"If I don't get sanctioned by Biden, does that mean I don't rate? That I have no value?"
Beit Ummar, June 17 - A twenty-three-year-old resident of this town south of Jerusalem voiced frustration today that he may never achieve the notoriety he craves if the American president and his staff continue to turn a blind eye to the youth's exuberant perpetration of firebomb and other attacks against passing Israeli motorists, despite Washington's official pronouncement several months ago that the US will impose travel and commerce restrictions on any resident of the disputed areas that Israel captured from Jordan in 1967, restrictions that US officials have so far applied almost exclusively to Israeli Jews.
Moussa Qawasmeh told relatives and acquaintances Monday that unless he achieves recognition as violent enough to trouble Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other American policymakers, he will feel unrealized and unproductive.
"I want to feel like I'm accomplishing something," he explained. "I know that my rock-throwing, Molotov-cocktail-lobbing, and occasional attempts to get people to shoot at Israeli cars have limited direct impact on anything that happens. The army comes and scatters us, maybe a motorist gets out and threatens us with his sidearm, but not much has actually changed in years."
"It felt different for a little while after October 7," he continued. "It felt like something had shifted, maybe the success of that day might carry over to our part of the country. But even that faded. If I don't get sanctioned by Biden, does that mean I don't rate? That I have no value?"
Residents of Beit Ummar have made a regular habit of attacking vehicles on Route 60, the main north-south route connecting Jerusalem with the Etzion Bloc communities and Hebron, further south. The route, like many others in the area, runs alongside numerous Palestinian villages, where youths of all ages have made a daily habit of trying to kill Jews - both local residents and those just passing through - to strike a blow for "the Resistance," but mostly to feel like they matter in a world that prefers to ignore a people that seems to contribute nothing but misery to human existence even while receiving the highest per capita amount of international aid in history.
"When Biden sanctioned that one Palestinian I thought I had a chance," Qawasmeh recalled. "I had thought the whole announcement of intentions to impose sanctions on violent people would only be applied to Israeli Jews - and it was, at first. But when that one Palestinian guy was named a few weeks ago - well, that was a watershed moment. I could have been a contender."
"Since then, nothing," he sighed. "Not a single additional Palestinian on the list. Almost like it's a token thing to pretend evenhandedness. How many Jews to I have to try to kill, anyway?"
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