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it certainly has been the way the game is played.
but i don't remember other administrations making the fact of the settlements and their expansion into a central problem, particularly not so early in the game.
personally, i think that israel really fucked up when it went into gaza at the end of the bush period because the bush period was coming to an end. i think they drained away whatever remaining resonances there might have been around the language that the right had used since at least sharon's term as prime minister to box in the united states by co-opting the discourse of "terror" (because israel had long exploited it in framing the palestinians and their political motivations, so in a sense this was easy)...
gaza made reality visible.
what's been happening in the west bank is not new; it is not a sudden development. but awareness of it in the united states seems to have changed. so long as the discourse of "terrorism" was operative, it seems that the realities on the ground for most palestinians could be erased behind it. gaza changed that.
but it's still too early to know whether we're in a different game or the same one.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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