Marking Jerusalem Day (celebrated on Sunday), Matti Friedman reflects on the current state of Israel’s capital, and the relations between its Jewish and Arab residents:

[T]he rise of extremist ideology and violent armed movements throughout the region has ended any hope that Israel can safely cede control of part of [Jerusalem], which leaves Arab residents in a limbo that will soon be 50 years old. The contradictions of Israeli policy are apparent, like the expectation that Palestinians will abide by the law and avoid violence while authorities go about solidifying Jewish control. It is hard to see what outcome the government expects, for example, from the pressure cooker created in a place like the Shuafat refugee camp.

The contradictions of the Palestinian position are also apparent, though they are pointed out less often. Arab Jerusalemites want to reject Israel’s sovereignty but also want Israeli authorities to treat them fairly. They want elected officials to take their desires into account, but they won’t vote in elections. They declare themselves disempowered but refuse to wield the power that is legally available to them. It is possible to sympathize with their situation without ignoring their own role in the impasse.

In the absence of any clear policy on the part of Israel or the Palestinian leadership as to what East Jerusalemites should be encouraged to do, they do what they must to get by. The trend is not toward integration, exactly, because neither side wants that, but toward what might more accurately be termed mixing. This is going on in places like the commercial area at Mamilla, outside Jaffa Gate, frequented and staffed by Jews and Arabs, or the Malha shopping center, which actively encourages Palestinian clientele, and where it is now more common to see Palestinian salespeople. When my wife went to buy jeans at an American Eagle outlet a few months ago, the three young staffers there were Palestinians—a change in the human landscape of West Jerusalem.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.