All My Friends Are Fictional’s Reviews > What Does Israel Fear From Palestine? > Status Update

„There was never any doubt about the Israeli army's fighting capabilities. But with Israel waging wars on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen, the country must eventually choose between perpetual wars or living in peace. This can only happen if the country recognises Palestinian self-determination, a prospect that, at present, seems remote.“

In August 2025, the head of the Israeli army's Central Command, Avi Bluth, ordered the felling of around 3,000 olive trees in the village of Al-Mughayyir, in Ramallah, at the time of the harvest. For decades, the Israeli military has uprooted olives trees which are an impor tant cultural symbol and source of income for Palestinians. The justification this time was the claim that the trees posed a 'security threat'…

„The very high human and material cost of the war in Gaza proves that what Israel fears from Palestine is Palestine's very existence.“

„Yagil Levy has written:
The looting is a symbol of the general revenge. It's no accident that it has been accompanied by the destruction of property, including more than one incident in which homes were burned down needlessly. Looting reflects a negation of the enemy population's humanity, making it acceptable to rifle through their personal belongings, even the most intimate ones, and choose what to take.“

„Commenting on the destruction, Raphael Greenberg and Alon Arad wrote:
the destruction of these sites is part of the battle over perception and memory. We Israelis seem to believe that the land belongs to whoever controls its past; if we deny the Palestinians their memory of the past, we can also deny their attachment to the land and thus pave the way for their expulsion. This is not a new idea.“

[On the Overton Window]: „An idea can start far outside the political mainstream… It crosses over from the fringe of right-wing think-tankery to journalistic fellow-travellers; then it crosses over to the fringe of electoral politics; then it becomes a thing people start seriously advocating as a possible policy. The window has moved, and rough beasts come slouching through it to be born.“

‚We've been doing mapping every night, three or four houses a night for forty years. If we go into their houses all the time, if you arrest people all the time, if they feel terrified all the time, they will never attack us. They will only feel chased after.'

„It is not that the Israeli-Arab conflict has been forced on Israel. Rather, it's the other way around: Israel keeps up the conflict, because it needs the conflict for its very existence.“

„At present the relationship of Israel to the Palestinian territories is more akin to colonialism than occupation. Occupation is a situation of temporary, militarised control, external to the state's sovereign borders. Control of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories is civilian, permanent (according to the statements of Israel's leaders) and internal to Israeli society and politics.“

Sharing […] requires two partners, willing to share as equals. Mutuality and reciprocity must replace domination and hostility for genuine reconciliation and coexistence under international legality. Your security and ours are mutually dependent, as entwined as the fears and nightmares of our children. We have seen some of you at your best and at your worst. For the occupier can hide no secrets from the occupied.