Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Security forces trying to prevent a protester from entering Havot Ma’on in the West Bank Saturday. (Tomer Appelbaum)

Palestinians: Settlers throw stones at boy, steal his donkey - Haaretz, December 3, 2007

By Mijal Grinberg

West Bank settlers threw stones at a Palestinian boy and stole his donkey in the village of Tuba on Saturday, according to Palestinian reports.

The incident reportedly occured after some 150 left-wing activists marched in protest against the long route Palestinian children are forced to take to get to school from their South Hebron Hills village.

Children from Tuba go to school in Twane, a nearby village, via a lengthy and indirect path, in order to avoid harrassment from residents of the Havot Ma’on settlement.

The Ta’ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership activists, upon receiving word of the settler aggression, marched to Havot to retrieve the donkey, but were stopped at the settlement entrance by police.

During the march earlier in the day, the activists initially arrived at an area blocked by police and Israel Defense Forces, who told them they could not travel from Twane to Tuba.

As the security forces did not present the marchers with an order declaring the area a closed military zone, the activists continued along the path, evading the police and IDF troops who attempted to stop them.

Hatem Moussa/Associated Press

JERUSALEM Thousands of Israeli demonstrators gathered Monday to show their opposition to concessions to the Palestinians.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

GAZA Two of Hamas’s top leaders, Ismail Haniya, center, and Mahmoud Zahar, right, at a Palestinian conference on Monday.

Hamas Urges Taking Hard Line Against Israel, New York Times, November 27, 2007

By ISABEL KERSHNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
Published: November 27, 2007

JERUSALEM, Nov. 26 — The leaders of Hamas espoused a hard line against Israel at a conference that they and the militant Islamic Jihad faction convened in Gaza on Monday, the eve of the American-sponsored Middle East peace gathering in Annapolis, Md.
Also on Monday, Israeli right-wing activists stepped up their campaign against possible concessions to the Palestinians with demonstrations in Jerusalem.

In Gaza, Ismail Haniya, Hamas’s leader, said, “Let the whole world hear us: We will not relinquish a centimeter of Palestine, and we will not recognize Israel.” Mr. Haniya, who is usually associated with the more pragmatic wing of the Islamic movement, was responding to a refugee from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war who came up to the podium showing the deed for land he had left behind in what is now Israel.

AMONA, West Bank/Feb. 2006
A Jewish settler struggles with an Israeli security officer as authorities evacuate a West Bank settlement near the Palestinian town of Ramallah after Israel’s Supreme Court cleared the way for the demolition of nine homes at the site. This photo won first prize in The World Press Photo awards. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Teibel, Subject of AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo says God on her side, ap, 4/19/07

AMONA, West Bank (AP) — The photo caught the world’s attention: a lone 15-year-old girl holding back a wall of riot police moving in to demolish Jewish homes illegally erected in the West Bank.

Speaking for the first time since The Associated Press image won a Pulitzer prize this week, the girl, who would identify herself only as Nili, said God was on her side during the confrontation.

“In the photo you see me — one person as it were — against many. But that’s only an illusion,” said Nili, now two weeks shy of her 17th birthday, as she stood amid the ruins of the nine homes demolished in Amona in February 2006.

“Behind the many stood one man — (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert,” who ordered the demolition. “Behind me stood the Lord Blessed Be He, and the people of Israel.”

Nili, a shy, gangly teen born in Israel to American parents, was one of several thousand Jewish protesters who barricaded themselves behind barbed wire and on rooftoops in an unsuccessful effort to keep club-wielding riot troops from demolishing the homes built on private Palestinian land.

What do you mean when you say ‘no’? - Haaretz, November 18, 2007

Of all Israel’s iniquities in the occupied territories - the brutality, the assassinations, the siege, the hunger, the blackouts, the checkpoints and the mass arrests - nothing serves as witness to its real intentions than the settlements. Certainly for the future. Every home built in the territories, every light pole and every road are like a thousand witnesses: Israel does not want peace; Israel wants occupation. Whoever is serious about peace and a Palestinian state does not put up even a shed.

From Oslo through Camp David and on to the road map, Israel has not put an end to the most criminal enterprise in its history. A short memory refresher: In article 7 of the Oslo Accords, Israel promised that “no party would undertake unilateral steps to alter the situation on the ground, prior to the completion of negotiations for the final status.” That really made an impression on Israel. During the 10 years that followed, the number of settlers doubled. What about the heroic peace efforts of Ehud Barak as prime minister? During the 18 months of his government, Israel began the construction of 6,045 residential units in the territories.

