The following came in from the Christian Peacemaker Teams, which have maintained a team of nonviolent witnesses in Hebron (al-Khalil) in the southern West Bank for many years now. You can learn more about CPT’s principles at their website.
- At about 7:15am on the morning of Wednesday September 29, Chris Brown and Kim Lamberty of Christian Peacemaker Teams were attacked by settlers while accompanying children to school. The two of them were walking a group of
children from the village of Tuba to the village of Tuwani along a road
where the children have experienced harassment from settlers in the past. A
group of five settlers came out of an outpost of the nearby Ma’on settlement
and attacked Brown and Lamberty with a chain and bat. All of the children
were able to get away to their homes without injury.
The settlers pushed Brown to the ground, kicked him in the chest and whipped
him with a chain. He has bruises and cuts on his chest and face and is
experiencing trouble breathing. They kicked and beat Lamberty’s legs. She is
not able to walk and has significant pain in her left arm and a cut on her
chin.
Lamberty and Brown were taken by ambulance to Soroka hospital in Beersheba
for treatment.
The ready recourse by many Israeli settlers to the use of direct physical violence–in addition to the much deeper structural violence that they perpetrate by being key participants in Israel’s broad colonial venture in the occupied territories–is a very worrying feature of the situation there.
So too is the laxity with which the Israeli authorities tend to treat instances of phsyical violence perpetrated by the settlers.
Today’s Ha’Aretz has this story, updating the tale of settler Yehoshua Elitsur, accused by police of having gratuitously killed Sa’al Jabara, a 44-year-old Palestinian man, near his settlement on Monday.
The police, who are expected to recommend that Elitsur be charged with manslaughter, had requested that he be kept under house arrest or some other form of surveillance pending the completion of the legal proceedings against him. But the Kfar Sava Magistrates Court–inside Israel– which has been hearing the case, turned down the police’s request.
The Ha’Aretz story says that Elitsur claimed that a Palestinian car had tried to force him off the road, and he’d fired his weapon in response to that. But it also reports this, coming from–aparently–one of the people riding in the van being driven by Jabara:
- According to Ahmed Shatiya, a Salem resident, the car was on its way to the Jordan Valley when “just before reaching the main road, Sa’al slowed down and began driving up an incline adjacent to the road. He started to turn right to get onto the road when we all noticed a tall, dark-skinned settler with a beard standing in the middle of the road in front of a red Ford Fiesta.
“Sa’al thought the settler needed help and he slowed down; he then opened the window and spoke to him in Hebrew. Suddenly the settler aimed an M-16 at him. The settler fired off a few rounds at Sa’al, hitting him in his left arm and the left side of his chest.
“He lost consciousness and we tried to help him, and we shouted to the settler to come and help and call an ambulance, but he said, `Please God, he dies,’ and left.
The apartheid nature of the situation in the occupied territories–one law for the settlers; another for everyone else–seems very clear from this story. Imagine if a Palestinian had been accused of killing a settler under these circumstances. We could have expected to see not just no bail for the suspect, but far worse consequences including quite possibly the destruction of his family home; the encirclement and collective punishment of his whole community; etc, etc.
Note: I am not advocating the use of such harsh measures against accused settlers. But I do urge that there be one, reasonable law in the occupied territories that is administered by an authority that is fully, democratically accountable to all the people who have to live under it.
Is that too much to ask? (The Palestinians there have lived under foreign military rule for more than 37 years already. Israel? A democracy??)
Human equality now!
And of course, good wishes for the speedy recovery of the two Christian Peacemakers. (Chains and baseball bats?? Where are the prosecutions for that??)
I’ve met and photographed the CPT team in Hebron and they are fine folk. Sorry to hear that.
A few points. First, according to Ha’aretz, the attackers were masked. I agree that they were probably settlers, but I don’t think it can simply be assumed – not all the Palestinians are in favor of the CPTs either.
Second, Elitzur was placed under house arrest – it was his remand to prison that was at issue before the court. Bail pending trial is routinely granted in Israel, and with Elitzur under house arrest, he won’t be harming anyone until the trial takes place. He’s being treated the same way as most other Israeli manslaughter defendants.
