While the clock ticks away towards the anniversary of the Gaza carnage of last year, Israeli agression continues apace in the West Bank:
Abbas: West Bank mosque torching a despicable crime: Ha’aretz
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday said that Israel must rein in settlers’ provocative actions, after assailants vandalized a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, torching furniture and spraying Nazi slogans in Hebrew on the premises.
“The torching of the mosque in Yasuf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality,” said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom.
“The settlers’ unruly behavior must be stopped,” Abbas added after meeting on Friday with United Arab List-Ta?al chairman Ahmed Tibi in Amman.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday condemned the vandalization of the West Bank mosque, allegedly at the hands of of settlers protesting Israel’s temporary freeze on settlement construction.
“This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” said Barak.
Investigation into the incident points to the likelihood that settlers are behind the attack, police said, but the vandals have not yet been caught.
Settler extremists have recently attacked Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government moves to curb settlement construction. These protesters have dubbed the attacks the “price tag” policy.
Israel Defense Forces officers in the West Bank have expressed concerned that settlers may escalate their acts of opposition to the temporary freeze on settlement construction by targeting the Palestinian population.
The assailants entered the village of Yasuf before dawn Friday, according to Israel Police and Munir Abushi, the Palestinian governor of the district where the village is located.
They burned prayer carpets and a book stand with Muslim holy texts, and left graffiti on the floor reading, “Price tag – greetings from Effi”. Effi is a Hebrew name.
The vandals escaped. The IDF said it views the incident gravely and is investigating along with the police.
After villagers discovered the damage, they briefly threw stones at Israeli forces that entered Yasuf, Abushi said. He said two villagers were hurt in the skirmish.
Abushi met with Israeli police and army officers and expressed his dismay over repeated settler attacks.
“Israeli security forces have done little to protect Palestinian civilians from the settlers,” he said.
In an apparent attempt to placate settlers over the construction slowdown, Netanyahu has proposed including tens of thousands of settlers, including many living in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank, in a government program that bestows monetary incentives on residents and businesses.
The move has drawn criticism from Netanyahu’s coalition partner, the
Labor Party, which has indicated it will vote against the move at a Cabinet meeting next week.
Fire attack on West Bank mosque: BBC
A mosque in a village in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been damaged in an arson attack.
Attackers set fire to bookshelves and a large area of carpet in the mosque, and sprayed graffiti in Hebrew on a wall.
Palestinian residents of the village of Yasuf clashed with Israeli soldiers investigating the attack. Eyewitnesses say settlers were responsible.
Attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers are increasing. A number of incidents have been captured on video.
One of the slogans sprayed on the wall of the mosque in Yasuf read: “Get ready to pay the price,” Israeli public radio reported. Another read: “We will burn you all.”
Some hard-line settlers advocate a “price tag” policy under which they attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.
The village is located near the Jewish settlement of Tappuah.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it “views the incident gravely” and that security forces were working to locate the perpetrators.
But the local Palestinian governor, Munir Abushi, accused the Israeli security forces of doing too little to protect Palestinians from settler attacks.
A settler organisation in the area denied that settlers were behind the attack.
Meanwhile one rabbi from the south of the West Bank, Mechachem Froman, has offered to help renovate the mosque, saying attacks against holy buildings were against Jewish law.
Israeli human rights groups have accused the police and army of running inadequate investigations into attacks by settlers on Palestinians.
One group reported that nine out of 10 investigations into alleged attacks on Palestinians by settlers ended without anyone being charged.
Settlement curb call
On Wednesday, thousands of Jewish settlers and their supporters staged a rally in Jerusalem in protest at a recently announced curb on settlement building in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a 10-month lull in permits for new settlement homes in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem.
The order followed US and Palestinian calls for a total freeze in settlement building.
Palestinian officials have refused to rejoin peace talks until a total freeze is imposed.
All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Israel, the Palestinians and Apartheid: A public BRICUP/UCU meeting at SOAS
The Case for Sanctions and Boycott: 4th December 2009
The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – University of London
On 4th December 2009, the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and SOAS Palestine Society organised a public meeting putting forward the case for sanctions and boycott of Israel.
