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BEWARE - WOUNDED
LION!
The Other Israel - Nr. 4
- Tel Aviv 21.11.98
Unterdrücke nicht und bedränge
nicht!
After having
exhausted all possible delaying
tactics, Prime Minister Netanyahu
had no choice but to carry out the
first installment of the obligations
which he took in the Wye River
Memorandum, and hand over a sizable
slice of the northern West Bank - an
area where tens of thousands of
Palestinians live in thirty-four
towns and villages. Until last
Thursday, the Israeli army was able
to enter these villages at any time,
day or night, imposing curfews,
knock on the door and arrest whoever
they wanted. As of Friday morning,
such a visitation by the Israeli
military would be an act of war. Yet
the whole area remains an enclave,
surrounded on all sides by
still-occupied territory...
On the
morning of Thursday, November 18 -
one day before this
internationally-hailed withdrawal -
Israeli peace activist Salim Abbas
happened to visit a more remote and
obscure part of the West Bank, the
Jiftlic area of the Jordan Vally. He
had come to visit the Da'is extended
Beduin family, living with the
owner's consent on a plot of
privately-owned Palestinian land -
and arrived just in time to witness
a massive raid by the army and the
semi-military Border Guards, who
went on a rampage of destruction:
demolishing the Beduins' tents and
confiscating them as well as the
inhabitants' meager belongings;
ruining the cattle-pen and
confiscating the goats; confiscating
also the Beduins' single truck; and
to cap it all, destroying the water
tank and spilling its contents into
the sands. Sixty people - men,
women and children - were left under
the open sky, with literally nothing
left to them.
On the
same day, Prime Minister Netanyahu
arrived at a spot not far from
there, to address a gathering of the
Jordan Valley settlers and assure
them that the region "will remain
Israel's forever". In pursuit of
that purpose, it seems that an
effort is being made to "cleanse"
the Jordan Valley of Arab
presence...
The
honeymoon which never really began
is definitely over. Netanyahu
reluctantly resigned himself to the
Wye Agreement, whose full
implementation will leave the
Palestinians with about 40% of the
West Bank - but he seems all the
more determined to hold on at any
cost to the other 60%. "Move, run
and grab as many hilltops as you
can. What we take now will stay
ours, what we don't grab will go to
them" was Foreign Minister Sharon's
exhortation to the settlers.
In a
backhanded way, the same speech also
acknowleged that a Palestinian state
is inevitable - but according to
Sharon, such a state will consist of
no more than than these 40%, a
series of disconnected enclaves, and
will be denied any share of
Jerusalem. The Palestinian position
about such a "solution" was clearly
expressed in Arafat's "Rifle
Speech": faced with this
possibility, the Palestinians will
have no choice but to use their
guns.
Arafat's speech, as well as
Sharon's, reverberated throughout
the country and the world - until
Big Brother intervened from
Washington, to restore a temporary
calm. And so the process continues -
but in an atmosphere of utter
distrust. Netanyahu's reluctant
piecemeal handing over of territory
fails to build any confidence among
the Palestinians. And Arafat's
issuing of decrees "against
incitement" and for "the
confiscation of illegal weapons" -
which he is obliged to do according
to Wye - does not arouse a strong
feeling of trust on the Israeli
side.
Peace
organizations in Israel are nowadays
virtually flooded with reports and
requests for help from Palestinians
targeted in one way or another.
At the
beginning of this week, activists of
the Committee Against House
Demolitions rushed to the village of
El-Khader, where military bulldozers
destroyed hundreds of olive trees in
creating a new "by-pass road" for
settler use and provoked a major
confrontation in which tear gas and
"rubber bullets" were fired at the
villagers. At the moment, work at
El-Khader was halted by an appeal to
the Supreme Court lodged by LAW, the
Palestinian Human Rights Association
- but judging by past precedent,
this would be a stricktly temporary
halt (Details
halper@iol.co.il).
