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The issue of the Jewish settlements

At the same time, the world should not pay any attention at all as to what the settlers are doing. Their houses with the typical red shingles are not perceived as a luxury development compared to the housing available to the Palestinians. Yet there is this massive provocation both in terms of type of construction and to what further development this leads to once olive trees and open fields are replaced by these new settlements.

They are enclaves requiring military protection for 200 Jewish settlers and their families at the expense of 40 000 Palestinians. The justification given here is that this is the holy land of the Jewish people.

By trying to convince themselves that this is their land, they need guns and tanks and bulldozers to make sure the others have no counter arguments. They take the entire Israeli society into hostage and suppress the rights of the Palestinians. But to call this ‘terror of construction’ and ‘terror of development’, that would be flatly denied and angrily rejected, but the problems of terrorism are definitely linked with such development, if allowed to continue unchecked. Sharon, by bringing the settlers’ party Mafdal into the government in April to counter any threats by Simon Peres and the Labor party to leave the National unity of government, reflects the typical move of anyone who will try to do anything, in order to stay in power. Sharon does so by granting these settlers and their political-religious representatives a much greater influence over the course of the Israeli government, then what ought to be case, if a moderated policy would be implemented, in order to prepare the ground for a meaningful peace agreement.

Frightening is that this very same fraction that goes against the ‘law of the land’ have all the power and influence to do as they wish. That one sided approach to development is irrespective of the Jewish – Palestinian conflict not sustainable, not in political, economical, religious, cultural nor in human terms.

In its editorial comment, the New York Times states to leave this issue aside would be not to confront “Israel’s big mistake”.

The Right in Israel – the settlers and others

The Right in Israel does not wish so much to discuss or negotiate, but just set terms in such a way as they do not feel hindered in their development. In a way they combine claim for special land by using financial support to expand on the notion of recreating communities of purer spirit.

The three components – uprootedness in political, religious and cultural sense – bring about such ‘force fields’ (Martin Jay), as underlined by the willingness of assassinating Rabin for undermining what they believe to be the ‘holy law’.

The assassination of Rabin was a turning point in their development as law enforcement group in Israel. By putting religious over secular law, they form a different constitution by which they determine right or wrong and according to which punishments follow, even killing as the assassination of Rabin shows. They follow a similar path as the orthodox Fundamentalists in the Islamic world.

They are thus willing to kill, in order to uphold the law of not only the land, but of the spiritual compound defining the significance and meaning of the land in terms of their own historical roots and identity. They call these the deepest feelings anyone can have and, therefore, they feel threatened to the extreme if unsettled in their wish to safeguard what they do not want to be protected by a secular state, but by an absolute belief in a law that applies exactly to their own way of interpreting things.

In an article by James Bennet, printed on the WEB by the New York Times April 28, 2002, that is just shortly after five settlers, including a five year old child had been killed in the settlement Agora, under the title “Despite Violence, Settlers Survive and Spread”, a Mr. Weinberg, a settler who has been there for 30 years, but now joined by more recent ones, propounds the ideas of the settlers that have become one and the same cause for all of Israel:

“Weinstock, a patient man in a patient cause, explained the settlers' dogged approach.

"Catch the land, live on the land, work the land — and no matter how many people are killed, it is yours," he said. "The main idea of the Jewish communities in Samaria is, we don't fight, we build. We just build. Another hill — they kill us. Another hill. We go on."

To Mr. Weinstock and many other settlers, there is a religious war under way here, one that will never end, and one in which advantage can be gained only by possession of land. This is a war not between Israelis and Palestinians, they say, but between Jews and Arabs. It began long before Jews took the West Bank, they say, and it would continue if they gave it up, until they surrendered Haifa as well and left the region.

To Palestinians, settlers are the embodiment of illegal occupation. With startling red-tile roofs, fences topped with barbed wire and patrols of Israeli soldiers, the settlements stand on the hilltops where the Palestinians' grandfathers' olive trees once did, a daily reminder, they say, of their freedom denied. Settlers, they say, are fair game for resistance fighters, under international law.

Some Israelis share their outrage. Dror Etkes, the coordinator of the "settlement watch team" for the advocacy group Peace Now, conceded that those who argued for settlements from a security standpoint, rather than a religious one, had "historical and psychological ground" to stand on. But while settlements might enhance Israel's security for now by cushioning it against attack, he said, they were so provocative for the entire region that they would doom Israel in the long run.