Amongst the speakers were several from the South African struggle against apartheid including Ronnie Kasrils – former minister in Nelson Mandela’s ANC government and Bongani Masuku – International Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
Other speakers included Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), Steven Rose of BRICUP, Yasmin Khan from War on Want, and Tarek Mustafa from Egypt’s first independent trade union.
The speeches, lasting 80mins, were followed by a lively 50mins of question and answer session. The full steaming video of both sessions is included below as is a MP3 podcast of the event.
Use the link above for a full sound and video record of the whole events!
Food labels advice change over Palestinian territories: BBC
UK food labels are set to distinguish between goods from Palestinians in the occupied territories and produce from Israeli settlements.
Food packaging guidelines advise a change from labels usually naming only Israel or West Bank as the source.
The government said it was opposed to a boycott of Israeli goods, but that the settlements posed an obstacle to peace.
The Palestinian general delegation to the UK welcomed the move, but Israel said it was “extremely disappointed”.
All Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
The new guidelines recommend that food labels in supermarkets should bear the phrases “Israeli settlement produce” or “Palestinian produce”.
Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian general Delegate to the UK, said: “We welcome this. We have been calling for this for two years, since we began lobbying major British supermarkets when we discovered that they were routinely selling products marked ‘produce of the West Bank’ which were in fact the produce of illegal settlements.
“This is a very positive response by the British government.”
But the Israeli embassy said it was “extremely disappointed”.
“We think this is singling out Israel and it plays into the hands of those who are calling for a boycott of Israeli goods,” it said.
Israeli settler Yaakov Teitel goes on trial for murder: BBC
The trial of a Jewish settler charged with two murders and a string of other attacks has begun in Jerusalem.
Yaakov Teitel, an American immigrant who lives in the West Bank, faces 14 charges, including two counts of murder and three of attempted murder.
Police called him a “Jewish terrorist” when he was arrested in October. His lawyer says he is mentally disturbed.
He refused to stand before the court or make statements, saying only “the Lord is king,” Israeli media reported.
Relatives of Mr Teitel’s alleged victims were present in court, Israeli media reported.
“My brother is gone, but Teitel must receive the punishment he deserves. Such a person should remain in prison all his life,” Hani Balbisi told Israel News.
Police say Mr Teitel has confessed to killing Mr Balbisi’s brother Samir, a Palestinian taxi driver, in 1997.
‘Proud’
As he entered a previous court hearing in November, Mr Teitel said he had no regrets.
“It’s been a pleasure and an honour to serve my God,” he said, “God is proud of what I have done, I have no regrets”.
Police say Mr Teitel, a 37-year-old and father of four, has confessed to the 1997 murder of a Palestinian taxi driver in East Jerusalem and a shepherd in the West Bank, which he told them were to avenge suicide bombings in Israel.
The charge sheet says some of the attacks were motivated by Mr Teitel’s “hatred and objection” to individuals and groups whose lifestyles and ideology conflicted with his own.
Charges include: Premeditated murder, attempted murder, weapons violations, arson in grave circumstances, incitement to violence and terror and threatening from a motive of hostility against a specific group.
He is also accused of:
– Placing a bomb near a convent west of Jerusalem, wounding a Palestinian, after previously attempting to set fire to the building
– Sending a bomb disguised as a gift for the Jewish holiday of Purim to a family of messianic Jews – Jews who believe in Jesus as a saviour – seriously wounding a 15-year-old boy
– A bomb attack which lightly wounded the left-wing Israeli academic Zeev Sternhell last year
– Placing a bomb in a police station in an attempted attack which police say was aimed at diverting them from providing security for gay pride parades
– Laying an explosive device next to a Palestinian home near the West Bank settlement of Eli
– Putting poisonous antifreeze in three bottles of juice and leaving them near a Palestinian village in the hope of poisoning a passer-by.
He was arrested in Jerusalem after he was found giving out leaflets in the ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood praising an attack on a gay youth club in Tel Aviv in August that killed two people.
A large weapons cache was later found at his home in the West Bank settlement
Mr Teitel’s lawyer, Adi Keidar, at the time said his client was “mentally disturbed” and believed he was an “emissary of the Lord” who was instructed to carry out the attacks by God.
He said Mr Teitel had confessed to attacks he did not commit, and therefore his confessions could not be relied on.
If, as his attorney claims, he is ‘mentally disturbed’, he is certainly not more disturbed than Barak, Olmert and Netanyahu!