But both these facts are really beside the point. As you know, I hold no brief for the settlers and I think they should all be packed across the Green Line posthaste, but they are within the reach of the Israeli civil justice system while most Palestinians aren’t. You say that a Palestinian accused of attacking a settler wouldn’t get bail, but in fact most Palestinians who attack settlers aren’t punished at all because the PA won’t arrest them and the Israelis can’t reach them. There are plenty of Palestinians who have killed Israelis and are walking around with bail or trial the last thing on their minds.
Once again, I think the settler movement is despicable and I’d like to see Elitzur fry. But the word you’re looking for isn’t “apartheid,” it’s war. It’s logistically impossible to have a single civil legal system in the middle of a shooting war, and if this discussion illustrates anything, it’s the fallacy of applying an apartheid model to situation involving conflict between national groups.
Jonathan, this afternoon I listened to an interview with one of the CPT’ers who was attacked. There seems no doubt that the attackers were Israelis, most likely from the so-called “hilltop youth”. The area in which they were apparently lying in wait to ambush the CPT’ers and the children they were escorting is at the outskirts of a settlement – an area Palestinians could not safely approach. According to the interviewee it is an area in which settlers often “hang out”. At once point one of the attackers spoke English and he had a heavy, obviously Israeli accent.
And Jonathan, while not all Palestinians are happy with the CPT’ers’ presence, I have never heard of hostility being that open and reaching anything close to that level. There is also some societal pressure on those Palestinians who are not happy about the CPT’ers to refrain from bothering them. On the other hand, if there is societal pressure on settlers it is not for restraint. It is very common for settlers to viciously verbally attack CPT’ers and anyone else, including Iraelis, who does anything on behalf of Palestinians. Physical attacks,commonly rock throwing, are also very common and are probably less horrific than this one only because they usually take place right out in the open without any attempt to conceal them even from Israeli soldiers who nearly always do nothing to stop them.
“most Palestinians who attack settlers aren’t punished at all”
1. That is more than balanced by the fact that Palestinians who do nothing wrong at all are severely punished.
2. When Palestinians attack settlers their entire town is punished with everything from harassment to draconian curfews to aerial bombardment. I’d say that more than makes up for any lack of punishment of the actual attacker.
Jonathan– additional to Shirin’s last point, Palestinians who attack settlers are presumably put onto the list of those targeted for IDF assassinations. (We cannot know that, of course, because the process by which names are put on that list and the whole process by which targets for assassination are chosen is shrouded in worse-than-Star-Chamber secrecy. But on Btselem’s latest list of stats we see that 168 Palestinians have so far been thus killed.)
You do, as always, raise a number of thought-provoking points in your comment. I’m a little mystified what you mean when you write about “the fallacy of applying an apartheid model to [a] situation involving conflict between national groups.” What on earth do you think apartheid was, if it wasn’t precisely one chapter in a long-running, ongoing conflict between distinctly different national groups inside South Africa?
You and I have disagreed on this issue so many times now, that probably we should have a proper discussion of it someplace… Maybe we could start a joint “Dear Jonathan/Dear Helena” discussion and cross-post it on both of our blogs…
Jonathan, this afternoon I listened to an interview with one of the CPT’ers who was attacked. There seems no doubt that the attackers were Israelis, most likely from the so-called “hilltop youth”.
As I said, I agree that they were probably settlers; the Jpost article, which provides more detail, indicates that they came from the direction of one of the nearby hilltop settlements. It certainly isn’t any surprise to me that the hilltop youth would behave that way.
When Palestinians attack settlers their entire town is punished
Sure, and then some Palestinian faction takes it upon itself to ‘collectively punish’ Israelis by blowing up a bus. I don’t think these criminal justice analogies make much sense in the context of what’s going on in the WB and Gaza, and have made even less sense since the creation of the PA. What’s happening there now is a form of warfare, albeit one that doesn’t fit comfortably into traditional conceptions of war between states. It’s a nasty, brutal war (as counterinsurgencies always are) with atrocities on both sides, but those atrocities are committed in the service of military rather than criminal justice objectives.
