Actually I think that Israel hears the Palestinians loud and clear

In one of those “I’m so sophisticated because I can see through all the pettiness” articles, last week Ethan Bronner wrote about how the Mideast Land Conflict Now Includes Street Signs. The article deals with the Palestinians naming various streets after terrorists. In his opening paragraph Bronner wrote:

A city project marking every street name and house number in this temporary Palestinian capital has stirred an international dispute and exposed yet again how the Israelis and Palestinians live in sealed narrative bubbles and seem almost incapable of hearing one another.

“Narrative bubble?” Pray tell, what could he be referring to?

The dispute started last week when an Israeli television crew came through. As it passed the office of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the construction site of the new presidential compound, it noticed that a main road bore new blue signs declaring it Yahya Ayyash Street.

Mr. Ayyash was considered the most cunning of the Hamas bomb makers in the 1990s, known to friend and foe as the Engineer, whose work led to the deaths of scores of Israelis on buses and crowded city streets. He was assassinated by Israel in what its security forces viewed as poetic justice: they slipped him a booby-trapped cellphone and when he answered it one day in Gaza, they exploded it against his head.

The street signs not only honor Mr. Ayyash, but also offer a concise biography in Arabic and English: “Yahya Ayyash 1966-1996. Born in Rafat (Nablus), he studied electrical engineering in Birzeit University, he was active in Al Qassam Brigades, and Israel claimed that he was responsible for a series of bomb attacks, and he was assassinated in Beit Lahya (Gaza Strip) on 5/1/1996.”

Well actually, it started earlier than that (as acknowledged later in the article) when the PA planned to honor Dalal Mughrabi. In the case of Ayyash, though, I would think that honoring a terrorist who was killing Israelis after Oslo was signed is a sign of contempt for the agreement.

The Palestinians don’t view things that way.

As the Palestinian government statement put it, “Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who was responsible for the murder of innocent Palestinians in 1948 and is infamous for his role in the Deir Yassin massacre, has museums, streets and many public spaces across Israel named after him. Most were done through government funding.”

Deir Yassin, which was a military encounter is somehow comparable to blowing up civilian buses? That’s not to say that innocents didn’t die in Deir Yassin but it wasn’t the goal of the Israelis to do so. And yet Bronner doesn’t critique the Palestinian account. Balance, no doubt, forces him to be quiet and pretend that the grievances are equal, truth be damned.

Bronner gets another (anti-Israel) perspective:

Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said by telephone that he personally considered it inappropriate to name a street after someone like Mr. Ayyash. But he said it was inappropriate for the central authority to intervene in such city affairs without a clear set of guidelines agreed to by both sides on what constitutes incitement.

“The recent killing of four innocent Palestinians by Israeli forces is incitement,” he said. “The checkpoints, humiliation and harassment of the occupation cause far more incitement among our people than any street name. And obviously people have different views of who is a hero.”

Here’s what the IDF said about the incident:

IDF forces killed 4 Palestinians planting explosive devices near the security fence in Gaza. After searching the area, IDF forces uncovered two explosive devices, 2 rifles, a Kalashnikov, and a vest.

Assuming that one doesn’t trust the IDF on this story, here’s Al Jazeera:

In the Gaza Strip, on 13 April 2010, Israeli forces killed two members of the Palestinian resistance and wounded 3 others in armed clashes near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east of al-Boreij refugee camp.

Even according Al Jazeera (though their numbers are different) the IDF was engaged in “armed clashes,” not “innocent” civilians. Bronner didn’t challenge this assertion.

In order to preserve his narrative that (tragically!) neither side listens to the other, Bronner does three things:

1. He treats Israel’s protest against Ayyash Street as arbitrary. (The street had that name for a long time, only the sign went up recently.) Of course that means suggesting that this is an isolated incident not part of a campaign of incitement.
2. He allows the Palestinian government to call Deir Yassin a massacre. The truth is that Deir Yassin was a military target where civilians resided. I understand that the Israeli (or if you prefer the Irgun) version is disputed. But so to was calling it a massacre. Bronner should have indicated that not everyone agrees with the Palestinian narrative.
3. Finally, he allows a Palestinian spokesman to distort a recent news event. Surely he knew that the men killed were armed and planting bombs. Yet Bronner didn’t challenge Khatib.

In the beginning Bronner lamented about the cocoon that prevents Palestinians and Israelis from understanding each other. The problem with his article is that it’s a megaphone, blaring the message of the Palestinians side while de-emphasizing the Israeli postion.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.