By
Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States) (YellowTimes.org)
Colin Powell's list of humiliations in
Israel included a lecture by Prime Minister
Sharon explaining to him why Israel cannot stop
expanding settlements. Sharon asked Powell,
"What do you want, for a pregnant woman to
have an abortion just because she is a
settler?"
The
imagery of settlers as benign civilians, just
wanting to live their lives as they choose,
serves Sharon's intentions of burying the
"roadmap" and saving Israel once more
from the looming threat of peace. Indeed, the
continuing expansion of settlements during the
Oslo process already "saved" Israel
from peace once. From 1993 to 2001, settler
population in the West Bank increased 91 percent,
convincing Palestinians that Israel had no
intentions to leave the Occupied Territories.
But
that imagery is false. West Bank settlements are
nothing like suburbs in New Jersey. They are a
fundamental aspect of what is unique about
Israel. It is therefore necessary to understand
settlements for what they really are -- weapons.
The Hebrew words for "settlement" are yeshuv
and hityashvut. Israelis do not apply
these words to settlements in the Occupied
Territories, but rather to earlier settlements:
the kibbutzim and moshavim
(collective farming communities) created both
before and after 1948 in areas that are today
Israel. The opposite of yeshuv is
wasteland or desert, Shmamma. The usage
hints at the mythical "emptiness" of
Palestine in early Zionist imagination -- the
desert that awaits the settlers to make it bloom.
This myth ignores the fact that Palestinians
already lived in Palestine for generations.
In
contrast, the Hebrew word used to describe
post-1967 settlements in the Occupied Territories
is hitnakhlut, a word of biblical origin
which means roughly "settling down on one's
patrimony." The opposite meaning is
nomadism, wandering in the desert. The change in
usage reflects the transformation of Zionism from
the colonial mindset of the early settlers to the
religious fanaticism of the post 1967 settlers.
Another
set of words that describe settlements in Hebrew
comes from military terminology: lookout, outpost
-- Mitzpe, Ma'akhaz, He'akhzut,
etc. The early Zionist settlers are often
referred to as "pioneers" in English.
However, the Hebrew word they themselves use, khalutz,
comes from the military lexicon. It means
"scout."
In
all their forms, settlements are therefore
something other than civilian habitations. They
are actions at the front of the war of conquest,
a war alternatively conceived as a struggle
against the desert (hityashvut), a
struggle against squatters (hitnakhlut),
or, more honestly, a struggle for military
control (Mitzpe, He'akhzut). All three are
metaphors of war: civilization vs. nature,
landlords vs. squatters, us vs. them. The problem
is that what appears as nature is an existing
civilization; the so-called squatters have an
ownership title; and "us" is also
"them."
Settling
also means vanquishing the internal nomad, the
wandering Jew of the European anti-Semitic
discourse, which permeates Zionist imagery. The
extreme violence of the settlers is also a matter
of this repressed identification: a hatred of the
self projected onto the idealized other.
Little
about the purpose of the settlement activity is
secret. From early on, Zionism uses a military
term for the general strategy of building
settlements: "the conquest of the
land," kibosh ha'adama. As part of a
military campaign, settlements in the West Bank
follow an explicit plan of attack with clear aims
and means written in openly available documents:
the Alon plan, the Drobless plan, the Sharon
plan, The 100,000 plan, etc.
Like
all military actions, settlements must have
targets. Natzeret Illit targets Nazareth; Kiriat
Arba targets Al-Khalil (Hebron); Kedumim targets
Nablus; Ma'ale Adumim targets the territorial
continuity between the northern and the southern
West Bank; Ashkelon targets Al-Majdal, the
Palestinian town that was ethnically cleansed in
1950, long after the fog of the 1948 war had
dissipated, and so on.
Settlements
can occupy a strategic position such as a
hilltop, a clear line of fire toward a road, a
water well, etc.; settlements can bury the traces
of a destroyed Palestinian village; they may sit
on the outskirts of a Palestinian town, blocking
potential urban development, or of a Palestinian
village, targeting its agricultural fields; many
settlements target the water aquifers.
Since
1948, the first battalion, thrown into action
once a settlement has been decided, is composed
of bureaucrats -- mapmakers, hydrologists, civil
engineers, lawyers, judges, and apparatchiks.
Their job is to figure out which land can be
confiscated from Palestinians, and how best to
disrupt the civil ecology of the target.
Land
can be expropriated for "public" use,
namely Jewish use; or it can be declared as
"abandoned" if it belonged to a
refugee. Often, however, the settlement begins as
a military camp because "security" is
the best legal justification for confiscating
private Palestinian property -- a house, an
orchard, a field. The NAKHAL brigade is a
special paratroop unit whose job includes
providing personnel for new settlements disguised
as military camps.
Often
the land is designated "state land" in
order to ward off legal challenge in the
specially designed military "appeal
committee," which rubber-stamps the armed
robbery. "State land" is land Israel
reserves for the exclusive benefit of Jews (this
is what the term "Jewish State" means
in practice). For example, lease contracts in
settlements prohibit habitation by non-Jews.
Sometimes
the appearance of fairness requires that land
taken from Palestinians spends a few years in
decontamination, for example, as park land,
environmental reserve, etc. before it is
"thawed" for its final destination as a
new Jewish settlement. This is particularly the
case in East Jerusalem.
