All posts tagged settlements

Israel legalizes ‘outpost’ settlements.

The illegal outpost of Givat Asaf is among the four outposts to be declared legal.

The illegal outpost of Givat Asaf is among the four outposts to be declared legal.

By now the story almost writes itself: A high-ranking representative of the U.S. government—in this case, John Kerry—is slated to arrive soon in Israel, part of an effort to reinvigorate a peace process described as “moribund” since at least the early aughts. That effort is already making everyone mad, and Israel has taken the same steps it always takes to ensure that the U.S. government understands exactly where it stands: It’s expanding settlements.

The state said that it will act to legalize four West Bank outposts for which a delimitation order was issued in 2003 by the Israel Defense Forces GOC Central Command. Such an order allows the army to demolish at any time structures located within the delimited area.

In 2007, attorneys Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zecharya petitioned the High Court on behalf of the Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now, to implement the order.

…construction in the outposts continued despite the order. The High Court requested clarification from the state, and on Tuesday a detailed opinion concerning each one of the four outpost[s] was submitted to the court. In the document, the government said it had taken steps in recent weeks to retroactively authorize the outposts, which were built without official permission.

Built illegally, even by Israel’s standards; acknowledged as illegal, and thus ordered demolished; construction continues, despite state acknowledgement of the illegality of the outposts’ very existence—so sure, ten years later, why not rejigger your country’s laws to provide a patina of respectability? Why not give cover and support to lawbreakers in a manner that is not only insulting to all Israelis who respect the law, but which also flies in the face of the very thing to which your greatest ally has called you to commit yourself time and again?

There’s plenty that’s infuriating in this story, but there’s absolutely nothing new. If you’re a settler, you learned long ago that if you just push hard enough, you can do whatever you want. You will not be held accountable for illegal construction, any more than you might be for setting fire to Palestinian fields, or attacking Palestinian villages.

And if you’re an American diplomat, you learned nearly as long ago that pretty much no matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter what international law or the global community might say—Israel’s going to keep building. Keep expanding its hold on the West Bank until it has a complete and final hold on all those lands it now occupies illegally, and has ground down or kicked out as many of those lands’ legal occupants as humanly possible. Keep going until a two-state piece is literally impossible, the Palestinians have given up all hope, and Israel reigns triumphant.

At least, as an American and Israeli citizen, I would hope that the Administration and State Department understand by now that that’s the plan. Because that’s the plan. I mean surely, any sentient being with two eyes in their head can see that that’s the plan? Even just one eye?

The only people who might, conceivably, change the plan’s course are all those same Americans. Only if and when it becomes diplomatically untenable for Israel to continue down this illegal and destructive course will my Israeli government even consider throwing on the brakes. Only if and when a U.S. government takes a firm stand and sticks by it will Israelis and Palestinians have so much as a chance at the peace that Kerry is working so hard to achieve.

But let me stress: The plan’s end-goal is, despite everything, unachievable. Israel will not be able to convince the Palestinians to give up all hope, and the Jewish State will ultimately be lost in the effort. At best, all Israel will be able to achieve is a single political entity in which constant, low-level ethnic violence makes any semblance of normal life a distant dream (which is to say: an even worse version of what already exists). That’s the best case scenario. I shudder to think about the other options.

It may already be too late for Kerry to do anything, frankly. Nothing and no one in the current Israeli government gives me any reason to believe that Israel has any interest in turning the country’s Titanic around. For what it’s worth, those who support the settlement project (which is virtually the entire government) appear to be genuine in their assumption that they can force their will on the world.

And why shouldn’t they?

Just like the settlers, Israel’s governments have never been held accountable for their actions. Witness Kerry’s upcoming trip.

Crossposted at Open Zion/The Daily Beast.

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by emilylhauser on May 17, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics, Israel/Palestine, The Daily Beast
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Posted by emilylhauser on May 17, 2013

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/israel-legalizes-outpost-settlements/

East Jerusalem doc ‘My Neighborhood’ wins Peabody Award.

