David Swift has narrated this article for you to listen to.
When I first heard of the 7 October attacks, I feared it would be the beginning of a war on several fronts: in Gaza, in northern Israel, and in the West Bank. My biggest concern was that the high casualties from the retaliatory Israeli airstrikes would cause violence within Israel itself, as Palestinians in mixed cities such as Jaffa, where I live, took to the streets. This was exactly what happened two years ago, when mob violence erupted in Jaffa, Lod, Acre and other areas where Jews and Muslims live side-by-side, in response to the clearance of the Muslim neighbourhood Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. During those riots, three people – two Jewish and one Arab – were killed. In some of the most gentrified parts of Jaffa, Palestinian youths torched cars and set up barricades. Yet for now, despite the death toll in Gaza passing 12,000, the mixed cities remain quiet and peaceful.
For their part, Israeli-Arab leaders have been quick to condemn the violence of 7 October. I recently sat in on a Zoom meeting of around 400 Palestinians and Israelis from mixed cities across Israel, where Mohammad Barakeh, chairman of the Arab Monitoring Committee (who had been recently arrested over plans to stage a protest against the war) was unequivocal: ‘Even the prolonged suffering of the Palestinian people cannot justify the massacre of 7 October.’ There have also been various joint initiatives set up by Jews and Arabs, from blood donation drives in Shefa-Amr to hospitality centres for those displaced by the war. Amir Basharat, CEO of the Council Arab Authorities, lives in Jaffa, and told Israeli media that the Hamas attack, which ‘claimed Arab and Jewish lives indiscriminately’, increased the sense of a shared fate: ‘As far as Hamas is concerned there is no difference between an Arab and a Jew, they are all part of the occupying entity.
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