IDF har endret sin "rule of engagement" under pågående kampanje på Vestbredden. Så sier kommentator Yagil Levy i Haaretz 17. oktober 2022:
"In the West Bank, the Israeli Army Is Losing the Little Restraint It Had"
Resultatet er langt flere drepte palestinere enn under lignende omstendigheter i tidligere år. Tankevekkende artikkel, Israel har erstattet diplomati med vold.
In the West Bank, the Israeli Army Is Losing the Little Restraint It Had
Palestinians
clash with Israeli forces during a protest against the killing of 4
Palestinians in an Israeli military raid into the Jenin refugee camp on
September 28, 2022 in Jenin, West Bank.Credit: Nedal Eshtayah / Anadolu Agency via AFP)
In
late March, following a series of terror attacks, Israel's policing
army launched Operation Breaking the Wave, in the course of which it
raided Palestinian cities to arrest and kill terror suspects. According
to UN reports, from the operation’s inception to the end of September,
Israel killed 74 Palestinians in the West Bank.
So that we don’t take such death tolls for granted, it would be proper
to compare them to Operation Critical Time (“Godel Hasha’a”), when from
October 2015 through March 2016, the army operated to suppress the “lone wolf Intifada” – attacks by Palestinians not officially affiliated with any organization—against Israelis in the summer of 2015.
Like
the current pattern, the army’s first response was offensive: Raids in
areas where the attacks originated. But the commander of the Judea &
Samaria Regional Brigade, Brig. Gen. Lior Carmeli, declared it a
failure “so palpable, that we decided to halt this offensive action
within a few days.”
The army realized that its methods are unsuited to deal with unorganized
attacks, and according to Carmeli, deduced that “[Palestinian]
casualties from the clashes are the main fuel for their continued
intensification. Avoiding this is one of the most significant lessons
from previous uprisings.”
Therefore, a restrained 'rules of engagement' policy was devised. Major
General Roni Numa the head of IDF Central Command at the time boasted
that “In the effort of deploying the tactical force, the combat
trooper’s ability to neutralize an assailant without killing…. so as to
reduce the number of funerals that turn into public displays of
sympathy…”
This policy was supported by Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who preached
restraint, although he says most ministers pushed for a tough response,
but were contained by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense
Minister Moshe Yaalon. Eventually, a third Intifada was averted. This does not mean that the military brass were peaceniks, but they understood the limitations of force.
Nothing is left of this restrained approach. Under the shock of the Azaria affair,
the military itself began to revel in the numbers of casualties. When
Aviv Kochavi replaced Eisenkot as IDF Chief of Staff he echoed this
trend through the terminology of “lethality” and in turning the body
count into a measure of success.
The increased right-wing influence on the government following
Netanyahu's removal, and the criticism of so-called “abandonment” of the
soldiers, brought about a loosening of the rules of engagement by late
2021, when firing on Palestinians throwing rocks and incendiary devices
was permitted even after they had released their projectile.
More captive to the settlers than ever before, Israel's policing army has yielded to their increased violence toward the Palestinians. The wisdom of restraint has evaporated. An indication of the trigger-happiness can be gleaned from B’tselem
reports, which are based in part on IDF Spokesperson’s Office official
reports and which present the circumstances of each casualty.
Let
a single indication suffice, pertaining to the killing of rock throwers
(excluding cases in which the army claims that the deceased used other
means of assault as well) – i.e., cases in which the soldiers could have
reacted without killing.
Out of 142 casualties in the 2015-2016 operation, 7 were shot after
throwing rocks, or some 5 percent. In “Breaking the Wave” it’s 9 of the
47 cases reported by B’tselem until the end of July, or some 20 percent.
Under such circumstances, the odds increase of the clashes expanding
into a broad and bloody operation, and perhaps the collapse of the
Palestinian Authority.
The conduct of the military strengthens the conclusion that perhaps the
difference between the two cases is not only the leadership but also the
agenda, which seeks piecemeal annexation of the West Bank, starting
with Area C, while rejecting the option of renewing talks. This is the
most likely interpretation for the combination of proactive violence,
which the Israeli leadership should know the likely outcome of, along
with diplomatic paralysis.
I september 2021 bestilte Meta/Facebook an uavhengig vurdering av sin rolle i Israel/Palestina-konflikten. Bakgrunnen var påstander om forskjellsehandling.