It’s a brief film, only 25 minutes long, but it’s not easy to watch: Glass shatters in the pre-dawn darkness as uniformed men break into people’s homes, shouting “Get out! Hurry! Get out!” Old women and children are pushed and shoved; mothers weep as they comfort their children. “In blood and fire,” shout men in religious garb, smiles on their faces, “we’ll kick the Arabs out!”

But that’s not all we see in My Neighborhood, a short documentary about settler expansion in East Jerusalem that this week received the prestigious Peabody Award. Directed by Rebekah Wingert-Jabi and Julia Bacha, My Neighborhood chronicles the story of Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian area in what is today Municipal Jerusalem, where settlers were able to obtain court-backed approval to evict Palestinian residents from their homes—or, in the case of the film’s central story line, part of their home, a home in which the affected family has lived since 1956—but to which other Jewish Israelis soon came in solidarity and support. That story of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation and nonviolent protest is the heart of what the Peabodys describe as an “honest, hopeful documentary.”

The film (which can be watched in its entirety here) centers on the life of Mohammed El Kurd, a middle schooler who one day comes home from school to find half his family’s house taken over, his grandmother in the hospital as a result of being manhandled by settlers who had literally walked into her home and started to remove furniture. He writes poetry about his family’s loss (“The house has fallen/ Shame! /You pile up the misery/ Shame!/ First it is my turn, then your turn, then the neighbor’s turn/Shame!/ Wake up, wake up!”), and dreams of becoming a human rights lawyer, in order to win back his family’s property. “I hate them,” he says simply at one point, but adds: “I hate them for a reason.”

Mohammad’s life becomes entwined with those of two Jewish Jerusalemites, Zvi and Sara Benninga, brother and sister, children of American immigrants, who find the Sheikh Jarrah story intolerable and launch a grassroots effort to stop the evictions. Zvi makes very clear that the target of his activism is not individual settlers, but state policy: “You can find people who are violent and crazy in any society,” he says. “The problem is that here they’re backed up and supported [by the state].”

Mohammad’s grandmother admits that she has a hard time trusting the Jews who have suddenly shown up (“You’re telling me that they will leave their people and their religion and join us?”) but Mohammad himself has no such hesitation: “Some people say that these are Jews and Jews won’t do us any good. But I disagree…. They’re helping us and themselves. Why shouldn’t they?”

We see Sara Benninga dragged away by police; we hear her father, the son of Holocaust survivors, express the anxiety produced by watching his children arrested time and again. We hear the words of protestors, including Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own sister-in-law, Ofra Ben Artzi, who says: “Where there is injustice and human rights violations, and people are thrown out of their homes, I have an obligation to be there.” In the two years that followed the launch of protests, evictions stopped in Mohammad’s neighborhood—but they continued elsewhere.

Produced by Just Vision Media, a production company dedicated to telling stories of Israeli-Palestinian nonviolent cooperation (as in the acclaimed Budrus and Encounter Point), My Neighborhood is both powerful and moving, but by nature of its truthfulness, the hope the film tries to convey is necessarily limited.

“Sheikh Jarrah elicits hope,” Zvi Benninga says toward the end of My Neighborhood, “but it is set in a reality that scares me.

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by emilylhauser on March 29, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Entertainment, Israel/Palestine, The Daily Beast
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Posted by emilylhauser on March 29, 2013

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/east-jerusalem-doc-my-neighborhood-wins-peabody-award/

Israeli government’s priority: settlements.

Every now and then I like to remind people that the occupation is a real thing that actually exists in the lives of real people. On Monday, Israel reminded us why:

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz last week signed the government’s new national priority list, which grants housing and development benefits to some 660 communities….

The new national priority list includes 87 West Bank settlements out of a total of 131 settlements. Some of these communities belong to the large settlements blocs, such as Ariel and Efrat, which have a relatively high social-economic ranking, and others are isolated communities like Yitzhar, Itamar and Elon Moreh.

In total, settlements make up 13 percent of the list, while settlers make up just 4 percent of Israel’s population.

