Recent events have shown that things in Israel/Palestine are worse than ever. It can be argued that Ariel Sharon deliberately precipitated these events, and that Arrafat has done little or nothing to rein Palestinians in (whether he had the power to do that is another story). It is interesting to note that a veteran's group recently came out supporting peace and the dismantling of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territoriies, and that some reservists are beginning to circulate petitions saying that they will defend Israel to the death, but the they feel it immoral to serve in the Gaza or West Bank. The following is an analysis of the problem from an Israeli volunteer's perspective:
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Israeli Settlements: The Only Obstacle to Peace
Is The Price Of Occupied Territory Too High?
Marcia Freedman is a former member of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament,
and a longtime activist for Middle East peace. She is author of
"Exile in the Promised Land" (Firebrand, 1990).
Each week I spend several hours at an Israeli roadblock, one of the many set up to control Palestinian movement. I belong to an Israeli women's human rights group called Machsom-WATCH. Machsom is Hebrew for "roadblock" or "checkpoint." The group was created to monitor the treatment of Palestinians at roadblocks set up by Israel ostensibly to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem. These roadblocks have completely disrupted the daily lives of Palestinians.
I monitor the roadblock at Kalandia, a refugee camp on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank. This roadblock is one of three that people must pass through to travel between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It also divides Ramallah from a number of West Bank villages and towns that depend on the city for its hospitals, schools, and other vital services. Because of this checkpoint, it takes anywhere from two to four hours to get through in either direction by car.
Soldiers stop each car, check identifications, and examine the contents of all trunks. Even ambulances must wait their turn to be inspected. The rules for who can get through and who cannot change from day to day. Palestinians never know before setting out if they will be allowed to continue their journey. Some days the orders are not to let anyone through at all.
The roadblock is one enormous traffic jam. Palestinians have developed a routine of taking taxicabs from one roadblock to another and then walking through on foot. The roadblocks teem with people streaming through it in both directions, sometimes old women carrying bundles on their heads, young women carrying children, men carrying anything from briefcases to groceries. Young Israeli soldiers in full combat gear armed with M-16s, their guns always at the ready, stand guard as people walk around them.
The anger, the fear, the humiliation felt by the Palestinians trying desperately to get on with their lives is palpable. Sometimes they notice us, a handful of women wearing badges that say in Arabic and Hebrew, "Women for Human Rights," and they smile or thank us for being there. Most often they ignore us as they try to ignore the soldiers who have so much power over their lives.
So what are the soldiers doing there?
When I ask the soldiers what they are supposed to accomplish with their presence, they answer mechanically: "The purpose of the roadblock is to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem." They say they have to examine the contents of all cars to be sure there are no arms or explosives. When I suggest that it is ludicrous to think a potential terrorist would enter Jerusalem by going through a roadblock with a car full of explosives, the soldiers become defensive. They know it is true. They know that not a single terrorist has been caught at any of the dozens of checkpoints that monitor Palestinian traffic on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Just up the road, on a hill overlooking Kalandia and just across from the city of Ramallah is Psagot, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The residents of Psagot do not have to pass through the Kalandia checkpoint. Instead they travel to Jerusalem on a deluxe four-lane highway, a "by-pass road." It is called a by-pass road because it by-passes areas populated by Palestinians. The West Bank is crisscrossed by these super highways, which can only be used by Israelis.
As I stand at the checkpoint, monitoring the soldiers who are controlling an occupied population, I reflect on what this is all about. These unarmed Palestinian civilians trying to live under an occupation that all but keeps them under house arrest are not a threat to Israel. But for the people of Psagot, the Palestinians of the West Bank are a threat by their very existence.
To understand the situation at the Kalandia checkpoint, or the terrible deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations, one has to understand the history of the settlement movement. Who are these settlers? Why are they there? And why is the current Israeli government willing to throw out the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine just to maintain the settlements?
Today, this ideological minority controls the Israeli government.
There are some 200,000 Israeli settlers living on 120 settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The first settlements, illegal under international law, were established in 1975 by extremist Jewish nationalists on land occupied by Israel after the 1967 Middle East war. The settlers called themselves Gush Emunim, or the Bloc of the Faithful, and they believed that the Jewish messiah could not come until Israel settled the "Greater Land of Israel," the area of historic Palestine that had existed under Turkish and later British occupation.
