Israel-Palestine: As Stabbings, Shootings Kill Dozens, Endless Occupation Fuels Vengeful Resistance

The death toll from vio­lence in Israel and the Occupied Territories has increased with new Palestinian stab­bing attacks and an inten­si­fied Israeli crack­down. On Sunday, an attack­er iden­ti­fied as a 21-year-old Arab cit­i­zen of Israel knifed an Israeli sol­dier to death and then opened fire at a bus sta­tion in Beersheba, wound­ing 10 peo­ple. The attack­er was killed. In an appar­ent case of racial pro­fil­ing, a mob of sol­diers and bystanders then shot and beat an Eritrean man to death, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing he was a sec­ond assailant. After seal­ing off East Jerusalem neigh­bor­hoods last week, Israel is widen­ing its crack­down on Arab res­i­dents and con­tin­u­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions across the West Bank and Gaza. The United Nations says last week was the dead­liest for Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel in 10 years, rais­ing con­cerns “of exces­sive use of force, and vio­la­tions of the right to life and secu­ri­ty of the per­son.” We are joined by two guests: Jamil Dakwar, a Palestinian human rights lawyer with Israeli cit­i­zen­ship, and Nathan Thrall, senior ana­lyst at the International Crisis Group whose new arti­cle for The New York Times is “Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem.”

AMY GOODMAN: The death toll from vio­lence in Israel and the Occupied Territories has increased with new Palestinian stab­bing attacks and an inten­si­fied Israeli crack­down. On Sunday, an assailant iden­ti­fied as a 21-year-old Arab cit­i­zen of Israel knifed an Israeli sol­dier, then opened fire at a bus sta­tion in Beersheba with the soldier’s rifle, wound­ing 10 peo­ple. The sol­dier and the attack­er died. In an appar­ent case of racial pro­fil­ing, a mob of sol­diers and bystanders then shot and beat anoth­er man to death, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing he was a sec­ond assailant. Video footage shows the crowd kick­ing and assault­ing the vic­tim, 29-year-old Haftom Zarhum, as he lies on the ground. Zarhum lat­er died in the hos­pi­tal. He had been seek­ing asy­lum in Israel from his native Eritrea. The inci­dent comes after Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinians accused of stab­bing attacks, includ­ing three in the occu­pied West Bank city of Hebron.

After seal­ing of East Jerusalem neigh­bor­hoods last week, Israel is widen­ing its crack­down on Arab res­i­dents. A new bill before Parliament would give forces stop-and-frisk pow­ers to search any­one in the streets with­out cause. In addi­tion to severe restric­tions on move­ment, Israel is also erect­ing a wall in East Jerusalem that would sep­a­rate Palestinian neigh­bor­hoods from a near­by Israeli set­tle­ment. Israeli forces mean­while con­tin­ue mil­i­tary attacks across the West Bank and Gaza, raid­ing vil­lages and fir­ing on Palestinian demon­stra­tions. Over the week­end, a group of some 200 Israeli set­tlers report­ed­ly attacked two Palestinian vil­lages in the West Bank with firebombs.

The surge in Palestinian knife attacks and protests is par­tial­ly fueled by con­cerns over Israeli con­trol of the Al-Aqsa Mosque com­pound and vis­its there by far-right Israelis. On Sunday, Israel reject­ed a French pro­pos­al to deploy inter­na­tion­al observers at the flash­point holy site. Speaking today in Madrid, Secretary of State John Kerry backed Israel’s rejec­tion of a for­eign pres­ence at the Temple Mount, but said he would meet with both Israeli and Palestinian lead­ers in the com­ing days.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Israel has every right in the world to pro­tect its cit­i­zens, as it has been, from ran­dom acts of vio­lence. But in my con­ver­sa­tions with the prime min­is­ter, as well as with King Abdullah and the for­eign min­is­ter of Jordan, they have expressed a desire to try to see this process be able to find a way of mak­ing cer­tain that every­body is clear about what is hap­pen­ing with respect to the Temple Mount.

