Those Notorious Settlers

This is a chapter from my forthcoming book Pictures of Palestine, which gives an all-round picture of the Israeli setttlement project. I've posted it online before six months ago, but it's worth re-posting since I seem suddenly to be getting involved in settler issues, arising from the recent announcement of setttlement expansion in Efrat, close to the Hope Flowers School. This summary gives readers an overall perspective before things start unfolding on that front.

The settlement of Har Homa as seen from Bethlehem.
As you can see, there's an architectural difference between Palestinian areas (foreground) and Israeli setttlements.
You can see the separation wall below the settlement.

Bethlehem sits on a high plateau with quite steep sides. If you go along Manger Street, the historic main road from the Nativity Church toward Jerusalem, the route sweeps in a series of curves along the high edge of the plateau, affording fine panoramas, until it joins the old Hebron Road. There sits the Rachel’s Tomb checkpoint and the security wall, nowadays marking the northeast edge of town, separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem and blocking interaction between people lacking the right permits.

That view from Manger Street looks over a sweeping valley. On the far side rises another prominent hill – again, once covered with forest, felled in 1996-97. On the hilltop arose the Israeli settlement of Har Homa, a commuter settlement incorporated into the Israeli-created Greater Jerusalem area. An ugly, snaking fence with a cleared security zone on the Palestinian side separates Har Homa from Bethlehem.

This modern concrete monstrosity, with a population of 4,000, glowers over Bethlehem like a hilltop citadel. It always astounds me that Jewish people want to live there, with a commanding view over Arabic Bethlehem, which Har Homa residents cannot visit, and from which the Muslim calling to prayers resounds throughout the day. Surely that must give Jewish housewives headaches? But then, many of the inhabitants are neither the privileged of Israel nor the troublemaking ideology-soaked settlers who hit the headlines – they’re working couples with families, drawn there by the facilities, cheap property, tax breaks and financial incentives. These people are the more innocent and numerous of the many different kinds of West Bank settlers.

Israel is a settler country. The vast majority have immigrated over the last century, and settlements have been a major mechanism in the staking out of territory. In the West Bank they have taken on many different forms – urban, dormitory and industrial municipalities, city neighbourhoods (in Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus), religious and secular townships, farming communities and colonial outposts in the wilderness. Nowadays, in the political controversies over settlements, their variety is not widely understood.

The 1948 war left Palestinians with 22% of former Mandate Palestine. This they lost in the 1967 war. This occupied land was not incorporated into Israel proper, except for Jerusalem. The West Bank is run either by a military ‘civil administration’ or by the municipality of Jerusalem, and Palestinians occupy 54% of it, or 12% of ‘historic Palestine’ – the rest is Israeli settlements, military zones, nature reserves or government land. There are settlements northwards in the Golan Heights too (taken from Syria in 1967) and they existed in the Gaza Strip until Israel withdrew from it in 2005.

Settlement blocs have eaten into large chunks of the West Bank, either on its edge (such as the Etzion bloc west of Bethlehem, containing Efrat, Kvar Etzion and Betar Illit), or penetrating deep into wedges of the West Bank (such as the Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim blocs, orbital to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem respectively). There are farming and military settlements and zones in the Jordan valley and corridors of land, settlements and outposts breaking up many parts of the West Bank, leaving Palestinian enclaves with limited or circuitous connections.

Ma'ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, one of Israel's larger commuter settlements.
It cuts the West Bank into northern and southern halves and is strategically placed,
pulling the centre of gravity of Jewish Jerusalem east into Palestinian territory.

Settlements are largely officially sanctioned, though naturally it’s complex. Some are not, and most of those are officially overlooked. They’re another masterpiece of exceptionalism, all stridently variable, yet they’re all part of the same overall colonising strategy. Smaller outposts are largely the initiative of independent settler groups and they’re often illegal in Israeli law, which is only sometimes enforced. Or they are officially illegal at first, then they are legalised as time goes on. Under the military administration, Israeli laws are applied selectively in the West Bank. ‘Security measures’, meaning ‘what the military administration wants’, are the mechanism by which things usually happen – and there’s no questioning a security measure. It’s a military dictatorship, really, for Palestinians.