The
twelve "by-pass roads" planned to be
constructed in the near future
throughout the West Bank are a
direct threat to many villages,
especially since military law and
practice requires a "sterile
corridor" of 350 metres, all along
the road - which means not only that
Palestinians would not be allowed to
build there, but even existing
houses, built long before anybody
planned a road there, may get
demolished.
An
ever-present "hot spot" is East
Jerusalem. Today, (Sunday, Nov.22),
is the deadline set to the family of
Riad Gozlan at Silwan Village, just
south of the Old City Wall, to
vacate their home; the enlightened
courts of the state of Israel had
awarded ownership of the house to
the KKL (Jewish National Fund) on
the basis of a title-deed from the
1920's (of course, Arab title-deeds
from before 1948 are considered
invalid by the same courts); for its
part, the KKL intends to appoint the
religious-nationalist settler
association "Elad", which for years
covets the Gozlan home, as
"caretakers" on its behalf.
The
Gozlan Family is determined to hold
on to their home. Peace Now
activists intend to hold a
solidarity demonstration at the spot
this very afternoon (rendezvous at
4.00 PM at the parking lot opposite
the Dung Gate). After the
demonstration , people who are
interested will be welcomed to stay
at the Rozlan's house.
This
afternoon, some fifty Peace
Now protesters, together with many
Palestinians headed by Feisal
Huisseini, held a demonstration in
front of the threatened house.
So far, no settler or police arrived
to carry out the eviction order and
the Gozlan Family - ten adults and
eighteen children - are determined
to resist. Other inhabitants of
Silwan are ready to rush to
the scene instantly at need, as are
Israeli and Palestinian activists
from further afield. (American
Friends of Peace Now -
apndc@peacenow.org - have
launched a call upon donors to avoid
giving to the Jewish National Fund
because of its involvement in the
affair.)
A
further Peace Now protest is
scheduled for Tuesday,
Dec. 1 at 11.00 - when government
officials are to show building
contractors around the confiscated
Palestinian land at Har Homa/Jebl
Abu Ghneim, in preparation for
construction of a "Jews only"
neighborhood there. (Info
02-5660648, 050-331726,
peacenow@actcom.co.il).
Meanwhile, a group of young people
in Jerualem and Tel-Aviv started
collecting cloths and toys for the
AL-Atrash family, which is living -
father, mother and ten children - in
a tent ercted on the ruins of their
house south of Hebron, which was
declared "illegally built" and
demolished for three consecutive
times (Details: Moran, 02-6222790,
morac@netvision.net.il).
For all
that Netayahu promises and allows
the settlers, an increasing number
of them come to see that they have
no future on the West Bank; that
implementation of Wye will make
their settlements into enclaves at
the end of long and narrow corridors
(Israeli enclaves within Palestinian
enclaves, but that is no consolation
to either side...). Formidable
fortifications would be erected
around each settlement (anti-tank
trenches, electric fences, guard
towers and projectors were just a
few of the items mentioned by the
army as indispensable). Moreover,
though Netanyahu promises that
Wye will be "the very last
concession", many settlers who were
quoted in the press last week don't
believe him - and would rather go
away right now, provided they could
get enough compensations to let them
get started anew inside Israel.
Labor Knesset Member Yossi Katz
tabled again this week his
"Compensation for Voluntarily
Evacuating Settlers" bill; it was
greeted by howls of anger from the
settler leaders - but perhaps not
from all of their followers...
In
fact, most settlers have not come to
live there for ideological reasons,
but simply because of the
government-subsidised housing which
they could not get elsewhere. The
present circumstances make such
housing less and less atrractive -
which could lead to a rift among the
settlers, eventually isolating the
religious-nationalist hardcore.
The
curious and alarming
theology/ideology motivating this
group was deeply explored by Sefi
Rechlevski in his controversial book
"Messiah's Donkey" (named for Rabbi
Kook's doctrine that the "sinner"
secular Israelis have the God-given
task of building up a state which
will then be taken over by the Elect
and be transformed into a pure
theocratic-nationalist polity).
