MUHAMMAD AL-DURA walks unsteadily towards the fifth anniversary of the intifada that claimed his brother and namesake as its most famous victim. The first Muhammad was killed in the opening days of bloodshed — a 12-year-old shot dead in Gaza as he huddled behind his father in scenes that quickly became the defining image of the clashes.

His mother bore a son to replace him. Aged 3, he now sits in the family home, using sofa cushions to build a wall around himself.

Death, birth and separation. These are the principal features of the latest Israel-Palestinian conflict that reaches its five-year mark today.

Muhammad’s mother, Amal, now sits in Bureij refugee camp, keeping a watchful eye on her remaining children.

After Muhammad’s death — the Israeli military apologised, then quickly withdrew its admission of responsibility — Mrs al-Dura named her next son as a defiant message to Israel that “we Palestinian women always conceive and compensate for our sons”.

But although she wants nothing to do with the numerous Palestinian factions seeking to exploit the al-Dura name, she shares the near-universal Palestinian analysis that credits those militant groups for the recent departure of Israel’s soldiers and settlers from Gaza.

“Israel left Gaza because of the Palestinian resistance,” she said. “We are still suffering from what happened five years ago and we will suffer all our lives because they killed our son. I get fed up with all the killing and trouble, but still the occupation is like an obstacle that we are forced to struggle and fight.”

Amal al-Dura and other Palestinian women are producing babies at a far higher rate than Israelis. The Jewish birthrate is only 1.2 per cent annual growth against 3.94 per cent in Gaza.

Some analysts believe that that, along with the cost in money and lives defending Gaza’s remote settlements, led Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister, to accept the demographic argument that Israel had to separate itself from the Palestinians. Sallai Meridor, the former Jewish Agency chairman, said: “In order to secure the future of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state it needs not only securely defensible borders but demographically defensible borders.”

It is an irony, therefore, that the intifada that precipitated this separation began on September 28, 2000, when Mr Sharon staged a walkabout on the disputed Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinians already seething after the breakdown of peace talks rioted, drawing a harsh Israeli response that escalated into bloodshed that has claimed 3,700 Palestinian and more than 1,000 Israeli lives.

For all the hopes attendant upon the Gaza pullout that is an integral part of Mr Sharon’s separation strategy, the region quickly slid back into blood-letting over the past week.

Though Israeli troops are gone, the warplanes keep coming back. Last night they were in action again, firing missiles at several buildings and plunging Gaza City into darkness.

There are grounds for hope. Israel is no longer in Gaza. Confounding widespread pessimism, the Palestinians delivered a smooth transition from Yassir Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas and a Gaza pullout without missiles raining down on departing Israeli soldiers and settlers. And the militant Islamic group Hamas is to compete in elections in January.

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