advised n Building more settlement would provoke more anger The killing of an Israeli settler family was a heinous crime with no moral or political justification. The same, can be said for the settlements that Israel continues to build on stolen Palestinian land. Anyone who has seen the photos of the victims, especially those of the small children, cannot help but ask themselves how any human being can commit such acts. But Israel's response to the crime — an announcement that it had approved new settlements in the West Bank — is wrong-headed, counter-productive and will serve only to provoke more frustration and anger. Immediately approving more settlements is a knee-jerk reaction devoid of any real thought as to how to defuse the tension that is an everyday element of life in the West Bank. It is equally counter-productive for the Israelis to engage in the collective punishment that has become that country's signature response to all things Palestinian. The Israeli army entered the village of Awarta and demanded by loudspeaker that all men in the village aged 18 to 40 present themselves for questioning. It is the same kind of thinking that prompted the disastrous invasion of Gaza a couple of years ago, an invasion for which Israel has paid a steep price in terms of world support. Certainly, there is a need to view the tragedy in the context of the abomination of blatantly illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. But stabbing sleeping children to death cannot be viewed as apolitical act. This killing is the work of individuals who, somehow, have found themselves capable of plunging knives repeatedly into the bodies of those who had no possibility whatsoever of defending themselves. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke in Arabic on Israeli radio, calling the murders “inhuman,” “immoral”, and “an abomination.” He is right. Palestinian anger over Israeli oppression is justified, but the unfettered violence that once characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not be allowed to return. Condemnation of irrational, vicious violence should come from all sides, and it should be treated as the crime that it is. Responding with the approval of more settlements only casts the crime in a political light that it does not deserve. __
