Saeb Erekat is right to call Israel’s announcement of an easing of restrictions on Palestinians “a publicity stunt.” It is another cynical move in the well-practiced game of advance and retreat of which the Israelis have become such masters. Israeli leaders have time and again raised and dashed the hopes of the Palestinians, manipulating their emotions so that with the death of each new expectation, their anger becomes ever greater. They thus increase their support for the men of violence, whose outrages are then used as an excuse for the withdrawal of any Israeli olive branch.

There is another element to these peaceable publicity stunts. From somewhere within the Israeli establishment there emerge rumors of dissatisfaction. The world is given to believing that moderate voices are finally making themselves heard. This encourages outsiders to hold off on any thoroughgoing criticism and wait to see if moderate opinion may not finally start to prevail in an aggressive and uncompromising state. But experience should by now have taught us that this is all hokum.

It is merely the good cop-bad cop routine adapted to confuse and divert criticism of an inflexible and brutal regime. The latest good-cop act allegedly comes from the Israeli military chiefs, who are supposed to have said that they think that the severity of their clampdown on Palestinian communities is encouraging terrorism. Hence the easing of restrictions.

What, one may ask, can Israeli generals been thinking in the last 10 years that it suddenly dawns on them now that their repression is fueling resentment and playing into the hands of Palestinian extremists? Who do they suppose they are kidding? Israel needs the Palestinian extremists to justify the creeping territorial grab, the concrete curtain, the curfews, the minute control of the captive Palestinian population.

Unfortunately the Americans, the Zionists’ most important audience, will be largely fooled. Letting Palestinians on their own streets for a few more hours will be seen as an act of great generosity. Few will appreciate the seething anger of most Palestinians as they are forced to be tightly controlled guests in their own country. Few will understand why in their gratitude the Palestinians do not disown their extremists and agree to submit to the “reasonable” and “peaceable” demands of the Israelis. And so the ground will be prepared yet again for a further extremist outrage and the death of more innocents. Then in horror, Israel will turn to their world audience and protest: “We tried, and look at the reward we got.”

Thereafter the Americans will sit by while the Israelis lever their oppression of the Palestinians up yet another ratchet, to guarantee the next outburst of fury following their next phony offer on an olive branch.