Is it a provocative naivety or pure stupidity? These are the questions that will always make us wonder about the decisions that come from the Israeli government. It doesn’t matter which side of the Israeli political world they represent. I’m not going to start looking for answers on how it all started, but this is reality of the Middle East problem. The truth is that at the moment Israel holds a lot of responsibility on what’s going on, without meaning that the Palestinians are innocent. On the contrary, the Palestinians are guilty of many daily issues. However, Israel is supposed to be the mature democracy, but it acts like a spoiled brat!

The latest news from Israel is that the cabinet ministers are backing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to approve the construction of hundreds of new settlements apartments in the West Bank, hereby ignoring all the international warnings, including the ones from Washington. I’m not trying to pretend that I am some kind of Middle East expert, I never was, and Israel always had my sympathy – as I suppose in the same way the entire western world had, due to our guilt of the holocaust. But it seems they are doing their best in Jerusalem these past few years to test our limits.

More settlements in the West Bank!? Does this mean that all the agreements from Camp David and after are wiped out? Weren’t the settlements the big thorn in all the negotiations – from Carter to Clinton – and weren’t the settlements the big target of the terrorist attacks? On the same time, aren’t these settlements the settle of the darker elements of the Israeli society?

Are we afraid to talk about it? Does anybody think that the settlements are just people looking for a place to live in peace with their kids? Or do the nationalists believe that Palestinians have no right to something that belonged to them for centuries?

I said that I’m not going to discuss the background reasoning of this conflict, but it always makes me smile and wonder what the world would say if the Greeks would want the land covering Afghanistan to England back? After all, it used to belong to us …once upon a time!

But let’s leave the past behind us and look at the present.

The present for both nations looks very bleak. And the future even worse if it continues like this. News agencies and the internet are full of photos with kids in the occupied Palestinian land. These are kids that live with the war and die daily; starving faces and women in pain; life in exploded houses with tanks watching from the street corners.

This is one side of it, and if anybody believes that the other side lives in prosperity and safety is… at least naïve. How many Israelis have sent their kids to school or colleges to find out a few hours later that their kids are in a covered coffin? How are they supposed to leave their kid to play outside, when they are worrying that a sniper is watching somewhere, or a rocket is targeting the field? This is the dark present, and as I said… the future looks even darker.

Of course the Palestinians are led mainly by a feeling of injustice. This, at the moment, makes them difficult to negotiate with. When what is behind you are ruins and death negotiations. But Israel is supposedly an organized democracy, in their defence. I agree, but still they are… an organized democracy with the luxury of choice and support for a solution from all around the world. So why do they have to do something like that? Something that obviously will provoke anger, make the injustice feel worse and make the rest of us starting doubting. By placing more settlers in the West Bank, aren’t they just provoking any negotiation and treat?

Please don’t forget, the settlers aren’t so …innocent. As I said before, I have the strange feeling that there is some kind of taboo when talking about them. Nobody has forced them to move to the West Bank. They went there by free choice. Actually, they are the ones who are forcing the government to create these settlements for them. They are going there, knowing that this land doesn’t belong to them and one day they might have to return it.

Worst part of all, they are doing this… by bullying their way and hiding behind the Israeli armed forces! Apparently, a big part of the Israeli tax goes to their safety.

Why is the Israeli government doing this? Why do they believe that a new settlement will create a new situation that the international community will have to accept? Perhaps it would have worked in the 60s, but in 2009, I have my doubts. That’s why I’m saying that Israel is obviously testing our limits, and this is a very dangerous game in a world that constantly changes and somehow had enough.