EIPA Press Briefing, 12 May 2021
‘Escalation in Jerusalem and Gaza border: how did we get there and what is the endgame?
With:
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum
Jerusalem’s Deputy mayor responsible for foreign relations, economic development and tourism. A Jerusalem city council member since 2016, she previously headed up the European desk of Jerusalem’s Development Corp. She has also served as a communications consultant for corporations and NGOs. Prior to her deputy mayoralty in 2018, Fleur led the city council opposition.
Khaled Abu Toameh
an Arab Muslim, is a veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades. He studied at Hebrew University and began his career as a reporter by working for a PLO-affiliated newspaper in Jerusalem. Abu Toameh currently works for the international media, serving as the ‘eyes and ears’ of foreign journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Abu Toameh’s articles have appeared in numerous newspapers around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report and The Sunday Times of London. Since 2002 he has been writing on Palestinian affairs for The Jerusalem Post
Ron Ben-Yishai
Best known in Europe for having portrayed an animated, auto-biographical version of himself (the television reporter) in Ari Folman’s Oscar, Ceasar and Golden Globe winning film, “Walz With Beshir” – is one of Israel’s most pronounced experts on most of the hotspots of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Afghanistan and nations of the Arab Spring. However, his expertise goes way beyond Israel’s military invasions of Lebanon, the drug wars of Colombia and the Lone Wolf attacks of recent years in Israel and in Europe.
Lt col Jonathan conricus
international Spokesperson of the IDF (Israel Defence forces),Head of International Public Affairs, Public Diplomacy and Social Media
Fleur Hassan Nahoum
• ‘I don’t think there is one thing that sparked the flame. I think it’s a combination of a
number of things. Opportune time for the Palestinian Authority to cause the trouble
they wanted to cause, and Hamas to cause the trouble that they wanted to cause.’
• ‘The macro lens is that both the PA, and Hamas, for different reasons, were looking to
inflame fires. They were looking to cause some trouble.’
• ‘The reason the Palestinian Authority is interested in a conflict right now is
because they want to avoid an election… They did it to impress the Biden
administration, but the truth is that they never really wanted to have an election…
they’re actually in danger of losing a lot of support.’
• ‘We’ve been working for five years to strengthen leadership connections, civil
society, spiritual leaders, and we’ve really created some very very strong bridges
with civil society. We live in such a dichotomous world. Monday night there’s a
rocket flying in the vicinity of Jerusalem and Tuesday morning I’m meeting in a
mixed Arab Jewish neighbourhood where an innovation centre has just been
opened… And those are the lives that we lead here. On a day-to-day we’re
working, we’re living; same cafes, same shopping malls, gyms and everything
else. Jews and Arabs living in one city.’
• ‘Then, of course, you have all the different troublemakers that have been inflamed,
that have been encouraged. I’m convinced that Hamas have been very diligent
working behind-the-scenes to take a group of troublemakers and to turn this thing into
a very deliberate confrontation.’
• ‘For both these parties there are a couple of disturbing things going on that they don’t
like. And that is the rapprochement, up until this point, between Jews and Arabs in
general… Hamas and the PA don’t like this because it makes them irrelevant.’
• ‘We’ve seen a record number of Arab East Jerusalemites in college in the city. I’m
pushing forward programs for integration into hi-tech companies. There’s so much
going on… These things are disturbing to a group backed by Iran, helped by Turkey,
and whose whole philosophy is to deny that Israel exists and whose only solution is
kicking Israel out.’• ‘This is not a case of a competing property claim… This has been going on for years.
Since the late eighties, even. Originally the Israeli courts found, what I believe to be,
an equitable solution. Look, you have rights of residency and we have rights of
ownership. You don’t mess with our rights and we won’t mess with your rights.’
• ‘I feel extremely sympathetic towards this family, because this family has become a
political football for the Palestinian Authority, for the Palestinian leadership. We know
that the leaders that unfortunately have cursed the Palestinian people are quite happy
to throw these families under the bus, in order to score some political points, even
though there was a decent and elegant legal compromise offered, that unfortunately
wasn’t taken.’