AMY GOODMAN: The over­all death toll stands at 44 Palestinians and eight Israelis this month. The U.N. says last week was the dead­liest for Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel in 10 years, rais­ing con­cerns, quote, “of exces­sive use of force, and vio­la­tions of the right to life and secu­ri­ty of the person.”

Joining us now are two guests. Here in New York, Jamil Dakwar is with us. He’s a human rights lawyer, a Palestinian cit­i­zen of Israel who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as senior attor­ney at Adalah, a lead­ing human rights group in Israel. And in Jerusalem, Nathan Thrall is with us, senior ana­lyst at the International Crisis Group cov­er­ing Gaza, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. His new arti­cle for The New York Times is head­lined “Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem.”

Nathan, let’s start with you in Jerusalem. What is hap­pen­ing there, and why do you believe that the sit­u­a­tion is so out of con­trol at this point?

NATHAN THRALL: So what’s hap­pen­ing now in Jerusalem is check­points are going up all over the east. At the exits to Palestinian neigh­bor­hoods in occu­pied East Jerusalem, you have big con­crete cubes going up and very, very long lines for Palestinians to exit their neigh­bor­hoods. And there is a sense among Palestinians in East Jerusalem that they are being pun­ished for these so-called lone wolf stab­bing attacks that have tak­en place so far. The oth­er morn­ing, res­i­dents of one neigh­bor­hood, where basi­cal­ly the traf­fic police, the park­ing — peo­ple who give park­ing tick­ets nev­er go, came and left 500-shekel tick­ets on everybody’s car. And there are a series of small steps like this that are lead­ing a lot of Palestinians in East Jerusalem to feel that they’re being col­lec­tive­ly pun­ished for what’s going on now.

I live right at one of the seam neigh­bor­hoods between the east and the west, and it’s filled with bor­der police who are basi­cal­ly stop­ping a high pro­por­tion of the Palestinian men who are walk­ing from one side of the city to the oth­er. Many of them work in the west side of the city. You had men­tioned a moment ago that there is a con­sid­er­a­tion of allow­ing the police to do stop-and-frisk with­out cause. You know, that’s news to the res­i­dents of Palestinian East Jerusalem, who are stopped and frisked with­out cause all the time and are being stopped and frisked with­out cause today. So the sit­u­a­tion in Jerusalem is extreme­ly tense. People are eye­ing one anoth­er sus­pi­cious­ly. A Palestinian woman in West Jerusalem was walk­ing around today and was telling me how peo­ple were star­ing at her, sur­prised that she was walk­ing around there.

So, the attacks don’t seem to have any kind of orga­nized lead­er­ship behind them, which makes them much more dif­fi­cult for any­body to stop. And one of the big prob­lems here is we don’t have an orga­nized polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Jerusalem, a Palestinian polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Jerusalem, which means that there’s no one for the Israelis to talk to in order to try and calm the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: I want­ed to go right now to what hap­pened on Sunday. The Israeli prime min­is­ter, Benjamin Netanyahu, reject­ed Palestinian con­cerns over the Temple Mount.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The rea­son the sta­tus quo has been vio­lat­ed is not because we changed it. We didn’t change any­thing. The orders of prayer, the vis­it­ing rights have not changed for the last 15 years. The only thing that’s changed are Islamist hood­lums, paid by the Islamist move­ment in Israel and by Hamas, who are enter­ing the mosque and try­ing to put explo­sives there, and, from there, emerge and attack Jewish vis­i­tors to the Temple Mount, and Christian vis­i­tors. That’s the only change in the sta­tus quo. Israel will pro­tect the holy site, will guard the sta­tus quo. Israel is not a prob­lem on the Temple Mount, Israel is the solution.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime min­is­ter. We’re also joined by Jamil Dakwar, human rights lawyer, a Palestinian cit­i­zen of Israel, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a senior attor­ney at Adalah, a lead­ing Israeli human rights group. Your response to what Netanyahu just said?

