A. Harel on IDF-settler symbiosis

This is a very informative article by Haaretz’s Amos Harel on the close symbiosis that exists between settler activists– including those responsible for most of the so-called “illegal” or “unauthorized” settlement outposts– and high-level authorities inside the IDF and other organs of the Israeli state.
He writes,

    The outposts are a continuation of the settlements by other means. The sharp distinction Israel makes between them is artificial. Every outpost is established with a direct connection to a mother settlement, with the clear aim of expanding the takeover of the territory and ensuring an Israeli hold on a wider tract of land. Construction in the outposts is integrated into the overall plan of the settlement project and is carried out in parallel to the seizure of lands within and close to the settlements.

He illustrates the cooperation of state authorities in the establishment and maintenance of the so-called “outposts” in the case of one called Migron:

    Migron is surrounded by a fence, guarded and connected to the necessary water and electricity infrastructures. Its “ascent to the land,” even though it was done on private Palestinian property, and despite the fact that it was undertaken in a deceptive manner, has received backing and practical support from the state. The security establishment’s declaration to the High Court of Justice this week that it would take more than a year to implement the compromise agreement, whereby the inhabitants of Migron would be moved to the adjacent settlement of Adam, shows that this backing is still in place…
    Behind every settlement action there is a planning and thinking mind that has access to the state’s database and maps, and help from sympathetic officers serving in key positions in the IDF and the Civil Administration. The story is not in the settlers’ uncontrolled behavior, though there is evidence of this on some of the hilltops, but rather in conscious choices by the state to enforce very little of the law.

Harel writes that the the Obama administration has held fast to the position that all the 100 “outposts” identified by the United Nations and by Israeli attorney Talia Sasson must be evacuated. (And not just the 23 or 26 outposts that PM Sharon’s security adviser Dov Weisglas agreed to evacuate, back in 2001.)
He writes that most of the present outposts were established during two waves of activity: between 1997 and 1999 (when, of course, Netanyahu was the PM), and between 2001 and 2003 (i.e., under Sharon– and notwithstanding Wesiglas’s 2001 promise to evacuate some of the ones that were already there.)
He adds,

    During those years, the area of the settlements themselves increased. The symbiosis between the army and the settlers in the West Bank was at its peak then. Many of the terror attacks elicited “a suitable Zionist response” with the army’s encouragement: the establishment of a new outpost or the pushing back of the fence around an existing settlement.
    The settlers’ moves were supported by surveillance cameras, protected roads, guards and often by declarations of a “special security zone.” To prevent infiltration, the area of the settlements was expanded and Palestinians from neighboring villages were prevented from approaching them. However, in the same breath, the moves were exploited for long-term goals, taking over and building on lands that were in large part private.
    For nearly 12 years now, I have been intermittently covering the outposts, as part of my coverage of the army. Officially, the IDF doesn’t see the connection between the defense establishment and the settlers. Construction in the territories is ostensibly a matter for settlement reporters and nosy activists from Peace Now. In fact, this connection is at the heart of the settlement project.
    In March 1998, during a tour, I was told by the commander of the Samaria Area Brigade, in an afterthought, that although the Gidonim outposts near Itamar were established without a permit, the Defense Ministry was acting to “launder” them. On that same day, Eli Cohen, the defense minister’s settlement adviser, was also touring the area. Queries put to the ministry by Knesset members were answered with evasive comments, but very quickly all the outposts in the vicinity were connected to all the necessary infrastructures.
    Five years later, at the height of the Sharon prime ministership, a senior officer who had recently been demobilized after service in the territories volunteered to explain the facts of life to my colleague Guy Kotev and me. With the patience usually reserved for children who have difficulty understanding, he asked us whether we really believed that the outposts go up without the authorities’ knowledge. He related that the director general of the settler organization Amana, Zeev Hever (known by his nickname, Zambish) was visiting the prime minister’s residence at night to go over the maps with Sharon. “And after that you expect that we won’t give them guards and we won’t hook them up to the water system?” he wondered.

So it is excellent to also learn from Harel that he judges that Obama has remained adamant on the need for speedy evacuation of all the outposts.
(As a precursor to the evacuation of all the settlements, I hope.)
He notes the very dire effects of the laxness that the last two US presidents have shown on the whole Israeli settlement construction question:

    During the 16 years since the Oslo process began, the number of Israelis living east of the Green Line (pre-Six-Day War border) increased from 110,000 to about 300,000 (not including East Jerusalem). The number of building starts in the West Bank in 2008 was 40 percent greater than during the previous year.

