"This is a long time coming. Myself and my predecessors have pointed out the increasingly entrenched nature of the occupation – the growth of the settlements, the expanding land appropriation, the increased violence. Those dark moments are preludes to what we’re seeing now. You cannot continually put a cork on a volcano and expect it to hold back the explosion. The killing and kidnapping of Israelis civilians – those are clearly war crimes. But war crimes committed by one side do not allow war crimes committed by the other. There is a narrative about Israel that it is a law-abiding democracy that shares values with the West – and that sometimes is a blind spot when it comes to the Palestinians. It doesn’t take into account the many violations of international law – the settlements, the annexations, the penning in of people. There is a longstanding sense that Israel is the West’s compensation for what it did and what it allowed with respect to European Jewry during the second world war: the promise that Jews deserve their own homeland where they can be safe and secure. What never is factored in is the process where a Jewish state was meant to replace an Arab state – and the suffering that occurred from that."