Israel poet Yitzhak Laor has a good point, as usual:

Every so often, ghosts from “the Jewish past” are summoned by a contemptible action in the occupied territories. Someone manages to photograph it. There are dramatic headlines about it, as in the case of the young Palestinian ordered to play the violin, but then the affair quickly becomes “an exception.” Most of the soldiers do not compel violinists to play at the checkpoints. Most of the soldiers do not kill little girls. Most of the soldiers do not confirm the killing. But the melodramas help to conceal the larger truths. Israelis do not like the truth. And the truth of the Israelis can be found deep inside the occupied territories.
[…] The fact is that the checkpoints are not a product of the intifada. When the truth is written about the history of the checkpoints, and not from the chronicles taken from the desk of the army commanders, it will become clear that the checkpoints gave birth to the intifada. They were born in 1991, two years before the Oslo Accords, and were greatly reinforced after these agreements were signed. Only complete blindness on the part of Israelis – who know more about the chic restaurants in New York than they do about the checkpoints in the West Bank, the checkpoints that divide and slice it, turning its citizens into the victims of good or sadistic soldiers – only this blindness could have begotten the “surprise” of Autumn 2000: What did they want? After all, everything was already OK.

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