Ethiopia is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history. The rebels from the Tigray region who rose to challenge the federal government have inflicted a heavy blow on the economy that was prospering in the last few years. But what was it that led to the current chaos?

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In the 1990s, when Meles Zenawi was president and later prime minister of Ethiopia, the country was divided into eight regional states – each one of which had its own rules and laws – with the central government in Addis Ababa.

The division aimed to allow each region to self-govern independently and to prevent unnecessary clashes between the different ethnic tribes. However, it did not prevent such conflicts among the tribes, especially in Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray.

Zenawi himself was a Tigrayan, and for the 27 years he spent in office the Amharans were resentful of him and accused him of withholding funds from their region in order to invest in development in Tigray.

Debretsion Gebremichael, who is the current president of the Tigray region, was a member of the previous government. He was among the supporters of Abiy Ahmed becoming prime minister of the provisional Ethiopian government, but during Ahmed's tenure, the ties between the federal government and the Tigray region deteriorated.

For the past 27 hours, the Tigrayans have controlled key positions and Ahmad, who used to fight with Tigray soldiers, began to distance himself from them and appointed an ethnically diverse cabinet.

Tigrayans felt Ahmad had betrayed them and decided to leave Addis Abbaba and station in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, and began preparations to distance themselves from Ethiopia.

When the Tigrayans were in power, they passed a law that allowed each district to declare itself an independent state. This was their goal and they began preparations for independent elections in order to establish facts on the ground.

The move was a provocation of the federal government, with the last drop being the Tigray People's Liberation Front's attack on a federal military base and the killing of Ethiopian soldiers of non-Tigray origins.

Ahmad, who had until then exhibited patience with regard to the rebels, declared a law and order operation and sent forces to Tigray.

When the rebels set out, the tensions that had existed between Tigray and Amhara reached a new peak. Gebremichael sent forces to Amhara who left a trail of destruction in their wake, killed thousands of Amharans, and took over large territories, forcing masses to leave their homes and migrate to other areas. These masses became refugees in their own country.

When the Tigray militia began approaching cities around the capital, Ahmad entrusted the governing to his deputy and joined the forces, and began to command them himself. The move led to the unification of the Ethiopian people and the army against the Tigray rebels. The military, with boots on the ground, crushed the militia and took back control of the territories.

Ahmad's hand-on approach was viewed favorably among Ethiopians, in contrast to Western leaders, who had embraced him when he had won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize but criticized the leader now.

Ethiopia has accused the West, especially the United States, of assisting the Tigray militia and providing them with military equipment in order to bring Ethiopia down from within.
Neighboring countries Egypt and Sunday – who have unsuccessfully been negotiating with Ethiopia about a mega-dam on the Nile – were also accused of aiding the rebels.

So, it seems that the federal government is about to win the war, but the economic hardship will continue.

The Ethiopian birr is at an all-time low and foreign currency is hard to come by. The farmers, who should be growing produce, are at the frontline of the war.

As such, Ahmad has three difficult tasks to tackle: establishing a national army that will unite all of Ethiopia, rehabilitating the economy by attracting foreign investors, and restoring the country's image in the world. Ethiopia needs the West in order to recover and is in need of humanitarian aid to survive.

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The Ethiopian community is one of the youngest in Israel. The protesters must not be tagged as belonging to one ethnicity. At all the centers of protest, I saw white people who are unwilling to stand by in the face of police racism and violence.

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Any intelligent person should act to rip out the bad apples in the Israel Police who are sowing the seeds of hatred, having invented for themselves their own code of conduct, and one that does not align with the laws of the state.

Those same people who call themselves community activists should use their heads and not just be governed by their emotions. They must think of the consequences of their actions. Establish a think tank comprised of all kinds of people with experience in a variety of fields and consolidate plans of action that will benefit the community.

We, who are crying out against the police violence directed against us, must act with restraint and not use violence or block roads. The police have an interest in provoking us in order to justify their actions.

The time has come to wake up. There is a sense of alienation and neglect among members of the younger generation born and raised here in Israel and unwilling to suffer in silence. The state and the local authorities must, therefore, put their heads together and find a permanent solution to the many complex problems.

In the absence of systemic thinking and the punishment of anyone who takes the law into their own hands and kills people, disasters will continue to take place. We must not go easy on members of the community either. The Ethiopian community needs to continue to foster cohesion, and not just in times of crisis.

We must open our eyes to what is happening. There are a lot of anarchists are elbowing their way into the protests with the aim of harming the community and our country. We must not forget: This is our country, and our actions have consequences.

The public and the government need to understand that the community does not see these demonstrations as a popular pastime. They are aimed at giving a voice to the pain and sadness that we feel over the killing and the bleeding wound in our bodies and in our souls.

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Following the large protest against over-policing and police violence against the Ethiopian community in 2015, there was a sense that the Israel Police had learned its lesson and changed its behavior.

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But it seems the Israel Police is incapable of translating a statement of its intentions into action, its officers continuing to see themselves as above the law. The defective handling of Ethiopian Israelis' complaints of police violence by the Justice Ministry's Police Internal Investigations Department serves to support officers who fire their weapons at members of the community. It is a shame that a handful of racist cops are devastating families, destroying an entire community and harming the image of a state that we love and hold so dear.

I will not lay out all of the disasters the Israel Police has inflicted upon us, because the public has not been exposed to all of the shocking incidents. If a murder is not documented, the police, with all the resources at its disposal, acts to defame the victims and conceal its failures.

Young children in our community are scared of police cruisers. Just like the children in the Gaza periphery region run for cover whenever they hear a siren, so too do our children whenever they hear the siren of a passing ambulance or security force vehicle. The police are causing our children emotional and physical damage. They are being forced to grow up with the sense they are being persecuted for no other reason than they are the children of immigrants from Ethiopia.

But the damage being done does not end with us. It impacts the country and society in general. The government must delineate a policy of containment and stop taking us into consideration only when it comes time for budget deliberations, as the latter always stays the same and we are relegated to just another budget item. What we need is to be treated like human beings. I suggest all kinds of community activists try to calm the tensions and find effective means of action that will put the offender on trial. We must not sow the seeds of hatred and add fuel to the fire.

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