Winning prize for peace while advocating war: The Electronic Intifada
Sayed Dhansay,11 December 2009
Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize only days after announcing an increase in troops in the ongoing US-led war in Afghanistan. (Pete Souza/White House Photo)
United States President Barack Obama has just accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. His nomination had been controversial, not least because he is continuing and escalating two illegal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also because it was awarded to him at the beginning of his term, before he has proven a genuine willingness to promote peace.
Though his eloquent and moving speech in Cairo last June spoke of “peace,” “mutual respect” and “new beginnings” with the Arab and Muslim world, his administration’s foreign policy has thus far proven otherwise. The glaring contradiction between his words and actions are nowhere else more obvious than in his dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In his acceptance speech yesterday, President Obama quoted former US President John F. Kennedy’s advice on attaining peace: “Let us focus on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.”
As a first step toward achieving that evolution, Obama advised that “all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force.” Those standards — international humanitarian law — were however not applied by Obama to Israel in its devastating attack on the Gaza Strip last winter.
Though the UN-commissioned Goldstone report accused Israeli forces of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in Gaza, Obama’s representatives at the UN Human Rights Council voted against a resolution that adopted the report’s findings. In addition, his government attempted to discredit the report by claiming that it was biased against Israel and flawed from the outset. This is hard to believe considering that its author is a jurist of international acclaim, not to mention a Jew with strong ties to Israel.
Obama also advocated that “Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure.” Yet when it comes to Israeli intransigence, Obama appears unwilling to demand the same level of accountability or exert any pressure at all.
Israel has flouted international law with impunity for 42 years with its settler-colonial project in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem. Israel’s illegal wall continues to annex Palestinian land, while home demolitions in East Jerusalem occur now almost on a weekly basis. Here, Obama has not “exacted a real price.” Instead he has rewarded Israel with billions of dollars of continued military assistance, and caved in to pressure by backtracking on his original policy that a comprehensive settlement freeze be a prerequisite for resumed peace negotiations.
Though US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell hailed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ten-month freeze as an “unprecedented step to achieving peace,” facts on the ground showed otherwise. Netanyahu declared openly that settlement construction would resume at full pace after the elapse of the ten-month period.
This week, the Israeli Peace Now movement reported that construction in West Bank settlements currently outweighs that within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Journalist Gideon Levy hit the nail on the head when he described this freeze as “just another scene in Israel’s masquerade” in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Obama also warned those who violate international law by “brutalizing their own people.” He said that there must be consequences for genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo or repression in Burma. He failed however to mention the brutalization of Palestinian citizens of Israel, the slow genocide in Gaza or the repression in the occupied West Bank.
A recent report by Israel’s Interior Ministry revealed that 4,577 Palestinians were stripped of their right to live in East Jerusalem in 2008, an all time record in 42 years of occupation. Residency revocation in Jerusalem last year was 21 times higher than the average over the last 40 years. Israel treats native Palestinians in East Jerusalem as if they were foreign residents whose presence can be revoked at will, even though these Palestinians did not come to Israel. Rather, Israel came and imposed itself on them with its internationally unrecognized annexation and occupation of the city from 1967 until present.
An Amnesty International study published in October accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water. While Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have lush gardens and sparkling swimming pools, some 180,000 Palestinians have no access to running water. The report states that Israelis use up to four times more water than Palestinians, while the settler population alone uses more water than the entire West Bank Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
Though his presidency terminated in January of this year, Mahmoud Abbas and his collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA) continue to be propped up by the Obama administration. Obama preaches the value of democracy, yet his government fails to recognize the democratically-elected Hamas government. Instead, the US continues to endorse Israel’s siege on Gaza which has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe of such proportion that some Gazans have even resorted to faking cancer in the hope of escaping the isolated coastal territory.
President Obama also stated in his speech that “I believe peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please, choose their own leaders or assemble without fear.” Perhaps he should have then taken the opportunity to mention the systematic repression of any outward opposition to the PA or Israel by PA security forces. Then again, if he did so, he would be forced to acknowledge that these very police are trained in their art by none other than US General Keith Dayton and funded by US taxpayers.
