Despite the wide-spread assumption that the suicide bombers responsible for the death of 13 Israeli citizens in the Mahaneh Yehuda market of West Jerusalem on 30 July 1997 were sent by an islamic group from abroad, the Netanyahu government responded with measures aimed at punishing the entire Palestinian population in the 1967 Occupied Territories, as well as the Palestinian Authority: hermetic closures of areas A (Palestinian towns) and the green line, economic sanctions, house demolitions, etc. What is new, however, is not the use of collective punishment itself, but the fact that it occurs under the conditions of an unprecedented crisis in Israeli-Palestinian relations which has led to a total collapse of coordination between Israel and the PA on all levels: intelligence, economy, and civil affairs. An immediate rise of Palestinian unemployment, rapid impoverishment, and the absence of all those basic services which require Israeli approval are the result. Another result, however, is the increasing readiness by the PA to permit, and even support, the mobilization of public protest, including popular initiatives which it had aimed to restrain in the past.