Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein had a great oped in yesterday’s Ha’aretz about the Israeli government’s complicity in the settlement movement. Both Dana and Zonszein are active in the Israeli organization Ta’ayush and run the Ibn Ezra blog which is an invaluable source on the settler movement around Hebron. The blog has been especially focused on “Hilltop 26,” a settler outpost that is on its way to becoming another Israeli settlement strangling the city.
Dana and Zonszein’s oped entitled “Birth of a settlement” focuses on Hilltop 26 and lays bare the fiction that the Israeli government is at the mercy of the powerful settler movement:
The IDF and Israeli government have clearly made a decision to actively support the outpost of Hilltop 26. While it is still a small structure, the time-honored pattern of land grabs is clear: It starts with a clubhouse, then a mobile home and pretty soon the settlers will have built a house equipped with running water and gas. Hilltop 26 is only one example of the 100 or so outposts of this kind throughout the West Bank.
The settler movement is not as strong as it is portrayed in the Israeli and international media. Without the active and passive support of both the government and the armed forces, the settlers’ efforts would be rendered useless. Without it being possible to freely document and expose these matters, Israel’s government will continue to use the image of the settlers as a cover for its own overt policy of support for settlement creation and maintenance in the West Bank.
Instead of being an impediment to Israeli policy, the settlers are Israel’s most useful tool for expanding control over Palestinian land. Be sure to check out Ibn Ezra for continuing updates. Their most recent post offers updates since the Ha’aretz article:
As we
drove out, beside the series of two-meter high electrical poles, we
also saw an IDF jeep parked next to the outpost, clearly protecting the
area. Issa informed me that the electric poles were put up within the
last two days and that the settlers have been moving rocks making way
for a mobile home. This is a major escalation in construction and
exactly what we describe in our op-ed piece. The fact that the army has
now stationed a jeep at the outpost is clear evidence of their
intention to continue working together to create new facts on the
ground in the southern west bank.
No surprises here. This is what happens when the rule of law is not enforced: thieves just keep on stealing. I can see the settlers' point of view though: what is the difference between the land that was stolen in '48 and the land that is being stolen in '09? And if we were allowed to keep the former, what's to keep us from keeping the latter? Certainly not the Israeli government that is in cahoots with us and certainly not the "international community" that wants to avoid a bloody fight with our lobbies. It looks like things will have to get much worse before they get better.
Settlers are enabled by the Israeli state. The Israeli state is enabled by the welfare check from the US Treasury. The welfare check is enabled by Congresspeople, Congressional candidates, Presidents, and Presidential candidates who trip all over each other in rushing to grant more funds to Likud and neo-con schemes. These politicians are enabled by all voters who see the light on the Israel/Palestine tragedy, yet after expressing some remorse, continue to vote for the one who is the lesser evil on other issues. I even know Palestinian Americans who voted for Obama. Jewish Americans too, who reject the Zionist project, still vote for politicians who subsidize it. No matter how good a Republican or Democrat politician might be on other issues close to our hearts, as long as they compete to ingratiate themselves with the fanatic Israel trends we must shun them. Unless we are speaking of Kucinich or Ron Paul, vote Libertarian.
RE: Israeli government and settlers 'working together to create new facts on the ground' *TAKE ACTION TO END THE OCCUPATION Send a personalized letter (E-mail) to the Members of Congress on the Appropriations Subcommittee. Let these Members of Congress know that you oppose the President's FY2010 budget request for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel. *TO SEND YOUR LETTER (E-mail) – http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/t/2439/c...
This is good practical advice.