Some ideological settlers want the occupied settler areas to become a ‘new’ or ‘other’ Israel, subject to Orthodox Jewish rules and autonomous from Israel proper. This is a potentially dangerous state of affairs which could blow up into a conflict between the state of Israel and renegade settler groups. There’s already a low-level war going on between these settlers and adjacent Palestinian communities (more about this below).

The settlement outpost opposite the school.
This has just been legitimised in an announcement this week - houses will be built here soon.

Outposts – often trailers, cabins and tents – are the way that settlements are established and extended. Settler pioneers head out, take some land, defend it, hold out for a while, then develop and expand from there. The authorities conveniently build roads and services for them, and the army guards them when called on.

Some settlements are full-scale towns, such as Pisgat Ze’ev (40,000), Ramot Alon (40,000), Ma’ale Adumim (30,000), Modi’in Illit (27,000), Ariel (16,000) and Betar Illit (25,000). Others are more like suburban dormitories with a few thousand people. Some are populated by special interest groups, whether ultra-orthodox Haredim in Betar Illit and Modi’in Illit, or Russians in Ariel, or supporters of parties such as Labour or Likud, or ex-army people.

Some are city neighbourhoods carved out of Palestinian urban areas – 35% of East Jerusalem is now made up of Israeli settlements and neighbourhoods. Some settlements (such as Gush Etzion) are former Jewish settlements founded in the 1930s, abandoned in the 1948 war when Jews had to retreat into Israel and later reoccupied after 1967. Some are outposts of followers of certain rabbis or sects, or they’re alternative communes or run by independent-minded pioneers (‘Jewish rednecks’, an Italian activist called them) with a penchant for building and farming.

The purpose behind settlements is strategic, to obstruct an Arab re-invasion, a Palestinian revival or the expansion of Palestinian towns. Or it is religious, to fulfil the biblical notion that the land was given to Jews by God. Or it is economic, to allow Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to expand. Or Zionist, based on an expansionist and colonialist impulse.

The settlement of Ma'on in the southern West Bank
- as seen from the Palestinian village of At Tuwani.
These settlers, helped by soldiers, have been attacking the village and its lands.

Settlers you hear of in the news, encroaching on Palestinian farmland, uprooting trees, attacking Palestinians, setting fire to fields, houses and mosques and causing other trouble are a minority. They are ideological, religious or cowboyish settlers with overblown chutzpah, ranged particularly around the biblical towns of Hebron and Nablus, or out in wilder rural areas. Most settlers are more harmless, there because of economic incentives or a need for a home, and many are immigrants of the last few decades.

Tuwani villagers fruitlessly protesting attacks against their land and houses

In 2007 there were 485,000 settlers, of whom 280,000 were in the West Bank, 190,000 in East Jerusalem and 19,000 in the Golan Heights. Eighty percent of settlers live within commuting distance of Jerusalem. Added to settlements are infrastructure such as security walls, which break up the West Bank and isolate Palestinians from each other, together with settler roads and bypasses, military zones with restricted access, nature reserves, appropriated farmland, industrial sites and land reserved for settlement expansion.

Settlers can thus range from secular commuters, disadvantaged families and new immigrants to orthodox religious nationalists, farmers and idealistic Zionists. The overall effect is that Palestinian lands have been sectioned up, rendered into patches which can no longer form a proper contiguous Palestinian state. The Arabic word for settlements means ‘colonies’. Colonisation is the reason for their development.

Irrespective of their legality in international law – which states that all settlements on the Palestinian side of the Green Line are illegal – facts on the ground have been established to make any abandonment of settlements difficult. Large numbers of Israelis would have to be moved and much infrastructure would be destroyed – something no Israeli administration would willingly do, especially if it relies on settler or right-wing nationalist parties to keep it in power. There have already been cases where soldiers refuse to move settlers or, if they do, the action is symbolic and settlers simply move back afterwards.

Ironically, much settlement and infrastructure construction work has been done by Palestinians, simply because of their need for employment and income. They are hired as cheap labour without being subject to Israeli employment laws, which don’t apply in the West Bank. Up to 2009, 12,000 Palestinian building workers gained permits each year to work in settlements. Controversially, some Palestinian construction and materials firms have been involved as well – the West Bank has plenty of good quarrying stone. The PA decided in 2010 to end this divisive system, though whether there will be jobs to replace those lost is a moot point. Settlement-building will become more expensive as a result. There are also international moves to obstruct the settler movement through selective boycotts and disinvestment, and product-labelling and trade restrictions on goods exported from the settlements.

