Nile Bowie: Gaza and the Politics of "Greater Irrael".

According to Benjamin Netanyahu: The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won't allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn't matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war. Israel's must be the same. The two states solution does not exist. There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population. There are no Palestinian people, so you don't create a state for an imaginary nation, they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews. The Israeli bombardment of Gaza being perpetuated under Operation Pillar of Defense comes at an interesting time. Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements into Palestinian lands has increased at unprecedented rates. Netanyahus administration has approved the construction of 850 settler homes in the occupied West Bank in June 2012, even after the Israeli parliament rejected a bill to retroactively legalize some of the existing homes in the area. The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank has almost doubled in the past 12 years, with more than 350,000 residing illegally under international law. While Israels Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asserts Tel Avivs unwillingness to permit Palestinians any right to return to their lands, emphasizing, not even one refugee, apartheid enforced on ethnic and religious lines has become a ratified part of Israeli government policy. Far right political discourse that was once considered extremism is now the status quo in Israel. While Netanyahu publically announced support for a Palestinian state on the West Bank, his government has threatened to end the Oslo Accords, if the United Nations General Assembly granted Palestine with non member observer state status. A panel of Israeli jurists assembled by Netanyahu's government to determine the legal status of the West Bank, concluded that there is no occupation of Palestinian lands, and that the continued construction of settlement outposts are entirely legal under Israeli law, despite critical international opinion.