And yet, looking back at the history of the region, it is only after great upheavals that hopeful consequences follow. The

The very high human and material cost of the war in Gaza proves that what Israel fears from Palestine is Palestine’s very existence.

minimal. A mechanism has to be found that would not leave the USA as the only sponsor of the ensuing negotiations, because the USA is not a neutral party.

Israel sees UNRWA as perpetuating the refugees’ insistence on their right of return. It believes that if it succeeds in dissolving the organization the refugee problem will be forgotten. But this is an illusion. There will be no lasting peace without resolving the refugee issue.

A recent investigation by the Guardian based on a review of internal State Department documents and interviews with people familiar with sensitive internal deliberations revealed how special mechanisms have been used to shield Israel from US human rights laws and circumvent the Leahy law.[10]

In July 2004, in a case before the ICJ in The Hague that I took part in, the court found that Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank violated international law and should be dismantled. The fact that it still stands to this day means that no one should expect the results of the January 26 ruling to follow quickly.

After decades of tolerating Israel’s building of new settlements funded by US money, rather than taking action against this colonial project, which is recognized as the main obstacle to peace, the USA acted to sanction a few individual settlers. A number of Israeli settlers were also sanctioned by France, the UK and Canada.

It is clear that as long as US pressure amounts to nothing more than urging and imploring, and falls short of denying Israel the arms it uses to wage war, it is unlikely to bring results.

We Israelis seem to believe that the land belongs to whoever controls its past; if we deny the Palestinians their memory of the past, we can also deny their attachment to the land and thus pave the way for their expulsion.