Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2016, pp. 8-10

Special Report

Israeli Settlements Come at a High Price

>em>By Rachelle Marshall

After Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights in 1967, there were hopes the Israelis would eventually return the territories in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions. It was not to happen. The ruling Labor government ignored the resolutions, and in 1977 the Likud party headed by Menachem Begin came to power. Begin and his minister of agriculture, Ariel Sharon, immediately laid plans for building Jewish settlements throughout the occupied West Bank, on the theory that “facts on the ground” would assure that the territory could never be returned to the Palestinians.

Today more than 600,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, in settlements that extend from East Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley and are connected by a network of Jewish-only highways. The settlers’ land, water and low rents are subsidized by U.S. and Israeli taxpayers, and by an additional $229 million in tax-deductible donations from American donors. They receive protection from an Israeli military that receives more than $4 billion a year in aid from the U.S.

A far greater cost is borne by the Palestinians, who live under restrictions that affect virtually every aspect of life and cost their economy $3.4 billion a year, according to the World Bank. An equally great cost has been to chances of peace, as the continued expansion of settlements has all but ended the possibility of a two-state solution. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently confirmed this when he said the settlements “are steadily chipping away at the viability of a Palestinian state and the ability of the Palestinian people to live in dignity.”

Secretary of State John Kerry also warned of the consequences of more settlement construction. “It is not an answer to simply build in the West Bank and destroy the homes of folks you’re trying to make peace with and pretend that’s a solution,” he said. “Unless significant efforts are made to change the dynamic—and I mean significant—it will only bring more violence, more heartbreak, and more despair.”

That prediction is proving true. Between early October and mid-January, 26 Israelis were killed by Palestinians and 169 Palestinians—several as young as 12 and 13—were killed by Israeli soldiers and police. The Palestinian attacks, disorganized and unpredictable as they are, reflect the frustration and despair Palestinians young and old feel as hopes of peace remain in deep freeze.

Israel has responded by restricting movement in and out of Palestinian towns, conducting sweeping arrests, and raiding Palestinian hospitals searching for suspects. The government has set up scores of new checkpoints, 20 of them in Hebron alone, turning that city into a prison. Soldiers have a license to kill any Palestinian who appears to be carrying a weapon, even if it is only a screw driver. A video accidentally dropped by an Israeli soldier showed an Israeli sniper deliberately targeting an unarmed Palestinian protester while the sniper’s commanding officer says, “Come on, you’re allowed to shoot.”

Meanwhile Israel is accelerating the forced dispossession of Palestinian families in order to make way for Jewish housing. Thousands of West Bank homes are currently slated for demolition, and Israel announced plans on Jan. 21 to appropriate 380 more acres of territory near Jericho for settlement housing. “It is starting to look like de facto annexation,” one American official said.

In East Jerusalem, 15 families face immediate eviction, 7 of them inside the walled Old City, and at least 100 more cases are pending. Echoing the stand of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Daniel Luria of Ateret Cohanim claims,“It is the natural and historic right of Jews to live anywhere in Jerusalem.” Daniel Seidemann, an expert on Israel’s land issues, says this means “what’s ours is ours—and what’s yours is ours, too.”

At present, 28,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter, along with 1,000 Jews. Ateret Cohanim is dedicated to changing this ratio by establishing Jewish enclaves inside the historic Arab Quarter. Evictions are often based on technicalities. One family hit by arcane rules is the Gaith-Sub Laban, who have lived in their home in the Old City for 62 years. Since 2010 they have been fighting eviction by a Jewish trust that claims the grandmother, Nora Sub Laban, who was born in the house, had installed an air conditioner without permission. She got rid of the air conditioner but the family still faces eviction.

Between 2009 and 2014, 467 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem were demolished, and 1,117 Palestinians displaced, to make room for Jewish settlers, and the process is continuing. Palestinian shopkeepers are also suffering as police barriers and a dozen new checkpoints keep potential customers away. There seems no doubt that Israel’s government intends to erase East Jerusalem’s identity as an Arab city.

On the West Bank, the proliferation of settlements has given rise to another threat to Palestinians in the form of Jewish terrorists. According to Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet, the members come primarily from the makeshift settlements that right-wing Jews have established without authorization on Palestinian-owned hilltops. After enjoying immunity from arrest for years as their crimes escalated, several suspected offenders are now awaiting trial in Israel for carrying out attacks against Palestinians.

The group is accused of setting fires to churches, mosques and Palestinian homes, most shockingly a home in the village of Duma, where a firebomb tossed into the house killed 3 members of the Dawabsheh family, including a toddler and his parents, and left a 4-year-old severely burned. Other families have barely escaped similar arson attacks. Churches have had sayings such as “Christians to hell,” and “Death to Heathen Christians” scrawled on their walls.

