A sign placed just outside the West Bank Jewish village of Yitzhar on Monday has prompted charges of “racism” against the community.
The protest sign, reading that “entrance to Arabs is dangerous,” was clearly a parody of the infamous red and white signs found throughout the disputed Samaria and Judea regions forbidding Israelis from entering Area A, which is under the security and municipal control of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
The Yitzhar sign appeared after a recent dispute between residents of the mountain village and Israeli security forces over the entry of a Palestinian doctor coming to help administer COVID-19 tests.
Yitzhar spokesman Zvi Sukkot claimed that Palestinians are generally permitted entry into the community, but only those known to local residents who had undergone security checks. In the event of the doctor, Sukkot said such a security check wasn’t possible.
Sukkot further said that the sign was meant as a protest gimmick, explaining that the sign was no different than the ones erected by the state which prevent Israelis from entering roughly 20% of the West Bank.
He added that the sign was taken down after 30 minutes of being posted.
Many figures across Israel’s political spectrum condemned Yitzhar for the sign, calling it “racist” and an embarrassment to the State of Israel.
Member of Knesset Yair Golan (Meretz) even attempted to link Yitzhar with the Yamina party (that received 35% of Yitzhar’s vote in the last elections), calling the nationalist party “Yitzhar’s representatives in the Knesset,” despite Yamina lawmaker Betzalel Smotrich tweeting a harsh condemnation of the sign.
But all this condemnation is irrelevant to the realities on the ground. It actually is dangerous for Palestinians to enter Yitzhar. We should acknowledge this openly. Any Palestinian entering the village does so at risk to his own life (similar to West Bank Jews entering Palestinian communities). But this situation shouldn’t be confused with racism, which is actually more entrenched in the attitudes of many westernized Israelis who often relate to Palestinians as “savages.”
Yitzhar is different. They’re “savages” too. What they and many other Jewish and Palestinians in the Shkhem/Nablus area experience is an actual tribal conflict. The populations have a long painful history of intense nationalist violence in both directions. We can analyze why, how it began, and who benefits but if we hope to successfully solve the problem, we need to do so responsibly within the context of the realities both populations have been experiencing.
The Jews who live in Yitzhar and similar communities are actually the Israelis best equipped to ultimately develop more positive and more equal relationships with Palestinians. They are, perhaps ironically, our ideal peace-makers because – unlike more establishment West Bank Jewish communities – the mountain villages surrounding Shkhem/Nablus don’t experience themselves as backed by the State of Israel and its powerful security apparatus. In fact, their residents often feel themselves victimized by the state in many of the same ways Palestinians do (politically motivated house demolitions, administrative detentions, violent interrogations, etc.).
These Jews, deeply connected to their land and identities, should therefore be Israel’s primary “face” to Palestinian society.
Anyone experienced in such matters understands that so long as a violent ethnic conflict exists, there’s value to Palestinians being afraid to enter Yitzhar and other similar small Jewish communities. And those of us seeking to end the conflict should understand that true reconciliation requires local Jews and Palestinians to courageously engage each other’s identities and stories in order to construct larger and more inclusive narratives. But efforts to soften local Jews or westernize either population will always be rejected as counterproductive.