While he champions the right to freedom of worship, Obama avoids the fact that his “loyal and true friend,” Israel, routinely denies Palestinians the right to freely access the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. He criticizes Burma for its religious repression, but is silent on the continuous incursions into one of the world’s holiest sites for Muslims by the Israeli army and extremist settlers.
Obama claimed as a centerpiece of his foreign policy the need to “prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them.” He reminded his audience that it was incumbent on all of them to ensure that Iran and North Korea do not “game the system.”
While his administration is leading the efforts to increase sanctions against Iran, we hear no mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, even though it has demonstrated time and again its brazen willingness to use grossly indiscriminate, deliberate and massive firepower on civilian targets, as witnessed in the 2006 Lebanon war and during last winter’s assault on Gaza.
The most disturbing aspect of President Obama’s speech however was its unabashed justification of war. The leader of the liberal, democratic free world was accepting the world’s most coveted peace prize. And the overarching theme of his address was that it was impossible to eradicate violent conflict. Obama’s colleagues in the Knesset may well have been pleased to hear this.
“There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified,” Obama said. This fatalistic attitude lends itself more to a Rumsfeld-Cheney “bombing for freedom” ideology than that of someone accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
Furthermore, it sends a very dangerous signal to the Israeli government who know that they have America’s protection in institutions tasked with upholding international law. It provides no impetus for Israel to end its occupation, lift its draconian siege of Gaza or embrace the only viable option that it has left — peaceful transition that will protect the rights of Palestinians and Israelis within the framework of a secular, bi-national, democratic state.
In fact, it only further emboldens Israel to accelerate its process of ethic cleansing and colonization, and use military force to achieve these ends. Indeed, many Zionists believe that it is after all morally justifiable to use violence to rid “Greater Israel” of anyone who is not Jewish. The comments of Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi that the Israeli military’s “next round of hostilities will be even more intense” is quite revealing in this regard.
What is surprising, is that President Obama seems to realize the folly of his very own “just war” doctrine. Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., he states that “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem. It merely creates new and more complicated ones.”
If any modern conflict has proven this to be incredibly accurate, it is that of the Israelis and Palestinians. No amount of arrest raids, land confiscation, home demolitions or massacres can bring about peace. These do not solve the social problems of dispossession, statelessness and disenfranchisement. Nor do they quell the desire for freedom and self-determination. Indeed, they only serve to create new and more complicated problems.
By Obama advocating war as an acceptable foreign policy, he is only serving to create new, more complicated problems in the Middle East. Instead of promoting the dead two-state solution with a moribund puppet regime, he should acknowledge the fundamental root cause of this conflict — that of the dispossession of a people from their native homeland. Without this, there will be no practical, attainable peace.
Sayed Dhansay is a South African human rights activist and independent freelance writer. He volunteered for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2006 and is an organizer of the South African delegation for the Gaza Freedom March. He blogs at http://sayeddhansay.wordpress.com
Israel: “a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier”: The Electronic Intifada,
Jonathan Cook, 10 December 2009
The fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week as he tried to scale a fence into the Gaza Strip was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army was supposed to have phased out several years ago.
The Israeli media reported that Yakir Ben-Melech, 34, had bled to death after he was shot under the “Hannibal procedure,” designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive alive by enemy forces.
One critic, Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator and leader of Gush Shalom, a small radical peace group, defined the procedure as meaning: “Liberate the soldier by killing him.”
The controversial directive, which was once one of the army’s best-kept secrets, was drafted more than 20 years ago after the Israeli government had come under domestic pressure to release hundreds of enemy prisoners for the return of three captured soldiers.
Israel is currently involved in just such negotiations over Gilad Shalit, a soldier who has been held prisoner in Gaza by Hamas for more than three years. According to reports, he may be freed in the near future in a deal expected to see several hundred Palestinians released from Israeli prisons.
Israel was supposed to have stopped the Hannibal procedure after it withdrew its occupying army from south Lebanon in May 2000.
However, there is strong evidence that it has continued to be used, particularly during the events that triggered Israel’s attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and again last year during Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Ben-Melech, a patient at a mental health clinic in nearby Ashkelon, tried to enter Gaza in the early hours of Monday in what his family believe was a bid to save Shalit. The army says guards fired several warning shots as he ran towards Gaza before shooting him in the leg.
Several Israeli military correspondents, apparently briefed by the army, reported that the Hannibal procedure had been invoked in Ben-Melech’s case.
