Palestinians Face Increased Violence As Extremists Call the Shots

by Rachelle Marshall

“Their cars cruise slowly through the teeming streets. Poking out of the windows are the menacing black barrels of M-16 automatic rifles and snub noses of Uzi submachine guns…They are the unofficial, self-appointed protectorate of the Jewish presence in the West Bank—a loose network of vigilante squads who claim they are the vanguard of a new security force that will maintain law and order in the occupied territory if the Israeli army reduces its force as a result of proposed Palestinian autonomy.” William Claiborne, Washington Post, June 1, 1979

The quotation above appeared more than 17 years ago in an article by a veteran Washington Post correspondent. It described a wave of violence against Palestinians by ultra-religious Jews, including several killings, beatings, destruction of property, and the repeated “terrorizing of Arab families in their homes.”

Today, more than 17 years later, the danger to Palestinians in and around Hebron from extremist settlers is even greater. In addition to beatings and vandalism, Israelis have fired at worshippers attempting to reach the Ibrahimi mosque, and spat at the mayor and other Palestinian officials, calling them “dogs” and “murderers.” A pamphlet distributed throughout Hebron by a settler group warned Arabs, “You sons of bitches, the day of revenge is near.” In late October the security chief of a nearby settlement beat to death a 12-year- old Palestinian boy.

The recent wave of attacks against Palestinians is a reflection of the increased power of Israeli extremists, who combine primitive Judaism with fanatic nationalism. Although Jewish fundamentalists are still a minority, since the last election they have been a formidable political force, with 23 seats in the Knesset and a prime minister they helped to elect. The strength of the religious right was indicated by Netanyahu’s decision last September to open a second exit to an archeological tunnel that runs underneath the Old City of Jerusalem. Israeli security forces had warned that the new opening would arouse protests because of its proximity to Muslim holy sites. In 1988, when Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister, the government attempted to create such an opening, but after riots broke out the ordinarily rigid Shamir quickly backed down.

Israeli extremists combine primitive Judaism with fanatic nationalism.

Netanyahu went ahead with an action that eventually cost the lives of 65 Palestinians and 15 Israelis in order to fulfill a campaign promise to Orthodox religious groups. Netanyahu had established close contacts with religious extremists before taking office. According to the Israeli peace publication The Other Israel, one of his chief financial backers is an American Jewish fundamentalist, Erwin Moskovitz, who has also invested heavily in settling Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem. Moscovitz was a guest of honor at the tunnel opening ceremonies on the night of Sept. 23.

Another of Netanyahu’s promises, which Palestinians were well aware of, was that once elected he would allow Jews to pray on the site of Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, which Israelis call the Temple Mount and Arabs know as Haram al-Sharif. Although Jewish tradition forbids Jews to rebuild the original temple on the site or even set foot on it until the coming of the Messiah, since 1969 ultra-religious extremists have made repeated attempts to destroy the mosques and erase all traces of what they refer to as “centuries of Muslim occupation.” In 1990 a group of them threatened to invade the area during Muslim prayers and when Palestinians mobilized to fend them off, Israeli police killed 18 of the Palestinians. Palestinians fear the new tunnel opening will make Haram al-Sharif and the Arab quarter of the Old City more accessible to the fanatics.

The Israeli writer Amos Oz responded to Netanyahu’s statement that “The tunnel touches the foundation rock of our existence” with a stinging warning against the rise of religious extremism. “There are some among us who are pushing Israel into a new type of war for new goals,” he wrote in the Nov. 14 issue of the New York Review of Books . “Sacrificing the initial purpose for which Israel was founded on the altar of ‘the foundation rock of our existence’ might drag us all into an endless cycle of religious wars.” Oz concluded: “The opening of the tunnel and current Israeli policy towards Hebron represent nationalistic and religious autism rather than legitimate security considerations.”

Fears for the Future

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak voiced similar fears that Israel’s refusal to implement the peace agreements would lead to violence. “If they do not conclude something just between the two sides my fears for the future will be terrible,” he told a New York Times reporter. “Not terrible on the Israeli side aloneon Israel, on Jordan, on America, on all those who are supporting Israel.”

Despite urging by Arab and European leaders, Israel has yet to fulfill provisions of the Oslo and Taba accords that call for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, a direct passage between Gaza and Jericho, permission to open the Gaza airport, free traffic of people and goods between the occupied territories and Israel, and further troop withdrawals from the West Bank. In deference to the religious extremists who occupy the center of Hebron, Netanyahu has refused to honor the Peres government’s agreement to withdraw from the city without revisions that would leave Israel in control of overall security, with Israeli troops stationed in the surrounding hills and free to pursue Palestinian suspects anywhere in the area. Israeli soldiers would also continue to patrol the center of Hebron, a city where 450 ultra-Orthodox Jews live among 120,000 Palestinians. Palestinians in central Hebron would have to obtain permits from Israeli authorities in order to go to their jobs or carry out any construction. Netanyahu’s arrangement would leave the Palestinians in Hebron vulnerable to continued attacks by extremist settlers, who recently firebombed a Palestinian home and have threatened to seize 20 more whenever Israeli troops are withdrawn. Violent confrontations would be inevitable.

Israel’s expanded settlement program has created an equally dangerous situation elsewhere in the West Bank. In keeping with Netanyahu’s pledge to the religious right, and his own conviction that all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean belongs to Israel, the government has begun construction of thousands of new homes for ultra-Orthodox settlers on the West Bank. An additional 900 housing units will be built on the Golan Heights. In early November Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans for two new cities east of Jerusalem designed to house100,000 Israelisa development Knesset member Haim Ramon said “would create another Bosnia in Israel.” New housing for Israeli settlers will straddle the connecting road between Nablus and Qalqilya and foreclose any possibility of Palestinian control over enough contiguous territory to establish an independent state.

