Israel’s war is coming: a Palestinian protest in the Galilee mourning over the Gaza war, says a 15-year-old student
She says Palestinian rallies are often organized jointly with Jewish activists, who are more likely to get permits. And Sattath sees a clear chilling effect. She says most Arab citizens are against the war, but aren’t protesting.
That’s why it was such an unusual sight, one recent Saturday afternoon, when hundreds of people marched through the Arab town of Deir Hanna, in Israel’s Galilee, loudly protesting the Gaza war.
There is a Palestinian flag with a red triangle, but it has been banned by police. But like many, 25-year-old Haj Amir defiantly hoisted one over his shoulder.
The march was for an annual event called Land Day, centered in the Galilee but marked more broadly every March 30, to commemorate Palestinian opposition to Israeli expropriation of Arab land. But this year, it was also about opposing the fighting in Gaza that has now lasted six months.
“We feel safe here, without any threats” of retribution for speaking out, said Nagm Madi, who brought her four young children. Wearing a headscarf and large, stylish sunglasses, she said it was her first chance to raise her voice against the war. “We are not extremists. We want peace and we want to express ourselves.
Palestinians make up 20% of Israel’s population, but have long felt treated like second-class citizens due to lack of job opportunities, disproportionate poverty and under-investment in Arab communities. Condemning the plight of Palestinians in Gaza can be perilous, but many still grieve the loss.
A university student has been under scrutiny for a long time since posting a poem on social media. It was by Mahmoud Darwish, considered the Palestinian national poet, and it mentioned a martyr.
A work colleague messaged her that it was inappropriate and she should change her profile picture because she switched it to a black one in a sign of mourning over Gaza.
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“I don’t think Jewish Israelis feel safe,” she says. She thinks that they support the war because they believe only war and violence will protect them and their children.
Legal aid lawyers took cases to the Israel’s Supreme Court and were able to get permits for some recent anti-war demonstrations.
Noa Sattath, executive director of theAssociation for Civil Rights in Israel says it’s still a very grim picture from where she is.
Some protest permits for Palestinian citizens have also had “very limited and strict conditions,” says Hassan Jabareen, general director of the human rights organization Adalah. Organizers of the protest in the center of an Arab town were only allowed to use an out-of-the-way soccer field.
In March, a Palestinian professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem was suspended after suggesting that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and expressing doubts over the extent of alleged sexual assaults by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack. She was returned to the university, after she ” clarified” some of her comments.
She said she still has fears at her apartment. She is comfortable speaking both Arabic and out against the war in Gaza.
That did not happen. One of her friends, who is also a Palestinian citizen of Israel, created a podcast as a way for people to speak out after a period of stress last fall. “It was called ‘We will not be silent,’” she says. He gave me an excuse not to say my name.
The work she has done with the group of Jews and Palestinians in Israel has given her confidence. They set up a hotline and financial aid for Palestinian citizens who faced harassment, and have held “solidarity” meetings to find common ground between Jews and Arabs. The group has organized several anti-war rallies.
“To show that we demand a cease-fire agreement, which is the only way that will bring the Israeli hostages back home,” Bishara says. “And second of all, to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
At a Tel Aviv cafe, she suddenly freezes mid-sentence after spotting a man in a t-shirt and shorts with a large gun on his hip. After the Hamas attack, Israel’s far-right national security minister loosened gun laws to arm civilians. He recently celebrated giving out 100,000 new gun licenses. One Israeli newspaper reported that no Arab communities or town residents were listed among those eligible.
Bishara says it’s painful to see the destruction in Gaza and the more than 33,000 Palestinians killed. She says that Israeli media doesn’t show that. “There is somehow a bubble,” she says, and she believes Jewish Israelis “don’t see what the international society sees in different [media] platforms.”
To preserve the status quo, he says we need to stand up to the extremists and not allow them to damage it.
“This is Yahya Sinwar’s dream, to unite arenas,” he says, referring to the Hamas leader in Gaza. “This must not happen. Israel’s military should concentrate on Gaza and prepare for a war in the north if that were to happen. There is a chance that events on the Temple Mount will cause a war. And this is very dangerous”
The collapse of the peace process has led to a rivalry between the Israelis and Palestinians in the area of control over the holy sites.
According to Tzidkiyahu it’s more than just a cynical mobilization of religious symbols. The issue of the Al Aqsa Mosque has had an important role in Israeli national security for decades.
The naming of the attack is significant because it shows Hamas that it wants to unify the Muslim world by fighting not just for Palestinians, but for all Muslims as well.
JERUSALEM The large green doors of the mosque at Al-Aqsa compound are usually closed at 7 a.m. every weekday, as Palestinian worshippers leave the building. The Israeli police are in preparation for the arrival of a group of Israelis who will be at the mosque and Dome of the Rock.
One frequent visitor is Yehuda Glick, a leader in the movement pushing for Jewish prayer at the compound. A rabbi from the US is with a group. They stop at the stairs leading to the Dome of the Rock and begin to pray.