The use of the procedure was also confirmed by Zvika Fogel, a former deputy head of the army’s Southern Command, an area including Gaza. He told the Reshet B radio station: “The Hannibal procedure is definitely the right procedure. We cannot afford now some soulmate next to Gilad Shalit.”
However, in an apparent sign of continuing sensitivities on the issue, English-language editions of Israeli newspapers did not mention the procedure. The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s only major newspaper produced in English, excised a reference to the procedure included in an early report on its website, and the army’s spokesman avoided answering questions about whether the procedure had been used in Ben-Melech’s shooting.
Later explanations from the army focused instead on the threat Ben-Melech supposedly posed. One official told Ynet, Israel’s largest news website: “The [border] guards had no way of knowing who he was and feared that his attempted infiltration was part of a larger-scale terror attack.”
Ben-Melech’s sister-in-law, Ilanit, responded that the army’s account made no sense. “He ran in the direction of Gaza, not the soldiers, so why did they shoot him?”
The Hannibal procedure only came to light accidentally in 2003 after a slip-up by the country’s military censor allowed a reference to remain in a report published by the daily Haaretz.
In a follow-up article, the newspaper revealed that the directive had been formulated in 1986 in the wake of a deal in which Israel had released more than 1,100 Palestinians for three Israelis. Gabi Ashkenazi, the current chief of staff, was among those who drafted the procedure.
The order, described as the most controversial in the Israeli army’s history, was that “a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier,” according to Haaretz. The directive reportedly created a furore in the army at the time, with some commanders and rabbis considering it immoral, though no mention of it was made public for many years.
It was last used officially in October 2000, five months after Israeli forces withdrew from south Lebanon, when Hizballah captured three soldiers along the border. Attack helicopters fired on a vehicle in which it was believed the soldiers were being held.
The soldiers’ bodies were returned by Hizballah, along with a captured Israeli businessman, four years later in a deal that included the release of 400 Palestinians and 35 Arab nationals.
The procedure, according to Haaretz, was revoked in 2002, although several soldiers told the paper that they had been told to follow it despite its official annulment.
There have been a number of indications, in addition to the shooting of Ben-Melech, that the procedure is still in force.
It appears to have been invoked after Hizballah captured two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border in summer 2006, an incident that triggered a month-long attack by Israel on Lebanon.
Eitan Baron wrote in a blog that his brother Yaniv, a 19-year-old tank driver, had been sent in hot pursuit of the Hizballah team holding the two soldiers on a Hannibal procedure mission.
Yaniv Baron and four other crew members died when the tank ran over a mine and was then fired on by Hizballah in what was widely assumed to be an ambush.
According to Baron, Yaniv’s battalion commander told the family after his death that the procedure had been invoked. “They [the tank crew] were familiar with the procedure, and without giving it a second thought, started driving,” Baron wrote.
Further revelations about the procedure emerged last January, during Israel’s assault on Gaza, when the Israeli media reported that Israeli soldiers being sent into Gaza had been told to avoid capture at all costs.
Channel 10, a television station, quoted an officer from Battalion 501 of the Golani Brigade saying: “No troop member from the 501 battalion is to be kidnapped at any cost, nor in any situation, even if this means blowing up a grenade in his possession, killing himself and those trying to kidnap [sic] him.”
An officer from the Givati Brigades was also quoted, citing the Hannibal procedure, adding: “We will not have two Gilad Shalits at any price.”
During the assault, Hamas claimed that it had captured soldiers on two occasions but that the Israeli army had killed the Hamas fighters and soldiers in aerial attacks. Three Israeli soldiers were reported to have died in friendly-fire incidents.
A number of Palestinians, including children, have been shot by the Israeli army after getting close to the perimeter fence that surrounds Gaza. Last year Israel announced that it would shoot any Palestinian who entered a zone extending several hundred meters inside the fence.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Lawless settlers are an inseparable part of Israel: Ha’aretz
By Gideon Levy
The dogs of Shiloh run about, excited. Barking loudly, they try to chase after the long convoy of security vehicles passing the doghouses. But they aren’t going anywhere: They’re collared to long iron chains.
No sight could better illustrate the futile journey of the inspectors and police officers through the West Bank this week.
