from under their feet. For the Israelis, it was an outburst of murderous terrorism.The perpetrators of these attacks appear to the Palestinians as national heroes and to the Israelis as vicious criminals who must be liquidated.
75 During Barak's short term as Prime Minister, settlement activity continued at an accelerated pace. Palestinian resistance was minimal.The Israeli authorities saw in every violent attack on the settlers a crime against civilians.The Palestinians saw it as a legitimate defense against the spearhead of a dangerous enemy, which was dispossessing them of their land.
76 In the course of the al-Aqsa Intifada, a large part of
the Israeli "Peace Camp" collapsed, demonstrating the shallow-rootedness of many of its convictions. Since it never undertook a real revision of the Zionist narrative and never internalized the fact that there exists a Palestinian narrative, too, the Palestinian behavior appeared quite inexplicable, especially after Barak had "turned every stone and made more generous offers than any previous Prime Minister". The only remaining explanation was that the Palestinians had deceived the Israeli Peace Camp, that they had never really intended to make peace and that their true purpose was to throw the Jews into the sea, as the Zionist right has always claimed.The conclusion: "We have no partner".
77 As a result, the dividing line between the Zionist
"right" and "left" almost disappeared.The leaders of the Labor Party joined the Sharon Government and became his most effective apologists (e.g. Shimon Peres) and even the formal leftist opposition became ineffective.This proved again that the original Zionist narrative is the decisive factor unifying all parts of the political system in Israel, making the differences between them lose their significance in times of crisis.
78 The Second Intifada, resulting from the failure of the Camp David conference, raised the intensity of the conflict to a new level. More than 5000 Palestinians and more than 1000 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed.The Israeli military reaction turned the lives of the Palestinians into hell, cut towns and villages off from each other, destroyed