After a 1948 United Nations partition plan and the war that followed, Israel only possessed 78 percent of that historic Palestine. But Jewish extremists -- a small minority of messianic nationalists and an equally small expansionist secular minority -- were not satisfied. Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been their leader and hero for decades. Today, this ideological minority controls the Israeli government.
At first only a few hundred settlers moved into the territories. During the decade immediately following the 1967 war, Israelis generally viewed the territories as bargaining chips for possible negotiated settlements between Israel and its neighbors. Though successive Israeli governments established settlements in the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley of the West Bank, and the northern end of the Sinai Peninsula, they were established for strategic reasons. Thus, they could be dismantled and abandoned in exchange for permanent peace agreements with Egypt, Syria and Jordan. But from 1975 on, the settlement activity has had an ideological bent.
In 1977, the government of Menachem Begin and the conservative Likud Party came to power, upsetting the Labor Party hegemony for the first time since Israel's founding. Likud has held control ever since, except for the 1992 victory of Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin, which was cut short by his assassination, and the leadership of Ehud Barak in 1998, which was cut short by his ineptitude.
Under Likud, the number of settlers in the established communities that sprawl over the hills of the West Bank has multiplied. The settlements, connected by hundreds of miles of by-pass roads and protected by the Israeli army, are considered non-negotiable territory by a government that believes Israel must settle all of historic Palestine.
But in fact most settlers, about 60 percent, are not religious nationalists, according to surveys carried out by Israel's largest peace organization, Peace Now. The majority are former low-income Israeli city-dwellers who were lured by government-sponsored incentives: tax breaks, small-business venture capital and extremely low-interest mortgages.
As long as these settlements remain, there will be no peace.
These initiatives allowed them to buy apartments and build villas, providing a much different standard of living from the crowded and poor urban neighborhoods the settlers had moved from. Many in this group would willingly return to Israel proper if their return were subsidized to the same extent that their movement to the settlements had been. Given the enormous cost of the occupation, this would be a small economic price to pay for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
As long as these settlements remain, there will be no peace. The current Israeli government believes it can confine the 3.5 million Palestinians to 40 percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in four or five noncontiguous "cantons" controlled in perpetuity by the Israeli army.
This situation cannot last. The Israeli checkpoints cannot control the movement of individuals who are willing to die to liberate their people from occupation. In just the past 16 months, the number of terror incidents has risen dramatically. For how long will the population of Israel, six million people, be willing to live in fear to perpetuate the dream of 200,000 settlers and their expansionist supporters?
Israelis are beginning to question the wisdom of this government and the legitimacy of the army's conduct. In late January, more than 100 army reservists published newspaper ads denouncing the army's treatment of Palestinian civilians and declaring they would not serve in the West Bank or Gaza. In just two weeks this number has more than doubled. The peace camp is beginning to regroup, bringing tens of thousands into the streets demanding an end to the occupation.
I am a Jew, and I support the national liberation of the Jewish people. I believe in our right to a homeland of our own, both to protect ourselves from the anti-Semitism that has persecuted us and to realize our aspirations and self-determination as a people. But I deplore and condemn the extremist minority that today holds these dreams hostage.
Israel must recognize the legitimate rights of our historical cousins, the Palestinians, to a just and viable state of their own. The Israeli settlements must be evacuated. It is time to allow the Palestinian population -- displaced, exiled and long-suffering since 1948 -- to fulfill their own national vision.
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I have to admit that I have never considered the issue of the settlements thoroughly, and thinking of it now, my reaction would be much the same as the Palestinians if some invader came in and put down little colonies with special roads to keep my people from having a single place to call their own. If my rights as a person were denied and it was a struglle to live because of an oprressor, how could I not revolt? Think about it. How far would you have to be pushed? The Founding Fathers had it easy compared to the Paletsinians, and they still felt abused enought to throw off the Imperial yoke. I may not like their tactics, but I think the Palestinians have a legitimate claim.
Posted by Chris at February 22, 2002 03:49 PM