My new column is up at The American Prospect:
The mob numbered about 200 young and angry people. Some had covered their faces. They gathered on a West Bank road near midnight and hurled stones at passing cars. Israeli troops, including the commander of the division in charge of the area and his deputy, rushed to the spot. One of the rioters opened the commander’s jeep door and hurled a brick at him. Another shouted, “Nazi” at the deputy commander and hit him with a rock.
The rioters finally left. A few minutes later, several dozen of them—mostly teenagers—forced open the gate of a nearby Israeli army base. The sentries failed to stop them. At the parking lot outside the headquarters, they broke car windows and slashed tires. When a squad of soldiers chased them from the base, they blocked the road leading to it.
Clashes between the Israeli army and locals in the West Bank aren’t a new story. The apparent twist in these incidents, which took place on the night between this Monday and Tuesday, is that the rioters were Israelis—young, extreme rightists commonly known as “hilltop youth.” The reason for their wrath, according to the flood of Israeli news reports of the eventful night, was rumors that the police and army were about to carry out Israeli Supreme Court orders to evacuate a small settlement outpost, Ramat Gilad, built in violation of the laws in force in the West Bank.
From Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down, Israeli officials responded as if the confrontations represented an unprecedented internal assault on the state, the rule of law, and Israel’s internal cohesion. After an emergency meeting with cabinet ministers and top army and police commanders, Netanyahu declared, “We have a democracy in this country. … No one is allowed to break the law. No one is allowed to attack Israel Defense Forces soldiers.” The head of the army’s Central Command, responsible for the West Bank, said that “in 30 years in the service, I’ve never seen hatred like this from Jews toward our soldiers.” In a press statement, Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared that “homegrown terror … will not be tolerated.”
In short, Netanyahu, Barak, and colleagues were shocked, shocked to find that settlers were breaking the law and that the extreme right can attack the state. In fact, only the details—attacking a division commander and his deputy, breaking into a base—are new. Otherwise, there is plenty of precedent for the extreme right’s behavior. In a wider historical view, settler radicalism has been fostered by Israeli government officials and bodies since the occupation of the West Bank began in 1967. The state is under attack by its own creation. …
Read the rest here.