• ‘The question again is, who are the people who are creating this situation for these
poor helpless families?’
In response:
• ‘My reality is not what I am seeing on the TV screens… whether it’s in Lod or in
Jerusalem. So I think we have to separate the people with a specific agenda being
incited by bodies bigger than them, normally young vulnerable youth, it happens, and
from the regular mainstream Arab Israelis who just want to get on with their day.’
• ‘When these people are being told “you’re fighting for Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa”, it’s
easy to bring people into that religious fervor. Especially in the month of Ramadan.’
• ‘So I’m just hoping that this is localized to certain troublemakers, and that it doesn’t
spread in the mainstream Arab Israeli society, because that’s certainly not the
people I know and who I work with, and consider my friends.’
• ‘I honestly think the Palestinians just didn’t do what they were supposed to do, and
then they were just jumping and saying you’re not allowing elections… Maybe it was a
purposeful miscommunication that nobody wants to own up to.’
• ‘I just think that Palestinians are fed up with Abbas and his family and all the
corruption. They’re just fed up… The existential issue is that the Palestinianleadership, both the PA and Hamas, continues to lie to their people… The obsession
with the right of return is really ingrained from when they’re children, which leaves no
room to discuss a two-state solution or anything like that… They’re still teaching their
children that one day Israel won’t exist.’
• ‘So, I think the main thing is having new leadership, and I believe this is possible
with the new generation, who accepts that Israel isn’t going anywhere and that the
only chance forward for this region is to accept that nobody is going away, and to
create a situation where everyone can live in peace, in dignity, self-determination.
That’s really the only way forward and I don’t see it happening with the current
leadership.’
Khaled Abu Toamed
• ‘This is the result of ongoing incitement from Palestinian leadership. They use these
holy sites to incite the people against Israel. Of course with the aim of deligitimizing
Israel, demonising Jews, and trying to drag the Arab and Muslim world into a
confrontation with Israel. That has always been part of the Palestinian strategy. By
shouting out and calling out “Al Asqa is in danger! Where are the Arabs? Where are
the Muslims? You need to come and defend your holy site. In other words, you need
to come and wage war against Israel. Where are the armies to come and save this
mosque?’’ ‘
• ‘I’ve been covering this conflict for thirty-nine years and I feel that there’s always
repetition. And what we are witnessing right now is very similar to something we have
witnessed in the past. Those who have been following the rhetoric of Palestinian
leadership, of Palestinian media, of Hamas in recent weeks could easily see that we
were headed towards some sort of a confrontation with Israel.’
• ‘Mahmoud Abbas was waiting for an opportunity to cancel an election that he never
wanted in the first place. The only reason why he called these elections was because
of pressure from the European Union and, as Fleur said, to impress the Bidenadministration… He felt that he got himself into a trap, and he was looking, from day
one, for ways to rid himself from this crisis.’
• ‘These people that we’ve been dealing with in the last thirty and forty years. You
know, these people, they just don’t move on. They don’t change. I’ve been covering
Palestinian issues for nearly forty years, and it’s the same people I’m dealing with…
They don’t want to pave the way for the emergence of new leadership.’
• ‘Abbas saw that he was headed towards another catastrophe for Fatah. I can
understand that he would want to cancel the elections. But why turn it into a campaign
against Israel? Why put all the blame on Israel? Ironically, many Palestinians don’t
buy that… What Abbas did during his speech on April 29th in Ramallah was to
unleash a wave of incitement. Very harsh rhetoric against Israel.’
• ‘The best way to avoid a Palestinian intifada against the Palestinian leadership is
by telling your people, “It’s not me, it’s the Jews. Go there, go fight against Israel
who wants to destroy the mosque.” Israel, Israel, and look where we are now.’
In response:
• ‘I would like to warn against generalizations… what you see on TV is not always
representative of the reality. I still believe that the vast majority of Arab citizens in
Israel, including those who live in East Jerusalem, are not supportive of the violence.