In
the end, it doesn't matter how the land is
procured. The Settlement of Shilo, established in
1985, is 45 percent land declared
"public," 52 percent land expropriated
for "security" reasons, and 3 percent
land expropriated for "public" use.
Shilo is still 100 percent used as a weapon
against the Palestinian population.
After
the bureaucrats come the bulldozers, followed by
the mobile homes, the construction workers, and
finally the settlers. Palestinians with Israeli
citizenship, who are excluded from most jobs in
Israel, can at least feed their families by
working as construction workers, erecting the
gravestones of their own disappearance.
When
families finally move into a new settlement, the
war just begins. A settlement (unlike a
Palestinian village) needs room to grow, land
reserves, an abundance of cheap water, etc.,
which the state of Israel will provide, often by
using resources denied to the target village or
town. For example, each settler in Hebron
consumes over nine times more water daily than
his water-starved Palestinian neighbor.
Palestine
villages grey; Israeli settlements blue; white
area C appropriated by Israel
In
addition, a settlement needs access -- a road to
connect it with other settlements. Roads are a
key mechanism for confiscating Palestinian
property. Between August 1994 and September 1996,
4,386 dunam of private land (there are about 4.5
dunams per acre) were confiscated for the purpose
of constructing seventeen "bypass"
roads. Roads are long and wide and their
trajectory can be shifted here and there to
achieve maximum impact in terms of houses that
must be demolished, orchards that need to be
uprooted, and growth that can be stifled. Used
properly, a road is a weapon of mass destruction.
For example, road 447, which shortens the trip to
the Settlement of Ariel by a full five minutes,
"necessitated" uprooting one thousand
olive trees and confiscating 75 dunams from
residents of the two Palestinian villages which
Ariel targets. In addition, every road that
connects two Jewish settlements doubles as a road
that separates two Palestinian towns.
Palestinians cannot use "Jewish" roads.
In
this manner, the land becomes a palimpsest, in
which every act of civil engineering is also its
opposite, an act of war: roads increase the
distance between people; building houses leads to
overcrowding; laying down water pipes creates
water shortages, etc. All aspects of human
existence are turned into weaponry. Even the
sewage the settlement produces is a weapon
against downhill Palestinian towns. Every feature
in the landscape appears doubly, with a plus sign
in the Jewish ecology and with a minus sign in
the Palestinian one.
Finally,
like all offensive military operations,
settlements trigger a defensive reaction, which
Israel calls "terrorism." Hence
settlements need protection, fences, a security
perimeter, a nearby army encampment, a wall,
bypass roads, etc. All these require physical
space, thus justifying additional land
confiscation, additional fields that can be
declared off limit to their owners (so that they
can be declared state land after three years, as
the Ottoman Law prescribes), as well as
checkpoints, curfews, missile attacks,
imprisonment, assassinations, and so on.
A
settlement is an aggressive action in a
post-modern war, a genocidal war that cannot be
televised even though it happens in full view of
the camera.
Chinese
military theoreticians Qiao Liang and Wang
Xiangsui write in their 1999 book
"Unrestricted Warfare" that in the war
of the future there will be no traditional
battlefields, no combatants, and no weaponry. The
war of the future will happen everywhere, will
engage everyone, and will be fought using
commonplace everyday objects. In essence, they
warn us that there will no longer be a
distinction between war, terrorism, and everyday
life.
In
Palestine, this future is already one hundred
years old.
For
detailed data on settlements, see B'Tselem: http://www.btselem.org/Download/Land_Grab_Eng.pdf
An
earlier version of this article appeared in the
spring 2003
SustainCampaign.org
newsletter.
[Gabriel
Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He
is an unabashed "opssimist." He writes
his columns because the pen is sometimes mightier
than the sword - and sometimes not. He lives in
the United States.]
Gabriel
Ash encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org
Michael Matza
Ben
Shahar, the economist, has studied the cost of
evacuating isolated settlements. He estimates the
cost at $750 million to $2.4 billion.
A
detailed look at the settlement map shows that at
least 100 settlements, with 60,000 residents,
cannot be included in the areas annexed to Israel
in the context of a comprehensive peace
settlement, Ben Shahar wrote in his first report,
excerpts of which were published by the Israeli
daily Haaretz last week.
"We
assume the average size of the families in these
settlements is at least five people," Ben
Shahar said. An average house could be built for
$150,000, on land provided by the Israel Lands
Administration.
Regarding
funding, some of the money would come from donor
countries in exchange for the housing units left
behind by the settlers for the Palestinian state,
Ben Shahar says.May.13.2003
A
recent radio programme
A recent radio
programme contained an interview with the leaders
of a tiny group of Jewish settlers encroaching on
new land in the occupied territories of
Palestine. The interviewer was incredulous that
at such a critical time, seemingly intelligent
people should be inflaming the situation rather
than trying to mollify it. There seemed no
rational reason for such provocative
behaviour. The settlers themselves,
suffering great hardships in establishing their
new community, justified their behaviour through
an appeal to religious authority. One could not
help noticing that the undoubted hardships and
danger only served to reinforce their sense of
righteous conviction and, it has to be said, a
somewhat smug 'holier than thou' attitide.
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