JAMIL DAKWAR: Well, I think that what is real­ly strik­ing here is that the Israeli gov­ern­ment, every time there is any kind of a rise in ten­sion and cri­sis and use of vio­lence, it turns into mil­i­taris­tic approach towards deal­ing with the Palestinians. It’s using that same old poli­cies of a crack­down, on col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment, on see­ing the Palestinians with no real­ly val­ue of their life and their basic human rights. The response, and par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issue of sta­tus quo, you know, Israel is the only coun­try that is allowed to change the sta­tus quo in Jerusalem, and it’s been chang­ing that for years, for decades. And yet, if a coun­try or polit­i­cal par­ty is sug­gest­ing a change of the sta­tus quo towards more peace­ful res­o­lu­tion, towards more pro­tec­tion of civil­ians, then that is always reject­ed. So I think there is, clear­ly, a going back to giv­ing now the Israeli gov­ern­ment and Benjamin Netanyahu a pre­text to go — what he real­ly would pre­fer to do is to con­tin­ue his poli­cies of aggres­sion against Palestinians.

Certainly, this is going to be more and more dif­fi­cult, because in Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem, the rea­son that there is no lead­er­ship is because Israeli poli­cies were crack­ing down on insti­tu­tions. The Orient House was closed by the Israeli gov­ern­ment. The Palestinians who were elect­ed by their own peo­ple were not allowed to engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. Many of them were impris­oned. So that, in and of itself, clear­ly shows that the Israeli gov­ern­ment wants to see only its own inter­est, mean­ing the Jewish Israeli inter­est in Jerusalem, and that con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion both in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank as a mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, which is now near­ing 50 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what has caused this lat­est esca­la­tion of vio­lence, from your per­spec­tive. Where did you grow up, by the way?

JAMIL DAKWAR: I grew up in Haifa. I went to school at Tel Aviv University. I remem­ber when I went to law school at Tel Aviv University, there were very, very dif­fi­cult times. There were times when there were sui­cide attacks going on inside Israel. Those hap­pened in response to the set­tler going to Hebron mosque and killing prayer — Palestinians who were pray­ing in the mosque. That kind of blew up the whole sit­u­a­tion. And it was clear that with­out crack­ing down on the set­tler vio­lence, with­out end­ing Israel’s set­tler activ­i­ty in the West Bank, there is no way that the Palestinians will sit back and allow the Israeli gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to con­trol their life in every way.

So I think the esca­la­tion that we’re see­ing now has been mount­ing, has been build­ing, because of what’s hap­pened in the last sev­er­al years. There is no hope for any real, nor­mal life. This is the new nor­mal for the Palestinians, which is mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion con­tin­ues unabat­ed, the Israeli gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to send set­tlers to the West Bank. There’s a crack­down round­ing up chil­dren, Palestinian chil­dren, in night raids, doc­u­ment­ed by Palestinian and Israeli human rights orga­ni­za­tions. These kinds of things will make Palestinians despair or make the Palestinians, some of them, to resort to vio­lence and do what they are doing. And I think that is what is real­ly concerning.

AMY GOODMAN: Are these knife attacks new?

JAMIL DAKWAR: These knife attacks are new, although in the — we’ve seen in the — this is not the first time that there were these kinds of wave of knife attacks. And it hap­pened dur­ing the Shamir — appeared in the ’80s. They were very much sim­i­lar, in a sit­u­a­tion where the Palestinians were real­ly giv­ing up on their hope to have a nor­mal life. I think that there’s now also — there’s the impact on their lack of abil­i­ty to be able to express themselves.

You men­tioned the Arab Palestinian cit­i­zen who stabbed the sol­dier. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Palestinian cit­i­zens are peace­ful. They’ve been peace­ful in their activ­i­ties for their entire career, and yet the Israeli gov­ern­ment is crack­ing down on their lead­er­ship, is crack­ing down — there are home demo­li­tions inside Israel, dis­place­ment of Arab Bedouin com­mu­ni­ties. That is mak­ing peo­ple see that despite the fact that you are mak­ing an effort to be a cit­i­zen, a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, the Israeli gov­ern­ment is say­ing, “No, you are not wel­comed here. You are an ene­my. You are not going to be enjoy­ing the same basic rights as oth­ers in the country.”