Adam Horowitz wrote: "Israeli government and settlers 'working together to create new facts on the ground" I gotta better one: "Strategic Affairs" Minister Moshe Ya'alon speaking in the wake of the Netanyahu/Obama meeting: "[S]ettlement construction will not be halted … we will not halt the construction in the settlements within the framework of natural growth." And for those who think Obama stood tall with Netanyahu, Ya'alon denied that Obama even made any demands for any settlement construction to be halted, but anyway said that if such a demand is made "[w]e won't let them threaten us." See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1087541.html
I have noticed a certain tendency among second-tier Israeli politicians to make jokes about the difficulty of stopping "natural growth" in the settler population, along the lines of "How do you expect us to stop young married settler couples from having sex?" In fact, I first noticed this a couple of years ago. No one except 'B Michael' (on Ynet) has bothered to point out that they can always move back behind the green line, even during the wife's pregnancy.
The NYT is really pushing the stopwatch on Iran talks hard… read this execrable editorial: Mr. Netanyahu is, not surprisingly, uncomfortable with Mr. Obama’s decision to test Tehran with an offer of negotiations. The Israelis are right that time is clearly on Iran’s side. The current plan is for the United States to join the Europeans and Russia in talks with Iran, right after Iran’s June presidential elections. There is the possibility of bilateral talks to follow. Mr. Obama said he would assess progress by year’s end. If diplomacy is moving forward, he should resist pressure to shut it down prematurely. We hope he is using the time now to prepare Europe and Russia for the necessity of much tougher sanctions if this effort fails.
And further more, the editorial calls on Palestinians to prove they are humans! Palestinians must do more to prove that they are capable of self-government. and of course, the onus is one the Arabs to make Israel an offer it can't refuse: Mr. Obama also needs to rally Arab states to make Mr. Netanyahu a better peace offer. That should include an early start to normalizing relations with Israel, bolstering Mr. Abbas and persuading Hamas to stop its rocket attacks.
Vote socialist or green.
Obama should keep the US masses posted from the bully pulpit regarding what we offer Iran to convince it it has nothing to fear sans military nukes in the current array of forces in its neighborhood and what has been done by its neighbors, and from afar (the US & allies). The average American has no clue that the man in the arab street looks on his own government as a puppet of the US at his expense, and he looks on Israel as the rogue in the neighborhood, standing, once again, on the shoulders of Uncle Sam.
Israel must do more to prove it is not forever grabbing more land, keeping all options open in the interest of lebensraum for Orthodox babies, always with the big nuke stick behind the curtain, the Samson Option the ultimate veiled threat. Israel must do more to show it can actually live without hanging on Uncle Sam's saggy tits a la Richard Speck madeover in jail in under panties. The US must recognize Hamas as duly elected and quit trying to divide and conquer to establish yet one more sham arab regime operating at the expense of its people–how many tyrannical nations do we deal with regularly, starting with red China?
Additionally, I do seem to remember seeing statistics saying that, at any one time, a substantial number of buildings in the settlements are actually unoccupied. So they're seemingly very well-prepared for the 'natural growth', unless settler children move into their own house at a very young age;)
People simply will not take onboard the fact that there is no evidence Iran is seeking 'military nukes', and plenty of evidence, from IAEA inspections, that it isn't. People only hear and regurgitate what they want to hear and regurgitate, being by and large basically cowardly herd animals.
It's those "facts on the ground" which give Israel its dignity, huh, Phil?
There is a blatant effort going on right now in the USA TV news to build up Iran as a rabid racist state to that needs to be demolished in the interest of the USA. The spokes people have been all over the place on both broadcast and cable news TV, which is where most Americans get their tiny dosage of foreign policy news. This morning they had an Irish-named guy from one of the usual think tanks on CSPAN washington Journal spewing all the usual hasbara rhetoric and POV–he was as clear as a bell–the US needs to attack Iran, or at the very least, support Israel in doing the same. This all reminds me of the lead up to our attack on Iraq in 2003. It's so obvious. Americans rather use the internet to gossip about the final American Idol candidates. My own family is included.
Is that fair? Phil is against the continued expansion of "facts on the ground" in the form of ever new or expanding settlements. Phil's dignity would, I think from his articles, be enhanced by uprooting those settlements. Phil at least knows this; what he thinks about the '47-48 establishment of Israel as a final stance, Phil has never said to my knowledge. What say you, Mooser?