And why did Israel sign up to the road map two years later? “The government of Israel will freeze all its settlement activities, in accordance with the Mitchell report, except for natural growth in the settlements.” And what happened in practice? Accusations that the Palestinians are not implementing the agreements, and a boatload of new settlers. This was also the case in 2005, another major “year of peace”: the disengagement. And what did Israel do in its own backyard? Another 12,000 new settlers.

This terrible enterprise, whose purpose is to foil any chance for peace, is also a criminal enterprise. According to Peace Now, based on Civil Administration data that have been kept hidden for years, about 40 percent of the settlements were built on privately owned land of Palestinians helpless to safeguard what is in most cases their sole property that was robbed in broad daylight by an occupying state. This took place years after the Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that it is illegal to build on private Palestinian land. Indeed, while Israel is debating whether it is a state of laws, whether the prime minister was given a discount for the house on Cremieux Street, and whether we want a powerful Supreme Court, we should remember that what is happening in the territories is the real corruption that engulfs us.

Now we are on the eve of another peace event, yet during the past year another 3,525 new residential units were built in the territories, under the auspices of a government that talks incessantly about the end of occupation and two states. All the grandiloquent statements are void of substance when we read the data: Construction is at a peak in 88 settlements.

Avishai Margalit, A Moral Witness to the ‘Intricate Machine’ - The New York Review of Books, Dec. 6, 2007 issue

“I am an Israeli. I live in Jerusalem. I have a story, not yet finished, to tell.” This is the opening line of David Shulman’s powerful and memorable book, Dark Hope, a diary of four years of political activity in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is a record of the author’s intense involvement with a volunteer organization composed of Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews, called Ta’ayush, an Arabic term for “living together” or “life in common.” The group was founded in October 2000, soon after the start of the second Palestinian intifada.

“This book aims,” Shulman writes,

at showing something of the Israeli peace movement in action, on the basis of one individual’s very limited experience…. I want to give you some sense of what it feels like to be part of this struggle and of why we do it.

Struggle with whom? Shulman explains:

Israel, like any society, has violent, sociopathic elements. What is unusual about the last four decades in Israel is that many destructive individuals have found a haven, complete with ideological legitimation, within the settlement enterprise. Here, in places like Chavat Maon, Itamar, Tapuach, and Hebron, they have, in effect, unfettered freedom to terrorize the local Palestinian population; to attack, shoot, injure, sometimes kill—all in the name of the alleged sanctity of the land and of the Jews’ exclusive right to it.

His diary proceeds to show how this happens.

Shulman speaks of “the last four decades.” It is forty years since the Israeli victory of 1967 brought the West Bank under occupation.

A Palestinian farmer selects and sorts olive during the harvest

James Hider, Olive branch blossoms amid harvest of fear - Times Online, November 9, 2007

In an olive grove on the edge of Nablus, Fuad Amr and his sons keep one eye on the branches they are stripping and the other warily on the Jewish settlement that overlooks their land from a hilltop.

The settlers could descend at any time to intimidate them or even beat them and steal the fruit of their labour, as happens every year across the West Bank in the olive season.

The Palestinian farmers, however, have found unlikely allies - Jewish activists, some of them Orthodox rabbis, who risk violence to protect them.

“I am afraid,” Mr Amr said, as he flung black olives on to a plastic sheet, from which his wife gathered them into a sack. “I’m picking the olives and all the time I’m looking out for settlers. They come in buses, sometimes 20 or 30 of them.”

Last year one of his neighbours was hit on the head by a rock thrown by settlers, who cite the biblical-era Jewish settlements in the area as a claim to the land.

Every year, however, Israeli and foreign peace activists come to protect the Palestinians during the harvest and help them to pick their crops. Some of them have also been beaten by settlers, but they say that their presence prevents the Palestinians from being driven off their fields.

One of the Jewish groups is Rabbis for Human Rights, which aims to promote religion as a point of harmony and justice between Jews and Arabs.

B’Tselem - 19 Oct. 07: Hebron: The Israeli Settlement in the a-Ras Neighborhood

On 19 March 2007, a new settlement was established, in the heart of the a-Ras Palestinian neighborhood. In the months that have passed since then, despite the decision of the Defense Minister at the time to evacuate the settlement, the settlement has grown. Recently, the settlement was connected to the electricity grid, and construction and renovation work is taking place at the site.