Israel’s renewed effort to accommodate right-wing settlers has been accompanied by increased violence by the army and police against Palestinians. Last October Israeli soldiers sprayed live bullets into the crowd attending the funeral of a child killed by a settler when angry mourners threw stones at them. On Nov. 21 Israeli police burst into the home of a Palestinian police officer in Hebron and stripped and beat his pregnant wife. The Israelis claimed they were looking for guns, which they did not find. Later that week Israeli television showed a videotape of an hour-long beating of a group of Palestinians by border police who were obviously amusing themselves. Afterward, a police official admitted it was not an isolated incident, and said that 237 complaints had been filed this year. The authorities have done little to discourage official brutality. Three days before the videotape was shown, an Israeli military court fined four security agents one agora, or a third of a cent, for killing a Palestinian at a checkpoint in 1993. Netanyahu’s press spokesman, David Bar-llan, explained over National Public Radio that “We’re in a war situation. Those soldiers should not even have been indicted.”

When Israeli bulldozers broke ground on Palestinian-owned land near Nahalin last November and villagers came out to protest, Israeli troops opened fire, killing 36-year-old Atallah Amireh and wounding 12 others. Amireh, the father of 7 children, was carrying papers affirming his ownership of the land and had taken his case to court. In the same week, The Wall Street Journal reported without apparent irony that an American attorney, Peter Sonnenthal, was seeking compensation for the land in East Germany that the Nazis had forced his Jewish grandfather to sell at bargain rates in the 1930s.

When Atallah Amireh was shot in the chest he was holding a sign saying “No Peace With Settlements,” a statement of fact few Middle East observers would deny. The question is whether, and how, the Netanyahu government can be compelled to abandon its policy of populating the West Bank with Jews and instead implement the Oslo and Taba agreements, including good-faith negotiations on Jerusalem.

European Criticism

The U.S. is unlikely to be an agent of change, especially given the fact that even liberal American Jews are reluctant to criticize Israel. But even if the Clinton administration were willing to challenge the pro-Israel lobby, growing investment in Israel by U.S. computer firms and other high-tech industries is forging ever closer economic ties between the two countries that would make it difficult for government officials to exert pressure on Israel even if they wanted to. In contrast to Washington’s strong identification with Israel whatever its policies, European leaders seeking to play a larger role in Middle East peace negotiations have been sharply critical of the Netanyahu government. French President Jacques Chirac was cheered in the streets of Ramallah last October after an appearance before the Palestinian Legislative Council in which he endorsed a Palestinian state and criticized Israel for its settlement policy, its takeover of Jerusalem, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and the construction of West Bank roads open only to Israelis. Shortly afterward, British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind visited Hebron, where he said all Israeli settlements on Arab land were illegal and should be removed. During the same week, Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring also called on Israel to exchange land for peace.

While European leaders were speaking out in behalf of Palestinian independence, the U.N. was criticizing Israel on a related, and shocking, issue. On Nov. 14 the Israeli Supreme Court reconfirmed Israel’s distinction as the only nation in the world to allow torture as official government policy by ruling that Israeli interrogators could use “physical pressure” against a suspected member of Islamic Jihad. Human rights groups have extensively documented Israel’s use of torture against Palestinian suspects even to the point of death, but instead of denying it Israel claims torture is a necessary tool against terrorism. Following the court ruling, the U.N. Committee Against Torture called for an inquiry into what one official called “institutionalized torture,” and said Israel may have violated an international human rights treaty it signed in 1991.

Although the outlook for a just peace settlement while Netanyahu holds office is bleak, there are signs that resistance to the new power of religious zealots is growing within Israel. A new generation of young Israelis who were politicized by the murder of Yitzhak Rabin are publicly refusing to accept the end of hopes for peace, and many older Israelis who enjoy growing prosperity are thought to be unwilling to pay a heavy price to hold on to the occupied territories. Some political scientists even doubt the Israeli military would support a war against Syria or the Palestinians. According to Yaron Ezrahi of Hebrew University, writing in Tikkun, “The question today is whether the prime minister can depend on the people’s army to fight a preventable war that would be rooted in gross miscalculation, incompetent decision making, and ideology irrelevant to security and defense.”

Ezrahi may have had in mind the open letter that 33 members of the most elite military units sent to Netanyahu last October saying, “Our ability to fight and make sacrifices is dependent on the knowledge that the government did everything possible to prevent war. Lacking that knowledge, we cannot see how we would fight in the war which is coming.”

An equally strong statement appeared in Ha’aretz , signed by 150 reservists including Netanyahu’s brother-in-law and the son of the mayor of Jerusalem. It concluded, “We will take no part whatsoever in oppressing the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, nor in protecting the settlements which are the instruments of that oppression.” On Oct. 25 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency gave substance to rumors of a growing rift between the prime minister and the army by reporting that hundreds of soldiers were disarmed as a security precaution before attending ceremonies at which Netanyahu was to appear.

There is an obvious gulf today within Israel between ideologues who have twisted religion into an instrument of hatred and violent lawlessness, and those who recognize that Israel’s survival depends not on acquisition of land but on peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. “The country is split in two,” former Jerusalem Post editor Dan Izenberg declared in San Francisco recently.

If Netanyahu continues to cater to the extremists, whose fanatic nationalism he shares, he will not only deepen the divisions within his own country but threaten the peace and stability of the entire region. Clinton, the Congress, and newly appointed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright must recognize that for the U.S. to stand by as this fate is played out would make it party to almost certain disaster.