Rapport fra BSR ( Business for Social Responsibility) forelå 22. september 2022:
Rights Due Diligence of Meta’s Impacts in Israel and Palestine in May 2021 In September 2021, Meta commissioned BSR to review the human rights
impacts of the company’s policies and activities during the May 2021
crisis in Israel and Palestine.
Times of Israel oppsummerer slik 22. september 2022: "Probe finds over-enforcement of policies on
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp adversely impacted freedom of
expression and other rights during conflict, especially for Palestinians"
Human Rights Watch oppsummerer 27. september 2022: "For years, digital and human rights organizations have been calling for
an independent review of Meta’s content moderation policies. These
calls came as a result of Meta’s constant and deliberate actions to
censor the voices and narrative of Palestinians and those in solidarity
with them. Thus, denying Palestinians their right to freedom of
expression, affecting their freedom of assembly and freedom to political
participation and non-discrimination and further distorting the
international community’s understanding of what is happening in
Palestine.
We appreciate and value BSR’s efforts and professionalism through their assessment and independent review."
...........................................
Da er det klarlagt skjevbehandling av Facebook til ugunst for palestinerne. Og Facebook har fått en rekke forslag til forbedringer. Vil det bli bedre?
Det pågår forhandlinger om delelinjet i havet mellom Israel og Libanon, under ledelse av USA. På oppløpsiden oppstår problemer, og disse blir del av valgkampen i Israel, takket være Netanyahu. MIFF tvitrer om dette, og får tilsvar fra meg:
Conrad, #Israel har ved selvtekt lagt ut bøyer 5 km ut fra kysten, UTEN at det foreligger avtale med Libanon om grensene.
#Libanon ber at disse israelske bøyene angis som "de facto" istedet for som foreslått "status quo".
Problematisk?
Conrad, ALLE fornuftige må understøtte at en avtale om grenselinjer i havet mellom #Israel og #Libanon er positivt.
Da ville man ha EN mindre mulig årsak til krig.
Men #Netanyahu vil det MOTSATT, i valgkamp hisser han til krig.
En farlig mann
Den israelske menneskerettsadvokat Eytan Mack har flere artikler om israelske myndigheters forhold til militærjuntaen i Myanmar.
Her følger to av hans artikler:
6. oktober 2022: "Israel Saw Brutal Myanmar Regimes as a Business Opportunity, Documents Reveal" "Newly declassified documents show how Israel armed, trained and for decades built up successive military regimes in Myanmar. A murderous civil war? Torture? Massacre? For Israel, it’s fertile ground for cooperation"
23. april 2021: "Myanmar’s genocidal military is still a friend to Israel" "Public pressure has forced Israel to halt arms sales to the brutal military junta, but the state’s political support remains strong." (972 magazine)
Det er snakk om omfattende våpenleveranser og opplæring. Et eksempel på det politiske samarbeidet er avtalen av 2018:
"Israel, Myanmar Sign Education Pact for Programs About 'Holocaust and Its Lessons' and Xenophobia"
"Accord with country accused of ethnic cleansing will allow each side to edit how it is depicted in the other's textbooks" (Haaretz 29. mai 2018)
EDIT 27. oktober 2022
Ny artikkel, av Oded Yaron:
"Broker for Israeli Arms to Myanmar Arrested in Thailand for Drug Dealing, Money Laundering"
"Documents
reveal that a corporation implicated in corruption, served as a
middleman between IAI, Elbit, and Israel Shipyards and Myanmar's brutal
junta, despite international sanctions over the Rohingya genocide."
Dokumentasjon på hvordan israelske firmaer lenge har bygget opp militærjuntaen i Burma, nå Myanmar, med våpenleveranser og opplæring.
Her må det gransking til av en internasjonal kommisjon. Slik at de som står bak kan stilles til ansvar.
EDIT 2 5. september 2023 Ny artikkle av Oded Yaron: "Revealed |Israel Sold Arms to Myanmar Even After the 2021 Military Coup
"Shipping
records show Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems arming
Myanmar’s junta, which bombs civilian targets in the country"
Det må gjentas: Her må det gransking til av en internasjonal kommisjon. Slik at de som står bak kan stilles til ansvar.
