Occupations are ALWAYS brutal and nasty. There are no moral occupations.There are NO exceptions.

Armies are not moral enterprises, they are killing machines.Occupying armies NEVER behave well.Might is right and in an occupation situation, i.e. a military machine versus civilians situation, it is the military machine that has the might and which exercises it

The Isreali army and the occupation of the west bank are NOT exceptions to any of this. All occupations demoralise and humiliate the occupied and brutalise both the occupied and the occupier.While one might grudgingly accept the necessary evil of occupation in an immediate post war situation ( which is why international law accepts the legality of occupation in certain carefully detailed circumstances ) it must never be considered " a good ".

The key thing is that any occupation is short. As short as possible both for the safety and self esteem of the occupied and the moral survival of the occupier.

The big problem with the occupation of the west bank is that it has gone on for 43 years and has been normalised in the psyche of the Israeli public.Further it is compounded by the illegal colonisation of the territory, which colonisation has to be protected and facilitated by the army with disastrous consequences for its reputation and the sense of moral and spiritual well being of its soldiers. The army finds itself the supervisor and protector of what inevitably and necessarily has evolved into an apartheid province.

What is happening on the west bank is classic occupation plus colonisation stuff. Military law for the occupied population, civil law for the occupiers settlers, special roads for the settlers, even different definitions of childhood for the the occupied population and the settlers. And so on and so on. And the classic occupier terror tactic of the knock on the door in the dead of night, or rather the kicking down of the door in the dead of night.

Then the all too familiar ludicrous plea that if only the occupied would accept the occupation and stop resisting it then and only then can the occupation end.Classic black is white stuff.

Why do a few kids throwing stones provoke the brutal terror response that it does ? It's not that the stone throwing represents any real threat to the occupation, but rather, that it is a statement that the occupation , howeve, forlonly, is resisted.And this is the kind of statement no occupier can allow to be heard, since occupiers represent the occupation as benevolent supervision welcomed by the grateful occupied.

It is all classic time immemorial stuff. No State is exempt from the impossibility of moral occupation,including Israel.

If Israel is to have any long term future, not just morally and spiritually, but also existentially, it must stop the colonisation very soon and end the occupation soon after.

Let the special pleading and hysterical cries of ANTI SEMITIC !!! begin