Showing little fear of their supposed oppressors

 A good article, Mr Harris.  I, too, am quite convinced that this incident on the border was a deliberate provocation.

Whenever Muslims believe they have gained something, they will always push for more.

In this case, they want to be able to go right up to the fence; because if they can 'desensitise' Israel to people approaching the fence, that will make it easier for attacks to be launched against Israel, through or over that fence.

It's all about conditioning Israel to tolerate, without responding, an ever-increasing level of abuse.

It's about training Israel in dhimmitude...and the EU, the UN, the USA and way too many other people are currently only too eager to assist the Muslims in doing this, and only too eager to demand that Israel play the dhimmi. No matter what a Muslim did to a dhimmi, a dhimmi always had to 'take it', without hitting back.  'We will never hit a Muslim'.  Never...not even in self-defence against unprovoked Muslim aggression, bullying, attempted murder.  Under the dhimmitude system, Muslims are free to hit dhimmis as much as and whenever they like, but dhimmis are forbidden to hit back.

I have one further observation, though.

Mr Harris - why 'Palestinian' and 'Palestinians' all the way through your otherwise excellent article?

Why not say, '"Palestinian' Arab Muslims", or 'local Arab Muslims' or 'Gazan Arab Muslims'?

'Many Palestinian supporters'...= 'Many who support the 'palestinian' Arabs'. (In that opening sentence, you could cut to the chase even more directly, by stating, 'Many who support the Muslim jihad against the Jews...".

'One Palestinian man was killed' = 'One Gazan Muslim man was killed'.

'Many Palestinians' = 'Many local Arab Muslims' or, if one is sure that there were Islamochristian dhimmis present as well, 'many local Arabs', or 'many 'Palestinian' Arabs'.

Have you seen Philippe Assouline's 'A Palestinese Lexicon'?  If you haven't, look it up; we drew attention to it here at NER , under the headline 'An A-Z of Victimhood'.

Thanks for the positive feedback, call me Rob if you prefer! It may well be that the conflict at the fence was a pretext for justifying the placing of Hamas’ "security" personnel right up against Israel’s border http://www.eurasiareview.com/24112012-hamas-deploys-at-gaza-border-after-israel-kills-palestinian/

Your point about Israel becoming some sort of collective national dhimmi, in which no matter what the Muslims (AKA Arab-Palestinians) do has to take it without hitting back, is a well observed parallel.

I take your point about the use of the world Palestinian being problematic. All Jews living there were Palestinian before the foundation of Israel. The Jerusalem Post was the Palestine Post. The Palestinians are a largely created people, a modern synthesis of Egyptian migrants and Syrian/Lebanese Arabs of which their culture is largely derived. I often use the words "Arab-Islamic populace" intermittently due to that issue since the use of the word "Palestinian" confers some sort of wrongful notion of a close ethnicity with "Palestine" that compares with or trumps that of Jewish people. Where we may differ is in the sense of the word Palestinian having some currency for those that defend Israel. Using the word allows one to revisit the faulty history of the present leftist theocracy of the region, and perhaps could be reshaped given time since it is not going to go away. However, I will use "Arab-Islamic" etc. more after your suggestion. I read Philippe Assouline's A Palestinese Lexicon a while ago – excellent article.