This has many ramifications, one of which is that people like Elitzur are in a fundamentally different position vis-a-vis the Israeli state than hypothetical Palestinians who kill Israelis. When settlers commit crimes, Israeli police can easily arrest them, and if they’re released on bail, they certainly won’t melt into the West Bank and disappear. On the other hand, Israeli police haven’t been able to make routine arrests of Palestinians in the WB or Gaza since the first intifada. Sometimes they can conduct raids and make arrests, but more often such operations are deemed too dangerous or are successfully eluded by the suspect. And if a Palestinian is arrested, he won’t stick around if released on bail – I certainly wouldn’t stick around in his place.
In other words, there’s a rational basis for the differential treatment described in Helena’s main post. The fact that Israeli nationals have an easier time getting bail from Israeli courts due to their lower flight risk isn’t “apartheid” any more than American courts’ routine denial of bail to Israelis arrested here. If you want to look for examples of Israeli misconduct, you will find them, but the courts’ treatment of Elitzur isn’t one of them.
Ah, comments crossing in the mail.
What on earth do you think apartheid was, if it wasn’t precisely one chapter in a long-running, ongoing conflict between distinctly different national groups inside South Africa?
Actually, the ANC was very pointedly not a nationalist movement – its ideology from very early on centered on the creation of a single South Africa in which all races were equal. The ANC was not an independence movement and opposed any creation of separate states for African ethnic groups; indeed, the one thing almost everyone (except a few fringe Afrikaner separatists) could agree on during the anti-apartheid struggle was that South Africa should remain one nation. Apartheid centered on racial supremacy within one country, and the anti-apartheid movement centered on racial equality within one country.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the other hand, involves a national liberation movement whose goal is an independent state. The status of Palestinians under Israeli civil law isn’t implicated by either side, except for a few people at the fringes. That makes it a fundamentally different type of conflict from what occurred in South Africa. There may be certain tactical parallels (as there are between nearly any two conflicts), but trying to impose an apartheid model on the I-P conflict will lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why it is taking place.
You and I have disagreed on this issue so many times now, that probably we should have a proper discussion of it someplace… Maybe we could start a joint “Dear Jonathan/Dear Helena” discussion and cross-post it on both of our blogs…
Sounds interesting, actually.
Christian Peacemakers Attacked by Israeli Settlers
Helena Cobban has the details. This is sort of a dog-bites-man story, but it’s probably useful to occasionally be reminded of the kinds of things the settlers often get away with….
“As I said, I agree that they were probably settlers”
Then why did you even bother to suggest otherwise? The likelyhood that they were not settlers was somewhere between zero and zero.
“then some Palestinian faction takes it upon itself to ‘collectively punish’ Israelis by blowing up a bus.”
Exactly. The democratically elected government of a sovereign state, which is a UN member and therefore presumably committed to uphold the UN charter, a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and virtually every other international treaty, violates its own solemn agreements by imposing massive and often deadly collective punishment on and entire population for the acts of a single member. A Palestinian faction, with no central control, takes it upon itself to blow up a bus.
Jonathan, there are people I would not expect to be able to discern the difference here. You are not one of them.
“I don’t think these criminal justice analogies make much sense in the context of what’s going on in the WB and Gaza”
And so Israel does not need to be held responsible for honouring its commitments to the international legal instruments to which it is signatory.
“and have made even less sense since the creation of the PA.”
PA? What PA? The PA has been rendered completely impotent by the Israeli government. The PA is less than irrelevant.
“What’s happening there now is a form of warfare, albeit one that doesn’t fit comfortably into traditional conceptions of war between states.”
What is going on, Jonathan is a brutal occupation which is in the later part of its fourth decade. What is going on, Jonathan, is the not-so-slow strangling of an entire population of 3.5 million human beings. What is going on, Jonathan, is an inexorably advancing land grab.
What is going on, Jonathan, is that Israel is getting away with massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. What is going on, Jonathan, is that Israel is getting away with obliterating the human and national rights of another people.
And what is going on, Jonathan, is the realization of the goals stated very clearly by Ben Gurion and others like him. To paraphrase, let’s take what we can get now, and go for the rest over time.