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, a Palestinian report­ed­ly opened fire at a cen­tral bus sta­tion in the south­ern Israeli city of Beersheba, killing a sol­dier and wound­ing 11 oth­er peo­ple. He had tak­en the gun of the sol­dier. Afterward, the Israeli police spokesper­son, Micky Rosenfeld, addressed reporters.

MICKY ROSENFELD: As a result of the attack where the ter­ror­ist had a pis­tol and opened fire, we have six peo­ple that were injured, four of them being police offi­cers injured inside the cen­tral bus sta­tion. One man was severe­ly tak­en to hos­pi­tal and received med­ical treat­ment. Unfortunately, con­firmed that he passed away a few min­utes ago. Heightened secu­ri­ty is con­tin­u­ing in the area, and our police units are still in and around the cen­tral bus station.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli eye­wit­ness to the shoot­ing, Sima Koseshvili, called for greater security.

SIMA KOSESHVILI: [trans­lat­ed] Do I need to live in a world where I am afraid to leave home to go to my col­lege stud­ies, to work or to go shop­ping? Everything is fright­en­ing, and I want the police to take more action and increase their secu­ri­ty presence.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Thrall in Jerusalem, can you talk about what hap­pened there in Beersheba? First you had the killing of both the Palestinian gun­man and the Israeli sol­dier, many oth­er peo­ple also injured, and then the Eritrean man being beat­en to death in a case of appar­ent­ly mis­tak­en identity.

NATHAN THRALL: Yes. Frankly, I know about as much as what — as much as you do about what hap­pened there. I wasn’t there, and I’ve seen the reports and watched some of the videos. And I’ve seen that the gov­ern­ment has, you know, acknowl­edged that a trag­ic mis­take was made. But beyond that, I don’t know the details of the incident.

AMY GOODMAN: The sig­nif­i­cance of this?

JAMIL DAKWAR: The sig­nif­i­cance is that, look, what’s hap­pen­ing is that now any­one appears to be an Arab Palestinian. And that starts with the racial pro­fil­ing, stop-and-frisk, that is a dai­ly expe­ri­ence of Palestinians. But also Israeli Jews who are Arab Jews, who come — [Sephardic] Jews, who appear to some Israelis or to the Israeli secu­ri­ty forces as sus­pi­cious Arab Palestinians, some of them are even being attacked. I think this is going out of con­trol, because the Israeli gov­ern­ment and the politi­cians are spread­ing those state­ments, mak­ing those state­ments that are very dan­ger­ous state­ments, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to take arms and shoot peo­ple, shoot to kill. And there are now human rights reports inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot-to-kill orders. This amounts to extra­ju­di­cial killing. There need to be clear inves­ti­ga­tions of these instances. You have peo­ple who did not pose any immi­nent threat to addi­tion­al peo­ple; even if they com­mit­ted crimes, they still should not be exe­cut­ed right on the spot. And that, I think, will bring the sit­u­a­tion to a much worse, because peo­ple are mis­trust­ing any­one who is a Palestinian, who is an Arab, who appears to be Palestinian, and that’s why the Eritrean refugee got in that sit­u­a­tion. And the lynch­ing — there’s sit­u­a­tions where a sol­dier is stand­ing by, secu­ri­ty forces stand­ing by and not pro­tect­ing those civil­ians. That, in and of itself, is a huge, dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion that I think even worse than the act of lone­ly or indi­vid­ual tak­ing some knives and stab­bing peo­ple, because that frus­trates entire — puts entire com­mu­ni­ties at risk, when law enforce­ment car­ries those attacks and crack­downs and opens fire with no respect to human life.

