The lid on the powder keg of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, has been rattling for years now. Palestinians from all walks of life have lost their voices making the case that Israel’s right-wing government – with its numerous cabinet ministers living in illegal settlements and its fundamentalist prime minister – is pursuing policies bound to lead to exactly what we are witnessing today, violence.
Too few listened.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has built his entire political career on a platform of violence against Palestinians. Leading up to his first election as prime minster in 1996 he publically and aggressively mocked Israel’s own prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, for entering into an interim peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The toxic environment Netanyahu operated in was partly behind the motivation of a Jewish extremist to assassinate Rabin. Netanyahu prides himself on being the leader who stopped the peace process in its tracks. To make sure peace would never have a chance, he accelerated settlement building in the West Bank, attacked Gaza multiple times, demolished more Palestinian homes, arrested Palestinians, including minors, often without charges, and failed to bring to justice the Jewish settlers who recently burned alive a Palestinian family while they slept in their home.
