Spiraling Violence in the Occupied West Bank Signals a Loss of Control

[ThatRobGuy]

Spiraling Violence in the Occupied West Bank Signals a Loss of Control

The Palestinian Authority is absent from the hotbeds of militancy while Israeli forces have failed to prevent violent reprisal attacks by Jewish extremists.

www.nytimes.com

The northern West Bank was once viewed by Israeli, Palestinian and international authorities as a kind of pilot program for Israeli disengagement from the occupied territory, and by some even as a potential prototype for a future Palestinian state.

But a sharp escalation of violence in the region in recent days involving Palestinian militants, Israeli security forces and extremist Jewish settlers underlines the failure of that vision.

The northern West Bank is witnessing an explosive mix of the rise of local, armed Palestinian militias carrying out shooting attacks against Israelis; almost daily raids by the Israeli military to arrest militants, which often turn deadly; and reprisals by extremist Jewish settlers, who have rampaged through Palestinian villages setting fire to property.

The killing Israelis at Eli set off waves of reprisals on Tuesday and Wednesday by Israeli extremists who rampaged through Palestinian towns and villages, including Turmus Aya, north of Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, which administers most Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank. Turmus Aya is a relatively well-heeled community, and many of its residents are also U.S. citizens.

It prompted an hourslong gun battle in which seven Palestinians, including a 15-year-old girl, were killed, according to Palestinian health officials. Israeli helicopter gunships were sent into the area for the first time since the early 2000s to secure forces trying to extricate wounded soldiers and armored vehicles disabled by a powerful roadside bomb.
A day later, Palestinian gunmen killed four Israeli civilians, including a 17-year-old boy, near the Jewish settlement of Eli. The Palestinian gunmen were members of the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized control in the coastal territory of Gaza in 2007 after winning elections a year earlier.

And then late Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike by a pilotless drone killed three Palestinian militants in a car who the military said had just shot at an Israeli position in the northern West Bank and had carried out attacks against Jewish settlements in the area.

 

[Landon Caeli]

Well, it's an ongoing dispute between two ethnicities... If I had to choose a side, obviously it would be Israel, since Israel is not Islamic.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Well, it's an ongoing dispute between two ethnicities... If I had to choose a side, obviously it would be Israel, since Israel is not Islamic.

It's a lot of "eye for an eye" stuff going on.

If we all had a time machine, I'm sure most would agree that the right to intervene would've been when Islamic nations in the region started expelling Jews in record numbers with nowhere to go, instead of waiting until when we did.

Not that Israel is completely innocent in the conflicts that go on...but there was very much a "We don't want you to live here so get out of our country!, but we also don't want you to live in the tiny landmass other nations carved out for you (the size of New Hampshire in the middle of a hostile zone the size of mainland US) either because "that's OUR special religious place" thing going on...

When an ideology says "We don't want you to live here" and also says "We don't want you to live there either after we kick you out", at that point, it's safe to assume that the ending clause can be dropped off the statement and their position is simply "We don't want you to live"...full stop.

So I can't entirely fault the Jewish Israelis for having a serious chip on their shoulder.