Understandably, it is in an uphill fight to convince Arabs, especially Palestinians, that they should accept Israel's takeover of Palestine when the Jews owned less than 10 percent of the former British mandate.

In the 60 years since its establishment, Israel has managed to gain control of 78 percent of historic Palestine and, in the meantime, has been recognized by many countries and virtually accepted by the Arab states although an alternative idea for a unitary state for Palestinians and Israelis has been lately gaining impressive ground.

The Arab governments offered Israel a peace initiative more than six years ago after the Palestinians 10 years earlier walked up to the negotiating table at Oslo, Norway, in the hope of reaching a final settlement.

The Palestinian leadership, much to the chagrin of many Palestinians, have at present virtually conceded that they can settle for 22 percent of the Holy Land, that is, the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.

None of these magnanimous gestures have brought the Israelis around; in fact the Israeli government has never made a peace offer or spelled out its views on borders or other core issues.

Rather it has resorted to occupation as a key instrument in determining the final borders. In other words, grab as much as you can and then negotiate a partial withdrawal.

At no point has it thought of reaching out to the Palestinians although the outlines of a settlement are crystal clear – a pull-back to the 1967 borders which would leave the Palestinians only one-fifth of their homeland.

But Israel has, meanwhile, resorted to repressive policies and a harsh occupation that has led to several bloody incidents, as the case was in recent weeks when two disheartened, if not depressed or mentally unbalanced, Palestinians who separately took matters into their own hands in Jerusalem.

One invaded a yeshiva school, killing eight Israeli students, and another ploughed his bulldozer into a main Jerusalem street, killing three women and injuring more than 40 others.

Neither was a member of any Palestinian militant group. Yet the Israeli government labeled them as "terrorists" and now wants to demolish the homes of their families as punishment, much like what they did when the 23-year-old American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, was killed in March, 2003 by an Israeli army Caterpillar bulldozer while protecting the unlicensed home of a Palestinian refugee in the Gaza Strip.

These two incidents received extensive media attention in the United States, but not the repressive Israel actions against the tormented Palestinians in Israel's midst.

For example, Israeli troops have this week raided a popular shopping center in occupied Nablus and ordered it closed for two years, accusing the owners of links with Hamas militants. The owners, the BBC reported, denied the claim and Nablus's Palestinian governor was quoted as saying the orders would not be obeyed.

Other anti-Palestinian incidents, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, include:

A group of West Bank Israeli settlers beat a 31-year-old Palestinian in the southern Hebron Hills, after having tied him to a telephone pole.

Another 25-year-old resident of a Negev town who was severely beaten by police in Ashkelon three months ago, died of his wounds last weekend.

His family says that two detectives had brutally beat him after calling him a "smelly Bedouin" when he was spotted at a nearby Israeli beach with another Arab friend.

A Jerusalem mother, Mona, wife of an Palestinian-American called Habib, traveled to Jerusalem from the United States last March with her five-month-old child called Ramzi to see her family that resides in the Holy City.

But when she requested an extension of her residency she was told by the Israeli authorities that "since I have made a decision to marry an 'American,' who can't reside in Jerusalem, I have made a decision to seek residency in a foreign country and therefore 'choosing' to abandon my residency rights in Jerusalem."

Palestinians, unlike Israelis, are not allowed to have dual residency or citizenship.

Reporters Without Borders has also condemned the "abusive behavior" of Israeli security agents toward Palestinian journalists traveling in the occupied Palestinian territories or returning from visits abroad.

It said it had recorded five incidents of wrongful arrest of five journalists, one of them a prize-winning reporter Mohammed Omar, who was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank last week as he tried to return home to Gaza.

Time has not acted in the best interests of Israel. A recent opinion poll conducted by the University of Maryland (WorldPublicOpinion.org) in 18 countries – a total of 18,792 were questioned – has revealed that 71 percent of Americans would prefer that the United States stay neutral when it comes to the Mideast conflict.

In no country did the majority back the Israeli stand.

This is probably what led French President Nicolas Sarkozy, unlike Bush, when he recently spoke before the Israeli parliament, to call on Israel to drop its refusal to cede sovereignty over Arab East Jerusalem and to stop settlement in the West Bank.

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George S. Hishmeh is a syndicated columnist.