As Ynet so delicately puts it: “the government appears to be encouraging Israelis to purchase lands in settlements like Beit El, Tapuach, Ofra and Eli”—the very thing that the government has long encouraged Israelis to do, via perks such as state subsidized mortgages, extra education budgets, and superior infrastructure funding.

It’s important to remember here that Ofra was built illegally even by Israeli standards, and whole sections of Beit El sit on land stolen from private Palestinian owners—and that these two examples are hardly exceptions to the rule. The occupation (a real thing that actually exists in the lives of real people) is a tool wielded by successive Israeli governments to protect the country’s investment in the settlement enterprise, an enterprise rooted in and shaped by lawlessness.

“On the other hand,” Ynet reports,

the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Kiryat Malachi, which were hit by hundreds of Hamas rockets in the recent round of fighting in Gaza, have been excluded from the list despite their relatively low social-economic ranking.

Other communities excluded from the list include Lod, which was the subject of a scathing state comptroller report, Ramla, Kiryat Gat and Beit Shemesh, which has an even lower social-economic ranking.

…Ephraim Mishal, who is running for the position of Kiryat Malachi mayor, added: “What more has to happen in our city for the government to include us in its aid programs. A lot of blood has been shed, and the government is conveying a message that we are not on its list of priorities.”

Indeed. Not on its list of priorities, and apparently not likely to be in the near future. Unless and until rockets start to fall again (which, in the absence of a two-state peace, seems a forgone conclusion, even to Israelis who lived through the last war), a two-state peace made increasingly impossible by the on-going settlement enterprise.

If the people of Lod and Kiryat Malachi want to see their problems genuinely addressed, they’ll have to start in Ofra and Beit El.

Crossposted from Open Zion/The Daily Beast.

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by emilylhauser on January 3, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Israel/Palestine, The Daily Beast
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Posted by emilylhauser on January 3, 2013

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/israeli-governments-priority-settlements/

The one book you need to read: The Unmaking of Israel – Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

I am late to this, but The Unmaking of Israel (published 2011) is that one book that you need to read on Israel, if you read no others.

And if you read others, you should still put Unmaking at the top of the pile.

And if you read nothingnothing else?

At least read the first chapter. It’s only 14 pages, and it’s a brilliant little précis of the book’s entire argument.

Plus the book’s short, and honed razor-sharp, and a pleasure to read, to boot. (And look! It’s only $10.94 on Amazon!)

Gorenberg is an American-Israeli like myself, except he stayed. He’s been there for more than 30 years, is Orthodox, lives in Jerusalem, and he’s a very, very good writer — I often recommend his short-form work, and over on the right you’ll see a link to his blog, South Jerusalem. Before I go any further, though, a caveat: I agree with virtually every single word in Unmaking, and the only reason I say “virtually” is because I’m sure there’s some small point that I would have handled differently, because surely there has to be. I just can’t remember which one, just now.

So it’s possible that part of why I recommend this book so highly is simply because it is such a relief to read something that to me feels like the very finest of common sense. But even so, having gotten that out of the way: It’s a great book, with an excellent summary of Israeli history that manages the supposedly impossible task of respecting the Palestinian narrative as well right in that first chapter, and you really should read it.

Gorenberg’s bottom-line point is this: The settlements, and everything that led up to and is flowing from the settlements, is pulling apart the positive good that is Israel, and has been so doing since 1967 — and it’s not just Israel that’s suffering, but Judaism itself.

The trends I’ve introduced here did not grow out of one carefully premeditated policy. Some resulted from ignoring commonsense warnings about long-term rule of another people. Some are the completely unintended consequences of seemingly safe decisions, or of choices made to solve immediate problems. Many are the product of continuing to sanctify values that made sense before 1948, when Jews were seeking self-determination — and that make no sense in an independent state.

There’s an essential chapter about the utter lawlessness of the entire settlement enterprise — even by Israeli legal standards – and Gorenberg very clearly lays out the dangers of allowing a particular ideological group rise to the top of the military in a democratic state (especially when that group openly opposes government policy), as well as the danger in fostering the flowering of an entire sub-society, the ultra-Orthodox, that rejects the secular state, contributes nothing to it and consciously fails to prepare its children to ever contribute to it, all while depending on that state for its livelihood.

