West Bank / Israel - The Tribal Self Besieges the Innocent, and the State Fails to Restore the Illusion of Order

Event Baseline: In the occupied West Bank village of Qusra, Israeli settlers have besieged two Palestinian families since Sunday, blocking essential supplies. Israeli security forces reportedly withdrew and about a dozen settlers remain; troops failed to remove them on Wednesday.

The settler is not a person; he is a reflex of stored tribal images. The image of a promised land, of an enemy other, of a divine claim to dirt. That image is thought, and thought moves to encircle, to blockade, to starve. The state arrives with its own image of law and order, but that image is weaker than the tribal reflex. So the state withdraws. The settler remains. This is not a failure of enforcement. This is the natural output of a fragmented brain that has never perceived the other as itself. The Palestinian family is not seen; only the image of 'Palestinian' is seen. The siege continues because the image requires the other to be food. The system cannot correct itself because correction would mean dissolving the image, and the image is the self. That is death to the self, and the self will kill before it dies.