I’ve heard in the last three to four weeks, other voices from residents of East
Jerusalem attacking the rioters saying, “you’re ruining Ramadan, the economy…”…
It’s really a small group, they decided to instigate the violence on the pretext that
Israel was preventing them from celebrating Ramadan at the Damascus Gate… the
barriers were removed and yet the rioting still continued, so it wasn’t really about the
barriers…’
• ‘What worries me is that these Palestinians are being brainwashed, being exposed
to all this incitement from the Palestinian Authority, from Hamas, and sadly by
some of the leaders of the Arab community inside Israel.’• ‘What worries me is that I haven’t seen many Arab leaders coming out and
denouncing what’s going on in the streets… this is very harmful for the Arab
community inside Israel… they are fighting for integration, not separation in Israel.
And I still believe that there are many sane and rational voices among them.’
• ‘We are doing Netanyahu an injustice… I am sure he would have preferred this did
not take place, this flare-up of violence. I am not really sure how this could serve his
interests… For Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority, and Islamic Jihad there is no
difference between Netanyahu, Gantz, Lapid… They see everyone in the Israeli
government as an enemy… We should not even insinuate that he would in some
ways drag this on because it serves his political agenda. I don’t buy this.’
• ‘I believe that despite the current tensions, the relations between Jews and Arabs will
remain good.’
• ‘There is this constant attempt by extremists, especially on the Palestinian side, to
damage relations relations between Arabs and Jews within Israel. Hamas and the
PLO have always had an interest in dragging the Arab citizens of Israel into a
confrontation with Israel. So Arab Israelis need to be very careful. We are Israeli
citizens. We are loyal citizens… It is ok to identify with Palestinian aspirations and so
on, but Arab Israelis need to be very careful about crossing the red line.’
• ‘Things will go back on track. It might take some time but we will see Jews and
Arabs getting closer together.’
• ‘Unfortunately these demonstrations have been hijacked by thugs… we must be
careful and not characterize all these protests as anti-Israel… Not any Arab who
demonstrates against Israeli policies wants to destroy Israel.’
• ‘This conflict did not start with the Palestinian elections… It did not start twenty or
thirty years ago. It’s been going on for a long time. We will continue to see these
outbursts of violence every now and then because I believe that there are still a
majority of people out there in the Palestinian world, in the Arab world, in the Islamic
world that has still not come to terms with Israel’s right to exist. And I believe that this
is the core issue. This is the essence of this whole conflict.’Jonathan
• ‘An interesting fact that I think is underreported in international media is the rate of
rockets that are fired by terrorists in Gaza but that fall short in Gaza. Out of 1100
rockets that have been fired, 200 fell short, actually landing inside Gaza. And our
assessment is that they are responsible for at least some of the civilian casualties that
are reported in Gaza by Hamas authorities.’
• ‘We have also struck various targets where Hamas uses civilian infrastructure. This
has created quite a lot of international attention and I’m sure you’ve seen the front
pages of all of the newspapers. A big tower attacked from the air and then crumbling
down. And there’s been criticism. I’d like to address that criticism… Not even one
single Gazan civilian was injured in any of those two attacks on those big buildings
that we struck. First of all they’re military targets because they’re used by Hamas for
military purposes, intelligence, counter-intelligence… that’s why we struck them… but
before we struck, we made sure that there were no civilians there. First by warning
shots, and then also by phone calls to Gazan civilians making sure that they’re out of
the area and that they stay clear.’
• ‘Our intent is to minimize collateral damage. Women, children, any non-combatants.
We go to great lengths in order to minimize the risk, but the fact of the matter is that
Hamas is embedded, on purpose, within the civilian population, and they are using
civilian infrastructure as their human shields. Which makes it almost impossible to
strike military targets without any collateral damage. Without being cynical, I think that
the numbers so far are quite good. As we have killed more than twenty known
terrorists and there are a relatively small number of civilians that have been killed…
We aspire to the smallest possible amount of collateral damage.’