Do these Israeli settlers block the path to peace?
Excerpts:
The fire started easily. Midway through July, the relentless sun had turned the grass and scrub into tinder. A couple of molotov cocktails tossed on the ground were enough to get it going. A stiff wind out of the west made sure it spread quickly. It raced across the open hillsides where sheep and goats often grazed, and leapt into the olive groves of the Palestinian farmers who live below the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar.^
As a reporter watched, the farmers rushed outside and tried hopelessly to tamp out the flames with olive branches. But the flames spread too rapidly, and the groves were quickly overwhelmed. A fire brigade from the nearby Palestinian city of Nablus arrived but could not get its water tank near enough to the fire.
On the hillside above the fire, half a dozen young men from Yitzhar were making their way slowly back to the settlement, stopping every few minutes to turn and look back at their handiwork. Above, inside the guarded settlement, a bunch of the hilltop youth, as they are known, looked down excitedly. “Ayzeh yofi!” some exclaimed (“How beautiful!”), clapping each other on the back. A couple of the youths carried large jugs of water down to their thirsty friends below.
[actually, 4 Arab youths are suspected of setting the blaze and were picked up byt the IDF and Martin adds this at the end: A few days later, the guard at the settlement’s entrance gate explained the cause of the scorched bushes and earth just below the gate – at least as it had been told to him.
“The Arabs set a fire,” he said. “They tried to burn us out.”]
...The extremists are a minority of the settlers, and not large enough in number to defeat a determined government action. But their political and symbolic influence is disproportionate – as is their will to defend their convictions to the end, which alarms Israel’s armed forces...At Israel’s insistence, however, there will have to be adjustments to account for areas where large concentrations of settlers now live. That land is to be swapped for land on Israel’s side of the frontier, which will go to Palestine. The problem is that as many as 160,000 settlers will be outside the blocs that are to be traded to Israel...
Many of them won’t go without a fight. “People talk about the violent resistance when the settlements in Gaza were evacuated,” says Dani Dayan, head of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ political organization. He is referring to the 2005 settlers’ eviction ordered by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and carried out by the Israeli army. “If they think evicting 8,000 people in Gaza was difficult, wait until they try to evict 160,000.”...A secular Israeli, Mr. Dayan was born in Argentina and now runs a software company. From his majestic, modern home in the affluent settlement of Maale Shomron., you can see the office towers of Tel Aviv, just 20 kilometres away.
Photo credit: Heidi Levine
He is an outspoken critic of the hilltop youth and other extremists, but he’s convinced that the settlements of the West Bank are “irreversible.” Ordering their forcible eviction, he says, “would break the backbone of Israeli society, and no responsible Israeli prime minister will do that.”
At least, not without paying a steep price.
...The quality-of-lifers, though numerous – about 150,000 – are pragmatic. They will vote to remain in their attractive communities, but they will not fight to retain them. The security patriots – perhaps 20,000 – would never think of fighting against Israeli soldiers, but their numbers have declined as a proportion of the West Bank communities.
It is the religious zealots who have grown in number and intensity.
...“We want everyone to know this land is ours,” says Mrs. Shoham, 48. It was “given to us by God.” She points a little way to east to where God is said to have entered into his covenant with Abraham, promising this area to the chosen people, the Jews. “No one has the right to give it away,” Mrs. Shoham says, taking a swipe at the government of Benjamin Netanyahu,...
...Last month, the commander of Israel’s forces in the West Bank called for the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva to be closed. General Avi Mizrahi said that several of the yeshiva leaders hold views that are not “consistent with democracy” and incite “Jewish terror” such as the attacks on nearby Arab towns and villages.
Avraham Binyamin, a spokesman for the settlement of Yitzhar, says Gen. Mizrahi, an army commander, had no business making such remarks. Accusations of inciting terrorism are “nonsense,” says Mr. Binyamin. “Terrorism is something that has to be proved – judged in a court of law – and no one has done anything like that with regard to the yeshiva.”
Mr. Binyamin did not deny that there have been acts of violence against Palestinians and their property carried out by youths of Yitzhar. But he argued that “Jews in Judea and Samaria suffer from real terrorism” such as the murder in March of five members of a family in the nearby settlement of Itamar. “To come along and accuse people when they respond to this sort of thing,” he said, “is like accusing a hungry child of stealing bread.”
...“The international community today is obsessed with this immediate solution of two states,” says Mr. Dayan, the Yesha leader. “It is futile.” Having a Palestinian state on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Mr. Dayan says, is not a formula for peace. “Peace will come if the perception of Israel is that it cannot be beaten,” he says. “We [the settlements] are not an obstacle to peace. … We strengthen Israel’s perception of being a strong country and therefore we bring peace closer.”
...Is compromise possible? Not according to Mr. Dayan. The maximum he believes Israel can afford to offer in negotiations isn’t close to the minimum that Palestinian leaders need. However, “that’s not as terrible as it sounds,” he insists. “We can reach a modus vivendi – an accommodation that is less than peace, less than a final-status solution – but that will make the life of all of us, Israelis and Palestinians, better.”
Such a situation “has its shortcomings,” Mr. Dayan acknowledges, including continuing to withhold full political rights from the Palestinians. But if both sides work to improve Palestinian living conditions, it’s better than the futile peace process, he says.
This idea – a well-provided, semi-autonomous Palestinian authority – is the most today’s West Bank settlers say they’ll agree to. Tomorrow’s settlers, with their radical yeshiva educations, likely won’t support even that...
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