They’re here to deliver the building freeze orders, to people who rip them up in front of the cameras. This week, they traveled from one settlement to the next, and we followed, an odd convoy of armored vehicles from the Civil Administration, the Yasam special police forces and the Border Police, two cars full of journalists and one car driven by a settler activist reporting to his friends from the field and giving advance notice.
Some settlements the convoy passed quickly, without stopping, which raised even more speculation about the objective of this shadowy trip. At other settlements, its way was blocked. When the convoy parked at one West Bank junction, a few Palestinian passersby from a nearby village stared. They had no idea where it was headed; it seemed like the members of the secured convoy weren’t so sure either.
Monday was a windy, rainy day in the West Bank. Gush Dan remained indifferent to what was going on just a short trip to the east in Hevel Binyamin – the pictures of the settlers forcibly blocking the law enforcers, and the council heads tearing up the orders, didn’t rouse them from their deep, multi-year coma.
On June 11, 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace stood outside Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama and physically prevented two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from entering. Wallace, who coined the phrase “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” was trying to block implementation of the law banning racial segregation in his state. Only the presence of the deputy U.S. attorney general and National Guard troops kept the governor from taking the law into his own hands. Wallace was compelled to step aside and let the black students into the class. The rest is history – the American history of upholding the law.
Around here, no attorney general or state prosecutor has thought to personally stand up to the rebellious council leaders, as in Alabama, and our national guard troops are still apologizing to the settlers. Anyone upset by their behavior ought to direct his anger at the state, not at them. The state that permitted, funded, secured, invested in, paved and built, turned a blind eye and kept silent in the face of all the violations of the law that accompanied this enterprise from day one. The state cannot come and say now: We didn’t know that this is how they are. We didn’t know they would spit in our face like this. We didn’t know that this is what grew there, in the land of lawlessness, which is an inseparable part of the State of Israel.
Production of a farce
The scene is grotesque. A long convoy of jeeps and vans slowly and noisily makes its way along the West Bank roads, going hither and thither, often to no avail. In the middle are two white Civil Administration jeeps. One contains the short inspector in his wool hat. He stops every once in a while to smoke a cigarette. He holds the papers for which this whole convoy was gathered: the stop-construction orders. “How am I driving?” asks the sticker on the jeep.
You have to accompany Haaretz’s settlements reporter Haim Levinson to understand just how such a farce is produced, how this ridiculous spectacle is staged. A tight network of settler activists and PR people maintain a constant manipulative racket of beepers and cynical text messages, reporting, misleading, warning and threatening our reinforced vehicle. There’s not a moment of quiet.
And this is what one of the settler public relations fellows has to say early in the morning: “The guys from Yitzhar could lose it today. Yesterday the detention of one of the residents was extended. Listen what’s going to happen there: They issued demolition orders for Havat Gilad, and it’s going to be lively there. Havat Gilad is private Jewish land. It’s not stolen land. Everything was done with building permits.
“There are millions without building permits. Ehud Barak is no sucker: He needs to go to the Labor Party and say: I am a leftist. As soon as they hassle him, he’ll start with the illegal outposts. You want to embarrass me over the stop-construction orders? I’ll embarrass Ya’alon and Begin with the outposts. These aren’t illegal outposts. It may be illegal construction.
“And so Begin and Ya’alon will be embarrassed and he’ll win the left’s sympathy again. It’s not about the law here, it’s all a game. He takes Havat Gilad, which is a symbol, and says: I, Barak, am not afraid of anyone. I am demolishing Havat Gilad. The settlers will go wild, Barak will sit in the Kirya and play the piano and be the hero of the left.”
By the end of the day, Havat Gilad was still completely intact. Orders, shmorders.
The West Bank is once again flooded with slogans: “No surrender to Bibi’s freeze inspectors,” read red letters on every abandoned cement block and at the entry to every settlement. We’re eating a three-shekel falafel at Hawara when the beeper goes off: The inspectors are on the way to far-off Beit Aryeh. We cruise down the empty “Trans-Binyamin” road. “Have you spotted any unusual movement of forces?” asks another sign along the way, followed by a phone number. And of course: “Despite everything, we’ll keep building.” Of course. It goes without saying.
