My new column is up at The American Prospect:
The settlement’s security man did not like us. He did not like the cameraman with his bulky gear, or the two documentary film producers who’d brought Dror Etkes and me to the outpost of Derekh Ha’avot south of Bethlehem, and he certainly didn’t like Etkes, an Israeli activist known for expertise on land ownership and for his legal challenges to West Bank settlement. The security coordinator wore civvies but bounced a bit on the balls of his feet in the spring-coiled posture of junior combat officers, or recently discharged officers.
“You can’t film in the neighborhood,” he told us. Neighborhood is a euphemism for an outpost, a mini-setttlement ostensibly established in defiance of the Israeli government but actually enjoying state support. Derekh Ha’avot — the name means “Forefathers’ Road” — is next to the veteran settlement of Elazar but outside its municipal boundaries. The security man worked for Elazar. Filming would be “a security risk. I don’t know a lot about security, but I know a little,” he sneered, meaning, I know a whole lot.
That security argument, I can say with very little risk, was a bluff. Derekh Ha’avot, home to three dozen families, stands on privately owned Palestinian land, as military authorities confirmed in an October 2007 letter to another activist, Hagit Ofran (in Hebrew). But last year, in a ploy to evade a Supreme Court order to demolish the outpost, the Defense Ministry announced it was reexamining the land’s status to see whether it was actually state property.
The man facing us at the outpost who wanted nothing filmed was making his small contribution to keeping the occupation’s realities out of the sight of the majority of the Israeli public. For that, he deserves thanks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Comfortable public ignorance of West Bank realities is essential to the Netanyahu’s domestic efforts to paint a fictional picture of the West Bank and of Israel’s deteriorating diplomatic situation. …
Read the rest here.
Read about my forthcoming book, The Unmaking of Israel.
I think the basic point of this article is undeniable: Israelis basically ignore the post-1967 settlements, including even annexed settlements such as the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, which is terra incognita even among Jerusalemites (at least it was when I lived in Jerusalem). Since the Aksa Intifada, Israelis don’t seem to travel in Judea and Samaria anymore, even just over the Green Line to buy produce or get their cars repaired. That’s how it seems to me, anyway, but I wouldn’t know; I don’t travel there either.
My impression is that most Israelis don’t really like “settlers,” meaning the ideological ones. They don’t hate them, but they don’t like them.
On “[w]hether the settlers are acting as an arm of the state, or the state as an arm of the settlers,” it doesn’t look like a figure-ground problem to me, just from reading the occasional news stories. On day-to-day decisions it looks like the state as an arm of the settlers, not the other way around. But that does not imply the “driver’s seat” hypothesis, that a small group of settlers is, because of coalition politics, in the “driver’s seat” of Israeli settlement policy. While the settlers drive small decisions that most Israelis don’t care much about – an outpost here or there, expansion, etc. – the Israeli Jewish public as a whole is firmly in the driver’s seat on the big decision: withdrawal (or not) of settlements.
On Netanyahu’s speech, GS writes:
Yes, it was definitely aimed at Israeli voters. Still, I think David Frum put it best: “That wasn’t Benjamin Netanyahu speaking. That was Congress speaking.”
Like it or not, rhetorically it was a fantastic speech. Much better than I expected from the Israelis, who still think “Axis of Evil” is what Americans like to hear. For instance, Netanyahu thanked Congress not for money, not for foreign aid, not for assistance, not for arms, but for the “tools” Israel needs to defend itself. A beautiful way to thank America for money without calling attention to it. Somebody put a lot of thought into the words and symbols.
Clarification: of course I meant Israelis ignore post-1967 settlements in the West Bank, not post-1967 settlements in general.
Your comment that the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem is “terra incognita” to most Israelis is rather odd. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli visit that place and the Western Wall every year. For that matter, tens of thousands of Israeli visit Hevron every year. Certainly, a non-religious Jew who doesn’t view Jerusalem or Hevron as having any importance is not going to visit there very often, but there are at least 3-4 million Israelis who do view them as important and do visit there. Polls show overwhelming opposition to plans to divide the city.
I guess one’s own personal perspective depends on whom one hangs out with.
For some time the IDF has been deciding when the courts, especially the High Court, overstep their jurisdiction. The fence in Bil’in is perhaps the most obvious example. There can be no reason for ignoring the Court order to alter the fence (ignored now several years) save IDF refusal to relinquish control over the meaning of State security; so, absurdly, protestors against that gate are arrested or otherwise controlled even though the Court has already affirmed their position.
The IDF implicitly holds that relinquishing authority would snowball. I suspect that had the IDF decided to move the Bil’in gate on its own the deed would have been done.
The petty harrassment Gershom underwent in this piece is (or should be) illegal. It was common in the American Jim Crow South as well. In extreme, Southern juries would no convict whites accused of crimes against blacks–even murder. Things changed only when the Federal government prosecuted, removing the case not just to a Federal court but another venue as well–so away from local opinion.
If a legal settlement (under Israeli law) is supplying material (a car) to an illegal settlement it is violating the law, as is the IDF for ignoring the violation. As these violations grow, small networks of material transfer grow within the IDF, linked to the illegal and legal settlements. What might once have been framed as an issue of military discipline takes on a greater significance. Will the High Court interfere with the IDF’s national purpose? Who defines that purpose? Who will, must, be allowed to make mistakes? The IDF will not permit High Court mistakes.
As to the US Congress’ recent worship of Bibi, I say this: I live surrounded by Tea Partiers and their like. Israel symbolizes, apart from Biblical matters, the last American Western State. Natives must be displaced for the national good, especially so since these natives, thesedays, foster terrorists. Obama has a domestic agenda which overrides any feeling for Palestinians. To be “pro-Palestinian” is to limit growth and security. Our way of life matters; all else is secondary. To speak of the fate of Native Americans is to waste your time. The Gazan blockade is deserved. Only we hurt.
George Mitchell negotiated with the IRA to decommision their weapons. Unlike Obama and Hamas, Mitchell talked with the violent. The IRA is now mostly gone, so too their weapons. I suspect that, apart from the endless fatigue experienced when dealing with Israel and Palestine, Mitchell resigned just days before the Bibi love fest because he could not abide the Administration’s new, overt, policy. The Republican House’s decision to invite Bibi was brilliant. America first, out there, and at home. Are you an American First? Where do we cut spending? So Obama co-opted Bibi.
The love-fest between the Prime Minister and the U.S. Congress last month is no mystery to me. Both Boehner and Netanyahu want to see a Republican president elected in 2012. Netanyahu’s U.S. trip was primarily to drive home his view that Obama is not the “pro Israel” President; he’s campaigning for a Republican in 2012 (any Republican).
I suppose he’ll never really forgive the President for not bombing Iran and holding a 3rd U.S. war “in reserve”.
Thanks for opening more and more eyes to the reality on the ground.