With End of Gaza Fighting, Welcome Back to Israel's Normal Routine
Sunday, May 23, 2021 at 12:11AM by Gideon Levy. 23 MAy 2021 Haaretz
Last Friday, at noon, the municipal swimming pool reopened. The city was worried that swimmers would slip on wet floors as they ran to shelters, so they closed the pool during the recent hostilities. Gazans can split their sides laughing or die of envy, given that there is no pool or shelter in sight over there.
On Sunday, Palestinian laborers who are building the pool’s new changing rooms will return to work. The pool was built on the ruins of a watering pool serving the long-gone village of Sheikh Munis. These workers will again rise at 3 in the morning in their homes in the occupied West Bank in order to reach the checkpoint by 5 and their work by 6, in order to build Jews some changing rooms, the likes of which cannot be found in their own villages
At 6 A.M. on Saturday, Hayarkon Park was full of joggers and cyclists, happy to be back. The military-related conversations – “where did they get Kornet missiles?” – was gradually replaced by the regular talk of speed, distances and pulse measurements. At the tennis courts across the way, the last Ethiopian revelers were emerging from a party at the “white” sports club that is converted on Saturday night into a “Black” disco. And from Gaza, the photos and videos continued to flow: shell-shocked people beside the rubble, tents for the grieving, the bombed building housing the health ministry, along with a father and toddler son standing in the street, the father picking some white flowers from a drooping bush and handing them to his son in a heart-wrenching and tear-evoking moment.
K.T., a medical student at the Al-Azhar University in Gaza, who took these photos and video clips, hesitated before emerging from her house on Friday, for the first time in 11 days, in order to see the destruction. “I was very wary about going out, but then I thought that this was Palestinian history in its formation, and I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I want to remember these crimes and fuel my rage,” she wrote.
The checkpoints near the Gaza border and in Jaffa were removed on Friday, the shelters in Tel Aviv will close on Sunday, and Galina, the dog who went missing during the first siren and whose owners have been posting endless posters in the park since then, has apparently not returned home yet: Come back Galina, it’s time to return to normal.
This routine is what will bring about the next war. Everything that was and all that will be will provide the fuel for the next round of hostilities. The blockade on Gaza will continue; the Israeli boot will continue to press on the West Bank’s neck, and in mixed Jewish-Arab cities, provocations will continue against the remnants of the pre-1948 Palestinian community, while the world continues to support Israel. The arrogance will also remain as it was: We’ll provoke and torment, humiliate and oppress, remaining convinced that we can continue doing so unimpeded. It’s hard to believe how much Israel is prepared to invest toward every war without investing a thing in order to try and prevent it. How it has no worries about the risks of war but trembles in fear at any attempt to prevent it. In Israel talking with Hamas is presented as a much more dangerous option than bombing it.
Is there even one Israeli with a plan for Gaza? Is there one Israeli who knows what Israel wants from Gaza, other than quiet for its own people? Should they throw rice at us in honor of the suffocation we’re imposing on them? Should they welcome us in honor of the destruction we’ve sown? Should they forget everything we’ve done to Gaza since 1948 and up to this day, at no cost to us? Has Israel ever tried a different method with Gaza other than the unilateral one?
- Gazans ran for their lives – and from the Israeli army’s sinister phone calls
- To end the chaos in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, establish a Palestinian state
- Rebuilding Gaza is an existential necessity for Israel
Within hours after the cease-fire took effect, Israel trusted Hamas blindly, opening roads and schools and closing shelters. In other words, there is a partner in Gaza that can be trusted, they are as good as their word. Perhaps we should try talking to them before the next war, not only after it? Hamasdoesn’t lack courage or a willingness to sacrifice, much more, incidentally, than we have. Perhaps this courage will be translated into political courage this time? There are rational people over there too, one should remember.
But these are empty words. Galina might return home, but Israel will learn nothing and forget nothing. Retired general Israel Ziv will return to TV studios in order to explain how we should strike and destroy, as much as possible, to the sound of cheering viewers. Welcome back to our normal routine.
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