I finally made it to the end of Righteous Victims, Benny Morris's account of the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1881 to 2001. It would benefit from more maps and fewer acronyms but it is probably still the single best survey of the subject.
On page 583, in the chapter on what is now usually called the first intifada, Morris writes of one violent incident:
On April 6, 1988, a group of fifteen Israeli high school pupils accompanied by three armed adults, all from Eilon Moreh, a major Gush Emunim settlement outside Nablus, went on a hike in the hills several kilometers from their settlement. The excursion--conceived as if Samaria were wholly Jewish and there were no Intifada--was typical of Gush Emunim behavior during this period. The group failed to coordinate the hike with the IDF, as required by law. Near the village of Beita they encountered a group of Arab youngsters, who pelted them with stones. One of the adults opened fire with his M-16 rifle, killing an Arab youth and wounding an adult. Scores of Arabs surrounded the group and, in effect, frog-marched them, under threat, into the center of Beita. There they were stoned again, and the sister of the slain youth threw a large stone at the killer's head. Badly injured, as he collapsed he let off a long burst from his rifle, accidentally killing one of the Jewish girls. Two villagers were also killed, and some of the Israeli youngsters were injured in the melee. A number of Arabs then protected the hikers until IDF troops arrived.
The enraged Israeli Right shouted "pogrom!" Sharon demanded that the village be razed and called for a mass deportation. Subsequently about two dozen villagers were arrested and tried for stone-throwing and the IDF demolished thirteen houses. It later emerged that several of those left homeless had taken no part in the rioting and that one of them had in fact saved hikers from the mob. Eventually the IDF paid him compensation. Six villagers were deported to Jordan.
It is not possible to distill, in a couple of paragraphs describing a single incident, 700 pages devoted to a 120-year historical survey. But a lot of the story is here: the reflexive violence, the stupidity, the accidents and unintended consequences, the thirst for revenge, the poor judgment and blustering over-reactions, death, all of it a great wave rolling over modest acts of human decency and making them seem pitifully small and inconsequential.
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