We see a sit­u­a­tion that real­ly requires more atten­tion and more action, not just — you know, con­dem­na­tion of acts of vio­lence is the easy part of this. What is real­ly need­ed to be done is what needs to be done about the sit­u­a­tion, the sit­u­a­tion of the occu­pa­tion, the sit­u­a­tion on East Jerusalem. And what we’re not hear­ing, what are the solu­tions, includ­ing admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. Every time Secretary Kerry tries to say some­thing right, whether it’s the recent com­ment that he made, where he said, “Well, we’ve seen build­ing of set­tle­ments, an expan­sion, etc. That is now — and now we’re see­ing vio­lence.” So he’s mak­ing the right con­nec­tion, a very log­ic, com­mon­sense con­nec­tion, and yet he had to retract those state­ments, even though he’s real­ly say­ing what every­body knows, what every­body knows in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, what every­body knows here in the United States, that set­tle­ments are ille­gal, and yet they are now get­ting full sup­port from this Israeli gov­ern­ment, and is now build­ing on turn­ing this con­flict into a reli­gious war. And I think that is real­ly the crit­i­cal point where I think we need to be very, very con­cerned about. People who know the sit­u­a­tion know that if you are going to speak to the youth about reli­gious wars and agi­tate them, they will take things like this, they will take knives and stab peo­ple. And with­out lead­er­ship, with­out any hope, with­out a future, this will become the norm. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, that would be a very dan­ger­ous route to go to.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there a role for the ICC here, the International Criminal Court?

JAMIL DAKWAR: Well, the ICC, as you know, there’s a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion of the sit­u­a­tion in Israel and Palestine, par­tic­u­lar­ly the sit­u­a­tion of Palestine after Palestine joined the ICC. There were calls to ask the pros­e­cu­tor to look at the alleged crimes com­mit­ted in the recent month. I believe it will be a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult for the pros­e­cu­tor to jump at this issue. There’s a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment that hap­pened just last week with the ICC pros­e­cu­tor ask­ing to open full inves­ti­ga­tion in Georgia. That will be an impor­tant — has impor­tant impli­ca­tions on the sit­u­a­tion in Palestine, because this will be — if this full inves­ti­ga­tion will move for­ward, will be the first non­state par­ty full inves­ti­ga­tion that is tak­ing place in the ICC, which could, again, delay, on one hand, the Palestinian sit­u­a­tion, but, on the oth­er hand, would also set impor­tant prece­dent for that. I think, most impor­tant­ly, there should be a clear deter­rence to the Israeli gov­ern­ment from clear state­ments made, that the Israeli gov­ern­ment can­not con­tin­ue these actions with no con­se­quences. There is no account­abil­i­ty. We know from reports like B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Al-Haq and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that inves­ti­ga­tions with­in the Israeli mil­i­tary are dis­cred­it­ed, they’re not cred­i­ble, they’re not seri­ous, and there­fore, at some point, there will be action by legal mech­a­nisms, includ­ing the ICC, to look into the crimes that are com­mit­ted in the occu­pied Palestinian territory.

AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his coun­ter­part in Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, vis­it­ed Israeli stab­bing vic­tims recov­er­ing in the hos­pi­tal. On Sunday, Mayor de Blasio vis­it­ed the Western Wall and toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum. He signed the guest book at the muse­um, “Never again,” then made a statement.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: We’re here at a painful moment. We’re here at a moment where peo­ple are afraid, where peo­ple are strug­gling, because of the vio­lence in their midst every sin­gle day late­ly, more and more ter­ror­ist attacks on absolute­ly inno­cent civil­ians, some­thing uncon­scionable and unac­cept­able, accord­ing to all our val­ues, and some­thing that must end.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Thrall, I want­ed to get your com­ment — also the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, Marine General Joseph Dunford, in addi­tion to de Blasio, are in Israel — to what you believe needs to be done and what de Blasio said.

NATHAN THRALL: So, what we’re see­ing is the begin­ning of the United States com­pen­sat­ing Israel for the Iran nuclear deal, and they’re dis­cussing now increas­ing the $3 bil­lion in aid that Israel receives each year. And regard­ing de Blasio’s state­ment, of course attacks on civil­ians are hor­ri­ble, and all of this death is hor­ri­ble. In terms of look­ing at the root caus­es, I see very lit­tle being done to address that.

