Israeli Confusion And The Settlements

Analyzing the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the Middle East conflict in general, it is easy to draw the conclusion that many of the most controversial issues are in fact totally irrational. After spending time in Israel, I realized that some Israelis have an incomplete awareness of what the occupation is. People asked me many questions, ranging from inquiries about political and security issues, to very simple questions such as how tall the wall is, or why even internationals volunteers are so scared of young soldiers at check points.

Some people chose not to know, others are simply facing an overwhelming barrage of information. These thoughts came to mind when I read an article published on Haaretz on the 3rd of June, which explained that the Israelis Defense Forces have declared the Nablus area a closed the military zone to keep out left-wing activists. The IDF issued the order for the closure after receiving numerous complaints from soldiers who said the activists were interfering with their security duties at area check points. The Israelis organization “Machsom Watch” (checkpoint watch) has been the subject of most complaints.

What I found bizarre is that the IDF declared that “the closure applied to all Israelis, regardless of ideology". What about the thousands of settlers that, in the same area forbidden to peace activists, are injuring people and devastating Palestinian farmlands? In the last three days Israeli settlers have set fire to more than 50 dunums (50,000 square meters) of Palestinian-owned farmland south of the West Bank city of Nablus. The settlers have torched 1350 olive trees in the villages of Asira Al-Qibliya, Tell, Huwwara, Habet and Burin, in addition to 280 dunums of wheat and barley and seriously injured six Palestinians.

Gershon Messika, the president of a settlers’ organization in the northern West Bank said that the violence was inevitable given the plan to dismantle the outpost. According to Messika, “it’s natural that people who faced the expulsion from their house do what they can to avoid being expelled”. Maybe this is true. But what about the people who have been evicted from their houses and lands for the construction of these settlements? Why does everybody in Israel agree that they do not have the right to resist? Is this not discrimination?

The most authoritative information source in Israel, Haaretz, has reported that in the evacuated outpost in the Nablus area, “opposition from the small numbers of settlers on the scene to the dozens of riot-control police was minimal”. This demonstrates that even the Israeli media is not concerned with the violence committed by these extremists against the Palestinian population as revenge for the evacuation of outposts. The same newspaper defined the evacuation of illegal settlements as a “game of cat and mouse” but I think a more appropriate metaphor is "a game of carrot and stick”.

Every month the Israeli television is showing images of soldiers evacuating illegal settler outposts, sometimes with violence exploding even against the soldiers. It is just a show...why have none of them been arrested for it? Everybody knows that the following day, the extremists will be reconstructing everything in the same place, perhaps bigger than before. Nobody will disturb them, at least for another couple of months. Isn’t this, then, a show? When I tried to pose these kinds of questions to Israeli friends they didn’t have an answer. There is no rationality in what is going on in the Nablus area, there is no rationality in this conflict, and there is no rationality in the psychology of this conflict.

After these events, far-rightists sent a letter to the IDF General in charge of forces in the West Bank: “You are tainted with anti-Semitism and hatred of real Jews. The Arabs are your cherished ones, these sons of Satan and whoever supports them is himself a Satan and a son of Satan, and this is you”. They described the IDF General as a Nazi that hates all Jews. These kinds of accusations are only the umpteenth proof that the psychology of these people is distorted. It seems that they are in someway living in a distorted reality that recalls the well-known trauma of Jewish history. It happens in many other extremely violent conflict situations, notably during the bloody war in ex-Yugoslavia during the ’90s, where people were still referring to Tito and Nazism....

For all these reasons it seems really bizarre that the Israeli Army is more afraid of Peace Activists and Human Rights Organizations than of those out-of-control violent extremists.

However these kinds of decisions are not new on the Israeli political stage and they form the basis of the lack of information and the new wave of pessimism that is facing the Israeli society far from Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli society has the right and the responsibility to know and to see what is going on in the Occupied Territories. I hope that Israeli organizations will continue to do their job, if not with the support of their government then at least with the support of Palestinian society and the international community.

Palestine Monitor