Extract from ABC News
ABC News HomepageThe young Palestinian man working in a service station in Jerusalem couldn't grab his phone quickly enough. I'd asked him whether things had been different for him, a Palestinian working in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood, since the Hamas attack in southern Israel.
"Look at this," he said, playing a video on his phone.
The video showed a Jewish man walking into the service station to get petrol. In Israel, you often need to pay for petrol before you put it into the car.
The man walked in and — realising that the attendant was Palestinian — began shouting at him: "You motherf--ker!" Then came a torrent of abuse. The attendant picked up his phone and began filming.
The man threw 100 Shekels on the counter for petrol. The attendant threw it back. "You cannot get petrol here," he said. "Your behaviour is not acceptable."
So came more abuse. But the man could not get petrol, so stormed out.
The attendant may have in fact been an Israeli citizen. The man delivering the abuse did not know that.
There are different categories of Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank. Some are full citizens, some are Jerusalemites, who cannot vote in national elections, and there are those who live in the West Bank and are not allowed to enter Israel without a permit.
The Jewish man had no idea whether the man in charge of the service station was an Israeli citizen or not — he just looked Palestinian, and that was enough for him to cop a massive round of abuse for the Hamas attack.
A city on edge
Jerusalem is now on edge. The incident reflects the sort of confrontations that are happening around Israel following the Hamas attack.
The petrol station attendant was not, of course, responsible for the Hamas attack, but the incident shows a dangerous hostility breaking out at a neighbourhood level.
In the West Bank — where three million Palestinians live under Israel's military occupation — things are even worse. And they have been for years, well before this latest war.
In the West Bank, the Israeli army regularly takes children as young as 12 from their homes at night to unknown locations, before they are placed on trial in an Israeli army court.
I know all this because I spent months researching it for a 2014 Four Corners episode and spent time at the Israeli army's military court watching children be put on trial before judges who are Israeli soldiers.
For the episode, titled Stone Cold Justice, I spent much time with the Israeli army, investigating how their military court system worked in the West Bank.
Since this war began, Israeli settlers have been intensifying their hostility. When I lived in Israel for six years, I travelled many times to the West Bank and saw settlers abusing or attacking Palestinians, with the Israeli army often standing by doing nothing.
When I asked a soldier one day why he didn't stop Jewish school children spitting on and throwing rocks at a Palestinian woman in Hebron, he said: "We are the Israeli army — we're here to protect Israeli citizens."
Even before this new war, tensions had been rising. About 200 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli security forces in the year before the war — about four a week on average. This was business as usual under occupation, before the latest war.
Over the first 10 days of this war, about 50 Palestinians have been shot dead by the Israeli army in the West Bank, even though Israel's war is with Hamas in Gaza — not the West Bank.
As Israel and Palestinians begin yet another war, the question needs to be asked: Are Israelis and Palestinians locked forever in this dreadful cycle of violence, with thousands of families on both sides forever grieving their lost children, parents or siblings?
This war is different
From a security point of view, Israel clearly needs to ensure that Hamas is never again in a position to commit the sort of atrocities they did on October 7.
The massacre in Israel of 260 people innocently enjoying a music festival and the killing and burning of more than 1,400 more surely constitutes a war crime on a massive scale.
But is carpet bombing 2.3 million people the answer? Within the first seven days, Israel had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza — an average of 16 bombs per square kilometre.
For a country that says it does not target civilians, Israel certainly is killing a lot of them.
Longer term, surely a political solution is better than a military one? Can we not discuss solutions to this tragedy?
The problem is that those in power at the moment, in both Israel and Gaza, do not agree that a political solution is better than a military one.
Usually in times of war Israelis put aside political differences. This time it's different.
Support for Netanyahu has crashed
The popularity and standing of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has collapsed.
Former Israeli prime minister and defence minister Ehud Barak this week did not adhere to the traditional protocol of supporting a prime minister in wartime.
Barak is Israel's most decorated soldier, so he has a huge standing among the public.
"I think in any normal place he would already have resigned," he said.
Barak's argument was that the highest number of deaths of Jews since the Holocaust happened on Netanyahu's watch — and that therefore he should resign.
Support for Netanyahu has crashed. A poll by Maariv, taken after this war began, found that Benny Gantz's National Unity party leads Netanyahu's Likud by 22 seats. Over the first week of the war, Gantz's party gained 12 seats while the Likud lost nine.
The Israeli media reported that on management of the war so far, Netanyahu scored a 4.2 out of 10 in the poll. He was awarded only one point from 42 per cent of respondents. Only 29 per cent of people said that Netanyahu was still qualified to be prime minister, with 48 per cent preferring Gantz.
Only 20 per cent of respondents said they would still want Netanyahu to be prime minister when the war ends.
One of Israel's most respected political analysts, Barak Ravid, said Netanyahu's political standing is the worst it's ever been.
He said this derives in part from Netanyahu's campaign over the last year to remove the independence of the Supreme Court and give politicians final authority — a campaign which led to hundreds of thousands of Israelis coming onto the streets to protest what they argued was an assault on democracy.
"The political leadership took a decision for nine months to focus on something that was not relevant to Israeli's security, but was negative to Israel's security," Ravid said this week.
He said intelligence services had been warning Netanyahu that Israel's enemies in the region were watching with great interest the demonstrations and internal divisions, and thought this could be an opportunity to strike.
While most Israelis seem to support major retribution against Hamas for the atrocities in southern Israel, the emotions are both strong and swirling.
The Israeli media reported that when Netanyahu this week went to visit Israeli troops near the Gaza border to tell them that the next stage of the war would begin soon, one of them confronted him.
He called Netanyahu a liar, according to the media. As a result, the prime minister decided not to deliver a speech he had planned to give to that audience.
Other members of the Netanyahu government who have visited victims of the Hamas attacks in hospitals have been abused and hounded.
As with the Palestinian in the service station, there are confrontations happening all over the place.
Beneath a big conflict are often thousands of smaller ones.
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