There are, he explains, two options: two states or one binational state with rights for everyone and consequently a Jewish minority. (Demographically, that would probably not be the case, as it happens, unless the Palestinian Arab "right of return" is granted, in which case it will be a closer call.) Towards the end of his monologue he becomes more incensed, referring to the settlers as "morons" and dismissing the counter-protesters as deluded into thinking this "apartheid" can continue. "They just want a reason to wave flags."

The West, he concludes, only supports Israel thanks to guilt for the Holocaust, but that won't last. Obama, he notes, was alone in vetoing the recent condemnatory resolution on settlements at the UN, but soon the pressure will be too much for him, and in any case he too supports the Palestinian Arab cause at heart. He sums up his case with a Hebrew idiom, lamenting that "Israelis have urine in the head".

As I leave, I observe a man carrying a giant flag featuring the portrait of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by a Hamas cell which crossed the border of Gaza into Israel. He is in his fifth year of captivity now and still deprived of Red Cross visits. The flag is the bearer's passport into both protests. On Gilad, the country agrees. But on little else. The main rally is dispersing, but the remnant is chanting, "Israel, Palestine, two states for two peoples." (It rhymes in the Hebrew.) The counter-protesters are satisfied with bogdim (traitors).

Today is Isru Chag, the day after Passover. A couple of days ago, the nephew of a longtime government minister from the Likud Party was shot and killed in Nablus by a Palestinian Arab policeman who is now under investigation, as he and others were visiting the tomb of Joseph, a right retained in the Oslo Agreement. The tomb had recently been restored following a series of Arab arson attacks. 

Meanwhile, that day British news media reported that one civilian had been killed in Syria. The dissonance between what the world reports and the reality in the Middle East is astonishing; Israeli news outlets reported that more than 100 Syrian civilians had been killed that day. A few days later, the Western media catches up.

Today I am meeting Naftali Bennett, the director-general of the Yesha Council, the representative body of the settlers. Naftali, a warmly hospitable man, is an accomplished fellow. He served in the Sayeret Matkal, one of the Israeli Defence Forces' most elite units, of raid-on-Entebbe fame. He is still a major in the reserves. Following his mandatory service, he launched a high-tech start-up: some seven in ten North American online bank transactions use his company's anti-fraud technology (such businesses are arguably the backbone of the Israeli economy). He sold it for well over $100 million, and stayed on for a little longer. The day after his departure, the second Lebanon war broke out and he returned to uniform. Thereafter, he served as Netanyahu's chief of staff and got him elected to the Likud Party leadership.