What we’re see­ing right now among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Jerusalem, is a real sense that the idea of a Palestinian state with a cap­i­tal in Jerusalem is escap­ing them. Jerusalemites have felt for many years that they are los­ing Jerusalem. They feel that they’re los­ing con­trol over Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well. And so, they’re — the oth­er guest had men­tioned that the insti­tu­tions of the Palestinian polit­i­cal lead­er­ship used to exist in Jerusalem. The PLO had some­thing called the Orient House, which was its head­quar­ters in Jerusalem, that had been — that has been shut down and is shut down. And, you know, Jerusalem has been sep­a­rat­ed by an enor­mous wall from the rest of the West Bank. And when Palestinians come and vis­it from Gaza, for exam­ple — those few who are allowed exit per­mits and do get to come to Jerusalem — they’re in shock at what they see. And see­ing it with their own eyes and going around the West Bank, they come to the con­clu­sion that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sep­a­rat­ing Israel from an inde­pen­dent Palestinian state passed a long time ago.

And nobody is offer­ing any kind of solu­tions or answers to Palestinians, includ­ing their own lead­er­ship. And I think that’s a big part of why you see Palestinians actu­al­ly act­ing right now out­side of the polit­i­cal fac­tions that dom­i­nate Palestinian pol­i­tics. Palestinians feel like those fac­tions are not offer­ing any solu­tions and that they are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands. So, the cen­ter of some of the fight­ing against Israel has occurred specif­i­cal­ly among those groups who are not under Palestinian Authority con­trol. The Jerusalem — Jerusalemites, of course, are not at all under Palestinian Authority con­trol. The Palestinian Authority is for­bid­den from act­ing in any form in Jerusalem — and in oth­er domains, as well. Villages in the West Bank who are fight­ing against the wall cut­ting through and tak­ing part of their land also find — many of them are out­side of the Palestinian Authority’s con­trol and there­fore are able, actu­al­ly, to fight Israel. The same thing with hunger-strik­ing pris­on­ers and with Gazans now, who are approach­ing the bor­der fence every day and throw­ing rocks, and get­ting shot and killed in the process.

So, I think that Palestinians, in gen­er­al, feel that they are approach­ing the end of an era, and that era is the era that was inau­gu­rat­ed with President Mahmoud Abbas’s elec­tion in January 2005. This came just after Yasser Arafat had died and at the end of a very bloody and painful intifa­da, one that was bloody and painful for both sides. And what Abbas rep­re­sent­ed for Palestinians was a chance to try a total­ly dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy, one that was not based on armed con­flict, one that would basi­cal­ly give Israel exact­ly what it most want­ed, which is secu­ri­ty, and to coöper­ate with Israel, ful­ly in secu­ri­ty, to hunt down mil­i­tants in the West Bank and to pre­vent attacks against Israelis, against set­tlers. And Abbas — if you ask the Israeli secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, they will say that Abbas has deliv­ered that in spades. And what the secu­ri­ty offi­cials say is, you know, “We view our job as to pro­vide the calm that allows the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship to reach out and to make a deal, or at least to improve the sit­u­a­tion.” Even if you don’t have a final peace agree­ment, there are a thou­sand things that Israel can do to make life bet­ter for Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem and Gaza. And a lot of the anger — sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I just — we have to wrap up, but I want­ed to bring Jamil Dakwar back in. Go ahead with “a lot of the anger,” and then I’m going to go back to Jamil.

NATHAN THRALL: Sure. OK, sure. I just want­ed to say that a lot of the anger is a sense that that strat­e­gy, that was inau­gu­rat­ed with Abbas’s elec­tion in January 2005, has been giv­en 11 years now to play itself out, and it hasn’t achieved any­thing. And it hasn’t real­ly eased life or restric­tions on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem. And so, what Palestinians are doing now is, in a very non­strate­gic and emo­tion­al way, rebelling against that, with­out a clear vision of where they’re headed.
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