Israel's occupation is traumatising another generation of Palestinians

Tomorrow the UN Security Council will meet, at the UAE's request, to discuss the deadly violence that has engulfed the occupied Palestinian territories in recent days. Scenes of helicopter gunships, drones, missile strikes and civilians fleeing a refugee camp resemble not so much a security operation as open warfare . Although the raids on Jenin , ostensibly to fight militant groups, according to Israel, have included the most significant deployment of Israeli firepower in the West Bank for decades, Palestinians have been here before. The decades-long military occupation, which has curtailed Palestinian rights and throttled their economic and political life, has also created a generation of people left resentful against the Israeli occupation. This has been exacerbated by political paralysis and the growing number of illegal Israeli settlements that reduce the land available for a viable Palestinian state to a string of isolated cantons. The scale of the firepower that has been used on a civilian city and a densely populated refugee camp is disproportionate to the threat posed by Palestinian militants to Israel – a rich, militarily advanced state. In the long run, these actions cannot provide the necessary safety for Israelis, and claims from its foreign minister that the country “has no fight with the Palestinians” just Iran, will not wash with the many men, women and children left traumatised by what they have gone through this week. Tuesday’s indiscriminate car-ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv that wounded seven civilians was outrageous, but also just a reaction to Israeli military actions in the Palestinian territories. The ground and air operation in the West Bank left at least 10 dead, more than 100 wounded and destroyed parts of the Jenin refugee camp. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders condemned Israeli forces for firing tear gas inside Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman hospital, calling it “unacceptable”. Finding a way out of this cul-de-sac seems harder than ever, and we are a long way from the early and mid-1990s when agreements like the Oslo Accords held the prospect of peace, no matter how imperfect. The Abraham Accords were an important step in reviving hope for peace. The UAE has already called for international efforts to end the violence and eventually restart the political process. There have also been recent indications by several international actors, including the EU and China, that they are willing to help mediate. But it is difficult to see the endgame. Israeli actions are putting the country on a course to perpetuate conflict in one territory that it has occupied for decades – the West Bank – and in another, Gaza, over which it has effective control. The dehumanising euphemism of “mowing the lawn”, used by some analysts to describe periodic Israeli strikes on Gaza, found a worrying echo in the name given to the Israel forces’ campaign this week – Operation Home and Garden. Hard-wiring conflict into this situation will condemn both Israelis and the Palestinians to further inter-generational instability. Lurching from crisis to crisis is not sustainable. That is why Friday’s UNSC meeting must not be a mere punctuation mark in a cyclical conflict. Substantive international engagement must happen. Although an immediate return to full peace talks is not realistic now, there are many ways to engage – indirect talks, using go-betweens or holding short-term negotiations to resolve acute security situations. With creativity and will, a way can be found out of this morass, step by step. There is no realistic alternative for two peoples fated to live in the same land.