Aside from considerable losses and hardships incurred by Palestinians, I have two worrying concerns. The first is space, both geographical and psychological. The West Bank is densely populated and settlements have been dropped into small spaces, not only impinging on Palestinian farmland, villages and towns but also dominating them since they are often high up, overlooking Palestinian areas. A wall or fence is built around settlements, usually more visible and humiliating to Palestinians than to Israelis. So life has become more claustrophobic for Palestinians.

The second concerns the settlements themselves, modern concrete estates with little spare space – though their elevation compensates for this. Innocent kids’ bike-rides into the country are just not done unless overseen by soldiers. These places are incubators of social problems and mental illness, sharing the ills of faceless dormitory towns worldwide, dependent on car transport and, in times of economic downturn and oil-price hikes, potential prisons.

Though Israelis are the apparent winners of this population-and-location game, their settlements are not naturally-evolved, full-spectrum communities, and thus they are susceptible to serious social issues. Settlements have narrow demographics, housing people of certain age-groups, belief-groups or social types, leading to problems arising from a deficient social spread. Other issues such as environmental and resource stress, effluent disposal, water aquifers, social polarisation and humanitarian, economic and social impacts on Palestinians all add up to a future headache of enormous proportions.

About 40% of settlements sit on private Palestinian land. Ottoman law had it that, if land was registered, farmed for ten years and taxed, ownership was recognised. If not, or if farming lapsed for three years, it reverted to government land. However, the later British-run registration process was incomplete in 1948 when Israel was established and the West Bank was occupied by Jordan. The Jordanians let people stay where they lived, intervening only when there was a dispute, so there is still much unregistered land.

Much was communally owned, therefore not technically ‘private’, and much land had only common or customary legal standing, without contractual ownership. Many ownership rights have been overlooked by the Israelis anyway, and land has been forcibly occupied by the army, settlers, court judgements or construction firms, walled in or otherwise appropriated for security zones or other purposes – especially in the case of large tracts of land in the Jordan valley. Eighteen percent of the West Bank is made up of Israeli military zones.

Above, the settlement of Ariel, a mainly Russian Jewish settlement and
orbital to Tel Aviv. Below, the ancient Palestinian town of Marda.

So it’s all suitably complicated – a nightmare to sort out and, in the Israeli way of things, intentionally so. This complexity obstructs any unravelling of the settlement project. If the evacuation of settled land were called for, then Israel would be responsible for doing it. It is therefore unlikely to be done, however many UN resolutions are agreed. The prospect of foreign troops battling with settlers to enforce laws, resolutions or treaties is a nightmare no one wishes to take on.

Some have suggested that settlers could become Palestinian citizens, but this is improbable and wouldn’t be accepted by many of them, given their nationalist zeal. Some would fight and some reckon that, since they are enacting the Law of God, they are fighting God’s war and that human rights or political decency play no part. It is God who decides these things, not humans, so this interpretation of God’s Law is a moot point. Some settlers oppose the idea of the state of Israel, though they’re happy to call in the Israeli army to protect them if necessary.

This is a success for the ‘facts on the ground’ strategy, adopted before Israel was founded. But this strategy isn’t unique in history: in the occupation of America, Australia, Siberia and the past colonial enterprises of European powers, laying facts on the ground was standard practice. The main difference is that Israel’s colonial enterprise has taken place in modern times. Key principles are thus involved here which, because of the passage of time, morally override earlier colonial precedents.

The first principle is that, whatever Israelis believe, Palestinians have needs and rights which are equal in all respects to those of Israelis. Second, whatever the historic and biblical claims of Jews, most Palestinians were living in Palestine before most Jews immigrated. Religious Jews reckon this land is theirs by God’s gift, but some assert that other Jews have not fulfilled the Covenant by which God granted them this land, and that the killing and stealing accompanying the occupation breaks the Ten Commandments. All this doesn’t mean Jews should leave, but it does mean, as in post-apartheid South Africa and other post-colonial countries, that the needs and rights of the original de facto inhabitants must be respected, accommodated and even prevail, especially if they are a majority.