2008, lest we forget, was exactly the year-long period in which George W. Bush had vowed– during his speech at the Annapolis Middle east Peace Summit (remember that??)– that he would broker a final-status Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement before the end of his term in office.
How can anyone say that Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert was negotiating “in good faith” with the Palestinians during that year, if at the same time he was accelerating his country’s expropriation of, and construction upon, the Palestinian land and national heritage?
Harel ends with a sober reflection on the split, or warped, moral vision of all the people– inside and outside the state apparatus– who have participated in the settlement- and outpost-construction project:

    Taking over the private property of someone who belongs to the neighboring people is a common phenomenon in the West Bank, even in recent years. We aren’t talking here about things that happened back in 1948. It is possible, of course, to describe these moves as a necessary part of the life-and-death struggle between the two peoples, in the name of which nearly all means are justified.
    One of the most obvious things learned from every visit is the extent to which things are done in a planned way, to this day. It is hard to miss the destroyed terraces in the settlement of Adam or the sight of the sewage flowing from Psagot, not far from the Binyamin regional council building, straight into the wadi that runs to the adjacent Palestinian town of El Bireh. But in those very same settlements live upstanding citizens, who would not cheat the grocer of 10 agorot and who would go out in the middle of the night to help a neighbor stuck on a dark road. In the outposts live scores of officers in the career army and the reserves, who serve in elite units and win citations for their courage. At the same time, according to the official state data, many of them have built their dream homes, a modest mobile home or a more luxurious villa, on land that has been stolen from someone else by force.

Great work, Amos Harel.

20 thoughts on “A. Harel on IDF-settler symbiosis”

  1. Quite right, Helena. We come closer to the truth. The settlers, illegal under any calculation, are supported by the Israeli state.
    That’s just right for hasbarists, like for example JES, who pretend they are in the right, but actually spend their last remaining years defending the indefensible.

  2. George W. Bush had vowed– during his speech at the Annapolis Middle east Peace Summit (remember that??)– that he would broker a final-status Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement before the end of his term in office.
    Do you trust a lair Helena?
    I don’t
    Anyway this reading gives some clues of real Jewish and Israel claims for their land:

    We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.

    Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, “When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?” (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a “state of all its citizens” – Jews, Arabs and others – in contrast to its declared identity as a “Jewish and democratic” state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.

  3. That’s just right for hasbarists, like for example JES
    Alastair, JES has been consistently critical of settlements. Quit trying to pick a fight.

  4. Hiring,HELP WANTED !!
    The sad truth is that had Israeli citizens believed that their State is doing the right thing, they would have made sure to explain it out of their own accord. Without being paid.
    The reason is that good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved. Yet nonetheless, the Foreign Ministry wants to try to change the situation. And they have willing partners. “Where do I submit a CV?” wrote one respondent. “I’m fluent in several languages and I’m able to spew forth bullshit for hours on end.”

  6. JES has been consistently critical of settlements.
    I agree that used to be the case. Recently, his point of view has narrowed, and he’s swung behind the state line. Quite typical of Israel in some ways; the breadth of opinion has narrowed to a very thin line. It’s a very brittle thin line, and JES is part of it.

  7. Recently, his point of view has narrowed, and he’s swung behind the state line.
    I have been reading all these threads and JES has never uttered a word in support of settlements. If your academic research is this sloppy I pity your students.

  8. I have been reading all these threads and JES has never uttered a word in support of settlements
    You’re going from memory there. Not the point. He is no longer criticising, if he ever did, the state of things in Israel. Nobody does any more. Except perhaps Uri Avnery.

  9. You’re going from memory there.
    Er no, I’m going from what he’s written:
    “I still maintain that there are plenty of other reasons to oppose the settlements”
    Written one week ago. Did you miss this? Does it mean something else in your mother tongue? Or are you “going from imagination?”

  10. “I still maintain that there are plenty of other reasons to oppose the settlements”
    one very mild statement, that’s not a criticism. When human rights abuses are going on every day there, and any honest man would stand up, and publically act against these abuses, but he doesn’t. It’s his country. That’s what I mean. He supports what’s going on.

  11. Israeli leader invites Abbas to peace talks
    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is inviting the Palestinians to sit down immediately to talk peace.
    Mr Netanyahu told the weekly Cabinet meeting that “there is no reason Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and I should not meet.”
    The only problem is that Abbas is the paid stooge of US. If there are to be negotiations it must be between the Israelis and the Palestinians, not between the Israelis and the Americans.

