The arson attack that ended with a small boy being burnt to death represents a new low in the long-running occupation and attempted settlement of Palestine’s West Bank. It is heart-breaking and shocking – but, given the situation that Israel has created and allowed to fester, not surprising.
Soon after the attack Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the killing, calling it a “terror attack”. He is right. But such words are irrelevant when measured against the daily incitement against Christians and Muslims, as well as the light sentencing handed out to those convicted of these attacks. As the UAE’s foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah put it, the crime was “a dangerous escalation of terrorist acts” against Palestinians and “the natural by-product of the spread of Israeli colonies”. The killing of baby Ali occurs in a context, and it is a context where the official government of Israel daily, through words and deeds, makes it clear that Christians and Muslims are second-class citizens.
Anyone who doubts the close link between official incitement and mob killings need only study the last high profile murder of a Palestinian child – the burning last year of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Mohammed was kidnapped and set on fire by a group of six Israelis, in July last year.
Tensions were already high after the murder of three Israelis from a West Bank settlement. Two days before the murder of Abu Khdeir, an Israeli politician called publicly for Israelis to make Ramadan “a month of darkness for them”, referring to Palestinians.
A day before, the now-justice minister Ayelet Shaked called Palestinians “snakes” in a Facebook post widely interpreted to incite murder against them. Even the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the same day, referring to the three Israelis who were killed, wrote on Twitter: “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created.” The next day, Abu Khdeir was set on fire.
It is that kind of language that feeds a belief among Israelis that Palestinian life doesn’t matter. Among extremists, such as the radical settlers who occupy illegal settlements across the West Bank, that belief is expressed daily in violence and intimidation to those on whose land they live. The Israeli government is complicit, because it both builds these illegal settlements and guards them.
This death should provoke the same widespread revulsion in Israel as it has around the world. Israel must step back, before a new cycle of violence against Christians and Muslims begins.