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Following a series of violent incidents involving settler and pro-settler Jewish Israeli extremists, including the attempted lynching of
a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, many Israelis expressed concern about
the rise in violent hatred within their society and wondered where it
was coming from. Several incidents over the weekend demonstrated that
this trend is only intensifying and clearly pointed to why.
For
the answer, Israelis need look no further than across the Green Line:
settler terror is an inevitable consequence of the occupation and the
myriad policies of the Israeli state that enable this extremism. |
| A Palestinian farmer inspects the remains of his olive trees after after they were uprooted overnight in an attack blamed on Jewish settlers. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP / GettyImages) |
As they have for numerous years, extremist settlers are again violently disrupting the
Palestinian olive-picking season, which is now underway. Settlers have
been attacking Palestinians on their way to pick olives and destroying
trees and orchards. Palestinians complain that the settlers are
operating with impunity under the watchful eyes of Israeli authorities
who do little to restrain—and even less to arrest or prosecute—them.
Increasingly,
occupation forces are also coming under settler "price tag" attacks
(retribution for government crackdowns on illegal activities), with
three undercover Israeli police officers posing as Palestinians violently attacked by
extremist settler youths near Hebron. The police say they did nothing
to provoke the youths, who have been arrested because they made the
mistake of assaulting occupation forces rather than Palestinians.
The recent violence comes in the wake of earlier attacks against
Israeli forces by extremist settlers, and a constant barrage of
assaults on Palestinians. Some of these attacks have been videotaped in
a manner that suggests Israeli forces on the scene stood by
impassively.
Attacks have also been spreading to target Christian sites including churches and monasteries.
Attacks have also been spreading to target Christian sites including churches and monasteries.
"Price
tag" violence has become part of a deep-seated culture of hatred and
impunity on the part of Jewish Israeli extremists. Like the racist Ku
Klux Klan in the American deep south during the civil rights era,
violent settlers are encouraged by incitement from radical establishment
figures and operate under a well-founded belief that the system will
not act systematically or forcefully to restrain or punish them in most
cases.
This atmosphere of impunity, and even encouragement, was dramatically illustrated by a celebratory sendoff at
an Israeli settlement over the weekend for a man convicted of severely
abusing a Palestinian teenager. The event honoring this thug was
attended by local settler leaders and rabbis, and by a member of the
Knesset.
One
of these rabbis, the notorious extremist Dov Lior, encouraged the
assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and is noted for
violent and racist statements against Arabs and other Gentiles. He
serves as the head of the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria"
(settler rhetoric for the occupied West Bank), and is employed by the
Israeli government as the rabbi of the Kiryat Arba settlement. Among
many other extreme statements, he endorsed a book by another radical
settler rabbi that advocated the killing of Gentiles, including infants,
“if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us.”
It
is true that such extremism doesn't characterize all, or perhaps even
most, Israeli settlers. But this mentality is part and parcel of the
settlement movement and nothing effective is being done either by that
movement or by the Israeli state to seriously counteract the continued
growth of such hatred and extremism. The Israeli police on several
occasions have announced the establishment of units to focus on such
extremism, but this does not appear to have done anything so far to
restrain or counteract the flourishing of the culture of violence, hate
and impunity.
In his recent U.N. speech,
which was basically a litany of familiar and mostly justified
complaints, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas led with the issue of
settler violence. But it's not clear was what, exactly, Abbas can do
about it other than complain. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has also
repeatedly stated that these attacks, along with Israeli government
incursions into Palestinian ruled areas, constitute some of the most
serious threats to the credibility of the Palestinian Authority.
These
attacks are intended to send a message to Palestinians that they live
under Israeli occupation and that there is little or nothing they can do
to protect themselves from settler rampages. Given that the Israeli
government typically offers little more than rhetorical condemnations of
this violence, that message is being received loud and clear. It
therefore constitutes one of the gravest threats to the promotion of a
culture of peace, and stability on the ground, between Israel and the
Palestinians, as it enacts the relationship of dominance and
subordination inherent in the occupation on a daily basis.
Other
Israelis need not wonder how or why such attacks take place. They are
the inevitable byproducts of the occupation itself, the culture it
promotes, and the rhetoric and mentality of the settler movement that is
so generously subsidized and protected by the state itself. But because
they are such a direct and grave threat to the rule of law, the
cultural health of its society, and prospects for peace, settler
terrorism is profoundly antithetical to Israel's real interests. And
until the Israeli government finally decides to act decisively against
the violence and the culture that informs it, rather than coddling and
subsidizing them, the problem is only going to get worse.
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Hussein Ibish is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. His most recent book is What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal. He has a PhD in comparative literature from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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