bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 44-2008
A Palestinian View:
Time to end the settlement project
by Ghassan Khatib
The recent settler violence in Hebron, which was described by Ehud Olmert,
the Israeli prime minister, as a pogrom, brought to the attention of
Israelis and Palestinians the grave danger that settlements and settlers
represent.
But the riots in Hebron were in fact different only in terms of the level of
violence. Otherwise they were part of an orchestrated campaign of settler
violence that has been in increasing evidence this past year. The Israeli
newspaper Yedioth Ahronot reported 675 violent incidents by Jewish settlers
in the West Bank, mainly against Palestinian citizens, but also against
Israeli soldiers.
The large-scale and organized nature of these activities indicates that they
are not spontaneous, scattered and individual initiatives but rather the
result of a political position that aims at achieving political objectives.
This would not be the first time settlers and settlements are deliberate
political pawns, whether for their own aims or those of Israel. Over the
years, Israeli governments have used the settler presence in the occupied
Palestinian territories at certain times in order to achieve specific
political objectives.
Indeed, the settlement project was started as a political strategy with
which to indicate Israel's intention to hang on to certain parts of the West
Bank. Later, particularly in the mid-1980s and under Likud governments, the
settlement project became intentionally arbitrary, an indication that
actually Israel intended to hold on to all the occupied West Bank. That's
when settlements expanded everywhere.
The recent negotiations and the news emanating about a solution that might
differentiate between settlement blocs that Israel wants to annex at the
expense of small and scattered settlements, seem to have provoked the
increasingly powerful right-wing pro-settler groups in Israel. These groups
want to put an enormous price tag on any retreat in the settlement process.
It is difficult to blame settlers for strongly opposing any intention by
their government to evacuate settlements or even this single Palestinian
house at a time when Israel is still encouraging settlement expansion
elsewhere. The first step to dealing with settler aggression has to be a new,
clear and decisive policy of ending the expansion of settlements generally.
Such a message might help persuade all concerned parties, including settlers,
that there is sincere determination in Israel to end this problem once and
for all.
A continued Israeli settlement expansion policy will only encourage settler
appetite for more land and more violence. And it must not be forgotten that
most violence between the two sides has indeed been initiated by settlers,
from the attempted assassinations of Palestinian mayors in the 1970s, the
spate of stabbings in the 1980s to the massacre of 29 Palestinians at prayer
in Hebron in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein.
This is, of course, in parallel to the systematic violence of the Israeli
army, either against individuals, mostly civilians, or against property and
its demolition of Palestinian houses.
Although violence of all kinds and from all parties should be condemned,
especially when directed against civilians, it is hard to ignore certain
differences. Jewish settler violence is undertaken under the protection of
the Israeli army and by a group of people living illegally on land that
belongs to the indigenous population. Palestinian violence, no matter how
egregious, is undertaken by a people under occupation and whose land and
lives are under daily threat.
The presence and expansion of settlements together with the activities of
settlers, violent and aggressive as they are, have shown that the settlement
phenomenon is the biggest and most dangerous threat to any potential peace
and co-existence between Palestinians and Israelis. Ending the expansion of
settlements and eventually evacuating the occupied territories of settlers
in order to allow for an independent Palestinian state to emerge are
prerequisites for a peaceful solution.- Published
15/12/2008 © bitterlemons.org
Ghassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet
publications. He is vice-president of Birzeit University and a former
Palestinian Authority minister of planning. He holds a PhD in Middle East
politics from the University of Durham.
Bitterlemons-international.org is
an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and
its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and
political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region.
Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
hagalil.com 17-12-2008 |