By: Ollus Ndomu
The wave of violence between Israeli and Palestine is slowly disintegrating into a full-blown conflict and threatens to deepen the region’s turmoil. Sparked by tensions old and new surrounding Jerusalem, these escalating confrontations test Israel’s newfound relations with Arab neighbors, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt. Jerusalem and the status of the Palestinians is historically an emotional issue for the Muslim world, which has strongly condemned Israeli’s recent military actions against the Palestinians protesting the threatened evictions of several thousand of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah (East Jerusalem).
Israeli-Palestinian wider unrest which has killed 119 Palestinians started building up in early days of Ramadan, after Israeli police mounted barriers outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate, a popular gathering place after the evening prayers during the holy month when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, ABC.
Monday clashes in East Jerusalem (Al-Aqsa) have reverberated across the Middle East with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, calling for a new uprising, similar to the one triggered by an Israeli politician’s visit to Al-Aqsa in 2000.
Hamas has fired 1,750 rockets and balloons including incendiary devices at Israeli in declaration of its unflagging support of the protesters as the UN and big name world governments start to fray an informal cease-fire.
Aljazeera and ABC reported Wednesday that a series of deadly shootings by Israeli police in the West Bank further heightened tensions which U.S President Joe Bidden hoped would soon come to an end through a dialogue between the two aggrieved parties.
A crackdown on the protests has dismayed the Muslim world including Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates which signed new peace ties with Israeli. The EU has condemned the scenes of violence and bloodshed and expressed concern about the evictions, while the White House has made a twofold comment which condemns the violence and justifies Israeli’s military action as self-defense.
With Jerusalem remaining an emotional epicenter of Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites including the infamously recurring regional conflict between Jews and Muslims, the escalating tension may force Israeli’s neighboring countries to abandon their internationally pronounced commitments to regional peace.
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