In his concluding chapter, Gorenberg writes:

For Israel to establish itself again as a liberal democracy, it must make three changes. First, it must end the settlement enterprise, end the occupation, and find a peaceful way to partition the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Second, it must divorce state and synagogue — freeing the state from clericalism, and religion from the state. Third and most basically, it must graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality.

As someone who focuses almost exclusively on Gorenberg’s three-part #1, I must say I got a little bit of a frisson in my Israel-loving heart when I realized that hey now, he’s about to say that ending the occupation/settlements is not the be-all, end-all! Because of course it’s not. It’s the first, prerequisite step, but then there are these other messes that we’ll have to clean up.

In those final pages, Gorenberg presents a very, very reasonable plan (a series of very, very reasonable plans) to essentially save Israel from itself, and perhaps the greatest disagreement we have is in tone — merely by laying these things out, Gorenberg suggests their possibility, and I have become so disheartened that I have a hard time believing anymore in those possibilities. I would venture that Gorenberg probably has his bad days, too, though.

And even if it never happens, I believe there’s value in marking the place and saying “This is what might have been.”

At any rate: If you read nothing else about Israel, read Gershom Corenberg’s The Unmaking of Israel.

(And happy new year!)

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by emilylhauser on December 31, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Israel/Palestine, Judaism
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Posted by emilylhauser on December 31, 2012

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/the-one-book-you-need-to-read-the-unmaking-of-israel-gershom-gorenberg/

“Israel orders demolition of eight Palestinian villages.”

Umm al-Kheir, South Hebron Hills. To the left: The rubble of the home of a widow with 9 children, demolished on 1/25/12. Center: The shack in which she and her children now live. On the right: the settlement of Karmel. Source: Wikimedia Commons

From Monday’s HaAretz, the peerless Amira Hass reporting:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the demolition of eight Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills because the territory is needed for Israel Defense Forces training exercises, the state told the High Court of Justice on Sunday.

The residents of the targeted villages will be moved to the town of Yatta and its environs; the state claims, based on information it obtained from local informers, that most of these people have permanent homes in that area.

The state will allow the residents to work their lands and graze their flocks there when the IDF is not training — on weekends and Jewish holidays – and during two other periods of one month each during the year. Barak agreed to leave four villages that are in the northernmost part of the area, even though this would reduce the dimensions of training area and prevent the use of live fire.

…The IDF and the Civil Administration regard all of them as squatters in Firing Zone 918, even though the villages have existed since at least the 1830s.

…The state also claims that in recent years residents have been repeatedly violating the status quo by expanding structures illegally.

Sometimes the news speaks for itself. (I particularly like that last sentence in light of this fact: “Israel’s government broke all its settlement-building records in 2011.“)

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by emilylhauser on July 25, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by emilylhauser on July 25, 2012

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/israel-orders-demolition-of-eight-palestinian-villages/

Human rights? Fine. Screw human rights – settlements cost Israel an arm & a leg.

In a completely inexplicable turn of events, after I posted about my every-other-week column at Open Zion yesterday – the post entirely disappeared. Gone. Poof! I’m trying again.

Here’s the top of my latest Open Zion post – to read the rest, please click through!

The Israeli public recently got a peek at the enormity of the actual, literal price tag attached to the settlement enterprise.

Migron is an “outpost”—a settlement that’s illegal even by Israeli standards—and was built on land that even the Israeli government recognizes as Palestinian-owned. The 48 families and single woman living at Migron have been ordered to leave by Israel’s High Court, and they’ve said that they will—if the government first provides them with temporary homes.

On Sunday the Netanyahu cabinet agreed (unanimously) to do so, to the tune of 53 million shekels—over $14 million, and that’s not including any other costs the government will incur when the families are moved to permanent homes in other settlements (settlements which are legal in Israeli eyes, if not according to the Fourth Geneva Convention).