Skudeneshavn 7. oktober 2022 / 27. oktober 2022 / 5. september 2023
Nye avsløringer om israelsk bruk av forgifting av motstandere er publisert 6. oktober i Haaretz.Fra før er kjent en rekke tilfeller av slike snikmord, tilsvarende det Russland har gjort i nyere tid i bl.a. UK
Det nye er at gift også ble brukt i 1948, slik det dokumenteres av de israelske forfatterne Benny Morris og Benjamin Kedar. Da er det blant annet snakk om bruk av tyfoid-basiller til å forgifte palestinsk drikkevann, så som i Acre, men også flere andre steder.
Haaretz har valgt tittelen: "Meshal Poisoning Provided Only a Glimpse Into Israel’s Biological Warfare Arsenal"
Dette er det mislykte forsøket i 1997 på snikmord med gift av Khaled Meshal i Amman Jordan.
Mossad-agenten ble tatt, og Netanyahu måtte levere ut motgift som reddet livet til Meshal.
Meshal Poisoning Provided Only a Glimpse Into Israel’s Biological Warfare Arsenal
New
article by Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar indicates that well before
the botched assassination attempt 25 years ago, Israel attempted mass
poisoning during the war in 1948
Hamas Leader Khaled Meshal addressing the 8th General Conference of Sudanese Islamic Movement in Khartoum, 2012.Credit: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters
On September 25, 1997, Mossad operatives from the special forces’ unit of Kidon (Hebrew for Bayonet) poisoned Khaled Meshal,
the chairman of the political bureau of Hamas, in Amman, Jordan. One of
the operatives held a small tube and sprayed Meshal’s ear with the
material.
The
Mossad modus operandi is to send one of its doctors into the arena of
operation in case an operative is injured and needs medical treatment,
without risking exposure at a local hospital. A female doctor,
accompanied by Mishka Ben David, one of Mossad intelligence officers,
was chosen for the mission in Jordan. They posed as an Israeli couple on
vacation in an Amman hotel. The doctor and Ben David possessed an
antidote, which would neutralize the poison if it leaked and injured the
operatives by mistake. Israel kept a backup antidote at another
location in Amman.
The mission failed. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu showed negligence and arrogance in executing an operation on
Jordanian soil, Israel’s most strategic ally in the Middle East. Just
three years earlier, Jordan had signed a peace treaty with the Jewish
state. However, the intelligence was also poor and the performance by
the operatives in the field was inadequate. Mossad operatives holding
falsified Canadian passports were arrested. Four others found shelter at
the Israeli embassy.
Jordan’s
King Hussein threatened to storm the embassy and to execute the
operatives. To placate the king, Israel agreed to release from prison Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, and to save Meshal’s life.
The doctor and Ben David gave one of the antidotes to a Jordanian
intelligence officer, who forwarded it to a Jordanian doctor. Israel
saved the life of Meshal, a bitter enemy of Israel until today.
On top of these self-inflicted wounds to
Israel’s own national interests, one of the most troubling ramifications
was the fact that the Meshal affair forced Israel to publicly admit
that it had used poison – a form of biological warfare by at least one
measure. Until then, the reports about the use of poison by Israeli
intelligence agents were always attributed to “foreign sources.”
Wadie Haddad in 1970.Credit: Wikipedia
At least two other incidents of this nature were revealed in the world
press. One was in 1978 after the death of Wadie Haddad, the operational
officer of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine. Haddad was the
architect of the spectacular hijacking of Israeli and international
airliners in the 1970’s, including the Air France flight diverted to
Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. In a daring operation, Israeli commandos
killed Haddad’s terrorists, who included German members of the Bader
Meinhof gang, and saved most of the hostages.
The Mossad retaliated. Knowing that Haddad had a sweet tooth, it
recruited one of his aides to be a spy. As instructed by Mossad
handlers, the aide purchased English-made Cadbury Chocolate in Belgium.
The chocolate was filled with poison prepared by Israeli scientists for
the Mossad. The Palestinian aide personally delivered it to Haddad, who
ate it without sharing. Haddad, who had suffered from severe underlying
illnesses, died a few weeks later in an East Berlin hospital. Until
today, Mossad veterans debate whether Haddad died of the poison or due
to his sickness, or because of the combination of the two factors.
