Start here —

For background from the modern Arab press —

The 28 Palestinian families arrived at the Karm al-Jaouni area of Sheikh Jarrah as refugees in 1956. Under an agreement with the Jordanian government and the UN refugee agency UNRWA, the homes were built in exchange for a revocation of their refugee status and the promise that these families would own the homes after three years.

The promise was never fulfilled, and in 1967 Jordan lost its mandate over the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the territories were occupied by Israel.

Al Jazeera, “Video shows Israeli settler trying to take over Palestinian house; Video captures Palestinian woman confronting Jewish settler in her family home in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah.” May 4, 2021.

Title issues in Sheikh Jarrah appear to go back to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (“Six Day War”) and the redistricting that ensued. So next:

The video makes it look like Israel just popped up on the map one day in 1948, and the Arab states were enraged by the sudden intrusion.

Well, neither Israel nor Pakistan arrived from out of nowhere in 1948. For one, a militant Islam had found itself unhappy in India, so one might suggest, and an horrific two-way mass migration formed the new state and its “frozen conflict” in Kashmir and shifting East-West alignments and related politics. As for Israel, cultural memory engraved in religion and ancient tradition, urged a return far predating 1948. A part of that history may be found here:

Rosenthal, Herman. “Agricultural Colonies in Palestine.” Jewish Encyclopedia. n.d.

Should your devotion to peace (even from your desktop, laptop, or phone — no less than mine if that) have you at least look or recall the history of Jewish habitation and investment in Palestine far predating Hitler’s atrocious crime, then consider the passage that follows.

From the Awesome Conversation

I appreciate the avarice, egotism, greed, and vulgarity involved in most wars in relation to taking property by force.

Fortunately, the tides move in both directions, making everyone miserable (if not vulgar).

WHAT IF Israeli and Palestinian officials designed together final boundaries and funded resettlement — no homeless; no “kick-outs”; no further coercion, fraud, or force — and no allowance for contempt or hate — for equal or better qualities of living where placed?

Take the emotion out of arrangements, domestic and other, and just focus on the basic human right to live in peace and free of intimidation and persecution. It doesn’t matter who you are, how you got there, what you believe or don’t believe, or even where loyalties may reside, but only that families may be settled and left to live (and work) — by mutual assent — fairly and without harassment.

Kumbaya?

Not necessarily. It’s out of necessity now that emphasis shift from immediate personal alliances, ambitions, concerns, egotism, and hurt (even) to broadened responsible modern Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. It should take only one rightly handled instance to change . . . everything.

“Masking” is what takes place when events are reported with critical missing information. In this instance, the Arab and Muslim press, the modern-looking Al Jazeera perhaps especially, overlooked the 1967 Arab challenge to Jewish survival in Israel, a war that is now an historical matter, and in standard operating procedure demonized the Jews while maintaining the innocence of Arab residents who knew their homes by having taken the same for themselves when political conditions permitted. In effect, the family had done nothing wrong with the exception of taking up residence in a geopolitical space that would again be contested, and whose outcome would be their loss by way of the restoration of previous boundaries.

Who are the thieves?

The Arab family settled in 1956?

The Jewish family pressing its case for title from before that date and after another horrendous eleven years later?

Let the finger pointing end.

Drawing to a close the instability of boundaries and related animus matters as much as the carefully and legally researched answers to legal title. To get that accommodation wants for asking those with interest to open their eyes and to think further into the future than themselves, their appreciation of themselves, and their immediate perceptions.

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