Or, in other words: A group of criminals told their government to foot the bill for ending their criminal activity, with tax-payer money. And the government agreed, for the low, low price of about $300,000 per family.

And yet, as outrageous as that story is, as enraged as Israel’s law-abiding citizens should be about Migron—it is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

A report released a year ago revealed that Israel’s settlements had, at that time, already cost Israelis $18.8 billion.

About six weeks after that report came out, a wave of fury swept Israel in the form of social justice protests that appeared to appear out of nowhere. Those who were paying attention knew something was afoot – from a massive consumer boycott to grumbled conversations at home and in the press—but I think it’s fair to say that for most, the speed with which a few tents became a national movement was breathtaking.

The demonstrations started out as housing protests, but soon became about so much more: They were about people wanting to find a job, build a family, and have reasonable hope that things can get better, for themselves and for the country. They were about people being told their entire lives that they live in the only country that’s Good For The Jews, and discovering that the government of Good-For-The-Jews treats them with contempt. They were about the 2010 Carmel wild fires that revealed a shocking state of unreadiness and about ugly Parliamentary fights over how best to shrink democracy. They were about doctors willing to go on hunger strike, sky-rocketing cottage cheese prices, and the Arab Spring.

Here’s what they weren’t about: The settlements. The occupation. The conflict.

To read the rest, please go to Open Zion (like, for real: Please?).

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by emilylhauser on May 5, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by emilylhauser on May 5, 2012

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/human-rights-fine-screw-human-rights-settlements-cost-israel-an-arm-a-leg/

HaAretz editorial: “UN probe must take West Bank out of Israeli hands”

Today I’m going to totally cheat, and just lift an entire HaAretz editorial from the site – because I couldn’t say it any better, and maybe — MAYBE — since it’s coming from Israel’s newspaper of record, the following will be greeted with the gravitas it deserves*:

Not for nothing is the government going out of its way to thwart the UN Human Rights Council’s decision to investigate the settlements.

The map of “available” land for settlements, revealed in Haaretz on Friday by Akiva Eldar, shows that while successive Israeli governments have trumpeted their desire to establish a sustainable Palestinian state alongside Israel, they have spared no economic effort or legal creativity to thwart this solution.

The map shows that for decades the Civil Administration has been seeking and mapping West Bank land that outdated Ottoman law defined as “state land.” Much of this land has been used to set up settlements and even illegal outposts.

Some parcels of land have been named after settlements to be established in the future within certain local and regional councils in the West Bank – and beyond them. In some places, boundaries of “available” land spill beyond the separation fence, which Israel calls the security fence.

Most of the reservoir of land, including 569 sites covering 620,000 dunams, or 155,000 acres (about 10 percent of the West Bank ), is east of the separation fence and the “settlement blocs” that Israel wants to annex in a final-status agreement with the Palestinians. Since the interim Oslo 2 agreement, which gave the Palestinian Authority control over civilian affairs in areas A and B, the Civil Administration has mapped land while “legitimizing” outposts and neighborhoods only in Area C, which is under Israel’s complete control.

The division into three areas was intended as a temporary arrangement. But successive Israeli governments have treated Area C – about 60 percent of the West Bank – as an inseparable part of Israel. The Civil Administration, the Israel Defense Forces and the State Prosecutor’s Office are doing everything possible to restrict the Palestinians living in this area, and are too charitable toward infractions of the law by settlers, as in the case of Migron.

In any case, no UN investigative committee is needed to understand that the West Bank belongs to another people and its lands are not available to a Jewish and democratic state.

*BWAhahahahahaha! Oh, I kid! HaAretz is routinely treated like a traitorous rag of traitorous traitorous-ness by those who disagree with its editorial board, because you see, to question the wisdom of official Israeli policy is to be dangerous, radical, and vaguely (if not out-right) anti-Semitic. Did you forget?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, this dangerous, radical, and vaguely (if not out-right) anti-Semite is going to go back to cleaning her house for Passover. That hametz won’t just run away out of fear, you know!

