This is why Israel is an immoral nation that deserves no right to exist:

A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items, Haaretz has learned. . . .

The company stops Palestinian workers from passing through the checkpoint with the following items: Large bottles of frozen water, large bottles of soft drinks, home-cooked food, coffee, tea and the spice zaatar. The security company also dictates the quantity of items allowed: Five pitas, one container of hummus and canned tuna, one small bottle or can of beverage, one or two slices of cheese, a few spoonfuls of sugar, and 5 to 10 olives. Workers are also not allowed to carry cooking utensils and work tools.

When you first read this you may be forgiven for thinking that these restrictions on food are being imposed on the people of Gaza. But no. These restrictions, by a private security company which is part of Israel’s business sector that benefits from the continuation of the occupation; are being imposed on people of the West Bank.

What for? After all, even it is cruel, immoral and internationally illegal; Israel claims an objective for its starvation of the people of Gaza: the overthrow of the Hamas democratically-elected government. Israel’s blockade is unjustifiable anywhere. But Israel claims in Gaza is need to put pressure on the Palestinians to overthrow a government that is headed by a terrorist organization that espouses the destruction of Israel. One may not, and I do not, endorse such thinking but at least can understand the collective punishment reasoning being offered.

But about the West Bank? The West Bank is, after all, headed by a government that Israel negotiates with and whose security forces Israel had been handing over territory to. Just this past week, Israel was praising Fatah security forces:

Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, a senior aide to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, told the same forum that the new forces, most of them drawn straight from high school, are doing a good job. “It’s not quite that they can assume full security responsibility, but we are on the right way,” he said. “And for the first time, I see some sense of professional pride there that we’ve never seen in these forces.”

So why would Israel also enforce an arbitrary blockade on the Palestinians in the West Bank [The Israeli army, as usual, plays innocent but that is to be expected whenever Israel acts it normal criminal self]? These Palestinians aren’t attacking Israelis? They do not hold an Israeli occupation terrorist soldier hostage nor are they firing $50 bottle-rockets into Israel. So why punish them? Or do 11 olives brought to the West Bank by a single Palestinian harm Israel’s security?

What is to be gained by Israel from imposing such a cruel blockade on the very people that are working towards peace with you? What is the purpose of setting arbitrary limits on food?

Israel just does this because it excels in sadistic mistreatment. It excels in seeking to make the Palestinians feel humiliated through petty actions. This is the ideology of Zionism that preaches that Israeli Jews are superior to Arabs and therefore all killings and abuses are justified against the latter.

This ideology is meant to make the Palestinians submit to Zionism. As then Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said in 2002:

“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

That is the mirage that Israel is pursuing against the Palestinians. That is why it treats even those negotiating in good faith with such cruel contempt. But the Israelis will never win in the end.