Thirteen years after the failed assassination attempt against Meshal, the Mossad struck again. In 2010, Mossad agents poisoned Mahmoud Mabhouh,
a senior Hamas operative who liaised with Iran to smuggle weapons to
Gaza, in his Dubai hotel room. Mabhouh died, and all members of the hit
team returned safely to Israel. But the Dubai police managed to
reconstruct the operation, revealing that the Mossad had used forged
Western passports. The Mossad suffered a blow to its prestige and
omnipotent image, and the affair damaged Israel’s foreign relations.
The Dubai police commander presenting evidence regarding the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010.Credit: Reuters
The 1925 Geneva Protocol forbids the use of biological weapons. Fifty years later another international
agreement was signed: The Convention on the Prohibition of the
Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological)
and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, commonly referred to as the
Biological Weapons Convention.
However,
while 183 states have ratified the treaty, Israel, together with Egypt,
Somalia, Eritrea and Comoros, have refused to join it.
It
is widely assumed and reported that the various poisoning materials
used by the Mossad for the already published cases, and few more which
have remained secret, were manufactured at the Israel Institute for
Biological Research in Nes Ziona, 20 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.
The
institute, which jointly belongs to the Prime Minister’s Office and the
Defense Ministry, was founded in 1952, replacing the army’s Scientific
Corps. Its first director was Alexander Keynan.
Alexander Keynan, the first director of the Israel Institute for Biological Research.Credit: Shaul2806/Wikipedia
This unit now stars in a fascinating
article revealing the clandestine history of the biological warfare that
Israel conducted during its War of Independence in 1948. The article is
written by two historians, Benny Morris, professor emeritus at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, and professor emeritus Benjamin Ze’ev Kedar
of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The article – “‘Cast Thy Bread’:
Israeli Biological Warfare during the 1948 War” – was recently
published by Middle Eastern Studies.
This
article is a rarity for two reasons. First, it was researched and
published against the wishes of the Israeli security establishment,
which has tried for years to block any embarrassing historical documents
about that war exposing war crimes against Arabs, like murdering
prisoners, ethnic cleansing and destroying villages. Second, the article
is based on original documents stored in the Israel State Archive and
other archives.
Morris and Kedar had already discovered that the codename for the
operation was “Cast Thy Bread” – taken from a verse in the Book of
Ecclesiastes (11:1). Based on their research, they detail how scientists
from the Scientific Corps, together with battlefield units, were
involved in a systematic campaign to poison water wells and spread
typhoid bacteria in Arab villages and cities as well as among the
invading armies of Egypt and Jordan. The purpose was to frighten the
Arab-Palestinian population, to force them to leave and to weaken the
Arab armies.
The order to use the biological warfare was given or at least approved
by the founder of the Jewish state, David Ben-Gurion, who was its first
prime minister and defense minister. Ben-Gurion consulted with the top
scientists at the time including Prof. David Erenst Bergman, who is
consider the father of the Israeli nuclear program, Prof. Ephrain
Katzir, a future president of the state, and Prof. Alex Keynan, the
founder of the biological research institute. The top military echelon
privy to the clandestine operation included generals Yohanan Ratner and
Yigal Yadin, who was the de facto chief of staff during the 1948 war and
then-Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan. Dayan, a future chief of staff and foreign
minister, was given by the scientists tubes with typhoid bacteria. His
assignment was to deliver them to his subordinates. The instruction was
to spread it in water wells near Jericho, where the Jordanian army was
deployed, and in Jerusalem area villages where the most fierce battles
took place.
Moshe Dayan in August 1948.Credit: Jim Pringle/AP
However,
one of Dayan’s tubes broke, and his 3-year-old son Assi (a future
writer, actor and film director) was infected and had to stay in bed for
days.
Typhoid germs were also sent in bottles to
the southern front. But local left-leaning commanders refused to
participate in the operations. They complained to their senior commander
Haim Bar-Lev, also a future chief of staff and cabinet minister.
Bar-Lev told them to get rid of the bottles. Nevertheless, a few Israeli
troops thought the bottles contained soft drinks and drank them.
Luckily, they were not seriously ill.
The
article by Morris and Kedar also sheds light on a few more cases in
which Israeli soldiers were sent with the poison to Acre and the Galilee
village of Ilabun. According to British Arab and Red Cross documents,
dozens of local residents of Acre were poisoned and became severely ill.
An unknown number of them died.