PS HaAretz is, in fact, an excellent source of information on Israel — please do click through and even bookmark.

image source

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by emilylhauser on April 2, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by emilylhauser on April 2, 2012

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/haaretz-editorial-un-probe-must-take-west-bank-out-of-israeli-hands/

On the West Bank, Israel does whatever it wants.

In yesterday’s HaAretz, leading Israeli political columnist (and national treasure) Akiva Eldar wrote about a dicey Palestinian decision to call on the UN to investigate Israel’s West Bank settlements (about which I wrote here, if you’re looking for a brief primer) — his point boiled down to: Such a gambit is simply not likely to pay off for the Palestinians, and then what?

However, on his way to making that point, he also happened to sum up, almost incidentally, the last decade or more of Israeli behavior on the West Bank, which in turn boils down to: They do whatever the hell they want, no matter what.

To wit:

Why would a rational person think a UN probe into the settlements would lead to any other results than those the results of the [2001] Mitchell Report, which recommended that construction be completely stopped and that outposts be evicted, or of the [US-backed] Road Map [signed and committed to by Israel] that recommended the Mitchell Report findings be implemented?

What more can we learn from an investigation into the settlement that we haven’t yet learned from [Israeli] Attorney Talia Sasson’s  report on illegal outposts [commissioned and committed to by the Israeli government]? What will the UN probe into the settlements teach us about the settlers’ attacks on the rights of Palestinians that haven’t been made public in the periodic publications of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or the websites of Peace Now, B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Bimkom, and Breaking the Silence?

It’s enough to look through the archives of the Israeli High Court of Justice and the Israeli press to determine that the settlers – aided by Israeli government after Israeli government –  are depriving Palestinians of their land, restricting their freedom, and generally making their lives generally more difficult. It is a shame to waste money on the stipends of the investigation staff.

So why did the Palestinians decide they need this investigation? They know no good came to them from the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead. It is hard to believe that they have forgotten the onslaught they suffered in the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the American Congress, as a result of their failed attempt to be admitted to the UN and their admission to UNSECO.

(All links added by me).

I highly recommend that you click through and read the whole thing, but I read that part, and honestly, it took my breath away. And that’s just since 2001!

But yeah, of course. The Palestinians and their damn precondition that construction on the settlements stop before they negotiate — that’s the problem. Oy li.

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by emilylhauser on March 26, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by emilylhauser on March 26, 2012

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/on-the-west-bank-israel-does-whatever-it-wants/

Israel’s settlements: What’s up with that?

Peter Beinart (who is now, loosely speaking, my boss), has raised a kerfluffle, something of a habit of his (see his 2010 essay, The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment, as well as the blog he edits at which I’m a columnist, Zion Square). He did this most recently on Sunday, by suggesting in the New York Times that supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should boycott Israel’s West Bank settlements.

“Oh noes!” cried Israel’s ambassador to the US, and various prominent Jewish thinkers, “Beinart is radical! And boycotting Jews! And boycotting Jews [and here I quote Jeffrey Goldberg] is distasteful, for obvious historical reasons!” I’m not at all sure what historical reasons these may be, as Jews have rather a history of disagreeing with each other and acting on those disagreements, and “radical”? A man who attends an Orthodox synagogue and declares himself a pro-Israel Zionist? Words are, once again, drifting free of their moorings, but that’s par for the course in these arguments.

The simple truth is that a boycott of Israel’s settlements has been around for awhile. I’ve been boycotting settlement products since before I left Israel, in 1998. Peace Now called for a boycott last July, and many Israelis think that’s a dandy idea. But Peter has real buzz, between his about-to-be-released book, and the aforementioned blog project — so, you know: Cue the drama!

Of course, people have a right to differing views on the settlements and the efficacy and/or tastefulness of boycotting them. What really bothers me is that no one’s talking about the actual settlements.

So here’s a primer.

What are the settlements?

