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The Israel-Palestine conflict has claimed 14,000 lives since 1987

Despite the latest fighting in Gaza, the endless occupation is tolerable to many Israelis

EIGHT DAYS have passed since the simmering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians boiled over once more. According to data from OCHA, a UN organisation, by May 17th it had claimed the lives of 230 people—mostly Palestinians but also nine Israelis and one Indian. The deaths of two Thai factory workers in Israel was announced on May 18th.

The spark for the latest fighting came in Jerusalem, after Palestinians in the city objected to the erection of metal barriers near the Damascus gate of the old walled city—the main thoroughfare to the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place in Islam—during the month of Ramadan. As unrest escalated in Jerusalem, Hamas—a militant Islamist organisation that runs the impoverished enclave of Gaza—began to fire rockets into Israeli territory. Israel’s armed forces responded by bombarding Gaza. The fighting is reminiscent of three previous rounds of war. One difference this time is that violence has spread to Arabs and Jews in Israel’s mixed cities.

America has repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council statements on the fighting, but on May 17th, in a call with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, President Joe Biden expressed support for a ceasefire. America is working with Egypt and other regional partners to secure one. It cannot come soon enough. The Palestinian dead include 96 women and children. With the exception of one soldier, all of the Israeli dead are civilians, too.

The victims in this latest bout join a tragic toll from the decades-old conflict. According to data gathered by B’Tselem, an Israeli human-rights organisation, between December 9th 1987 and April 30th 2021, the conflict claimed 13,969 lives. Fully 87% of the dead were Palestinian. The recent violence brings the total to over 14,000.

The bloodshed has come in different phases. The first Palestinian intifada, or “shaking off” of 1987 was a shock to Israel at the time and was the backdrop for the Oslo peace accords of 1994. They pointed the way to a two-state solution: the creation of a Palestinian state in territories occupied by Israel in 1967. But instead of peace came more violence. Extremists on both sides sought to destroy the compromise; Hamas and another radical faction, Islamic Jihad, in particular, embarked on a campaign of suicide-bombings; Israel responded with harsher security measures, including ever greater restrictions on the Gaza Strip.

The failure of the Camp David talks in 2000 sparked the second, and far more violent intifada, which shifted from stone-throwing to the use of weapons, not least by the Palestinian Authority established under the Oslo accords, and more suicide-bombings. It prompted Israel to build a security barrier in the West Bank and to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. And since Hamas seized power in the enclave, there have been repeated rounds of fighting—the deadliest of which erupted in 2014.

Settlement-building on occupied land has continued relentlessly. Latterly, though, the intensity of the conflict has diminished. The data from B’Tselem show that in the 15 years between the second intifada, which began in September 2000, and the end of the second Gaza war in August 2014, 800 people died each year, on average. Since then, victims have numbered 175 a year. In the same period, Israeli deaths fell from 85 a year to 14.

Israel’s military might, its erection of security barriers and its deployment of anti-missile defences mean that, for most Israelis, most of the time, the conflict is out of sight and out of mind. Relations with Palestinians barely featured as an issue in the four elections Israel has held in the past two years. The international outcry over the plight of Palestinians is unlikely to change this mindset. The latest fighting may show how the unjust treatment of the Palestinians stores up trouble. But even now, the endless occupation seems tolerable to many Israelis who have lost faith in peace.

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