  12. Ayalon: Israel unaware of US deadline
    Israel is unaware of any six-month deadline placed by the US for freezing settlement construction in the West Bank, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Saturday night.
    So is the rest of the world!
    According to a report earlier in the day in Lebanon’s An-Nahar daily, visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told Lebanese officials that if Israel failed to stop all Jewish construction in the West Bank by the six-month deadline, the US would end its support for peace talks.
    “We have no knowledge of this whatsoever,” Ayalon said through a spokesman.
    The Lebanese paper quoted Kouchner as expressing the fear that Israel’s “stubbornness, intentional foot-dragging and acquiescence to the Israel lobby” would convince the Americans to pull out of peace discussions altogether.
    The French foreign minister was in Beirut on Friday for talks with senior Lebanese officials, including Hizbullah legislator Nawaf Musawi. The meeting with Musawi dealt with efforts to form a new coalition government led by Prime Minister-designate Sa’ad Hariri.
    Israel is opposed to Hizbullah joining the government.
    Mark Regev, adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, responded to the Kouchner-Musawi meeting by warning that “if Hizbullah joins the Lebanese government, then Lebanon as a country will be responsible for any Hizbullah aggression against Israel. That has to be clear.”
    Gee… I guess this is another application of the Biden/Obama/AIPAC doctrine : Israel can attack anyone, anywhere, at anytime and the US will just grin and bear it. So the Lebanese better get ready for another mauling at the hands of the Israelis, who will no doubt be resupplied with lethal material in the midst of the mayhem by the US, even if “we disagree” with Israel’s terrorism. Which “we” don’t.
    Report: Egypt drops bid for Palestinian unity government
    Egypt has ceased efforts to mediate the formation of a national unity government between the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.
    Officials who met with the senior echelon of Egyptian intelligence said that Cairo is instead proposing that two separate governments, the Hamas regime in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, continue to function until general elections are held.
    Just in time for Netanyahu’s divide and conquer “negotiations” with the dupe Abbas, sanctioned by the dupe Mubarak, and Dupe in Chief Obama!
    “Egypt is the only country that knows how to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Abbas, adding that he would not accept any other country as a mediator.
    Says the one stooge of the other.

  14. any honest man would stand up, and publically act against these abuses, but he doesn’t. It’s his country. That’s what I mean. He supports what’s going on.
    Alastair, if I were a truly honest man I would tell you to put it where the sun doesn’t shine. But I’m not that honest.
    You know, Alastair, it’s easy for you while you’re living in Paris with your antiquities to complain and protest. I live a different reality here. If I may ask, what did you do to stand up publicly and protest human rights abuses under Saddam at those luncheons hosted by the local authorities where his henchmen were in attendance? I thought so. You’re a phony.

  15. A quick review of what Netanyahu’s israel demands are:
    1) That it be allowed to expand its nuclear arsenal.
    2. That it be allowed to “obliterate” Iran.
    3. That all the world must recognise it as a Jewish state.
    4. That it be allowed to fly over a disarmed Palestenian state.
    5. That it has the right to determine the composition of
    neighboring states.
    6. That it has the right to uncoditional expansion of
    settlements.
    7. That by including Hezbullah representation in Hariri’s cabinet
    Lebanon “ipso facto” becomes a rogue state and an enemy.
    8. It and it alone will decide how much of the Golan Heights it
    will give back to Syria.
    9. Anyone not agreeing to the above must be definitely “antis”

  16. TEL AVIV, June 8, 2009 (WAFA)- “Since Israel accepted the Road Map, which mandated a freeze of all settlement activity, the settler population in the West Bank has swelled from 211,400 to over 289,600 – an increase of 37% in six years,” B’tselem reported.

    In a report issued, Wednesday, B’tselemsa said the Israeli government has used the idea of ‘natural growth’ as a fig leaf to cover large-scale expansion of Jewish colonies.

    B’tselem added that the population of Israel increased at a rate of 1.8%. Among the Jewish population the growth rate is 1.6%. In that same year, the colonies increased by 5.6%. Of that figure, a full 40% is directly attributable to immigration, from Israel and abroad.

    B’tselem continued that, “The Netanyahu government claims that barring ‘natural growth’ will tear families apart. But, B’tselem argued, people do not have an inalienable right to live in the neighborhood of their choosing. Israel is a small country and the colonies are a short drive or bus ride from many towns and cities within the Green Line. This is an inconvenience people in all developed countries must deal with.

    JES,
    Saddam Gone keep repeating this song song this is so funny.
    Using Saddam here as a fig leaf to cover large-scale to cover Israeli human rights abuses and crimes, go read your reality before come put these pathetic words.
    Israeli Forces Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and Continue to Impose a Total Closure on the Gaza Strip
    27/2009
    http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/PSLG-7TSFX3?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P

  17. JES, please could you do two things:
    1. Stop engaging in childish ad-hominems against other commehters. (Re-read the guidelines, perhaps.)
    2. Clarify for us all whether indeed your position still is, as it was back in 2005, that all the settlers in 1967-occupied land should be evacuated back to Israel. Also, tell us, if not why not? Why has your position changed? I would be interested to know.

  19. Sure thing. But first you’ll have to point out to me what you consider “childish ad hominems”. Does this qualify?
    That’s just right for hasbarists, like for example JES, who pretend they are in the right, but actually spend their last remaining years defending the indefensible.
    Childish? Yes. ad hominem? I don’t think so (although the “hasbarist” part is definitely name calling).
    Or, how about this gem from Alastair:
    …and any honest man would stand up, and publically act against these abuses, but he doesn’t.
    Does calling me “dishonest” qualify as ad hominem?
    Now, as for your second request let me state that my position still is what it was in 2005. Let me repeat that: My position vis-a-vis the settlers still is what it was in 2005.
    So tell us, Helena, has your position toward the settlers changed since 2005?

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