“Bless the state of Israel, God almighty, please unite our hearts to rebuild your temple,” Glick says, referring to a third temple that some Jews hope to build where the Dome of the Rock — one of the holiest sites in Islam — now stands.
We are here to make sure this is a place of prayer for all nations. And when I come here, we always pray, that’s what we do here,” Glick tells NPR.
A Palestinian in Jerusalem: Why Israelis and the Temple Mount haven’t ruled there since the 1948 Israeli-Jerusalem War
Just blocks away from the mosque, in her home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, 59-year-old Palestinian Aida al-Sidawi has been banned by Israeli police from going to Al-Aqsa for six months.
I say “Allahu akbar!” when settlers come to Al-Aqsa. [God is great] if I see them singing, dancing or praying,” Sidawi says.
She’s part of a group of older Palestinians who consider themselves to be protectors of the mosque, mostly by being present at the mosque in the hours when Jews are expected to visit.
“Al-Aqsa is the key to peace and the key to war. “If the Israelis want to keep their hands off Al- Aqsa, then everything will quiet down,” Sidawi says.
After Israel began its occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the country agreed to continue an arrangement aimed at maintaining religious balance: Jews would pray at the Western Wall and Muslims would pray at the Al-Aqsa plateau. Non-Muslims could visit Al-Aqsa at certain times but couldn’t pray there.
That is still the policy of the Israeli government. In the past few years, as Israeli far-right groups have become powerful in government, there has been a challenge to the status quo.
Most notably, in 2022, Itamar Ben-Gvir was appointed national security minister, with oversight of the police. Ben-Gvir often advocates for the Temple Mount to be strictly Jewish and his wife is one of the leaders of the Temple Mount movement.
“Tell me, 25-30 years ago, did we have any issues here? Sidawi says no. “There were no break-ins [by Israeli Jews]. When the settlers tried to come in to pray they would be blocked by the police.”
Since Oct. 7, Israeli police have heavily restricted Palestinian entry, allowing only the elderly population of the Old City in. For the entire month of June, Ben-Gvir supported a near-blanket ban on Palestinian Muslims entering the holy site. The Prime Minister and War Cabinet decided against him as senior national security officials were not comfortable with further escalation during the war.
In recent years, when Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover overlapped, police raids on Al-Aqsa sparked further conflict, with militants in Gaza and Lebanon firing rockets at Israel.
According to an Israeli attorney and expert on Jerusalem, Israel violates the status quo by any interpretation. There are often displays of Israeli pride on the Temple Mount.
The movement for “Jewish sovereignty” at the Temple Mount has been under pressure to stay away from the Temple Mount due to the war in Gaza.
The Jewish shrines underneath the Muslim shrines are not dedicated to them. I would say that if you look at it in current terms, there is no balance,” Truitt says.
Palestinians and Israelis in Al-Aqsa: Where do we go? Where are we going? How many Palestinians are coming to Israel?
For many young Palestinians, this was the first time in over six months that they were allowed to go to Al-Aqsa.
“The Temple Mount is the explosive barrel of the world, it is appropriate that we handle it carefully,” says Mickey Levy, a member of Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, for a centrist party and a former chief of Jerusalem police. “It is appropriate that people who are professionals with a lot of experience make the decisions and not some minister or another who wants to set the area on fire.”
When it is time to start the night fast, many Muslims go to the compound just before nightfall, buying dates and other food from Old City vendors along the way, and breaking their fast on a grassy area around the Dome of the Rock. Children play soccer and catch.
A group of females are taking selfies near the Dome of the Rock. They speak on the condition that NPR use their first names only, out of fear of Israeli police.
“This is my home and this is my paradise. “We love the atmosphere, we come as frequently as we can, even with all the difficulties Israel places in front of us.” She took a 2 1/2-hour bus ride to get here from her home in Nazareth, Israel.
Ameera, who is from East Jerusalem, says that they’re always afraid something will happen to them. We come to pray and be in peace and comfort, but these are things we don’t have outside.
The arena is full of young men and women, many from inside Israel who are making a point of being here. Many Palestinians say Al-Aqsa is the single most critical issue in their lives.
“You get sad because you can’t visit Al-Aqsa, but you feel sad for your friends in Gaza, because they don’t have a place to go.” We’ve seen settlers go in and do whatever they want while we’re banned. It’s really painful.”
In 1994, in the West Bank city of Hebron, following years of tensions between Jewish settlers and Muslims over the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, American-Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire at Muslims who were praying there, killing 29 people.
“Goldstein was a Temple Mount activist, and the connection to the holy sites is very clear,” says Eran Tzidkiyahu, a scholar at Hebrew University who is an expert on the Jewish-Muslim struggle over the holy sites. “The war in the background, the fact that our minister of national security [Ben-Gvir] is a known fan of Baruch Goldstein and even had a poster of him on his wall.”
The Temple Mount movement doesn’t impress analysts who say that most Israelis don’t care about it or see it as a fringe group.