The time of the righteous
by Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Jan. 9, 2009
This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The “inclination of the commander” in the Israel Defense Forces is now “to kill as many as possible,” as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling.
The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as “exercising caution”: the frightening balance of blood – about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn’t raising any questions, as if we’ve decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.
Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town. Don’t bother us about humaneness and compassion. Only at the edges of the camp can a voice of protest be heard – illegitimate, ostracized and ignored by media coverage – from a small but brave group of Jews and Arabs.
Don’t forget the West Bank
by Dror Etkes, Haaretz, Jan. 9, 2009
The world’s attention is focused on Gaza right now, with protesters, diplomats, politicians and journalists almost completely attuned to that small strip of land. According to Haaretz, for example, the unblinking eyes of more than 400 foreign correspondents have been reporting from alongside the Gaza-Israel border for over a week now, 24 hours a day. It is precisely at such times – when reporters, foreign leaders and the Israeli security apparatus are distracted – that the most destructive events tend to happen in the West Bank, the other Palestinian entity, where Israeli rule and Palestinian life are more consistently intermeshed. This is exactly the sort of moment when major expansions in settlement infrastructure are likely to occur, and settler aggressiveness becomes more overt.
Such settlement growth occurred in 2001-2003, during the height of the second intifada, and in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, as well, when attention was focused elsewhere, much as is true of Gaza today. During the second intifada and primarily during the interval between the rise of Ariel Sharon’s government, in March 2001, and the Aqaba summit in June 2003, the number of illegal settlement outposts doubled, reaching 102. Over the course of the bloody summer of 2002, I personally witnessed settlers, backed by the IDF, fencing off thousands of dunams of private Palestinian land.
This era was a test for the Israeli government, an examination of its ability to enforce the laws of the state on Israeli citizen-settlers. And, for the most part, the government failed that test. The massive land grabs during those years were undertaken with unconcealed encouragement from the Israeli government, which used them as another way to punish Palestinians for the unrest.
The 2006 war in Lebanon was also a significant growth period for West Bank settlements. During the war and in the months that followed, there was a marked increase in the number of mobile homes in 31 illegal settlement outposts, and 12 outposts were equipped with permanent structures. Solicitation of bids for settlement construction increased by more than 300 percent during the first nine months of 2006, compared to the corresponding period in the previous year.