Since the settlement has been established, the harm to the Palestinian residents has increased and they have suffered further infringement of their human rights. Palestinians suffer both from the settlers and from Israeli security forces who have been assigned protect the settlement.

Researchers from B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights found that establishment of the settlement and the failure to evacuate it, have led, for example, to the following:

* Extensive abuse and violence by settlers in the new settlement, carried out in front of the eyes of members of the security forces;
* Abuse and violence by security forces posted on or near the new settlement;
* Increased prohibitions on movement enforced by Israeli security forces.

Failure to enforce the law on violent settlers

During the course of the first six months of the new settlement, B’Tselem and ACRI documented scores of cases in which settlers attacked Palestinians in the area. The attacks include beatings, blocking of passage, destruction of property, throwing of stones and eggs, hurling of refuse, glass bottles, and bottles full of urine, urinating from the settlement structure onto the street, spitting, threats, and curses.

Issacharoff, Bitter olive harvest / Justice falls short in the West Bank - Haaretz, October 18, 2007

Abed Al-Fatah Al-Hindi, a resident of the Nablus-area village of Tal, reaches the main highway between the Hawara and Git junctions, near the Gilad Farm. An International Red Cross crew stands waiting for him. He is bleeding from a large scalp wound, and his left eye is swollen.

A paramedic bandages his head, and a volunteer from Rabbis for Human Rights cleans his face. “Every year there’s a mess,” the villager tells Haaretz. “It’s just the first day of the olive harvest, and six settlers attacked me. There wasn’t much we could do.”

Around seven in the morning, Al-Hindi, his sisters and four other men came to the family olive grove, just 200 meters from Gilad Farm, not far from Nablus, one of the dozens of illegal outposts spread across the West Bank. They harvested for three hours, until 10, when they noticed a group of settlers approaching from the direction of the outpost.

“They shouted, ‘This is our grove, you can’t go near it,’ and threw rocks at us,” says Al-Hindi. “One of them held my arm and another beat my head with a rock. I yelled ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, and they said, ‘I don’t give a shit.’ They beat me until they left.”

…Zakhariah Sadah, a resident of the neighboring village of Git and an activist who works with Rabbis for Human Rights, offers his services as a translator…. According to Sadah, after settlers threw rocks at olive harvesters at the nearby Farateh village, he and some Israeli volunteers guarded the groves….

Three days ago, three armed settlers came to the entrance of the village, attacked a group of harvesters and threw everything they had harvested in every direction.

The Israeli Right Has a Peace Plan - by Ran HaCohen, AW, October 16, 2007

While the world holds its breath in anticipation of the Mideast Summit in Annapolis – which, no doubt, will constitute a historic landmark, giving a most significant boost to the economy of that small town in Maryland – the Israeli right wing comes up with a new peace initiative, launched by MK Benny Elon, chairman of the National Union and the Moledet Party, as “The Israeli Initiative,” “a new way of thinking about the conflict, in learning from our mistakes, and in rereading the regional map toward a revitalized and genuine quest to achieve The Right Road to Peace.” Elon also praises his plan in the media as being “beyond Left and Right.” And it has already been endorsed by U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback….

To gain support for this ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territories, Elon quotes “Independent polls indicat[ing] that half of all Palestinians are considering moving to a different country.” This might be true – thanks to Benny Elon and his fellow settlers. Years ago, when asked to explain what he meant by “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians, Rabbi Elon gave an example from Jewish law. According to the Halacha, a rabbinical court cannot impose a divorce on a refusing husband; but what it can do is use sanctions, including incarceration and even physical penalties, until the husband succumbs. This is what Elon meant by “voluntary transfer”: making Palestinian life in the Territories unlivable, to the extent that they would rather live somewhere else….

This review does not do justice to Zertal and Eldar’s book, which is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the settlements. However, to really understand the settlers and their treatment of the Palestinians, one should supplement this book by Haim Yavin’s extraordinary series of DVDs entitled Land of the Settlers, for which Zertal and Eldar were consultants. Yavin conveys a sense of the conflict as understood and lived by both settlers and Palestinians in their everyday lives. Zertal and Eldar’s book is less human. But it puts the unforgettable scenes filmed by Yavin in historical perspective.

