Israelis and Palestinians today

Americans have grown so accustomed to the disastrous

dynamics operating between Israelis and Palestinians today

that the failure to reach a peace deal amid the soaring death

tolls assumes an aura of normalcy in their minds.


This reflects a situation we imagine ourselves to be

powerless to help change and only adds to the tragedy


unfolding in the Occupied Territories and Israel as well.


Today the world's attention has turned to the aftermath

of the murder of eight students of an ultra-Zionist Mercaz


HaRav yeshiva, established by the founder of religious


zionism, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook in 1924.


Americans have grown so accustomed to the disastrous

dynamics operating between Israelis and Palestinians today

that the failure to reach a peace deal amid the soaring death

tolls assumes an aura of normalcy in their minds.


This reflects a situation we imagine ourselves to be

powerless to help change and only adds to the tragedy


unfolding in the Occupied Territories and Israel as well.


Today the world's attention has turned to the aftermath

of the murder of eight students of an ultra-Zionist Mercaz


HaRav yeshiva, established by the founder of religious


zionism, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook in 1924.

Last week the focus was the ongoing war in Gaza,


which will likely be the centre of attention next week as well.


The attacks on religious students in the midst of


study and prayer - coupled with the ongoing rocket


attacks from Gaza on the Israeli towns of Sderot and

Ashkelon - are already being offered as the latest


examples of continued Palestinian unwillingness


to make peace with Israel more than two years after

its unprecedented withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.




activist injured in protest against the wall
World's largest prison


But there are many problems with this argument; firstly,

most of the acts of Palestinian resistance to the occupation

have always been non-violent.


Equally important is the fact that while Israeli civilians no longer


live in Gaza, Israel's military presence has never ended.




Tel Aviv withdrew civilian settlers and then threw away the key

to what has now become the world's largest prison.


Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister and the architect


of the settlement movement, was willing to sacrifice Gaza in order

to ensure Israel held onto the major settlement blocs of the West


Bank, which today house more than 250,000 settlers


(almost double that number if one includes the Jewish

settlements in East Jerusalem).


The settler population of the West Bank also doubled during


the years of the Oslo "peace" process - which began when


Abu Dahim was about 12 and ended when he was 19 -


without a whimper of complaint from the United States.


By the time Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister,


was assassinated in 1995, Palestinian leaders were warning


that the continued settlement expansion was "killing" the peace


process and would sooner or later lead to a "revolution"


from the street.


Matrix of control


The presence of well over 100 settlements

has necessitated a matrix of control in which

80 per cent of the West Bank be declared off

limits to Palestinians.


It also meant the destruction of thousands of homes

and olive and fruit trees (the backbone of an otherwise


closed Palestinian economy), the confiscation


of 35,000 acres of Palestinian land, and the creation


of a network of bypass roads, military bases.


The 400-kilometre, 8-metre-high "separation

wall" also pierces deep into Palestinian territory, cutting

into at least three isolated cantons.


Together, the settlement system has made the idea of


creating a territorially and economically viable Palestinian

state impossible to implement.


With the eruption of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000


whatever infrastructure of peace had been created during

Oslo was quickly dismantled by both sides.


By mid-2002 Israel began deploying a strategy of managed

chaos, in which a near total closure of the Territories, coupled

with a destruction of much of their economic and political

infrastructure, turned the intifada into what Palestinians term


an "intifawda," a neologism that brings the violence of the


intifada together with the chaos, or "fawda" of a society

living in a barely functioning state and economy.