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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230411-in-its-quest-for-religious-war-israel-is-uniting-arabs-and-muslims-around-palestine/">middleeastmonitor.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">In its quest for religious war, Israel is uniting Arabs and Muslims around Palestine</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Dr Ramzy Baroud - April 11, 2023</div></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_lgclntyu0" alt="image.png" width="452" height="301"><br><p>By ordering a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/4/5/israeli-forces-carry-out-violent-raid-at-al-aqsa-mosque" target="_blank">brutal attack</a>
against Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque on the 14th day
of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu knew very well that the Palestinians would retaliate.
Netanyahu's motive should be obvious. He wanted to divert attention from
the mass protests that have rocked Israel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/22/huge-crowds-protest-in-israel-over-rightwing-governments-judicial-reforms" target="_blank">since January</a> and divided Israeli society along ideological and political lines in ways never <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64929563" target="_blank">witnessed</a> before.</p>
<p>Unwilling to relinquish his hard-earned decisive election victory and
entirely right-wing coalition government, while fearing that major
concessions to his political rivals could see his coalition dissolve,
Netanyahu set his sights on Al-Aqsa Mosque.</p>
<p>History has proven that Israeli attacks on Palestinian holy places
are guaranteed to provoke a Palestinian response. For Netanyahu and his
extreme far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, the price
of Palestinian retaliation was worth the political gains from uniting
Israelis of all political backgrounds behind them. Ben-Gvir, in
particular, knew that an attack on Al-Aqsa would reassure his far-right
religious constituency about his commitment to imposing full Israeli
Jewish sovereignty over Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy places in
the occupied city of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>What Netanyahu and his allies may have not anticipated, however, is
the intensity of the Palestinian response. Hundreds of rockets were
fired towards the north and south of Israel. These came not only from
the besieged Gaza Strip, but, even more strategically important, also
from South Lebanon.</p>
<p>Although some damage was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65210045" target="_blank">reported</a>,
the rocket response was a political game changer. This was the first
time in years that fighters in two Arab countries coordinated their
retaliatory action against Israel and hit back simultaneously.</p>
<p>It will be difficult for Netanyahu to claim any kind of victory after
this, unless he takes his country to a major war on two fronts; three,
if we are to consider the rise of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/08/boundaries-between-west-bank-factions-blur-as-resistance-to-israeli-occupation-grows" target="_blank">armed resistance</a> in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank.</p>
<p>However, even a major war could backfire. During Israel's attack
against Gaza in 2014, the occupation state struggled to sustain a single
military front as the war lasted 51 days, leading to an Israeli arms
and ammunition crisis. Were it not for the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/u-s-has-sold-ammunition-to-israel-since-start-of-gaza-conflict" target="_blank">decision</a>
of the Barack Obama administration to ship supplies of munitions to
Israel to refill its depleted arsenal, Israel could have found itself in
unprecedented difficulty.</p>
<p>The US, though, is no longer able to play the role of emergency
weapons supplier, at least for now, due to its own ammunition shortage <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/17/politics/us-weapons-factories-ukraine-ammunition/index.html" target="_blank">resulting</a>
from the Ukraine war. Israel was thus careful to limit its response to
the Palestinian and Lebanese rockets. This episode shall prove decisive,
as it will empower Israel's regional enemies and, instead of boosting
Netanyahu's credibility within his own right-wing camp, it has the
potential to undermine it.</p>
<p>How could Israel's most experienced political leader commit such an
obvious strategic error? Aside from making the desperate decision to
attack Al-Aqsa — likely under pressure from Ben-Gvir and the equally
extreme far-right Bezalel Smotrich — Netanyahu is no different to other
Israeli leaders in miscalculating the significance of the spiritual
component of the Palestinian struggle, and how it ties to Arab and
Muslim solidarity with Palestine.</p>
<p>While what is happening in Palestine is not a religious war, some Israeli officials and political parties are <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/senior-israeli-lawmaker-warns-religious-war-over-jerusalem-moves-2022-05-23/" target="_blank">keen</a> to have one. Although <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/senior-israeli-lawmaker-warns-religious-war-over-jerusalem-moves-2022-05-23/" target="_blank">warnings</a>
against "religious wars" in Palestine — in fact, the entire region —
have been mostly linked to Israel's current "most right-wing <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63942616" target="_blank">government</a>
in history", religious discourses have been the most dominant since the
development of Israel's founding ideology, Zionism, in the late 19th
century.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, despite the historical fact that Zionism has been
situated within a religious context, the founders of the movement were
mostly <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-01-21/ty-article/.premium/how-israel-went-from-atheist-zionism-to-jewish-state/0000017f-e918-dc91-a17f-fd9d87a00000" target="_blank">atheists</a>.
