Wednesday’s suicide bombing in Haifa should horrify people. Many innocents were murdered in a city known for comparatively good relations between its Palestinian and Israeli citizenry.

However, Wednesday’s suicide bombing in Haifa should not surprise people. The act of desperation is a testament to two weeks of nearly daily Israeli army incursions into refugee camps and towns of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

There is no justification for these suicide attacks, but a brief history of the past few days helps to shed light on the contributing factors. Just ask Mahmoud el-Makadma, whose 33-year-old pregnant wife was crushed Monday by falling masonry as the Israeli army was blowing up a nearby house. The house belonged to a suspected suicide bomber, and this tactic has been become a regular endeavor of the army.

In fact, the army had just finished destroying the house of a suspected bomber in Nablus before Wednesday’s indefensible crime in Haifa, according to the Washington Post. The demolition left the house’s nine occupants homeless. Also according to the Washington Post, at the same time, the Israeli army was knocking down the remains of a neighborhood mosque in Gaza’s Rafah refugee camp. They were finishing the job after the structure had been damaged in a previous attack.

Monday’s raid, one of many in a concerted campaign over the past two weeks, left eight Palestinians dead, including at least two noncombatants, a 13-year-old boy and Mrs. el-Makadma. In the Israeli army offensive following Wednesday’s attack, 11 Palestinians were killed and 30 wounded.

The Israeli government, as well as the beleaguered Palestinian Authority, have been cited on numerous occasions by human rights groups for their disregard of Geneva Convention and international law.

More than half of Palestinians are now unemployed and between 60-70 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live under the United Nations poverty line of fewer than $2 per day, according to a recent report of the World Bank. The United Nations says as many as 22 percent of Palestinian children are malnourished.

Is Wednesday’s suicide attack a defensible act of violence?

Of course not. But, combine the scarcely reported demolitions and invasions of the last two weeks to the indignity of the last 35 years of Israeli military occupation and the soil for extremism is made fertile.

The campaign of tank and Apache helicopter incursions into Gaza has even Israelis from neighboring towns angry. In a story from Wednesday’s Israeli paper Haaretz, Zvia Abergil, a shopkeeper in the town of Sderot, spoke for her fellow residents. “Every single time the IDF operations are carried out in Gaza, we in Sderot turn into targets for the Palestinians,” she said Tuesday.

“Mr. Prime Minister, the IDF, I appeal to you to do something more practical in this regard,” she told Israel Radio. “Isn’t there another way, such that we can, at long last, live in quiet and tranquility, as we used to?”

Even our government spoke up. In a statement perhaps related to gaining support for war on Iraq, they found the courage for criticism for this week’s Israeli incursions.

And so extremism runs rampant on both sides. Wednesday’s bombing is example of violence from an extremist Palestinian faction who plays right into the hands of hardline Likudniks. The latest violence comes on the heels of a new Israeli coalition government that pledges to be as right-wing as ever. Mr. Ariel Sharon’s brand-new coalition includes the ultranational National Union party, which is fundamentally opposed to a Palestinian nation. Astoundingly, some members of The National Union coalition such as the Modelet party unabashedly advocates an ethnic cleansing (known to them as “transfer”) of the West Bank and Gaza. According to their Web site, Modelet, a member of the National Union, is “an ideological political party in Israel that embraces the idea of population transfer as an integral part of comprehensive plan to achieve real peace between the Jews and the Arabs Living in the Land of Israel. [sic]”

The evidence is clear: Extremists on both sides are winning. They need each other to garner support for inconceivable actions. Both extremes rely on the violence to forward their agenda.

The United States must become an honest mediator, a role rendered impossible with the current military and economic aid imbalance. For peace there must be justice and dignity returned to those from whom it has been denied. Until the voices of moderation and reconciliation are nurtured and balanced mediation is initiated, we can expect more violence. The extremists will win and the people will suffer.