The settlements are roughly 220 communities built on the Palestinian side of the internationally-recognized border (or Green Line) between Israel and the West Bank (this doesn’t include Jewish “neighborhoods” on the Palestinian side of Jerusalem).

I say “roughly” because some settlements are “official,” built at the Israeli government’s behest, while nearly half (known as “outposts”) are illegal even in Israeli eyes but built with a wink and a nod from the government, and there’s a purposeful evasiveness about their numbers. A government appointed investigator found in 2005 that

the outposts are mostly established by bypassing procedure and violating the law, displaying false pretense towards some of the State authorities, and enjoying the cooperation of other authorities in harsh violation of the law.

Israel’s government agreed to act on that investigation’s findings, much as it committed itself to the US two years earlier (in the Road Map for Peace) to halting all settlement construction of any kind. It’s done neither. All settlements on Palestinian land are in blatant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states clearly that when one country occupies land in the course of a war, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.”

Some 310,000 Israelis currently live in the West Bank — nearly triple the number who lived there in 1993, when Israel first committed itself (in the Oslo Accords) to negotiating a two-state peace with the Palestinians. There are also 196,000 Israelis living in Palestinian Jerusalem, up about 40,000 since Oslo.

The settlements come with a network of settler-only roads (that is: A segregated road system, and as in all things separate but equal, the roads are separate, but far from equal), as well as hundreds of roadblocks, some permanent, some “flying” (mobile, and erected without warning), intended to severely curtail Palestinian freedom of movement, while allowing complete freedom of movement for Israeli settlers.

All of this — from tiny hamlets to major towns, to the roads connecting them, to the roadblocks standing guard around them (not to mention the military standing actual guard), and the “separation barrier” (a huge concrete wall) that Israel has constructed, often deep inside Palestinian territory — has left the Palestinian West Bank pock-marked with Israeli “facts on the ground”: cold hard realities that will be very hard to overturn to allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian state (see map, below — the blue dots are settlements).

And, you might imagine, it doesn’t come cheap: Israel spends $2.5 billion on the settlements annually. Moreover, successive governments have long given preferential treatment to the settlers — as but one example, in a country recently rocked by social unrest born in a chronic lack of affordable housing, just over 20% of government spending inside the Green Line goes toward residential construction, whereas in the settlements, residential construction accounts for nearly 45% of spending.

So, to sum up: The settlements – illegal, wildly expensive, and a literal barrier to peace. As I wrote once before, they are, in fact, the problem.

As my Twitter friend @dotanh reminded me: Boycotting settlements and settlement products isn’t even remotely about boycotting Jews. It’s about boycotting a system that is doing real, lasting damage to the Palestinian people, and to Israel itself.

And as Mother Jones writer Adam Serwer tweeted: “Put aside tactical considerations of Beinart’s [suggestion]. Who would want to consciously give the settlers a dime?”

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by emilylhauser on March 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Israel/Palestine, Social Justice
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Posted by emilylhauser on March 20, 2012

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/israels-settlements-whats-up-with-that/

My problem: I don’t know what to say.

Sue me - I boycott settlement goods.

Please note update, below.

So the other day, Israel proved to the world what many of us have long known: They’ve lost their damn minds.

How did they finally prove this on a global scale? By passing this bill:

According to the law, a person or an organization calling for the boycott of Israel, including the settlements, can be sued by the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they sustained damage. The court will then decide how much compensation is to be paid. The second part of the law says a person or a company that declare a boycott of Israel or the settlements will not be able to bid in government tenders.

That is: You post on your FB page that you won’t buy settlement-raised mushrooms and: boom! Lawsuit. At least in theory. (If you own, say, a restaurant, the theory becomes much more practice-y, I presume).

And so my problem is this: This law is so epically, Biblically awful, so utterly and thoroughly grotesque, so depressingly indicative all the everything that has gone wrong with the place since about 1994 — that I am at a complete loss. I have no idea what to say. The law is terrible. It’s not in the least surprising. It’s an indication of all that’s gone wrong with the place since about 1994. That’s all I got.