Several IDF and police jeeps wait by the entrance to Beit Aryeh, this innocent “communal yishuv,” as proclaimed by the sign, with streets bearing the names of flowers and plants, as in Modi’in, as in any other “communal yishuv” these days. Levinson says that the residents are offended if you call them “settlers.” The place looks deserted. Everyone is off at work in Gush Dan.
The “state’s balcony,” as per Ariel Sharon, is desolate. On a clear day you can see all the way to the airport, the sign even promises a view of “72 percent of Israel’s population,” no less, from Hadera to Gedera. The meaning is clear and menacing. This is where Sharon would bring his guests to show them the regional superpower’s “narrow waist” and the existential dangers, definitely existential, that awaited it if Beit Aryeh, the rock of its existence, were ever to be evacuated, God forbid. As if to demonstrate, an El Al plane passes by on its way to land. Even on a cloudy day, it could be brought down from here. Meanwhile, Nardi Marketing is offering a house for sale on one flowery-named street and the inspectors remain at the entrance, or perhaps they’ve already passed through here.
The Beit Aryeh Development Company is working on another “expansion” of the settlement, the new “Vineyard Neighborhood,” freeze or not. The construction equipment is already in the field, and so are some Palestinian laborers. A beeper alert from the Hebron settlers committee: “Convoy next to Beit Aryeh.”
The rain doesn’t let up, visibility is poor and we continue trailing the convoy toward an unknown destination. The leading Border Police jeeps stop by the Elisha pre-military academy, perhaps to fool the enemy, and then continue on. This part of the country is strewn with settlements, outposts, overlooks, expansions, academies, yeshivot and ulpanot. White caravans and red tile roofs on every hilltop. We briefly lose sight of the convoy and Levinson calls the lookouts at Talmonim. We find it again near Ateret. Turn left onto the road leading into Shiloh, “the place where the story of the Tabernacle took place,” as the sign tells us, where now you can get “grilled meats at the butcher’s in the industrial zone,” another sign informs us.
Surprise, surprise, the settlement’s iron gate opens without hindrance, police cars wait outside just in case, and the inspectors’ cars enter unimpeded.
We cross through Shiloh. The convoy doesn’t stop for a moment, not even when the wretched guard dogs bark wildly at it. Where are the animal rights organizations when you need them? These dogs are the only ones who offer any resistance to the inspectors. On the side of the road we see the foundations for four new houses, looking like no freeze is going to stop them.
In nearby Shvut Rachel, there is no resistance either and the convoy does not stop. It’s not clear why we went in and out, just passing through as if to check off another name on a list. Here, by the way, is where Jack Teitel lived happily.
A new vehicle now joins the convoy: a Hyundai Getz, belonging to Yishai Kariv of the Binyamin residents’ committee. No group is as organized as these settlers. Before long he’ll be leading the convoy, informing whomever he wants, warning whomever he wants, delaying its entry to its next destination. This too is all part of the big show. The convoy makes it way up the hill to Ma’ale Levona. Levinson knows: Here it’s going to be interesting, because of the girls’ high school there. This settlement is surrounded by an electronic fence. It’s a quality of life issue. The iron gate opens, and that’s when the day’s big show starts.
Within minutes, the entrance plaza fills with dozens of ulpana girls. They come down from the hilltops in their winter coats and long skirts, raring to go. A minute later, the boys appear, some with masked faces, pushing a huge dumpster and barbed wire to block the convoy. The happening is beginning: The girls climb onto the Civil Administration jeeps, sit down and start covering the doors with graffiti denouncing the “expulsion.” Meanwhile, their friends climb into the dumpster. They’re all giggling, and an older gray-haired woman is presiding over the action. Ma’ale Levona is fighting, the ulpana is fighting, and the evil forces of the law shall not be allowed in.
So what do they do? Capitulate. For now at least. The jeeps turn around amid flying clumps of mud. The mud revolution. Everyone is stuck in it now, not knowing what to do.
The beeper carries another announcement from the settlers: “Large Yasam forces have turned around. Starting to get wild.” The girls silently escort the jeeps on their way out. While other girls their age are hanging out at the mall, at least they’re fighting for something.
Three hours later, all the forces return, with reinforcements. A few rocks and a stun grenade are thrown, bold Border Police officers leap on the iron gate (now closed), other forces invade the community from another route and the target is finally conquered. Evening falls. Ma’ale Levona is in our hands.