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Yesterday, in West Jerusalem, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his bomb on a crowded early-morning bus. Eight people--actually nine, including the bomber himself-- were killed, and scores injured. What a tragedy. Here are some details about seven of these people.
I was in West Jerusalem exactly two weeks ago. When I visited Israel in 2002, I was glad to have the opportunity to take a few bus-rides, as I hoped it would show some sort of solidarity with my many friends in Israel who, I know, live with a constant level of dread that something like this may happen. On my most recent visit to Jerusalem, just two weeks ago, I didn't ride a bus. But I made a point of spending an evening walking over to Ben Yehuda Street and eating in a nice, popular restaurant there. The same sort of (perhaps ill-focused) "solidarity" at work.
The Israeli government and, it seems, many people in Israel are vocal in making the case that the fear they suffer from the suicide bombers justifies many of the policies their government has adopted taken and continues to adopt toward (or against) the Palestinians. That includes the policy of not negotiating with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority--on the grounds that the extremely hard-pressed PA is "not tough enough" on the militant organizations that organize the missions of the suicide bombers. It also, more currently, includes the government's pursuit of its present wall-building project in the West Bank.
I think I understand a little about how terrible it must feel to live in a country that is subject to periodic suicide-bomb assaults, many of them detonated in places filled with civilians. I have only spent a little time in Israel. But back when I was in Lebanon in the late 1970s, car-bomb attacks against "soft", civilian-packed targets were certainly one of the many tactics used by the (Israeli-backed) Maronite extremist organizations against the people of mainly-Muslim West Beirut. Like most of the other western journalists working in Lebanon at that time, I lived in West Beirut. I also had my children there. Yes, we were living within the bounds of an always unpredictable civil war (which was why I left the city, with my children, in 1981). Many horrendous things happened while I was there-- and of course, many even worse things, in 1982, after I was gone. But one of the things that happened periodically in West Beirut was certainly car-bombs.
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However, it is also quite appropriate to start asking some realistic questions about this whole phenomenon of Palestinian suicide-bombings of Israeli civilians that are, it seems to me, too seldom asked in most western media. Questions like these:
- Is there something about these types of attack that makes them uniquely different from any other form of assault against a society, and if so, what is it?
- Do the "special" attributes of this form of attack justify "special" forms of response against those judged responsible for such attacks?
- How broadly or narrowly should such "responsibility" be ascribed?
- Given that during the current Palestinian intifada more than four times as many Palestinian minors as Israeli minors have been killed (and we might assume that the proportion of "civilians" of all ages killed on each side is roughly similar) can we say that Israel's actions against the Palestinians--inasmuch as they are claimed to be "in response to" Palestinian violence against Israelis--have actually been proportionate?
- And, given that the cycle of violence between the two peoples, with its terrible attendant casualty toll, shows no sign of abating, can we say that Israel's policies toward the Palestinians have actually been effective in achieving the claimed goal of ending the violence?
These are not small questions, I know. But they have been weighing on me a lot in the wake of my latest visit to Israel/Palestine, and I hope to be able to start exploring them in some posts over the days ahead.
Today, I'll start with Question 1 above, and hope to make a bit of headway.
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