Adam Horowitz:
After supporting the settler movement for 40 years, the Israeli government is having a hard time cracking down on it. Reuters reports that the apartheid system Israel has set up in the occupied territories (one area, two rules of law) is a detriment to law enforcement:
According to settlers and Shin Bet veterans, pressure tactics
familiar to Palestinians — from bribery to ruses to interrogation
methods that civil liberties groups decry as torture — are all
available for use against Jewish detainees.
But few dispute that Jews are less likely to receive rough
treatment, if only because they enjoy sovereign Israeli rights such as
access to a lawyer within 48 hours of detention. By contrast,
Palestinians can be more readily kept incommunicado for long periods,
as the West Bank is under Israeli martial law.
"The Jew feels at home. He thinks he has more rights. He thinks he
can run to the Supreme Court," a recently retired Shin Bet chief
interrogator told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"So, statistically, the moment you apply physical pressure on Jews, they get offended and clam up — not like Arabs."
In
the end it doesn't even look like the Israeli government wants to stop
the settlers (or settlements), they just want them to look better:
Menachem Landow, a former Jewish Division head, said Shin Bet
officers — many of them religious Jews conversant with
ultranationalist claims to biblical West Bank land — prefer to stem
settler threats through dialogue rather than crackdowns.
"The working assumption with Jews is that they're friendly unless
proven otherwise, while Arabs are hostile unless proven otherwise.
There's no 100 percent formula here," he said.
information, on the understanding that they will continue their
activism but help the state prevent it turning violent." (emphasis mine)
