LAST week`s Israeli `special military operation` in the West Bank town of Jenin has been compared, in terms of its intensity, to a 2002 assault during the second Palestinian intifada. Smaller-scale incursions, however, have become almost a nightly occurrence in what is invariably described as a hotbed of militancy.

The toddlers who witnessed the depredations of 2002 and survived the sporadic bouts of lethal repression in their formative years are now in their 20s. The despair they have experienced throughout their lives has only deepened over the years. Should anyone be surprised that some of them see little choice other than to join the armed resistance? Many of the young fighters are independent of the usual outfits such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa Martyrs` Brigades, choosing to resist violence with violence simply because they see no alternative. Even under less extremist regimes, Israeli intent has never seriously shifted from the idea of indefinite occupation. The Palestinian Authority (PA) introduced after the Oslo Accords 30 years ago was always intended to serve as little more than a collaborationist entity.

Briefly optimistic about the possibilities held out by the Oslo settlement, Edward Said rapidly became disillusioned, pointing out that it would turn out to be little more than a reflection of the Nazi-backed Vichy regime in wartime France, increasing the likelihood of militancy, which would serve as an excuse for reinforced repression.

There are parts of Jenin where the PA dare not venture, and some Western commentators have suggested Israel`s hand is forced because of the authority`s inability to subdue the resistance. More pertinently, in Palestinian eyes its weakness stems from its chronic inability to resist the increasingly brutal reality of the occupation. Younger Palestinians in particular hold it in contempt for its designated role as handmaiden to Shin Bet and the Israeli Defence Forces.

The disillusionment has intensified in the wake of what is viewed as the most extremist Israeli government, whose leading ministers proclaim their desire to annex `Judea and Samaria` by expelling all Palestinians, exterminating as many as necessary. Illegal West Bank settlements are growing by leaps and bounds, with the settlers routinely rampaging through Palestinian villages.

They have been egged on by the likes of ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich neither of whom bothers to disguise his fascist tendencies. That fits into an Israeli pattern whereby, before and during the Nakba of 75 years ago, some of the lead-ing Zionists were perfectly comfortable with invoking the Nazi practices they had recently survived. The security establishment has acknowledged some of the settlers` crimes as indistinguishable from terrorism, and even Netanyahu has urged restraint although the implication often seems to be: it`s not a good look, let us do it for you.

Perhaps they worry too much. The `international community` seems to be focused on Russia/Ukraine and China/ Taiwan. Serial violations of the `rulesbased order` by Israel barely cause a ripple, every now and then occasioning an expression of concern or a mild reprimand, but never any repercussions. There isn`t the smallest sign of the kind of international pressure that persuaded South Africa to dispense with apartheid.

Israeli apartheid is barely acknowledged by any state, even though the designation is commonplace among human rights organisations and growing segments of the Western intelligentsia, and to call it out as a terrorist state would imme-diately and absurdly be termed anti-Semitic. Back in May, writing in Haaretz, Israeli satirist B. Michael asked a series of crucial questions about his country: `What`s the difference between a terrorist who murders a mother withher two daughters, and a state that murders in a single night a mother and her four-year-old daughter, parents and their son, a 12-year-old girl and her eightyear-old brother, and another two sisters who are neighbours? `What exactly is the difference between them? And why is the murderer a terrorist, and not the state? Where does it say that a state can`t be a terrorist? And how many innocent people is a state allowed to kill before being called a terrorist state? And how many children?` The answer, as someone said, is blowing in the wind. And who can say how many times Jenin will again be violated before those who matter open their ears, let alone heed Israeli historian Ilan Pappe`s comment in April, in the context of the demonstrations against the Netanyahu regime`s tinkering with the judiciary, that `the current protest wave has highlighted Israel`s fundamental paradox: it cannot be both democratic and Jewish. It will either be a racist Jewish state, or a democratic one for all its citizens. There is no middle ground.` m mahir.dawn @gmail.com