And so Israel does not need to be held responsible for honouring its commitments to the international legal instruments to which it is signatory.
Since when did I say that? The existence of a war does not justify war crimes. I have never argued that anything goes in war, or that Israeli soldiers should not be held responsible for the war crimes they commit. But it is the law of war and occupation, not peacetime civil law, that applies to interactions between Israelis and Palestinians. (That goes both ways, BTW; I do not regard Palestinian attacks on Israeli military targets as criminal acts, which they would be if civil law applied.)
And what is going on, Jonathan, is the realization of the goals stated very clearly by Ben Gurion and others like him.
No, Shirin, what’s going on is a war of choice on the Palestinians’ part. The occupation could have ended four years ago. The second intifada was not a war they had to fight. Whatever the inadequacies of Barak’s offer at Camp David, it was made in good faith, and if the Palestinians had made a reasonable counteroffer rather than throwing up their hands, they would ultimately have reached Taba without the baggage of the intifada and a lame-duck Israeli government. But the Palestinian leadership didn’t have a negotiating position; it had a maximalist fantasy, and one that led both Palestinians and Israelis to disaster.
What’s going on, Shirin, is a catastrophe for which both Israelis and Palestinians must bear responsibility. What’s going on, Shirin, is a war in which Israel is the stronger party and therefore the more capable of destruction, but in which the Palestinians are far from passive victims. What’s going on, Shirin, is a conflict in which the Palestinians – just like the Israelis – have shown very little will to control the actions of their extremists. What’s going on, Shirin, is a situation in which the Israelis – just like the Palestinians – are being radicalized by fear for their safety and a sense of siege rather than primal hatred of the “other” or a generations-long conspiracy to grab land.
Shirin, there are people here who I would expect to characterize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a morally black and white struggle between good and evil. You are not one of them.
To elaborate, in a somewhat calmer manner:
The second intifada, on the other hand, wasn’t necessary. In August 2000, there were no occupation troops, raids, checkpoints, curfews or fences. The Palestinian economy was growing, and investment was flowing in from both the Palestinian diaspora and Israel. The Israeli electorate had voted in a center-left Prime Minister who was interested in making a deal and whose offer at Camp David, while not adequate, was bona fide. There was no cause for war at that time; all that was necessary was to keep talking, make a reasonable counteroffer and wait a few months for ideas like dividing Jerusalem to percolate into the Israeli political consensus.
I’m a lawyer, Shirin, and I’ve done a great deal of negotiating. One thing I’ve learned is that anyone who offers 90 percent of what my client wants is looking for a deal. That doesn’t mean that the offer should be accepted – in Arafat’s place, I wouldn’t have accepted the Camp David terms – but it does mean that it’s time to huddle with the client and come up with a counteroffer rather than kicking over the table. Arafat kicked over the table. Even many Palestinians acknowledge that this decision was a disaster.
Dennis Ross, and others who were there, place the blame for the breakdown of the peace process on both sides, and nothing I’ve seen, heard or read gives me any reason to think differently. This does not excuse a single one of the human rights violations that the IDF has committed since, but the responsibility for the overall situation must fall on both parties.
Again, none of the above excuses even one of the human rights violations committed by Israel, nor could any possible Palestinian provocation excuse the settlement policy. I’ve stated my position on these issues many times, and my views are a matter of record. But what you are suggesting above – that Israel bears sole blame for the current situation – is both reductionist and historically inaccurate. This conflict is a mess for which both sides are to blame, and in which Palestinians as well as Israelis have a responsibility to make sacrifices and compromises for peace. I suspect that a fair final settlement will look very much like Taba, so both sides almost got there once, and now both have to do so again.
In any event, this discussion has now strayed very far from the topic of Helena’s original post, so in the interest of not hijacking her blog, this will be my last contribution to the thread. Please do not hesitate to get the last word, or to respond in private if you are so inclined.
Yes, I know I promised the previous post would be the last, but this article by Samir Ghattas in Al-Ahram makes some insightful points about the issues raised above (although I certainly don’t agree with everything in it).