Migron (Photo: Reuters)
Sidestepping a 10-year settlement freeze, Israel reached a deal last week with the illegal settlement of Migron, allowing the outpost to violate a court-ordered eviction. Following approval from the government’s prosecutors, the outpost will now have until 2015 to relocate. Initially, the hilltop encampment was marked for demolition at the end of March.
The deal was reached after a month of negotiations with the Israeli government when Likud representatives placated the settlers’ red lines: no demolitions, no evictions, and no returning land to their Palestinian owners.
The agreement met all of the settlers’ conditions, and the outpost is protected from demolition for another two years. At that time, the settlers are to relocate to a different hilltop in the West Bank on “Israeli” state-owned land. And their semi-permanent shanty houses will remain empty, or the military will take over the hilltop. Either way, the Palestinians are not getting this piece of the West Bank back anytime soon.
Migron has had a roller coaster relationship with the Israeli government.
It is home to some 50 families including the “price tag” youth known for violently assaulting Palestinians and damaging their property. And only a few months ago, the outpost was under fire after settlers attacked a military base, prompting Israeli officials to decry “Jewish terrorism.”
In the months preceding the March eviction date, the settlers launched a PR campaign to combat their reputation of gun-wielding youth, and successfully shifted their image to that of your average family.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, though illegal, Migron received millions of shekels for construction. Government ministries poured cash into roads and basic services for years until being subjected to criticism. In 2003, then prime minister Ariel Sharon publicly advocated demolishing the outpost. The eviction order, however, was not pursed due to the Second Intifada.
Today, Migron has government support again including a team of ministers who lobbied against the eviction. Israeli law, a court ruling, and the Palestinian farmers who have valid titles to the area all indicate the settlers should be forced out of their make-shift structures, yet the settlers stay.
What settlement freeze? Why are we even using that language? Israel never stopped its settlement expansion enterprise. You might as well be using the term “flat Earth.”
Can we stop saying settlement freeze? There is no such animal, vegetable or mineral.
chaos4700 has a good point on language. Bloggers and MEDIA far too often use the terms used by government spokesmen without questioning them.
On substance, the REAL STORY is that Israel not only violates international law but also violates the law announced by its own courts, even I believe its supreme court.
But back to language.
Another example of bad GOV-SPEAK, more important to Americans than “settlement freeze”, is “targeted killing” in place of the word “assassination” which has a long and honorable history for the same act and should be used instead.
Often the proper term would be “assassination with killing of non-targets”, “killing of non-targets” being English for the GOV-SPEAK of “collateral damage”. What, after all, does “targeted” do as a modifier for ‘killing” except to mark the phrase “targeted killing” as GOV-SPEAK so that anyone who uses it is aligning with the government?
Some say that the term “targeted killing” is GOV-SPEAK because it suggests that the killing is legal, whereas “assassination” suggests “murder” or illegal killing. well, one function might be to suggeset legality, but another more important function is to get MEDIA and PUNDITS and BLOGGERS to kow-tow to government by adopting the artificial GOV-SPEAK.
Resist! IMAGINE the ruckus in the State Department (or other) press conference if the MEDIA folks insisted on saying “assassination” every time the spokesperson said “targeted killing”.
Is anyone surprised? There is no such thing as justice or the rule of law to Israelis. They are alien concepts to these people.