Third, the right of invasion and occupation was legally abolished in 1920 by the League of Nations – this distinguishes the Israeli settler movement from earlier colonial enterprises. Fourth, it’s commonsense that all people must have a fair deal, with equal access to and responsibility for the space and resources of the Earth. That’s the bottom line and, in time, that’s what must prevail. Worldwide, if we cannot cooperate, all of humanity will suffer in the 21st century, Israelis included.

When I look out from my workplace at the school, over the valley I see a collection of portable cabins, a settler outpost at the northeast end of the rather long, thin settlement of Efrat. Efrat has a population of 7,000, and it is part of the Etzion bloc. The outpost has been there a few years, making a statement and creating a fact on the ground. Efrat will one day extend right up to the wall. That’s why the watchtower on the hill, overlooking Al Khader, is retained. Efrat is financed by a property developer who made his millions by running gambling joints in USA. He offered a large sum of money to the Issa family to get them to move the school so that the settlement could extend to the edge of Al Khader – the money was refused.

It makes me wonder whether, eventually, the school and the Palestinian houses on the hill around it, located on the Palestinian side of the wall, might nevertheless be forced to move. After all, the Palestinians over here are second-class citizens, whose needs and priorities are considered less important than the march of Israeli progress.

Encroachment on Al Khader could be prevented in the unlikely event that a peace agreement established clear borders and rights, permitting Palestine to become a proper country. This is one reason why, over the decades, Israel has prevaricated, delayed and dragged its feet over peace agreements. Such delay allows Israel to carry on its quiet invasion, its incremental conversion of a military occupation into a full appropriation of what remains of Palestine.

Settlement-building might, in international law, be illegal, but Palestine is not thus far a legally recognised nation, so its claim on the land is technically tenuous. Yes, Palestine doesn’t exist. In this political void, anything may happen. That’s why the international community quietly allows this situation to persist – it’s a convenient abrogation of responsibility. The right of invasion has been abolished, yes, but this applies only to recognised nations with legally-sound borders, which Palestine is not. Neat, huh?


Postscript

There's a developing trend which is rather ominous. Signs of it are given in this BBC report here. There's an emergent movement amongst the radical religious settler minority, particularly those living in outposts deeper in the West Bank (in distinction to the suburban settlers around Jerusalem or in the Ariel settlment block) that is edging toward separation from Israel, to found an 'Israel 2'. Put another way, Israel's right-wing, having made use of these pioneer settlers for their own purposes, are beginning to lose control of them.

The basis of this is the idea amongst some 'ultra-orthodox' religious Jews that the state of Israel is an abomination andconstitutes a breach of the prophecies, which say that the nation of Israel will be formed after the coming of the Messiah, who has not yet come. Before that can take place they believe there must be a showdown, a catastrophe which will cleanse the earth and allow the Messiah to appear. This interlocks with the ideas of right-wing Christians, particularly in USA, who to some extent are using the Jews for the achievement of the final conflagration as described in the Book of Revelations.

Settlers are now beginning to fight the Israeli army - as well as carrying out raids on Palestinian villages and mosques, and killings and attacks on Palestinians. This is an outcome of the loose and hubristic thinking of many expansionist Israelis who believe the occupation of Palestine to be good and just, even a duty before God to claim all of the land from the Jordan River to the sea (even, for some, all of the land from the Euphrates in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt).

As I have mentioned in my forthcoming book, one of my fears for this area is a war between Israelis - particularly since they have a habit of not knowing when to stop. It's a consequence of having lived in such a highly militarised and aggressive state for so long - in a sense, it has bred an addiction to conflict and a hardening of Israeli society to the degree where such things can happen.

This tendency is still new but it bodes ill, and I know some Israelis who, if they dare to think or talk about it, see red lights. It could mean things turning very ugly for the Jewish people, turning on each other, or it could also mean the debilitation or even, at a push, the end of the Israeli project. It would mean the end of the Israeli consensus, such as it is, which has allowed things to progress thus far. So the settlement project is not just problematic for Palestinians - it is becoming a problem for Israelis too. This was visible from its very beginning, back around 1970.

This scenario is admittedly pessimistic. But it shows what can happen when wrongs are permitted to go a long way - unintended consequences can arise, and transgressions progressively increase until a crisis comes.