Violence and Coexistence in Israel with CSIS's Jon Alterman

The Truth of the Matter

Since Friday, violence has erupted throughout Israel and the Gaza Strip between Israelis and Palestinians, sparked by attempted evictions by Jewish settlers in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem and a skirmish between Israeli police and Palestinian mosque-goers at al Aqsa Mosque. Andrew is joined by CSIS senior vice president Jon Alterman, Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and director of the Middle East Program at CSIS, to discuss the causes of the recent conflict, from ineffective governance on each side, to the end of Israeli isolationism, to undue escalation by Hamas. Hamas, which as Alterman points out, "isn't a party to any of this," began launching rockets from the Gaza Strip and "injecting itself into Jerusalem's story," expanding the conflict from East Jerusalem to the whole country and into Gaza. According to Alterman, Israel may just consider this to be more of what they refer to as "mowing the grass," another in a series of opportunities to teach Hamas a lesson and put off finding a resolution to this ongoing conflict for a few more years. Either way, in Alterman’s analysis, finding a "partner for peace" will become increasingly more difficult as Israelis and Palestinians drift farther towards social extremes—despite the fact that "nobody is going away" and "their fates are intertwined."