According to Shin Bet, the group of 30 to 40 young men that calls itself The Revolt consists mainly of high school drop-outs who have been rejected by the army. “The Revolt” also happens to be the title of Menachem Begin’s long out-of-print autobiography—a candid account by the former prime minister of his role as a Jewish commando in carrying out violent attacks on British soldiers and Palestinian civilians in pre-Israel Palestine.

The crucial questions are how seriously the Israeli authorities will take the current lawlessness, and what steps they will take to deter similar crimes in the future. In the past, the few Israelis convicted of crimes against Palestinians have served only short sentences before being released. In fact, said U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, “At times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law; one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”

So far, Amiram Ben Uliel, 21, and a minor with U.S. citizenship have been charged with murder for the attack on the Dawabshehs. Three more Israelis, including two minors, have been charged with other acts of arson, plus several assaults. The far right immediately used the arrests as an excuse to attack Shin Bet, charging that its interrogators had tortured the suspects into confessing. A lawyer for Ben Uliel said his indictment “is the beginning of opening a Pandora’s box against Shin Bet,” suggesting that the murder trials of the suspects will become show trials of the security services instead.

Harassment by settler groups such as The Revolt is only one of the many burdens Palestinians have had to bear since Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres allowed a right-wing Jewish religious group to establish a settlement in the middle of Hebron during the early 1970s. Israelis, too, pay a price. Not only do their taxes subsidize the settlements, but their 18-year-old sons and daughters are drafted into the army to protect them. The young Israelis barely out of high school who are sent to the West Bank can’t help but adopt a hostile attitude toward the people they were trained to regard as potential enemies.

The veterans organization Breaking the Silence has published testimony showing that looting, the destruction of Palestinian property and the use of excessive force have become the norm in the occupation army. The veterans’ group has also published statements by 60 officers and soldiers who served in Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. The guiding military principle in that war, they said, was that there should be “minimum risk to our forces even at the cost of civilian lives.”

The result, according to the veterans, was “massive and unprecedented harm to the population and the civilian infrastructure in Gaza.” Such statements prompted Prime Minister Netanyahu to accuse Breaking the Silence of “slandering Israel.” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said its motives were “malicious,” and excluded it from all activities involving soldiers. Naftali Bennett, the education minister, has banned it from state schools.

Meanwhile, Israel’s right-wing leaders are attempting to silence liberal Israeli groups across the board. The vague charge of “incitement,” long brought against Palestinians, is now being applied to Israeli citizens who defend Palestinian rights. Miri Regev, minister of culture and sports, is proposing a “Loyalty in Culture” amendment to the state budget that would, she said, “for the first time make support for a cultural institution dependent on its loyalty to the state of Israel.” The proposed law, said Israeli poet Meir Wieseltier, “brings us closer to the rise of fascism.” A far-right group called Im Tirzu is meanwhile conducting a campaign accusing internationally respected novelists such as Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman of being “moles in culture.”

A bill before the Knesset proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked requires human rights organizations that receive foreign funding to report their sources of funding. Ofer Cassif of Hebrew University responded to the proposed law by saying, “I think it is fair to compare Israel to Germany in the 1930s.” Other critics of the bill called it a symptom of Israel’s siege mentality, a mindset that has long been nurtured by Israeli leaders.

In 1955, then army chief of staff Moshe Dayan explained his opposition to mutual security pacts with neighboring Arab states by saying it was necessary for Israel to maintain “a high tension among our population and the army” in order to preserve unity in a population of immigrants. Maintaining the image of a beleaguered Israel surrounded by enemies has remained an essential element of official policy. As Israeli bombs were smashing into Gaza homes and shelters in 2014, and killing more than 2,000 civilians, Israelis and their U.S. supporters countered criticism by insisting on “Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Israel nevertheless does pay a price in worldwide public opinion for its violation of Palestinian rights. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced on Jan. 29 that France is planning an international conference to bring together the parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the U.S., “to preserve and make happen the two-state solution.” If the conference fails, Faubius said, France will recognize the Palestinian state.

A second warning sign to Israel was Obama’s recent appointment of Middle East expert Robert Malley as his adviser on dealing with Middle East terrorism. After the Camp David negotiations failed in 2000, President Bill Clinton and his adviser Dennis Ross blamed PLO leader Yasser Arafat for turning down a supposedly generous offer by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Malley, however, revealed that Barak’s offer to Arafat would not have led to an independent state but consisted only of chunks of West Bank territory separated from one another by settlements and Israeli military outposts. Malley recently asserted that the absence of a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has contributed to the rise of ISIS and other extremist groups.

As the prospect of achieving such a resolution remained dim, there was a poignant illustration of the tragedy and farce that combine in Israel’s effort to rule over 3 million Palestinians. When a group of men dressed as Santas and carrying candy and toys tried to march to the wall surrounding Bethlehem just before Christmas, soldiers barred their way and fired tear gas at the Santas. “This is Bethlehem,” one of the marchers said, “tear gas and soldiers and walls. This is the Holy Land.” ◙

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Mill Valley, CA. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on the Middle East.