And trying to come up with anything more just makes me more depressed than I already am. (Remember that post I wrote last Friday about how sometimes I feel like I would undo my entire life, if only it would mean that I wouldn’t have anything to do with Israel anymore? Yeah…).

So I’ll cave to my own limitations and outsource the effort, via links:

  1. Bradley Burston (who I love so much it hurts some days) in HaAretz: “Israel’s boycott law: The quiet sound of going fascist”
    “This is the one. Don’t let what we like to call the relative calm here, fool you. When the Knesset passed the boycott law Monday night, it changed the history of the state of Israel…. This is the one. This is where the slope turns nowhere but down.”
  2. Noam Sheizaf in 972 Magazine: “Everything you (never) wanted to know about the boycott bill: A reader’s guide to democracy’s darkest hour”
    “How come this law passed three Knesset votes?     The key moments in the legislation process was a decision by Binyamin Netanyahu’s government (and by him personally, as he told the Knesset on Wednesday) to have the entire coalition back the law. This means that the law will have the automatic support of most of the Knesset members, and that even coalition members who oppose it won’t be able to vote against it. Once the bill passed Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee—controlled by the right—it was clear for the two final votes, which took place Monday night. So, how did Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak vote? They didn’t. They avoided the vote. See the full roll-call from the Knesset vote.” What about the High Court? I hear that it is likely to strike down the law…. Many think that the court will kill the law or parts of it, and petitions on this issue has already been filed. Yet a verdict would take time… [and] already, there are threats from leading politicians to the court not to intervene in this issue, or else they would limit the court’s power. This has become a true watershed moment for Israel.”
  3. Joseph Dana, in 972 Magazine: “Knesset study: No democracy has similar anti-boycott laws”
    “On the surface, the Israeli anti-boycott bill is innovative in the way that it seeks to limit legitimate freedom of speech and expression under the auspices of democratic infrastructure. However, the Knesset’s own fact finding mission proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the bill has no parallel in other democracies.”
  4. Jerusalem Post: “US Jews say ‘Boycott Law’ hurts freedom of expression”
    “Backers of a new Israeli law penalizing anyone who targets Israel or West Bank settlements for boycotts tout it as a tool to fight back against anti-Israel campaigns, but American Jewish organizations seem remarkably united in deeming the measure an affront to freedom of expression.”
  5. Jerusalem Post: “Peace Now launches boycott of settlement products” (includes brief video of former Member of Knesset Mossi Raz speaking outside the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court).
    “Raz said that while Peace Now has never called for a boycott against the settlements, following the passing of the boycott law the organization ‘will call for a boycott of the settlements until the occupation is over and a Palestinian state is founded next to the state of Israel’.”
  6. HaAretz: “Israeli Left launches public campaign against new law banning boycotts”
  7. Peace Now anti-boycott page on Facebook: “Sue me – I boycott settlement goods”
  8. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel: “Knesset Passes Boycott Law; ACRI Plans to Appeal”
  9. Jerusalem Post: “Rights groups to appeal ‘Boycott Law’ at High Court”
  10. Update: Please also read the excellent piece of righteous anger that is “To the Knesset: How dare you not vote on the boycott bill,” by Dahlia Scheindlein at 972 Magazine, referencing the fact that fully 35 members of Knesset, including the Prime Minister, failed to show up for the vote:
    “I’d like to sue Prime Minister Netanyahu, for boycotting the State of Israel – after all what greater symbol of our state exists but our Knesset plenary? He abandoned our state at a critical hour. I can prove the damages, even though according to the law I don’t need to: just look at my tax returns. I pay your salary, Mr. Prime Minister, and you have scoffed at your duty to the citizens, made fool of the hardworking folks trying to close the month in order to pay you. Give us our money back.”

There is bound to be a lot more to write on this as the days and months unfold, by others and almost certainly by me at some point. In the meantime, those are all excellent places to get caught up on just how heinous the law is, and what some folks are trying to do about it.

8 Comments
by emilylhauser on July 13, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Israel/Palestine
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on July 13, 2011

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/israel-anti-boycott-law/

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