Israel Matzav

Security is an important element in the good life. Lovers of prosperity at the expense of others must believe that the convergence will provide them with personal security. It is very reasonable to assume that the residents of the settlement blocs will continue feeling comfortable and safe behind the various kinds of barbed wire, cement walls and locked gates, ignoring their role in the robbery. But the invisible Palestinians see and feel. In Israel they are counting on Palestinians accepting the robbery and inherent discrimination out of habit, international helplessness or Israel's military strength.

That is an illusion - like the illusion that reigned at the time of Oslo - that the Palestinians would accept the expansion of the settlements, being shoved off their lands and the draconian limits on their freedom of movement. The explosion that came at the end of September 2000 was caused by the violent clash between the international promise of peace and the reality of occupation and colonization. The convergence plan, which coagulates the violence of occupation in densely populated Palestinian areas, will bring forth and intensify three types of Palestinian rage: national rage due to the sabotage of the Palestinian project for a state, development and independence; economic rage of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their land, property and livelihood to the Jews who prosper on the other side of the barbed wire; and religious rage, of those who turn for solace to the Koran and Allah, where they can find explanations stating that's the way Jews are.

The supporters of convergence and its architects are deceiving themselves by thinking that all these forms of rage won't burst out, or that it will always be possible to suppress them. Indeed, it is difficult to predict when and how the rage will erupt, but sooner or later, they will be back disrupting the dreams of comfort and convenience at the expense of another nation.