The same method was also used in May 1948, a
week after Israel proclaimed independence, in Gaza. Two Jewish soldiers
from a special forces unit posed as Arabs and infiltrated Gaza with
tubes containing the typhoid germs. Their mission was to poison the Gaza
water well in order to stop the advancement of the Egyptian army. But
they were arrested, tortured and sentenced in August 1948 to death by an
Egyptian military court.
Israel
has never admitted the true nature of their mission but recognized them
as fallen soldiers. The article does not specify what was the actual
number of casualties caused by these biological warfare operations. Its
probably was not significant and was not widespread due to the
amateurish nature of the operation Cast Thy Bread and the logistical
difficulties. Yet, it’s no wonder that the Israeli security
establishment is ashamed of some chapters of its past and has been
trying to suppress the information.
Politisk oppvask i Hellas. Opposisjonspolitikere og journalister er hemmelig overvåket med spionvare:
"Greek intelligence service admits spying on journalist - sources"
(Reuters 3. august 2022)
"One more Greek lawmaker files complaint over attempted phone hacking" (Reuters 9. september 2022)
"Criminal Allegations Against Israeli-linked Spyware, Ex-intel Commander in Greek Hacking Scandal" "Investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis was under surveillance by Greece. Now he’s decided to take Intellexa, the firm behind the Predator spyware allegedly used against him, and its owners to court." (Haaretz 6. oktober 2022)
........................
Nå også i demokratiets vugge. Det er skremmende hvordan spionvare brer seg i noen politiske miljøer.
To ferske artikler summerer opp situasjonen i Israel - Palestina-konflikten:
1) "Why Israel’s plan of subcontracting the occupation is failing"
Oslo-avtalene har over tid resultert i at palestinerne administrerer sin egen okkupasjon, og ikke gitt PA noe reelt politisk fundament for en statsdannelse, snarere tvert imot.
2) "The Real Escalation Is the Destruction of Palestinian Space"
Beskrivelse av Amira Hass om hvordan gjennom årene de palestinske områdene på Vestbredden systematisk er oppdelt/omringet av ulovlige israelske nybygginger, slik at de fremståe som enklaver, ja en hullet sveitserost. - Og det er dette som er den israelske strategien, hvevder Amira Haas. (HELE artikkelen i Haaretz nederst under Kilde)
Oslo-avtalene skulle åpne en politisk vei til statsdannelse og selvstendighet og statsdannelse for palestinerne. Det er blitt motsatt, og disse to artiklene går grundig gjennom årsakene og viser resultatene pr oktober 2022.
The Real Escalation Is the Destruction of Palestinian Space Through
its conduct since Oslo, Israel has proven what the Palestinians have
claimed for more than 100 years – that the goal of Zionism is to
dispossess and expel them from their homeland.
The remains of the village of al-Tuwani in the South Hebron hills.Credit: Alex Levac
The
frenetic elections that take place with Italian frequency stands in
contrast to the stability of Israeli policy in the West Bank (including
East Jerusalem). By that, I mean the policy that, ever since the
occupation began in 1967, has been breaking up Palestinian territory
into as many small enclaves as possible, each surrounded and
disconnected from each other by as many Jewish-only settlement blocs as
possible. These blocs are expanding and are increasingly being connected
to Israel by a network of roads that is upgraded frequently.
The shredding of Palestinian space is the
first and most important escalation, a permanent one written in advance
into all government plans. Every Palestinian witnesses it and
experiences it personally. Israeli Jews ignore it, out of elective
ignorance, indifference and because they profit from it.
This
is the mother of all escalations, avout which every diplomat from the
European Union or the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem receives regular
reports. But in the mouths of their bosses at these nations’ foreign
ministries, it is translated into cliches such as “we support Israel’s
right to defend itself.” Diplomatic cynicism is also escalating.
East Jerusalem, the Israeli settlement town of Ma'ale Adumim, and the Dead Sea, in the occupied West Bank.Credit: Avshalom Halutz
Our media enthusiastically obsesses over minor, transient issues like the latest election poll and parrots ad nauseam the military/settler
mantra about the escalation in Jenin. Its most important mission is to
avoid dealing with what’s truly important – the planned, calculated
territorial dissection that many Israelis have been carrying out with
cold, juridical, surgical efficiency, wrapped in cunning, sophisticated
propaganda and carefully calculated pious lustfulness. The geographic,
demographic and aesthetic mutilation of Palestinian space is carried out
in broad daylight.
