Invitation to radicalisation

One million Israeli settlers in the West Bank is the current target of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, as reported by the Palestinian press.

The expansion of existing settlements and the construction of new ones has been a priority of successive Cabinets, Likud and Labour alike, since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967.

So far, the number of settlers, including East Jerusalem, reached 700,000, according to recent Israeli figures.

Such a course is diametrically opposed to the two-state solution that was promised upon the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994. It also contravenes seven of the United Nations Security Council resolutions that condemn Israeli construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The current American administration had the two-state solution as a pivotal principle of its Middle East mediation initiative, as advocated by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, and the UN-championed Quartet group he headed, support a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. 

The only stumbling block to a genuine peace effort is the policy of the current Israeli Cabinet, which, so far, has not felt the need to accommodate the Palestinians in the West Bank, assuming that in due time they will be domesticated like their brothers behind the green line, whose number will reach over 1,666,000 by 2016. 

But the new breed of Palestinians in the West Bank is different, not submitting to Israel’s policy of subjugation, exposed to new cultural influences, fed up with the uselessness of peaceful resistance.

Some adhere to a glorified notion of death, calling it martyrdom for God.

Such a generation cannot be defeated by the Israeli army tactics of fire and torture.

The more Palestinians are killed, the more new recruits will join the long line of potential suicide operators, both in the West Bank and abroad.

It was not much of a surprise that some Palestinians joined “Al Sabireen” militia, an affiliate of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Other Palestinians joined Daesh.

More terrorist organisations are eager to recruit Palestinian teenagers who, faced with no promise of a future solution to their humiliation, could be easy prey to whoever gives them hope in a future of freedom, dignity and independence.

Since 1967, Israeli Cabinets have resorted to prevarication to justify their construction of 123 settlements that accommodate hundreds of thousands of settlers.

The strategic location of those settlements makes any future existence of a Palestinian state on contiguous Arab territory impossible.

Such an aggressive Israeli policy constitutes an invitation to the new generations of Palestinians to become radicalised.