Rockets and political science

This week I found myself missing the good old days – not that they were
so “old.” Just under a year ago, in fact. I am nostalgic for that time
before US Secretary of State John Kerry decided he should try to bring
peace to this particular part of the Middle East, perhaps because he
had so spectacularly failed in Syria and Iraq among other places.

I’m not accusing Kerry of deliberately setting off the chain of events
that led to this week’s missile onslaught from Gaza or the senseless
murder of the three abducted Jewish teens – Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad
Shaer and Eyal Yifrah. And it was with tremendous pain and sorrow that
we discovered that it was despicable Jewish youths who police believe
kidnapped and killed 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir, apparently in a
revenge attack. But this time last year, or even a few weeks ago, we
were somewhere else completely – still in the Middle East, but a much
calmer, saner version.

As Lee Smith noted in an article in Tablet Magazine on July 8, a few
days after I’d posted a similar observation on Facebook, there was a
status quo that was working in a region in which peace is sorely
absemt.

As Smith recalled, last May in Jerusalem Kerry said: “People in Israel
aren’t waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there’ll be peace,
because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment and
a sense of prosperity. But I think if you look over the horizon, one
can see the challenges.”

He then jumped in where so many others have failed, trying to get a
peace agreement to his name. Aggravating matters, Kerry announced a
nine-month time frame for the negotiations. The stopwatch acted like
the timer on a bomb, ticking down to an inevitable explosion.

Similar to what happened following the Oslo Accords and the Camp David
negotiations, the harder the US pushed, the greater the number of
terror incidents. Not only did a peace agreement seem more distant,
even the modus vivendi was badly wounded.

I get no joy out of saying “Told you so.” And I really hope that Kerry
is not grinning in vindication having warned in a self-fulfilling
prophesy last November that failure to agree to his initiative would
result in a third intifada.

I find myself sad not only at the tragic loss of lives, I mourn the
intangible things that we lost, things that Kerry shuttling around in
helicopters and limousines didn’t even see.

A month ago, for instance, I saw Jews and Arabs on the overcrowded
Jerusalem Light Rail give each other seats and acknowledge each other’s
existence as normal human beings. In the rioting that followed Abu
Khdeir’s murder, local thugs in the Arab neighborhoods in the north of
the city burned down the rail stations and pulled up the tracks so the
trams can’t carry passengers to and from their homes any more.

Until last month, too, tourism was booming, adding prosperity to the
unofficial peace. Among the towns enjoying an unprecedented boost was
Nazareth, which was attracting Jewish Israelis and not just Christian
pilgrims, marketing itself as a window onto a different culture while
the art gallery in Umm el-Fahm was being reviewed in mainstream papers.
Both cities suffered severe rioting in recent days.

Trying to find at least some encouraging signs among the violence, I
noted that there were some mayors – the Nazareth city head among them –
who, unlike the Arab MKs, called for calm and an end to the
self-destruction.

MAINLY THE calls for restraint were aimed predictably at Israel,
leading me to wonder what counts as a proportionate response when more
than 100 missiles fall within 24 hours. I concluded that it depends on
how far you live from the rockets’ radius.

One of the reasons Kerry’s initiative failed was that it became
apparent to all American allies in the Middle East that they could not
rely on the US to protect them if push came to shove (and shoves in
this part of the global village can be very rough).

Until the failure of the Kerry negotiations Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas had hated Hamas and its leaders more than he
loathed Binyamin Netanyahu.

Following the demise of the talks, and boosted by the prisoner releases
he had already achieved, Abbas weighed his options and made a pact
with the devil.

Hamas, weakened among other things by the evaporation of its support
from Syria – which has all but disappeared as a state – elected to
boost its status the usual way, by attacking Israel and undermining
Fatah.

US President Barack Obama seems to be oblivious to the mayhem he helped
create. In an article written specially for a much-publicized peace
conference sponsored this week by the left-wing Haaretz newspaper, Obama
wrote: “As Air Force One prepared to touch down in the Holy Land last
year, I looked out my window and was once again struck by the fact that
Israel’s security can be measured in a matter of minutes and miles.
I’ve seen what security means to those who live near the Blue Line [the
Lebanese border], to children in Sderot who just want to grow up
without fear, to families who’ve lost their homes and everything they
have to Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s rockets.

“And as a father myself, I cannot imagine the pain endured by the
parents of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, who were
tragically kidnapped and murdered in June. I am also heartbroken by the
senseless abduction and murder of Mohammed Hussein Abu Khdeir, whose
life was stolen from him and his family.

At this dangerous moment, all parties must protect the innocent and act
with reasonableness and restraint, not vengeance and retribution...”

The intense irony of the participants of the peace conference having to
seek shelter at the Tel Aviv hotel venue because of a missile attack
from Gaza brought a painful smile to the lips of even self-professed
ultra-liberal friends on a night when so much of the country came under
attack.

Jerusalem also came under fire on Day 1 of Operation Protective Edge
(who comes up with these names?). We learned in November 2012, during
Operation Pillar of Defense, that Hamas chants its desire to liberate
the Holy City but doesn’t worry that its missiles might destroy the
holy sites. Perhaps it thinks that Israel, no matter what, will be
blamed. Maybe they just want blood, be it of Jews or Muslims, who will
become instant martyrs.

So I sat with my neighbors in the stairwell that we use as a shelter
waiting to hear the boom. And like so many others I acutely identified
with residents of the South, who have been suffering from far worse
attacks for more than a decade. (The distant thud I heard turned out to
be the sound of a missile landing in the garden of friends who live
outside the city, although fortunately nobody was injured.) Shortly
after the attack, I heard neighbors groaning: I jumped to the worst
conclusion (missiles can make you do that), but it seems they were
writhing in pain as Germany slaughtered Brazil in the World Cup
semifinal.

(“It’s too much that Germany and Hamas should score so many goals on
the same night,” moaned one wag, while others suggested that the
Brazilian goalkeeper employ the soccer equivalent of Israel’s Iron Dome
anti-missile missile system.) With the alert in my area and so many
friends all over the country under fire, it took me a while to realize
that something was missing: The noise of fireworks. Usually during
Ramadan, residents of the nearby Arab neighborhoods celebrate the end
of the fast each evening with fireworks. This year there had been riots
and arson attacks but the festive fireworks were missing as the
rockets passed overhead.

And then it dawned on me that something else had changed: Last year,
Jews wished Muslims “Ramadan kareem”; this year the traditional
greeting was absent, a sense of unease had replaced the feeling of
goodwill and hope. Whatever happens next, it will take time to rebuild
the trust. The last thing it needs is Kerry’s stopwatch and more
confidence-building measures.