The good news first: In the case that TTN’s Ken Bob wrote about the other day, Israel’s Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of giving the people of al-Walaja six more months to submit a zoning plan, which would allay and hopefully end the threat of eviction for 38 Palestinian families.
Now the bad news, from the opening paragraphs of a lengthy NY Times article:
BNEI BRAK, Israel — At five minutes to eight on Tuesday evening, an Israeli teacher was on an evening stroll, pushing his baby son in a carriage. Up the street, a businessman was in his car, running a brief errand. Around the corner, two Ukrainian construction workers were chatting outside a popular convenience store.
And a few blocks over, an Arab Israeli policeman was riding his motorcycle, keeping an eye out for trouble. Minutes later, all five men were dead — shot and killed by a Palestinian gunman in the single deadliest terrorist attack in Israel in eight years.
In life, their diverse backgrounds highlighted the breadth and complexity of Israeli society. In death, their shared fates stripped away that nuance, turning them all into victims of the same endless conflict.
Amir Khoury, the 32-year-old police sergeant, was an Arab Christian who was about to buy a house with his Jewish fiancée. “What a loss,” Ghazi Awwad, a lawyer who was close to Sergeant Khoury in college, said Wednesday. “Not all Arabs are good, and not all Jews are good,” Awwad added. But “Amir was a bridge between Arabs and Jews.”
It was the third deadly terrorist act in eight days — a rash of attacks that has left 11 people dead, and made March the deadliest month of militant violence, outside of a full-scale war, in several years.
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