Journalist Noam Sheizaf writes for the daily Israeli newspaper Maariv and has a blog called Promised Land. His most recent post is a useful response to anyone who thinks that things in Israel/Palestine would be different “if only the Palestinians were more like Gandhi.” He uses the recent killing of Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahmah in Bil’in as a reminder that Israel’s response to Palestinian resistance has nothing to do with the form that it takes, but the ultimate goal of controlling the land:
What we tend to forget is that the current violence is a relatively new phenomena. Since 1967 and for the first 20 years of occupation, the West Bank was fairly quiet. I remember, as a kid, how we traveled there during weekends, went shopping and sightseeing. Yes, the PLO carried on the armed fight, but this was done mostly from other countries – Jordan, later on Lebanon, and finally Tunisia.
But guess what – this nonviolent struggle never made Israel even think about abandoning the land it conquered or hand the Palestinians any civil and political rights. In fact, these were the years in which the colonization of land became an official government policy. Israel agreed to a Palestinian autonomy as part of the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, but never really considered keeping its promise . . .
My bottom line is this: in Bil’in, like in the first three decades of the occupation, Israel proved that it didn’t really care what kind of a fight the Palestinians are putting up, or what they ask for. This has nothing to do with “abandoning terrorism”, like Netanyahu – and all Israeli PMs before him, except for one – keep on saying. For all we care the Palestinians can convert to Buddhism or join the Likud. We just don’t want to go back to the ‘67 borders. That’s why, when they throw stones or wave flags, as they do in the video above, we open fire.
