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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Now the settlers are chosen
By Graham Usher
For a moment it seemed like a throwback to the era of Yitzak Rabin, when the Israeli government and the settler movement locked horns over the future of "Eretz Israel". On 19 October a small flat-back truck trundled up to remove the solitary container that marks Hill 804, an uninhabited Jewish settlement north of Ramallah and one of the 10 "illegal outposts" Ehud Barak has vowed will be dismantled in the coming weeks. But around 20 young activists from the Next Generation settler movement blocked the truck's path. After the briefest of stand-offs, the truck reversed and drove away and the settlers celebrated their victory before the press, who appeared to outnumber them by about two to one.
But there was a difference about this protest from the days of Rabin. For the truck had not been sent in by the Israeli army; it was sent in by the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements, the main political tribune of the 170,000 settlers who reside in Gaza and the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) and Barak's main partner in the "evacuation" plan. Underlining their commitment to the agreement, later that night the settlers dispatched a crane to remove a water tower from nearby Hill 827, another of the 10 to-be-dismantled settlements. They met no protests this time. The "Next Generation" had apparently gone to bed.
Why has the settler leadership taken on this onerous task, which, a council spokeswoman explains, "pains them so much"? The short answer is that the settlers clearly know a good deal when they see one. The long answer is that unlike Rabin -- whose contempt for political settlements like Hill 804 and Hill 827 filled the settler leadership with genuine foreboding -- Barak is a prime minister the settlers can do business with. The only requirement is that they uphold the "law" and remove settlements not established in accordance with the proper government criteria. Thry agreed to this compromise because the dividends far outweigh the price.
This theatre between Barak and the settlers was concocted following the much delayed first meeting of the ministerial committee on settlements on 10 October, convened to address the fate of 42 hill top settlements set up in the West Bank, most of them in the last year. The meeting made two decisions. The first was that the 2,600 10ders the government had issued for settlement construction in the first three months of its 10ure were legal and would not be reversed. Needless to say, neither the hawks nor the doves on the committee view settlements on occupied territory as illegal though every 10et of international law, including the 4th Geneva Convention, says otherwise.
The second decision was that the status of the 42 settlements would be left to Barak's discretion. After consultations with the army (without whose protection none of the 42 would have been established in the first place), Barak announced that 15 were illegal and would be dismantled. Stung by charges of anti-Zionism from settler leaders, he then dispatched his chief security advisor to meet with settler council leader, Benny Kashriel, to "listen to" the settlers' complaints. Following that meeting, Barak agreed that only 10 of the settlements would be dismantled and the council agreed to "act voluntarily to evacuate all the strongholds".
It is easy to understand the settlers' volte-face. First, the removal of 10 outposts (five of them uninhabited) means the de facto authorisation of 32 others. Second, settler spokespersons (much to the chagrin of the government) have let it be known that the agreement with Barak includes a clause that three of the dismantled settlements are to become part of settlement master plans, thus allowing the settlers to return to them in the future "in an orderly and legal fashion", as phrased by Israel's Haaretz newspaper on 20 October.
With attention focused on the struggle for Hill 804 (as well as the several thousand strong settler demonstration carefully staged outside the prime minister's residence on 17 October), the settlers and the Israeli army are quietly going about the usual business of settling the future borders of Israel.
On 14 October the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that settlers from the Gush Qatif settlement in Gaza had fenced around 2,000 dunums of land between the Palestinian cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. And on 18 October Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers due to the latter's attempted confiscation of 500 square metres of land in Deir Balout near Salfit in the West Bank. Unlike the Hill 804 contest, this protest was real and left the owner of the land, 72-year old Jabara Youssef, dead from a heart attack.
Not that the pain of Youssef's family is likely to alter Barak's admiration and support for the settlement enterprise in the Occupied Territories. Nor should his political theatre with the settlers surprise observers. Barak always said that he would be the "leader of all the Israeli people", including and perhaps especially the settlers. Only the settler movement doubted it. After his decision on their 42 latest outposts, they can doubt it no more.
