Another exhausting week in Israel, marked by more escalations, more rocket fire from terror groups and more destruction around people who just want to live their lives.
Nakba Day was marked yesterday. Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, initially referred to the dissolution of the British Mandate where Arabs (now referred to as Palestinians) became refugees due to losing the War of Independence to Israel.
While it is true Palestinians are victims of displacement, primarily by Arab leaders who made false promises and Israeli forces who were fighting a war instigated by those Arab leaders, Nakba Day has been co-opted to paint an inaccurate chain of events to demonize Israel and rewrite history. It ignores that Palestinian Arabs were offered a state, rejected it, and instead chose to launch a war against Israel with five Arab nations.
Nakba Day is used by many anti-Israel figures to mourn the failure of Arab leaders to eliminate Israel. In Israel, terrorists use it as another excuse for acts of violence against Jews.
This latest assault against Israel began when Khader Adnan, an arrested member of Islamic Jihad who went on a self-imposed hunger strike, passed away. Adnan was detained and convicted multiple times for terrorist activity and refused to be examined and receive medical treatment from Israel Prisons Service medical authorities and other civilian authorities. Adnan eventually starved himself to death.
Shortly after his death was announced on May 2, Islamic Jihad operatives, angry over what happened to Adnan, launched a revenge assault against Israeli civilians. On a weekend, the Gaza terrorists fired 104 rockets toward Israeli communities in the south.
Israel's delay in retaliatory action
Unable to ignore these rocket assaults, Israel waited a week to retaliate and launched Operation Shield and Arrow overnight. The IDF received intelligence and assassinated three Islamic Jihad senior commanders through targeted air strikes. These commanders were responsible for multiple rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, last month. They also led terror operations in the West Bank in the hopes of murdering Israeli civilians.
At least 13 Palestinians were killed in those air strikes, including the wives and children of the three Islamic Jihad operatives.
Hours later, Israel killed Khaled al-Fara, head of the missile unit in southern Gaza, through a precision car strike, foiling his plan to launch a guided missile attack.
All of this spurred some controversy in Israel itself, with some claiming this was nothing more than an attempt to appease our right-wing security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was whining about how Israel hasn’t had a strong enough reaction to the Gaza Strip.
I THINK pushing conspiracy theories like these only give Ben-Gvir more power than he would otherwise have had. The IDF does not make such decisions based on one member of the Knesset throwing a tantrum.
So began our five-day escalation with Islamic Jihad that led to 1,478 rockets fired at Israelis, resulting in the death of an Israeli, a Palestinian worker from Gaza and over 30 Palestinians in Gaza itself. As I write this, Islamic Jihad has broken another ceasefire and is launching Iranian-funded rockets at Israel. It has created two hopeless, frustrated and traumatized societies that cannot trust any of its leaders to finish this conflict.
What was very evident in this latest escalation is just how far gone Palestinian society is from a future of peace with Israel. It makes sense when you think about it logically: Palestinian leaders have dehumanized Jews, enforced anti-normalization policies against Israel, and raised a society that glorifies and compensates for terror.
When you mix this with being on the receiving end of Israeli military retaliation, which has led to the unintentional harm of innocent Palestinians, it only reinforces to Palestinians that we are the enemy. With all this in mind, it should be no surprise that Palestinian children are celebrating rocket attacks and death on the streets of Gaza – though it is still painful to see.
None of these words are meant to dehumanize Palestinians; on the contrary, my heart hurts for their reality. It is easy for people in the West to write from their keyboards and spew opinions about this conflict, but for those who know what violence and terrorism look like, we cannot wish more death and destruction on anyone else.
The onus falls on Iran’s puppets in the Gaza Strip, who will never do what is best for the Palestinian people. The Palestinians could have already had their own state, but that would mean making peace with Israel. For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it is easier to prolong the suffering of Palestinians and mask their inaction by shooting rockets at Israel to seem like they have things under control.
We are tired of war. We are all traumatized and scared, so how do we move forward if this is our reality?
How Israelis and Palestinians experienced history plays a central role in our pain and mistrust for one another. This is not just a conflict with history, religious friction and facts; it is a conflict with two different narratives.
On one side, a story plays out of people returning to their ancestral homeland, extending an olive branch for peace, being rejected at every turn and having had to fight for its existence ever since. On the other side is a story of people who were displaced from their homes, have had to be controlled by foreign powers and military, and want self-determination, just like anyone else.
The only way to resolve this conflict is to acknowledge each other’s narratives and suffering; without that, there is no future for peace. We must push past our fear and trauma and past our failed leaders to acknowledge each other’s pain. Only then do we have a real chance at peace.
The writer is a social media activist with over 10 years of experience working for Israeli, Jewish, and cause-based NGOs. She is the co-founder and the COO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm specializing in geopolitics.