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CWA # 486, 7 June 2021
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Revisiting the recent violence: Three takeaways

  Udbhav Krishna P

With a new government in place in Israel, will there be peace? Both sides have enough firepower to continue violence. Do they have the political will to kickstart a peace process?

The recent violence in Israel - first in Jerusalem and later between the State and Hamas witnessed numerous rockets being fired, substantial casualties and damages to physical infrastructure. Though there was a ceasefire, both sides have enough resources and energy to continue fighting. 

One could identify the following three of the takeaways from the recent Israel-Palestine conflict.

Return of violence 
After seven years of calm, the Israel-Palestine conflict returned to the world stage again, being in the headlines every day for more than a week. The violence began with Palestinian protests in Jerusalem against an anticipated decision of the Supreme Court of Israel to evict six Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. The protests quickly escalated into violent confrontations between Jewish and Palestinian protesters.

The Israeli Police storming the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam, added fuel to the fire. The Police used tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades against stone-throwing Palestinians. This violence and escalation coincided with Ramadan and Jerusalem day, festivals and celebrations where lots of people gather together from both sides. More than 300 people were injured during confrontations, mostly Palestinians, drawing international condemnation. The Supreme Court ruling was then delayed for 30 days as the attorney general of Israel, Avichai Mandelblit, sought to reduce tensions. On 10 May, after Israel ignored an ultimatum to remove their forces, two Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, began firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, hitting multiple residences and a school. 

Israel began a campaign of airstrikes against Gaza. Later on, Israel also used artillery shells and deployed troops and tanks on the borders of Gaza, reminding the world of the enormous bloodshed of the 2014 Gaza war. The rocket attacks from Gaza militants on Israel and Israeli air and artillery strikes on Gaza have continued since then, resulting in the destruction of infrastructure and bloodshed on both sides. There have been many protests and confrontations with the Israeli Police in the West Bank region regarding Gaza's hardships and sufferings. 

Return of Hamas 
The Israelis, this time, underestimated Hamas's strength and capabilities. The enormous barrage of rockets in their hundreds (1,500) in two days surprised the Israelis. The Hamas were well prepared from before, with military and economic support from Iran and Qatar. The rockets used by Hamas is a result of re-engineering rockets from; the unexploded artillery shells which Israelis had fired on Gaza in the 2014 Gaza war, the underground metal pipelines left by the Israeli settlers who left Gaza in 2005 and a few missiles found from the deck of two sunken British ships from WWI. The idea behind Hamas's firing thousands of rockets at once is to exhaust and overwhelm the highly advanced Israeli missile defence system, the Iron Dome. 

Rise of communal tensions 
There have been increased communal tensions between the Israeli Jews and 21 per cent of the Arab minority who stay in Israel. The State of Israel has to balance between managing external threats from Gaza and looking into internal instability within Israeli society at home. Old and new tensions among Jewish and Arab citizens have exploded into riots and attacks. The city of Lod has been the epicentre of communal violence. Arab mobs have torched three synagogues in retaliation. The next day, the Jewish groups lit Arab buildings aflame. 
A Vox report stated while fighting between Israel and Hamas is common, the street violence inside Israel's internationally recognised borders is not. Nothing at this scale happened in the last three Gaza wars; in fact, nothing like this has happened since a wave of ethnic rioting in October 2000. Even then, the centers of the current violence — so-called "mixed cities" like Lod, with high proportions of both Arab and Jewish citizens — were relatively calm.

To conclude...
The Israelis under Netanyahu wanted to inflict enough damage on Hamas, destroying most of their capabilities, so that rocket attacks will not happen again. The same goes with Hamas; they wanted to show the world and their Palestinian public that they can still fight against Israel even after the enormous hardships they have to face in the Gaza strip, with the sanctions and blockades. 

With a new government in place in Israel, will there be peace? Both sides have enough firepower to continue violence. Do they have the political will to kickstart a peace process?

About the author

Udbhav is currently pursuing Masters in International Studies from the Department of International Studies, Political Science and History, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru. His areas of interest include the Middle East, Nuclear and Weapons Technologies etc.

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