Divide and conquer: common imperial rules for the 21st century

As those policies impoverished the Irish, so do Israeli policies impoverish the Palestinians. According to the United Nations, unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza is over 50 percent, and Palestinians are among the poorest people on the planet.

Divide and conquer was 19th and early 20th century colonialism’s single most successful tactic of domination. It was also a disaster, one which still echoes in civil wars and regional tensions across the globe.

In the end not even the Israelis benefit. Empires profit only a few, and always at the expense of the majority. While the Sharon government spends $1.4 billion a year holding on to the territories, 27 percent of Israeli children are officially designated “poor,” social services have been cut, and the economy is in shambles.

The Israelis would do well to remember the Irish poet Patrick Pearse’s eulogy over the grave of the old Fenian revolutionary, Jeremiah “Rossa” O’Donovan: “I say to my people’s masters, beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people who shall take what yea would not give.”