Israelization is racing forward. Luxurious suburbs awash in greenery,
signs at every intersection with ads for affordable single-family
homes, new traffic circles, and malls which boast a neighborly
atmosphere have all been turning Palestinian communities into
two-dimensional scenery or hiding them completely behind iron gates,
bypass roads, blocked roads and Israeli signs announcing that it’s
illegal for Israelis to enter. Israel’s spatial planning screams the
Palestinians’ redundancy and the unassailable superiority of residents
of the Jewish colonies, now and in the future.
Here and there, Haaretz or +972 website
report on acts of spatial rape perpetrated by Israel. But two or three
reports per month, or even per week, don’t reflect its scale, pace and
serial nature. To understand the destructiveness of Israeli planning in
this Palestinian territory and the diligent work of breaking it apart,
you have to keep redrawing the lines connecting thousands (did I say
thousands? It’s millions) of points – the facts on the ground created by
all Israeli governments over the years.
An outpost in the Umm Zuka reserve, West Bank, in 2017.Credit: Gil Eliahu
It started with a military order from 1971 that abolished Palestinian
towns’ planning authority. This order remains valid today in roughly 60
percent of the West Bank.
It continues with the expropriation of land for military purposes and
its subsequent transfer to the settlements, in violation of
international law; forbidding Palestinian construction and development;
environment-guzzling roads; agricultural land expropriated (“for the
public’s needs”) to benefit every isolated settlement; California-style highways that
connect the settlements to Israel; shining new paved roads that connect
the heart of each settlement with its new neighborhoods and outposts –
built several kilometers away – and in the process swallow up more of
the nearby Palestinian villages’ land reserves and pasturage; a ban on
Palestinian construction near these roads; and let’s not forget the
security road that surrounds each settlement.
It is taken further by preventing Palestinians from accessing their lands for years, on various pretexts and through various means;
limiting the amount of water allocated the Palestinians and restricting
their own drills to find water; declaring hundreds of thousands of
dunams of Palestinian land to be “state land”; allocating these state lands exclusively to Jews;
creating army firing zones to block Palestinians’ natural rural
development; acquiring land through forged sale documents; outposts that
begin with mobile homes and turn into permanent villas; blocking the
exits from nearby Palestinian villages for the sake of these outposts’
security; agricultural outposts that plant vineyards on ostensibly
“abandoned” Palestinian land; and herding outposts, which are the new
hot thing, so far the most gluttonous devourers of Palestinian land.
And
it concludes with cabinet decisions to legalize all of the above, as
well as the separation fence, which imprisons large swaths of fertile
Palestinian land to its west. The owners of this imprisoned land can
obtain permits to access it at certain times only with great difficulty,
but any Israeli can wander through it to his heart’s content, and
sometimes even take it over.
The mount of Olives in East Jerusalem and in the background the settlement city of Ma'ale Adumim, in the West Bank.Credit: Avshalom Halutz
Every such fact must be connected to all
the others. Otherwise, it’s impossible to understand that fact and its
implications. Otherwise, you can’t see the whole monster.
You
can quantify the enormous number of dunams taken over by the herding
outposts again and again. You can calculate how many dunams have been
expropriated from Palestinian areas, whether de jure or de facto. You
can describe the teeth of the bulldozers that uproot olive groves both
ancient and new. And you can measure almost to the inch how much clearly
Palestinian agricultural land, with ancient wells and gurgling springs,
has been converted into a treasury of real estate for Jews or green
lungs free of Arabs (except for the workers), or on the way to becoming
Arab-free.
But you have to connect all these facts again and again to understand how the land has been filled with settlement blocs – the Shiloh bloc,
the eastern and western and northern Etzion blocs, the Reihan bloc, the
Latrun enclave, the Talmonim bloc, the Ariel bloc, the Rimonim bloc,
the bloc comprised of the Old City of Hebron plus Kiryat Arba. These
will soon be joined by the northern Jordan Valley bloc, the Shima bloc
in the southwestern Hebron Hills and the Susya bloc in the southeastern
West Bank. And Israel’s grasping hand is still outstretched.
There’s no doubt that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s hope/plan of 1995
has been fulfilled. A month before he was murdered, he told the Knesset
that one of the foundations of any permanent-status agreement would be
“to establish settlement blocs like Gush Katif – and I wish theywere
[already] established – in the West Bank as well.” Gush Katif, located
in the Gaza Strip, was admittedly dismantled. But in its place, more and
more settlement blocs and metastasis have been and still are being
established in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, as numberless as
the grains of sands on a beach.