"I don't see how occupation of millions of people, and establishing an apartheid system in the West Bank, is going to contribute to a constructive solution," he said.

With aerial photography, Peace Now has tracked the steady growth of settlements. In the last year, it says, it has spotted 34 new outposts in the West Bank — often just a couple of mobile homes, standing by the gash of a new road. The outposts are often strategically placed to claim a hilltop, to frame a major road or to hem in a Palestinian village. Palestinians know from bitter experience that such trailers have a way of turning into solid, lasting homes.

In all, there are 126 settlements in the West Bank and 19 in Gaza, according to Peace Now. Some, like the settlements just south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, seem like suburbs of Los Angeles, full of doctors and lawyers seeking quiet places where, paradoxically, they say they feel secure, where their children need not lock their bicycles. Others, like the tiny settlement guarded by soldiers in the heart of Hebron, ecstatically pursue a religious vision, leaving bullet holes from Palestinian snipers unpatched as witness to their suffering.

"I personally don't think that God brought us back here to throw us out again, either from Hebron or from the land of Israel," said David Wilder, spokesman for the Hebron settlers. "The land of Israel belongs to us."

The growth rate of the settler population declined in 2001, but it was still, on balance, 4.8 percent, with a total population of 210,000, according to Peace Now. They are surrounded by about 3.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Settlers receive income tax breaks and free schooling for their children. Housing in the West Bank is also much less expensive than in Israel's cities.

In the 1970's, Mr. Sharon, the agriculture minister, pursued settlements to motivate Israelis to hold on to the West Bank. As prime minister, he remains intent on retaining swaths of that land to buffer Israel against invasion, his advisers say. Yet in discussing the land he has invoked not just security but a sense of religious destiny.

"As for Samaria and Judea, these places were the cradle of the Jewish people, the bone and blood of our nation," he wrote in his autobiography, ‘Warrior.’

"We insisted on the right of Jews to settle in the area."

James Bennet mentions also that the settlers prefer to rename ‘settlements’ into ‘communities’. It is another example of changes taking place in the Middle East by wishing to alter terms of references. They use the term ‘community’ to invoke a sense of permanence. It connects with the word Sharon prefers to use: ‘forever’.

Indeed, to secure these settlements everything points towards creating an apartheid kind of state that segregates between Jews and Arabs. The dividing line is then a religious one and therefore all the more horrific.

The settlers are bolstered by Americans who just arrived six weeks ago and who in their naïve belief about rights tend to reinforce this missionary approach to things.

Religion is above politics and again the high ‘moral’ grounds are occupied by claiming first of all land on top of the hills.

Clearly this attitude towards living under conditions of ‘war in permanence’, but in defiance of all odds, is extremely compatible to the general vision of someone like Rumsfeld who after 11th of September propounds equally upon the same idea: no cultural tolerance for the others and their needs, but claim what you can, while fighting the war against terrorism and preparing still more and better for all other future wars.

Impact upon future generations

So general is this imprint upon the consciousness and mentality of the younger generations throughout the world, that they no longer share any vision of working towards just society with peace as its foundation, but who depart from the imperfection of everything leading always to war.

By contrast, there are the third generation families of Palestinian refugees who are depicted of holding some earth from the land they had to leave in a flowerpot holding some vain hope of return.

In May 2002, that is after the incursion efforts are renewed to recruit 1,000 families. Elazar Sela, the director of the new campaign for settlement, is quoted as saying: “Many young people want to move to the outposts and we don’t have enough trailers for all of them.”

(Associated Press, “Suicide bomber kills 2 in mall near Tel Aviv – 3 weeks after leaving, Israeli forces are back in Bethlehem with dragnet”, International Herald Tribune, May 28, 2002)

Settlers’ security as identical with all Israeli citizens

One further aspect emphasized by this article (James Bennet, printed on the WEB by the New York Times, April 28, 2002) is the synthesis that Sharon as ‘Warrior’ managed to create between the settlers’ cause and the rest of Israel.

However, that view is disputed in a letter to the editor. Michael Fox from Tel Aviv writes:

“Yoram Hazony is surely right that the vast majority of Israelis supported Israel’s military reaction to the Passover massacre and remain bewildered at the rage that this action sparked in Europe. But Ariel Sharon’s refusal to discuss the removal of settlements – one of the root causes of our present plight – has no such wall-to-wall support. Many Israelis, perhaps even a majority, believe it is indeed a big mistake.” (International Herald Tribune, May 23, 2002)

To a similar conclusion comes David Newman when stating that :

“Early in the development of the settlements, settlers argued that their towns contributed to Israel’s security. That is not accepted by most Israelis now; the settlements are seen for what they are, namely a security burden.”

