West Bank a Time Bomb Waiting to Explode

Analysis by Mel Frykberg

16 Apr 09 | IPS

Tension between Israel and Palestinians is rising sharply as reflected in a number of increasingly bloody and violent confrontations since Israel’s devastating war in Gaza at the beginning of the year.

While Gaza, which the Islamic organisation Hamas controls, has been a powder-keg for several years, recent attacks in the West Bank, which is under the control of the secular Palestinian Authority (PA) that is Israel’s peace partner, are causing alarm.

“The West Bank is a ticking time-bomb waiting for the right time and the right conditions to explode,” Dr Samir Awad from the political science department at Birzeit University near Ramallah in the West Bank told IPS.

Last week a 16-year-old settler boy from the illegal Israeli Bat Ayin settlement, situated between Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank, was axed to death by a Palestinian. Another seven-year-old settler boy was hospitalised with a fractured skull in the same incident. >>>