Aside from the ongoing reports in the
Palestinian press, Israeli organizations like Kerem Navot, Bimkom, Ir
Amim, Peace Now, Emek Shaveh, B’Tselem and Yesh Din, as well as Arij,
the Palestinian Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, provide a great
deal of information about all of the above, along with real-time alerts
and periodic in-depth analyses. Nevertheless, anyone who hasn’t
experienced this process or seen it with their own eyes will have
trouble grasping the violence and destructiveness of these planning
measures.
Dedicated
lawyers, both self-employed and from organizations like Haqel, the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Hamoked – Center for the
Defense of the Individual, together with Palestinian and Israeli
activists from various organizations try to stop this serial rape, or at
least send alerts. But these organizations, which are few and small in
number, are increasingly being persecuted and marginalized.
Ariel University in the settlement city of Ariel, the occupied West Bank.Credit: Moti Milrod
The rightist media and settler organs
frequently publish victorious reports about another Godly Zionist real
estate achievement. Consumers of this media experience the shredding and
fragmentation, and the compression of Palestinians into pales of
settlement as a redemption of the land, the fulfilment of a divine
commandment and a leap forward in their quality of life and material
gains.
The
settlers’ violence and their takeover of Palestinian land, beyond that
of the official, published master plans, are an inseparable part of the
system. The violence is reported on a bit more, because it’s a story
with a plot. Nevertheless, despite occasional expressions of shock, the
forces of “law” and order permitted and continue to permit this
systematic violence, and thereby legitimize and encourage it.
It all takes place before the soldiers’
very eyes, yet they either stand aside or shoot the Palestinians who
rush to the assistance of their brethren. The victims of the attacks are
arrested, the Jewish assailants file complaints against the victims,
the police either fail to locate any Jewish suspects or fail to question
them, the case is closed due to lack of public interest, and the
prosecution doesn’t file indictments. That’s what happens month after
month, year after year.
The
Jewish violence that accompanies every new outpost was and is like the
urine a dog uses to mark his territory. After it comes the army, the
planners, the settlements' regional council and the lawyers. Then they
finish the job with mobile homes, followed by hookups to water and
electricity, and most likely by taking over a spring and/or barring
Palestinians from accessing their olive groves. The grove’s owners are
allowed to go there only twice a year, with advance coordination and a
military escort – if the settlers are so kind as to allow it.
The Israeli settlement city of Betar Illit.Credit: Emil Salman
But this is never a permanent, final border. More violence expands the
territory even further, if only by a few dunams each time. And amid it,
the pockets intended for the Palestinians get swallowed up. The smaller,
denser and more isolated they are from other such pockets, the better.
Shattering the territory goes far beyond
“thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state.” It’s deliberate,
institutionalized abuse of each and every one of the five million
Palestinians living in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the
Gaza Strip (the severance of Gaza’s population from the West Bank's is
part of this territorial segmentation). This abuse targets property and
income, tradition and family life, the possibility of an education,
social ties, freedom of movement, any chance of a future.
The
institutionalized, sophisticated theft of territory assaults both the
present and the history of every locale, city, village and family and
harms the physical and mental health of every Palestinian. The problem
with this territorial carve-up isn’t that it weakens the Palestinian
Authority, but that it inevitably and intentionally sabotages the
collective living in Gaza and the West Bank.
The world once promised that this
collective’s right to independence and freedom would be realized. It
promised and betrayed its promise. Only the Palestinians’ impressive
rootedness and endurance have disrupted the Israeli master plan a tad.
Some
people criticize the outgoing (anti-Netanyahu) government, which has
been in place for the past year, saying it’s worse than its predecessors
with regard to its policy in the West Bank – the high number of
Palestinians killed by soldiers; the pogroms perpetrated by settlers
with a green light from the police, prosecution and army; the plans to
legalize outposts; and so forth. This accusation is both correct and
incorrect.
Israeli
security forces deploy on the roof of a Palestinian home during a
search, following reports of a shooting attack on a bus in Salem
village, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on Sunday.Credit: Majdi Mohammed /AP
Because the shattering of Palestinian space
is a planned, calculated process that spans successive governments,
it’s only natural that every stage of it is more sophisticated and more
destructive than its predecessor and crosses some line that wasn’t
crossed in the previous stage. This is a preordained escalation that’s
happening before our very eyes, and the center-right government formed
by Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz (with help from Merav
Michaeli and Nitzan Horowitz) neither stopped it nor intended to stop
it.
