This is a picture of a Palestinian youth throwing rocks at an Israeli military vehicle as it entered the Arab city of Ramallah on Wednesday, August 29, 2012.
This youth and hundreds, even thousands like him, have been greeting Israeli cars and individuals this way every day of every month of every year since the mid 1980s. There is absolutely nothing new about it.
It’s a dog bites man story.
The Israeli and the Palestinian law enforcement agencies alike also don’t see anything new or special about this habitually and violently inhospitable act.
Likewise, they see nothing special about hundreds and thousands of Arab youths who have lobed flaming objects, most commonly Molotov cocktails, at Israeli moving vehicles, with the expressed purpose of burning alive the people inside.
It’s the dog bite man thing. Whatcha’ gonna’ do.
Then a couple of Jewish 13-year-olds have been accused of doing the same thing.
Without direct proof, to the best of my knowledge, and at the exact spot where several Israeli cars had been pelted with Molotov cocktails on recent nights.
That’s HUGE news. That’s man bites dog. That’s the stuff the GSS can sink its teeth into.
In Israel, 2012, Arab crime is mundane, routine, unimportant. Victims of Arab crime are negligible.
But Jews who beat up Arabs—which they shouldn’t, and Jews accused of firebombing Arabs—which they shouldn’t, are amazing news.
Obviously, a police force without the minimal inclination of catching the real perpetrators is just not going to bring law and order anywhere, much less to an area as sizzling with hatred as Ramallah and its environs.
They’ll tell you it’s a political issue. You’ll have rock throwing and firebombing until Israel pulls back to the 1949 armistice line. But, you know, by the time any political resolution is achieved—probably by the time all of us writing and reading this will have great grandchildren—there’s going to be a Palestinian population out there that just throws rocks and Molotov cocktails, nothing special.
Good luck doing your law and order thing at that point.