As far as conflict goes, not much difference pre- and post-coronavirus

Amit Ben Yigal's death brought the enduring Middle East reality back with a bone-crunching thud.

By DAVID BRINN
IDF soldiers stand guard during a demonstration by Palestinians against the closure of the main road in Jabaa area south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem (photo credit: REUTERS)
IDF soldiers stand guard during a demonstration by Palestinians against the closure of the main road in Jabaa area south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem
(photo credit: REUTERS)
It’s a script we’re all too familiar with: another fallen IDF soldier, this one killed by a Palestinian in the midst of an operation in the West Bank. The radio interviews the distraught family, who describe the indescribable pain and sense of loss. Family and friends recall all of the soldier’s amazing qualities.
This episode: He was 21 years old and his name was Amit Ben Yigal, hit in the head with a rock propelled with apparent force from a building in Jenin in the middle of the night. Even though he was wearing a helmet, his wounds proved fatal.
 An only child, Ben Yigal was determined and proud to serve in the Golani Brigade. His father told him how proud he was, amidst his concern, after signing the special permission necessary for an only child to enlist. Letters the soldier had written were posted during the day attesting to his resolve and how he viewed his service to the country.
“It’s to curse the moment you are living in, and in the same breath remember why you are here. It’s a deep friendship... to look at the soldiers with the red berets when you have red eyes.”
Another in a long line of Israeli tragedies – and the first IDF combat casualty of 2020. It’s the kind of heartbreak we had temporarily forgotten about or had stored in the back recesses amid the last two months of coronavirus mania.
Perhaps, we may have thought to ourselves amid the prolonged isolation, this cataclysmic change in the very axis our lives spin on would also prompt a reset or revision in how our neighbors see us and themselves. We were encouraged about the stories of the IDF aiding Palestinian populations in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the willingness with which that help was accepted.
Could the shared corona quarantine experience that affected Israelis and Palestinians alike somehow forge a new shared understanding that something has to change in our relationship with each other?
Maybe – someday. But on Tuesday, Amit Ben Yigal’s death brought the enduring Middle East reality back, with a bone-crunching thud.
More than classes reopening, streets once again filled with pedestrians and packed beaches, the most glaring signs that we’ve entered the post-corona future, which is eerily like the past, are the somber tones of the radio announcers, the teary remembrances of the grieving parents and the marking of another senseless death – the victim of a conflict apparently stronger than any virus.