But
it’s only by chance that the current government played this part in
2022. In 2023, the planning escalation will continue, because –
disastrously for us – there’s no chance that the world will wake up
anytime soon and exert significant pressure on Israel and Israelis to
stop it.
This destruction and dispossession isn’t a
new invention; Israel has both expertise and experience in this field.
It is now doing in the West Bank what it has been doing within it's
recognized borders ("the green line") ever since 1948.
In
the early 1990s, when the diplomatic process between Israel and the PLO
was launched, the logical expectation – on the part of the
Palestinians; the Israeli peace camp, which once existed but no longer
does; and the countries that lent their aegis to the Oslo process – was
that Israel would stop this process of carving up and stealing land in
22 percent of historic Palestine. But under cover of the peace talks,
Israel actually accelerated this process and developed an ever greater
appetite for real estate.
It
thereby proved the accuracy of the Palestinians’ analysis and claims
for more than 100 years – that the goal, and the essence, of Zionism is
their dispossession and expulsion from their lands and their homeland.
The Oslo Accord was worded vaguely enough
that it was possible to waste time on interpretive arguments over the
dates, the amount of territory to be transferred to Palestinian civilian
authority in each military redeployment, the connection between Gaza
and the West Bank, the return of the Palestinians uprooted in 1967,
construction in the settlements, the right to water and the economy.
Given the patently unequal balance of power, the interpretations and
interests of the stronger side – Israel – obviously won out and were
reflected in practical policy.
The
interim period stipulated by that agreement was supposed to last five
years and end in May 1999. By that time, the sides were supposed to have
reached understandings about a permanent agreement that was then
supposed to be implemented immediately.
The Palestinian leadership and the leaders of the Fatah party, which
headed the PLO, as well as Israeli peaceniks and both Arab and Western
countries, all concluded that the permanent agreement would be based on
establishing an independent Palestinian state in the territory Israel
occupied in 1967, despite the vehement opposition to such a state by the
Israeli leaders responsible for Oslo, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
The belief of the Palestinian negotiators, headed by Yasser Arafat, that
Israel had indeed decided to change its spots and stop taking over
occupied Palestinian lands is a subject for historical, psychological
and political research.
The
belief of the Palestinian negotiators, headed by Yasser Arafat, that
Israel had indeed decided to change its spots and stop taking over
occupied Palestinian lands is a subject for historical, psychological
and political research.Credit: Adel Hana / AP
In exchange for a gradual shrinking of the occupation during the
“interim period,” which was supposed to end 23 years ago with the
transfer of most of the West Bank to Palestinian authority (that is, to
what the Oslo Accord termed Area A), the Palestinian leadership agreed
to begin security coordination and cooperation with the main mechanisms
of the occupation – the Shin Bet security service and the army. It
agreed to take action against members of its own people who used or
advocated the use of weapons to oppose the agreement with Israel. The
reasons it gave for this were that only the Palestinian Authority was
entitled to bear arms, and that security coordination was essential to
the success of the five-year-long interim phase, and thus to the
establishment of the Palestinian state.
Almost 30 years have passed since then, and the promise embodied by the
Oslo Accord – that the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would be
freed from the Israeli occupation – hasn’t been kept. Nevertheless,
Israel demands that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the
Palestinian security services continue protecting the occupation – the
settlers and the army. And Abbas and the security services obey. This
behavior peaked two weeks ago, when, under a steamroller of Israeli
pressure, the PA security services acted like an army of occupation and
arrested a Palestinian in Nablus who was suspected of shooting at
Israeli military targets and settlers.
What benefit or meaning there is in weapons that do nothing to stop the
Israeli machinery of destruction and dispossession and leave tens of
thousands of Palestinians prey to settler violence is a question for
another article. But the absurdity is clear. The army and the Shin Bet
have a Palestinian subcontractor. They continue to demand that it uphold
its part of a deal that expired long ago and that Israel, from the very
first moment, gutted of any respect of Palestinian rights, whether
human rights or their rights as a people. How long will senior Fatah
officials and the Palestinian security services continue collaborating
with this Israeli escalation and humiliation? Only time will tell.
