Abstract: | Let E and F be Banach lattices. We show first that the disjointness preserving linear functionals separate the points of any infinite dimensional Banach lattice E, which shows that in this case the unbounded disjointness preserving operators from \({E\to F}\) separate the points of E. Then we show that every disjointness preserving operator \({T:E\to F}\) is norm bounded on an order dense ideal. In case E has order continuous norm, this implies that every unbounded disjointness preserving map \({T:E\to F}\) has a unique decomposition T = R + S, where R is a bounded disjointness preserving operator and S is an unbounded disjointness preserving operator, which is zero on a norm dense ideal. For the case that E = C(X), with X a compact Hausdorff space, we show that every disjointness preserving operator \({T:C(X)\to F}\) is norm bounded on a norm dense sublattice algebra of C(X), which leads then to a decomposition of T into a bounded disjointness preserving operator and a finite sum of unbounded disjointness preserving operators, which are zero on order dense ideals. |