They used religion as a political tool to unify Jews globally around
their new ideology and to romanticise in the minds of their followers
what is essentially a violent, settler-colonial movement.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, over the years, the centre of power within the Zionist
movement has shifted from liberal Zionism to Zionist Revisionism, and
then in the past twenty years or so, to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/22/what-role-will-religious-zionism-have-next-israeli-government-explainer" target="_blank">religious Zionism</a>.
For Israel's current generation of Zionist leaders, religion is not a
political tool, but an objective. This is precisely why, as Palestinian
men and women were being attacked so ferociously inside the holiest of
all mosques in the country, Israeli Jews were attempting to enter the
Muslim shrine to <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-call-animal-sacrifices-al-aqsa" target="_blank">sacrifice animals</a>
as part of the Passover tradition. Although not many of them have
succeeded in doing so, events suggest that a new kind of conflict is
taking shape.</p>
<p>Historically, Israel has targeted Muslim and Christian sites to
acquire political capital. Late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did
just that when he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/29/israel" target="_blank">conducted</a>
a provocative "visit" to the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa with hundreds
of soldiers in September 2000, and when the Israeli military completely <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140910-the-ancient-mosques-of-gaza-in-ruins-how-israels-war-endangered-palestines-cultural-heritage/">destroyed</a> or seriously damaged 203 mosques during its so-called "Operation Protective Edge" against Gaza in 2014.</p>
<p>Christian sites have also been <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/02/04/in-jerusalem-attacks-on-christians-are-on-the-rise_6014400_4.html" target="_blank">attacked</a> and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-holy-sepulchre-shuttered-bill-allowing-seizure-of-church-lands-shelved/" target="_blank">confiscated</a>. Israel's targeting of Palestinian Christians has led community leaders such as Archbishop Atallah Hanna to <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/archbishop-atallah-hanna-says-jerusalem-is-facing-unprecedented-conspiracy/" target="_blank">warn</a> about "an unprecedented conspiracy against the Christian existence" in the Holy Land.</p>
<p>The attack on Palestinian religious symbols isn't limited to the
Occupied Palestinian Territories; it is ongoing across historic
Palestine, including today's Israel. The 13th-century architectural
marvel, Al-Ahmar Mosque in Safad, for example, was <a href="https://stepfeed.com/israel-turned-this-13th-century-palestinian-mosque-into-a-nightclub-0644" target="_blank">turned</a> by the Israeli authorities into a nightclub. A study <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/israel-turns-mosques-into-jewish-synagogues-bars-restaurants-study-shows" target="_blank">published</a>
by the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel revealed in
July 2020 that scores of mosques have been turned into synagogues,
barns, bars or restaurants by the occupation state.</p>
<p>Israel's targeting of the Arab and Muslim identity of Palestine is
now being accelerated under Netanyahu's leadership, but this strategy is
a double-edged sword as we have seen in recent days. In the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zdT0-21vu2o" target="_blank">video</a>
that went viral of Israeli soldiers beating up Muslim worshippers in
Al-Aqsa, the distressing pleas of a Palestinian woman groaning in pain
were heard as she cried "Oh Allah, Oh Allah" repeatedly. Palestinian
mainstream and social media have published comments that the response by
Palestinian resistance groups was specifically in answer to the pleas
of the unidentified woman. This is the power of spirituality; it has the
kind of logic that Netanyahu and his allies cannot possibly understand.</p>
<p>On 3 April, Jordan's King Abdullah <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230403-jordan-king-abdullah-muslims-have-duty-to-protect-islamic-christian-holy-sites-from-israel-persecution/">stressed</a>
rightfully that, "It is the duty of every Muslim to deter Israeli
escalations against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem." In
its quest for religious war, Israel is uniting Arabs and Muslims around
Palestine.</p>
<p>When this happens, instead of isolating and browbeating Palestinians,
it is Israel that will find itself even more isolated. Palestinians do
not see themselves as fighting a religious war, but protecting their
religious symbols stands at the core of their fight for freedom, justice
and equality.</p>
<p>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
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