Softening Israeli stance or buying time for deadlier attacks

With mounting tension in Jerusalem, postponing the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, temporarily barring Jews from the Temple Mount and diverting the traditional Jerusalem Day march away from both Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City have been termed ‘smart acts’ of Israel.

Rockets were still fired on Jerusalem, and then they pounded the South. Riots broke out in the mixed Jewish-Arab cities of Haifa, Ramle and Lod, as well as in Arab cities in the Galilee. Arabs blocked roads in the South, and passing motorists were threatened and pelted with rocks. Playing things smart is making a difference in shaping the narrative and getting legitimacy for action. Israel has struck Gaza harder after Hamas fires rockets on Jerusalem.

It is too early to tell whether this round of fighting in Gaza will be short – two or three days – or a longer more intense military campaign. Hamas, by firing rockets onto Jerusalem, is trying to create a new equation, to set new “ground rules,” whereby whenever there is trouble in Jerusalem, they will get involved: If there is fire in Jerusalem, there will be fire in Gaza, or fire from Gaza onto Jerusalem.

Israel must disabuse Hamas of this notion and convince its leaders that this is not a new line of action worth pursuing; that it is simply not worth their while.

And the only way to do that is to hit Hamas very hard – not cosmetic targets, but strikes that will convince them that they have too much to lose. Otherwise, Hamas will present itself as the guardian of al-Aqsa and fire rockets toward Jerusalem each time there is trouble in the capital – and there often is trouble in the capital.

Another is that someone quickly needs to step up among the Arab-Israeli leaders and condemn the random violence and rioting among Arab-Israelis over the last two days and work to tamp it down, or relations between Israeli Arabs and Jews could be set back two decades to where it was at the outset of the Second Intifada.

It is frustrating that the rioting and violence would kill all the efforts to normalize ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Fighting corona pandemic had created a sense of “we are all in this together.”

Mansour Abbas appeared on the scene, gave speeches in Hebrew about coexistence without the usual rhetoric about the evils of Israel and Israeli society, and for the first time ever, an Arab party was seen by much of the public as a legitimate government partner.

Even the Likud of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and parties to his right – Yamina and New Hope – were willing to cooperate with Ra’am. Only the Religious Zionist Party, a party dismissed by many as an extremist, racist party, was opposed – and many saw their opposition as anachronistic.

The recent rioting of Arab-Israelis will likely set all of that back. It will be increasingly difficult for part of the public to see Ra’am, let alone the Joint List – a less conciliatory Arab party – as legitimate coalition partners, especially since they have not come out strongly against the violence and demonstrated that they were trying to stop it.

When Jewish extremists act outrageously, they are widely condemned by the government and the country’s leaders. There is growing realization that an entire community cannot and should not be judged by the actions of a radical and violent minority. But it can be judged by how it responds to those elements within it.