(David Newman, “Israel has a problem to solve on its own”, International Herald Tribune, May 23, 2002)

After the incursion

“Israeli settlers stepped up their efforts to draw Jews to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including to some settlements evacuated when Ehud Barak was prime minister. A settler group told Israeli radio that is was seeking to recruit 1,000 new families, adding to a settler population estimated at more than 210 000 in the territories occupied by Israeli during the 1967 war.” (Associated Press, “Suicide bomber kills 2 in mall near Tel Aviv – 3 weeks after leaving, Israeli forces are back in Bethlehem with dragnet”, International Herald Tribune, May 28, 2002)

Sometimes the kind of thick headedness can become such a pain to politicians who see their hands tied by what these settlers demand without regard for the consequences.

Respect to the ‘wisdom of the land’

As if mythical dimensions rectify this need for military interventions, it prepares everyone for the need to fight for the land not only claimed, but taken away from those who would not have conceived cutting down the olive trees of their forefathers and who would endure the desert as an oasis of dreams instead of transforming it into an agricultural land bearing fruit after much work.

Again Israelis feel superior when comparing their fruits with many generations of Arabs have not succeeded in doing.

But does land always need cultivation and being made into a waste land in terms of human settlements expanding everywhere all while settlers – lawyers and doctors included – fancy quiet places where their children do not need to lock their bicycles as if the dream is to leave behind the hostile world in exchange for some save haven?

By ignoring the ‘wisdom of the land’, the settlers impose another model of living upon the land. They do so just as the White Settlers who expanded westward in America and in so doing drove the Indians from the land.

Construction business and interests of development firms

Over comsumption in terms of land use has not yet been really acknowledged as a prime environmental hazard although terms like ‘ecological footprint’ try to link urban settlements to what natural resources are needed to sustain it as urbanization and sub-urbanization alters the ratio untouched nature to human environment. Unfortunately these developments are rarely seen nor do they seem to disturb the rest of the world doing very much the same. Greece is full of examples where one political party after the other legalized immediately illegal settlements the moment they reached power by promising those who had really ruined natural landscapes the security of the state. That too is evidence of an ongoing political corruption since conflicts of interest are overcome by granting settlers all their say.

 

Right to defend the settlements

Really worrisome is the fact that the state of Israel allows settlers to defend their property with a gun, and if they kill any Palestinian they are not reprimanded nor arrested. It shows how far this right to defend yourself, property and claims of land included, has gone as principle. It is no longer subject to mere interpretation but has become a dictum and dogma in one and the same seizure of power by taking over the rule of the land as ‘the’ right to defend Israel.

Land for peace – a way to stop the violence

In another letter to the editor, another dimension is mentioned. William Freedman from Haifa responds to the article ‘They took our land, so why shouldn’t I kill them’ (Opinion April 26) by Muhammed Muslih:

“The writer, like so many others, concludes: ‘The United States should get Israel to withdraw to its borders of June 4, 1967. Then the violence will stop.’

He may be right, but if he is, it will be against the will and repeatedly stated intentions of the two principal terrorist groups active in the Palestinian territories: Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

Until very recently, almost all of the suicide bombing and other attacks on Israeli civilians were carried out by members of these two organizations. Yet while it is tirelessly claimed that the principal provocation of violence in the Middle East and the principal cause of terror against Israeli civilians is the occupation, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have made it eminently clear that evacuation of the settlements and the end of the occupation is by no means its sole or primary goal.

As one of the leaders of Hamas recently reiterated: ‘Our activities will continue even after the Israeli evacuation of the territories. It is contrary to our ideology to allow a Jewish state on Muslim land.’

For a variety of reasons, principally because I think the occupation is weakening Israel – economically, politically, and morally – I, like many, perhaps most, Israelis, am in favor of the evacuation of most if not all of the settlements and a return to the 1967 borders with minor corrections.

But such a retreat is by no means a guarantee that the violence will stop. As the most active of these terror organizations repeatedly and unashamedly make clear, their terror is designed not chiefly to end the occupation, but to remove the Jewish state from land they regard as their own.”

(International Herald Tribune, May 23, 2002)

 

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