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.
