For some, the facts represented the determination there would ultimately be a Greater Israel - stretching from the Jordan to the sea and representing the biblical bounds of old Israel. This aim has inspired some of the zeal with which some, including Christian Zionists, have opposed any sort of pullback of the kind occurring at Gaza. Others were more cynical, recognising that ultimately there would have to be some rationalisation of borders in some sort of arbitrated process, but that fully operational settlements well beyond legal boundaries would become facts that had to be dealt with, either being enclosed within new boundaries or brought out by third parties desperate for a resolution. Some have seen the settlements not only as pawns for a deal but, until there was such a deal, as forward posts for Israel's security; forts, as it were, linked by roads and communications and defence posts and keeping back Palestinians from the boundaries of the legal Israel.

For the first time in many years, the combined population of the area controlled by Israel, and the areas on the West Bank and Gaza, became less than 50 per cent Jewish. Most of the eight million or so Jews living outside Israel (there are more in the United States alone than in Israel) have no desire to emigrate, partly because discrimination against Jews in other societies has become less marked. And while Israel has long demonstrated it has the overwhelming power in relation to concentrated force, it is becoming more and more obvious that Palestinian resistance to occupation will continue and will grow stronger.

The most effective weapon is not confrontation but terrorism, and there is no sign of its decline.