Unrest Continues in Gaza

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is — in a sense, it was inevitable, because it’s a powder keg here. Oftentimes, you will have — for instance, there was the war of 2014 between Gaza and Israel. And it was destructive. It was horrific in terms of human loss. And then you had seven years of, I’m not going to say calm, but compared to what we’re seeing now, it was relatively calm. And now it has erupted again in violence between Gaza and Israel, in Israel proper, and now on the West Bank. Today, on the West Bank, what we saw was only Bethlehem, where we were, but there were clashes and protests and confrontations throughout the West Bank. And according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the death toll today alone among Palestinians was at least 10, with more than 500 people wounded. We have not seen those numbers in the West Bank since the second intifada. And what’s interesting, Christiane, is that, a few days ago, when you had this outbreak of communal violence between Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews, the government in Israel decided to redeploy some of the border police, who normally are in the occupied West Bank, to Israeli towns and cities. And now you see that the situation in the West Bank has suddenly ignited as well. And this really underscores just how deep the problems here are. Now, the Israeli government over the years has tried to wall in the Palestinians, wall out the Palestinians, has tried to put down protests violently. But it’s the cycle that goes on and on again. And I was mentioning to some of our colleagues earlier today that being, somewhat advanced in years, as I am, I probably covered the fathers of the young men who are now throwing stones in Jerusalem — in Bethlehem, and the fathers of the soldiers who are firing at the Palestinian protesters. And just imagine how it is if you are a Palestinian or Israeli grandfather, knowing that your son and probably your grandson are going to be stuck in this endless conflict with, at the moment, no sign of any sort of diplomatic out, any sort of resolution of this century-old conflict.