Rechlevski will expound his theories
in person at a meeting organised by
Gush Shalom, to take place this
Tuesday (Nov. 24) at 8.30 PM, in
Tel-Aviv's Tzavta Hall (details
03-5221732,
info@gush-shalom.org).
At the
moment, the settlements seem doomed
to remain for still a long time a
source of endless friction,
confrontation and bloodshed - until
an Israeli government with real
vision and courage will dismantle
them or until circumstances force
this step upon the Israeli side. The
same seems true also for the
entirely futile Israeli occupation
of South Lebanon and the endless
guerrilla war, which gets attention
only when Israeli soldiers get
killed. This grim cycle repeated
itself once again last week. The
death of three more young soldiers
aroused protests by soldiers'
parents, ranging from politically
articulated statements and
demonstrations by organised groups
such as the Four Mothers movement (lindabz@post.tau.ac.il),
to the purely personal outcry of
newly-bereaved families visited by
President Weitzmann, and to the
desperate mother who tried to commit
suicide on the day her soldier son
was sent to Lebanon. And still, of
the two options available -
unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon
or negotiation with Syria about the
Golan which will also include
Damascus' Lebanese sattelite, the
government chooses neither one and
maintains the status quo....
Twice
within twenty-four hours a
demonstration was held outside the
defence ministry in Tel-Aviv: on
Tuesday the mourning vigil by the
Four Mothers movement, upon hearing
the news from Lebanon; on the
following day, a solidarity vigil
with the imprisoned 28-year old
conscientious objector Yehuda Igos.
(An anarcho-pacifist who objects to
armies and nations in general and to
the oppression of the Palestinians
in particular, Igos was rejected by
the army's Commission on Exemptions
on Grounds of Conscience, and sent
off to military prison 4). (Yehuda
Igos Solidarity Committee -
morac@netvision.net.il)
The two
vigils were different in their
slogans and in the ages of their
participants (mostly middle-aged to
elderly in the first, teen-aged
radicals predominating in the
second). Yet they both constitute
part of what a columnist called "the
de-militarization of Israeli
society". In Ha'ir of this week,
socilogist Danny Bartal predicted a
massive movement of refusal to
military service, should Netayahu's
policies lead to war; and this was
curiously echoed on the other side
of the political spectrum, with
Yisrael Zeira of the National
Religious Party stating: "We have
lost the struggle for the hearts of
the people. The Palestinian state is
coming, and to deny it is like
denying the sunrise. Netanyahu had
no choice - he was afraid that in
the next war half the people will
desert him" (Ha'aretz, Nov.6).
Adam Keller Beate
Zilversmidt
 
 
P.S.
Please send the following message
(or anything else you want to make
up) to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and
if you have access to fax - also to
the military addresses, for which no
e-mail is available.
To ...
... ... ...
I would like to protest in
the strongest possible terms your
persecution of the West Bank Beduins
in general, and in particular the
brutal attack on the members of the
Da'is family at the Jiftlic on
Novemeber 18, 1998. I demand that
you immediately restore to the
family their confiscated property,
compensate them for what was
destroyed, and let them live in
peace on their meager land. I also
call upon you, with relation to the
Jahalin Beduins uprooted for the
extention of the Maa'leh Adumim
settlement, to let them have
reasonable conditions on the Abu-Dis
hilltop which your government
designated for them - including
registered ownership of their plots
of land, building permits, and
financial support to build dwellings
instead of those demolished by
Israeli forces.
Fax
Numbers
-
Defense Minister Yitzhak
Mordechai
972 3 6976218.
-
Head of the Military
Government's Civil
Administration Dov
Tzadaka: 972 2 9977341
-
Coordinator of Activities in the
Occupied Territories
General Ya'akov Or 972 2 9977356
E-Mail:
Please
send us a copy of any answer which
you get:
otherisr@actcom.co.il.
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