Behold the new crusader castles

Nine hundred years they came to the Holy Land: bands of robber barons with their private armies, intent on dominion and plunder. They gained the high ground, and there they built their fortresses of stone, and from their redoubts they would sally forth, looting and killing at will. Profit and land were their motives; only secondary was their professed desire to free Jerusalem from the hated Musselman.

Today the castles are back. All over the West Bank you can see them: cities of whitewashed concrete huddled on the hilltops. The locals are not welcome there, unless of course they have been contracted to work, enticed by better wages than they could obtain in their home towns. And like the crusaders, the Israeli settlers are not content to stay inside their fortresses. Regularly they come down onto Palestinian land, burning their olive groves (the ones they have not already stolen and placed out of their reach behind the Great Wall) or pour oil or foul sewage water over them. The effect is the same: the locals are deprived of their means of making a living from their land, what little they have left.

Just outside Bethlehem there is a huge development, housing thousands of Israelis, and following Israel's "defeat" at the UN last week, the government, in an extraordinary fit of diplomatic pique, ordered a huge expansion of this settlement, which will effectively cut Palestine in half. Already the half-hour journey from Bethlehem to Palestine's "capital" Ramallah has turned into a 2 or even 3 hour drive, because of the continual interdiction with checkpoints and roadblocks, set by the Israelis. If the new plans are realised, the journey will become practically impossible, and Palestine will have been severed in two.

But has Israel gone too far this time? Around the world there has been categorical condemnation of its latest, vengeful move (which includes withholding $75 million of tax revenues that was due to the Palestinian Authority; money that impoverished region desperately needs). Even the UK, Israel's avowed "friend", has expressed its strong disapproval. Israel's motive is clear: they want to provoke another Intifada, or protest, a protest they can use to say to the world: Do you see what we're up against? A group of terrorists, intent on destroying the Jewish race, and one we must subdue to ensure our own survival.

This time the world may not be fooled by this strategy of lies. Perhaps the time is approaching when even the US says enough is enough, and refuses to support Israel in everything it does. And when that happens, just like South Africa, it won't be long before the injustice is exposed for what it is, and freedom returns once again to the Holy Land.