Tel Aviv is Israel’s
second largest city, after Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city. Tel Aviv presents
itself to the world as a cosmopolitan city, perhaps Israel’s most ‘cosmopolitan’.
Its web page showcases the face it wants the world to see: beaches, beautiful
women, gay pride and restaurants.
According to
some, it’s also Israel’s most Left-leaning city. According to this point of
view, there’s probably more ‘two-state solution’ advocacy in Tel Aviv than
anywhere else in Israel.
On Wednesday,
April 29, 2015, Tel Aviv will host an Arab-Leftist gathering. This gathering
will be a protest against an Israeli government policy to destroy illegal Arab
construction in Israel (Gil Ronen, “PLO Flag to Fly High in Unprecedented Tel
Aviv Demo Today”, Arutz Sheva, April 29, 2015).
The Israeli
government bulldozes homes that have been illegally constructed. The government
does this to Jews (mostly, in Judea-Samaria). It does it also to Arabs in
Israel.
My
understanding is that Arabs build in Israel far more illegal homes than Jews. I
understand also that Arab advocates in Israel claim that the Israeli government
destroys more Illegal Arab homes than illegal Jewish homes.
This protest
is not, officially, about ‘Palestine’. But some in Tel Aviv seem to feel that
the protest will turn in that direction. That’s partly why the news headline cited
above refers to those PLO flags.
Those who connect
such flags appearing at an Israeli-Arab ‘construction’ protest to a different kind of protest may have reason
to be concerned. On Tuesday, April 28, 2015, at suppertime, I received a phone
call from a reader in Tel Aviv. He called to report that there was a crowd in
the same spot (Rabin Square) the April 29th protest was scheduled to
occur. He didn’t know about the ‘illegal construction’ protest scheduled for
the next day. He called to tell me that there were protesters in Rabin Square carrying
PLO flags, chanting. He didn’t hear the words of the chant, but he assumed that
those carrying a PLO flag in Jewish Israel generally don’t chant, ‘Ahm
Yisroel Chai’ (depending on translation, this means something like, ‘Long
live Israel; or, ‘the nation of Israel Lives!’).
Since a
protest about the right to build or preserve illegal buildings doesn’t—on the
face of it—have anything to do with the question of ‘Palestine’, it’ll be
interesting to see why anyone would think that PLO flags (i.e., flags of ‘Palestine’)
would appear at such a protest. But their appearance the day before certainly suggests
that the agenda of the protest might be different from what we have been led to
believe.
This protest
could be about a lot more than illegally built homes. It might be a protest to demand
that Israel yield to a new ‘Palestine’. It might be a demonstration of the
power or stubbornness of Israel’s Left. It might be a demonstration to show
that the pro-‘Palestine’ movement will assert itself even in the middle of a
large Jewish city. It might be to demonstrate all of the above.
Somehow,
this protest feels different. Maybe it’s the advertised reason that’s so
different—to protest against destroying illegal homes. Somehow, with PLO flags
already showing up the day before, this protest feels like there’s more involved
than homes.
We’ll find
out soon enough. The protest is scheduled to start in just a couple of hours.
Tel Aviv: it’s
Israel’s most European city. Will today’s event morph from a pro-Arab-Israeli
to an anti-Israel protest? Will that change challenge Tel Aviv’s self-image of openness
and tolerance? Will this protest be the moment Tel Avivians begin to reconsider
how they think about the two-state solution? Will this protest change anything in Israel?
Probably
not; but then, this is Israel: anything can happen.
Perhaps
today Israel will learn something from Tel Aviv. Stay tuned.
Coinciding with the Demonsttration in Tel Aviv there was a call for the Gaza Strip to protest. This, however, was stifled by my knowledge of the police in the bud.
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