The headlines emanating from Palestine-Israel, though ominous, should have been expected. The problem, of course, is that the Israeli government appears intent on making a desperately bad situation worse, and the administration of US President Joe Biden is acting as if doing what it’s been doing for the past three-and-a-half years is something other than pouring petrol on a raging fire.

The Israeli government continues to behave as if there are no consequences to its brutal behaviour. There is no let-up to its assault on Gaza as it routinely orders mass evacuations that force entire families to once again be uprooted. Bombings throughout Gaza have resulted in acute shortages of food, medicine and water. There are reports of children dying of malnutrition and now polio.

What the Israeli leadership cannot understand is that the anger and pain among the Palestinian people only create more resistance and new recruits for Hamas. For the past several months, the Israeli army has been confronting Hamas and other fighters in areas of Gaza’s northern and central regions that it claimed had been “cleared”. But as the US learnt in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, as long as the alien invader remains, no area is ever “cleared.”

Meanwhile, West Bank appears ready to explode. For several years now, the Israeli army and border police have been conducting deadly raids into Palestinian communities. Since the war in Gaza began, these have accelerated and become more lethal, accompanied by arial bombings.

To change this dynamic, the US must reverse course – and do so dramatically.

This isn’t all. Palestinians have long been plagued by extremist settler violence – burning, looting and even using deadly force. These rampages have been tolerated and often encouraged by Israeli military forces. This phenomenon has also grown in frequency and deadly intent.

To make matters worse, members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition have engaged in provocations, in word and deed, that have egged on the extremist settlers, generating greater anger or fear among the captive Palestinian people. Illegal outposts have been legitimized, provided military protection, government services and weapons, and, for all intents and purposes, annexed to Israel proper. One minister has led extremists to invade Haram Al Sharif, declaring his intention to build a synagogue on the grounds of Al Aqsa Mosque. Another member of the governing coalition has said that the goal of the government should be to remove the bulk of the Palestinians from the West Bank, to make it more governable.

All of these combined appear to have been a boon to Hamas’s recruiting, with the group reportedly picking up new members not only in the occupied lands, but also among the Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon.

While this dance of death plays out, the Biden team acts clueless. It is exhausting itself trying to negotiate a ceasefire, which it must know by now that the........

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