Lords of the Land - Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar - Books - Review - New York Times, October 14, 2007

Across the Green Line, the West Bank, captured in 1967, is another country, neither Israel nor Palestine, but a lawless place, where the Jewish settler, rifle in one hand and prayer book in the other, is undisputed king. The settlers have their own roads, guarded by the Israeli Army, water, electricity, supplies and — occasional if well-publicized crackdowns aside — substantial impunity from the law. Much of the land on which their settlements stand, was, as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar detail in this important book, simply stolen. The settlements are illegal, in contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territories. But for those who claim a divine mandate, the Geneva Conventions count for nothing. According to the United Nations, more than a third of the West Bank is now off limits to Palestinians. A web of Israeli Army checkpoints and obstacles further atomizes what is left of Palestinian society.

“Lords of the Land” is the first complete history of the settlement project. It provides a detailed narrative of injustice, and is profoundly depressing for anyone still hoping for a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or even hoping that Jews and Arabs will be seen as equal in the eyes of Israeli law.

The settlers’ great moment of joy: December 8, 1975. After nine days of resisting the Rabin government’s attempts to remove them from Sebastia in the West Bank, settlers hear that Rabin has blinked. Gush Emunim leaders Hanan Porat (right) and Moshe Levinger are hoisted aloft by their supporters. Photo by Moshe Milner, Israel Government Press Office.

Daniel Ben Simon, The return of the settlers, Haaretz, October 2, 2007

I have seen them at Homesh and on other hills, and there seems to be a new breed of fanaticism capable of deeds the previous generation of settlers regarded with awe and fear. Among the thousands of new fanatical youngsters there is no sense of national propriety or fear of the state’s authority.

I have seen them cursing security personnel and spitting at them and flinging racist epithets at Druze and immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia. They did this without the slightest hesitation or fear. This is the generation that follows the generation that achieved the revolution of faith in the territories after the Six-Day War. That same messianic faith that has changed the face of the country, never mind the face of the Middle East, for many years. The latest wildcat settlement attempts - even though they look like youthful actions - are a real challenge to the decision makers, a warning lest they dare follow in the despicable footsteps of their predecessors. The attempts are also aimed at making it clear that what happened in Gush Katif will not happen again.

The big mystery remains the settlers’ Yesha Council. Will it line up with the extremist voices? Will it try to moderate and lower the flames as it did at Kfar Maimon, for which it has paid a high price? After all, these young people have rebelled against its authority and have accused it of collaborating with a government that uproots settlements.

The international meeting in November, where Israel will play a crucial role, will apparently determine whether the Yesha Council will be swept up by the romantic vision of redemption in the style of settler activist Daniella Weiss, or try to reach an understanding with the government.

“CNN Comes Under Unprecedented Attack - Forward.com, September 6, 2007

The three-episode special, “God’s Warriors,” by CNN’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, is being characterized by Jewish groups as equating Jewish extremists in West Bank settlements with Muslim jihadists.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Mahmoud Ibrahim, 10, center, and other Palestinian boys survive by selling goods salvaged at a West Bank dump, near Hebron.

West Bank Boys Dig a Living From Settlers’ Trash - New York Times, September 2, 2007

A l’est de Jérusalem, l’entrelacs de routes aménagées par les Israéliens compromet la viabilité d’un futur Etat palestinien, le Monde, le 1er septembre 2007
D’après un rapport de l’organisation pacifiste israélienne La Paix maintenant, publié lundi 27 août, 315 millions de shekels (55 millions d’euros) ont été investis cette année dans la construction de six routes destinées à relier au territoire israélien des colonies situées à l’est de la “barrière de séparation”, donc promises à la démolition dans la logique d’un accord de paix. L’un des chantiers prévoit notamment de connecter à Jérusalem quatre implantations du sud de Bethléem : Tekoa, Asfar, Maale Amos et Nokdim, lieu de résidence d’Avigdor Lieberman, le ministre des affaires stratégiques, chef du parti d’extrême droite Israël Beitenou. “Cette route doit lui permettre de rejoindre son bureau d’une seule traite, sans croiser le moindre indigène“, raille l’avocat israélien Dany Seideman, fondateur de l’association Ir Amim, qui travaille à une meilleure entente entre Juifs et Arabes dans la Ville sainte.