The body of Islamic Jihad militant Arshad Abu Zeid is carried during his funeral procession in Jenin

The Israeli occupation army has re-imposed draconian restrictions on Palestinian civilians across the West Bank. The new measures, prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention, amount to virtually caging millions of Palestinians inside their respective towns, villages and refugee camps and follow an earlier ban on Palestinian traffic on intercity roads in the West Bank. If permitted to continue, the strangulation of Palestinian population centres, which coincides with the Eid Al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, is likely to lead to a resumption of violence on a very large scale.

This week, Palestinian resistance factions, mainly under pressure from Egypt, re-committed themselves to the fragile calm on condition of Israeli reciprocity. Israel responded by carrying out more assassinations and air strikes against suspected resistance activists and civilian infrastructure such as roads and buildings that the Israeli army claimed were being used by "terrorists". The frailty and mendacity of Israeli justifications suggest that the real goal is simply to wreak maximum damage and collective punishment on Palestinians "for the sake of it", in the words of one Palestinian Authority official.

The latest spate of air strikes, increasingly carried out by unmanned drones, began 27 October when missiles were fired on a crowded market in the centre of a refugee camp, killing eight. Four were minors or children who were walking near their homes following the Iftar meal. Only one was a resistance activist affiliated with the Islamic Jihad. At least 10 other civilians were injured in the aerial attack, with some sustaining life-threatening wounds and burns. True to form, Israel never expressed regret for the killing of seven civilians. On the contrary, the Israeli army spokesman spread disinformation about the killings, blaming "terrorists" for the carnage.

The Israeli army killed, or assassinated, at least 15 Palestinians this week, ostensibly in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Khadera north of Tel Aviv late on 26 October, in which five Israelis were killed. The Islamic Jihad group carried out the bombing to avenge the assassination by an Israeli army death squad a few days earlier of Luai Saadi, a middle-rank resistance activist affiliated with the group's armed wing, the Al-Quds Legions. The disproportionate Israeli "retaliation" suggests that Israel doesn't see itself as being bound by the calm or tahdia, and that it continues to view each and every Palestinian resistance fighter as fair game for army death squads, regardless of whether he is armed or engaging Israeli forces at the time.

Israel's brazen attitude towards the calm is expressed not only in the daily killings of Palestinians, but also in the hermetic blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is fatal to the Gazan economy and renders the Strip a huge open-air detention camp. This week, one human rights organisation complained that the Israeli blockade was killing Palestinian children in urgent need of medical treatment, which is only available abroad or in Jerusalem. While the international community plays deaf and dumb, paying disproportionate attention to such secondary subjects as the throwaway remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the fate of many Palestinians, including innocent and ill children, hangs in the balance.

In the West Bank, Israel is effectively doing the same thing; imprisoning Palestinians in their homes. Yet whereas Gaza has been reduced to a single huge prison, the West Bank is being divided into dozens of wards, with many thousands unable to move and not knowing what will happen the next day, or even the next hour. This week, Israel consolidated the Huwara checkpoint south of Nablus with additional infrastructure befitting a border crossing. The Israeli army also closed roads linking Nablus and neighbouring northern West Bank towns such as Jenin, Qalqilya and Tulkarem.

Likewise, it has become next to impossible for Palestinians to travel from the southern West Bank (Bethlehem and Hebron) to central towns such as Ramallah and the Jerusalem region (Abu Dis, Eizariya, Ram), let alone East Jerusalem, which is surrounded by a hermetic gigantic wall to keep the city off limits to Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank.

Israel claims the draconian measures are merely "defensive actions" aimed at preventing Palestinian "terror". "Whenever we relax the restrictions on the Palestinians, the terrorists strike on Israelis," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Regev described the mutilation of the West Bank as a "temporary security measure", adding that Israel remains committed to the creation of a Palestinian state somewhere in the West Bank.

When reminded that most of the newly introduced roadblocks and ramparts are located on roads linking Palestinian population centres, undermining their supposed "security" relevance, Regev couldn't give a clear answer as to their justification. When pressed, he couldn't say why a Palestinian college student from Hebron or Bethlehem couldn't access his college in Abu Dis, just a few miles to the north, or why a Palestinian doctor or nurse from Qalqilya couldn't reach their hospital in Nablus, a few miles to the east. The silence of the Israeli state on this issue leaves few other interpretations than to see the new Israeli measures as aimed solely at tormenting ordinary Palestinians, making daily life harsh and unbearable.

According to Uri Avnery, a prominent Israeli peace activist, the ultimate goal behind the policy of throttling Palestinian civilians is the political elimination of the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas. In an article entitled "Abbas and the lame duck", published 29 October, Avnery argued that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was trying to de-legitimise Abbas akin to how late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was undermined. Avnery argues that Sharon's real aim is to sow despair among Palestinians, bring them to their knees, compel them to accept his diktat -- namely to be content with 42 per cent of the West Bank (11 per cent of their original homeland) in several disconnected enclaves -- and, eventually, to coerce them to emigrate altogether.

"Sharon behaves like a bullfighter, sticking his bandilleras between the shoulders of the bull in order to enrage and bait him, till he lashes out in all directions," Avnery wrote.

The Palestinian Authority concurs. "Sharon's present actions in the West Bank, including the mutilation of Palestinian towns and villages by these sinister roadblocks, are a deliberate, political and strategic policy aimed at preventing our people from even contemplating having a viable state for at least 50 years to come," said Abdullah Abdullah, director-general of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry.

Abdullah further accused Sharon of adopting a policy based on evasions, false pretexts and slanted justifications, as well as red herrings, aimed at diluting and eventually killing the "roadmap". "The man is not interested in peace; he doesn't really believe in the roadmap, he is only interested in stealing more of our land. The world should immediately stop trying to accommodate Sharon," Abdullah said.