And so the vast number of mainstream Israelis, while saying they support peace, once again find themselves in bed with the settlers and on the side of oppression. "I hate to say we told you so," said Yisrael Medad, a prominent Jewish settler from Shilo, deep inside the West Bank. "Now you hear all the time that it was a mistake to pull out of Gaza. You hear it on the television when it was never discussed before. More of the anchors are willing to ask that question. They would never ask that a year or two ago. They used to say ours was the extreme view. Now I would say that it's the mainstream, that no matter what we have done territorially speaking it's not going to satisfy them [the Palestinians]. They are always going to attack us..."
...In Shilo, Medad finds himself in agreement with Raanan on one thing. He sees Israeli public opinion as increasingly indifferent to Palestinian suffering. But he says it is because of foreign criticism of Israel's actions. "With the harshness of the criticism, they're slowly but surely turning off more Israelis to elements of humanity, consideration, so eventually they say: who the hell cares?" he said. "We don't see the human face. In that situation we can do anything we want. There's a lack of identity of who the enemy is. He's not human any more..." [I said that with disagreement, expressing unfortunate sorrow in that development]
...A soldier with Ahren, who declined to be identified because he was in uniform, said the Palestinians brought it on themselves. "They voted for Hamas and then Hamas attacked Israel so it's their problem," he said. "I don't know if this [attack on Gaza] will solve anything. Probably not. We cannot get rid of Hamas. But the lesson we've learnt is that we can't trust the Palestinians. We knew that with Arafat. Now we know it again."
That is the upside of the conflict in Gaza for Medad. He believes it could help assure the future of the West Bank settlements by reminding Israelis that control over what Israelis call Judea and Samaria is what keeps Hamas rockets from falling on Tel Aviv. "Things are changing. It's Gaza that's changed things," he said.
Shilo sits alongside the main road from Ramallah to Nablus, a long way from the "security barrier" Israel has built through the West Bank and Jerusalem. Shilo's residents are religious and mostly assert Israel's claim to all of the territory west of the Jordan river. A Palestinian presence is tolerated at best.
When Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers out of Gaza in 2005, he called it a painful sacrifice for peace. Another view was that he had run out of political options and the pull-out was a way to stave off international pressure to talk to the Palestinians. What the dismantling of the Gaza settlements did not do was end the expansion of colonies on the West Bank. Shilo has grown by about 25% since 2005. The "outposts" around it, which are illegal even under Israeli law, [but the "outposts" around Shiloh are not 'illegal' as they sit on land properly zoned and deposited at Israel's ministry offices] have been expanding so fast that the "Shilo block", with about 10,000 residents, is now as large as the main settlement that was dismantled in Gaza.
Most Israelis tell the pollsters they would sacrifice Shilo for peace. But influential voices are against it, among them the man tipped to be Netanyahu's defence minister. Moshe "Bogie" Yaalon, the former military commander in the West Bank, pressed the government for months to attack Gaza, and is against a withdrawal from the West Bank.
Medad is confident that Yaalon's views will prevail. "If you don't have control over a population, you suffer. You want to call it occupation... fine. But there has to be some sort of control, supervision," he said. Yaalon recently asked: "What is the big difference between Gaza and Judea and Samaria - Judea and Samaria we can go in at night, we know where they are, and pick them up. In Gaza we can't do that."
At your service.
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