It might seem counterintuitive, but the current Palestinian-Israeli hostility is a healthy return to what relations between occupiers and the occupied should be. Thus far, it is largely a rhetorical escalation in hostilities, but such words often quickly become action.
In this war of words, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking before the UN General Assembly, called Israeli actions in Gaza this summer a “genocidal crime.” This was in turn rebuked as “slander and lies” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who responded from the same UN podium with accusations that the Palestinian resistance is a carbon copy of the Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria. Another round in the war involved statements by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat comparing Netanyahu to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the extremist, self-appointed caliph of the so-called Islamic State.
