The Divide Between Israel and the Palestinians: A Memorino to Rashida Tlaib, the One American Representative in the Detroit Suburbs
Perhaps Mr. Biden’s bear hug will give him political cover to reinvigorate the pursuit of a two-state solution, last attempted by U.S. diplomats in the Obama administration. Mr. Biden recently said “there’s no going back” to the prewar status quo. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called for the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, to govern Gaza after Israeli forces withdraw. It assumes Israel would sooner pull out than pay the price the Palestinian Authority would demand. The United States will have to threaten to reduce military assistance if they want to have any chance of success. Israel can conclude that U.S. talk is just that if it so chooses.
Some of the people who have died during the war between Israel and Hamas have been honoured with vigils in the suburbs of Detroit.
There have been many different tales told about the war and about the only Palestinian American in congress, Rashida Tlaib.
Jeremy Moss is a Democrat state senator from Southfield, a suburb with a large Jewish population, spoke at a gathering last week in solidarity with the Israeli hostages. “I had so many people coming up to me saying that they don’t feel seen, heard, represented,” he said.
Mr. Turaani said that Ms. Tlaib was like Joshua Reed Giddings who was censured by his House colleagues for opposing the slave trade.
This year, thanks to a redistricting shake-up, she began representing one of the largest Arab American communities in the country, as well as parts of the largest Jewish community in the Detroit area. Her views of the conflict are both personal and difficult to reconcile, which has made her difficult to represent.
The divide would pose a huge challenge to any politician. It could not be Bridgeable for Ms. Tlaib, as she staked out a position that angered many of those who depended on her.
Tlaib was one of 10 House members who voted against a resolution to condemn Hamas and reiterate $3.3 billion a year in U.S. military assistance to Israel.
On Nov. 3, she posted a video on social media accusing president Biden of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people” and including a pro-Palestinian slogan that many think is calling for restoration of Palestinian land.
Ms. Tlaib has said she saw it as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.” In a statement released after the censure vote, she vowed to “continue to work for a just and lasting peace that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people, centers peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and ensures that no person, no child has to suffer or live in fear of violence.”
Ms. Tlaib was condemned by the Biden administration, Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, and the governor of Michigan for her defense of the slogan.
Mr. Mellman thinks that Tlaib is out of step with Democrats in Michigan and with her congressional colleagues. “We hope she will change her views, and if not, perhaps somebody might be interested in running against her.”
Israel and the Gaza War: How did Hamas Attacks on Gaza Break Its Stand, And Why Israel Has Known About It? The Times’ Letters to the Editor
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Any kind of shared future is most likely a longer way off than it was a month ago. But Palestinians already knew that. Was the day before Hamas’s attacks considered “peace”? Maybe for Israelis it was, but for Palestinians it wasn’t.
Since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Israeli forces have launched numerous raids on the West Bank, arresting people from all walks of life, including students, activists, journalists, even individuals posting online in support of Gaza. Air and drone strikes have destroyed houses and streets, targeted numerous refugee camps, and nearly leveled Al-Ansar Mosque. Israeli forces destroyed a memorial to a journalist, that was located at the spot where she was killed while reporting a story, in Jenin last month.
The state of play was broken by the Oct. 7 attacks. The occupation’s unsustainable nature was laid bare for all to see, as was the impossibility of governing two peoples but privileging one of them over the other.
There have been periods of increased cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians over the past 75 years. But these were usually preceded by times of increased conflict, such as the first and second intifadas, or popular uprisings. The intifadas, in which Palestinians participated in large-scale resistance, sometimes civil and sometimes violent, are often presented by Western media as random or indiscriminate bursts of murderous savagery — as has been the case with the Oct. 7 attacks. The violence happened in a way that wasn’t in a vacuum.
Many Gazans’ parents and grandparents are banned from entering areas where they lived in the past because of a conflict of interest. They still invoke rich memories from their childhood or adolescence, when they walked through citrus groves in Yaffa or olive fields in Qumya — the latter of which, like many villages whose people were expelled into Gaza during the 1948 war, was later transformed into a kibbutz.
The National Security Minister, who is also a settlement owner, is making efforts to arm civilian groups with assault rifles in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. So far, the ministry has purchased 10,000 assault rifles for such teams around the country. More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7 in an atmosphere of escalating violence.
Ramallah, a city without normal life for the past few months. Is it still a little hard to cope in the presence of a large population?
The city of Ramallah, which has a young and lively population, has been without normal life for the past month.