When Settlers Terrorize Palestinians

Plenty is written about Palestinian attacks against Israeli targets. Plenty is written about the Israeli army's attacks on palestinian targets in Gaza and the West Bank. Very little is written about an insiduous kind of violence that anyone should be hard-pressed to distinguish from terrorism: Israeli settlers' attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

The violence is reminiscent of white-on-black violence in the American South between 1865 and 1963, when the violence was endemic and punishment against its perpetrators rare, light or risible. Palestinians are literally being terrorized off their lands in brazen attacks, a spate of which caught the attention of Israeli media in the last couple of weeks, enough to elicit an outraged editorial from Haaretz, the Israeli daily:

Four Palestinians from the village of Khirbet Sussia were beaten by masked settlers while herding their sheep. One of them, a 57-year-old woman, was hospitalized. The Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court released two suspects in the assault to house arrest. Last week Palestinian police sources reported that two improvised mortar shells, bearing the legends "Sharon 1" and "Sharon 2," were fired from the settlement of Bracha to the village of Burin, near Nablus.

When there's word of homemade shells in Israel, it's usually in reference to the crude Qassam rockets named after the Palestinian hero of insurgency, Ezz al-Dine el-Qassam (1880-1935), who battled British and Israeli colonialism in the 1920s and 30s, and fired at Israel by Hamas or its like-minded allies from the Gaza Strip. Western readers might be surprised to discover that Israeli settlers are developing their own homemade shells. "Sharon," of course, stands for Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister and a hero to settlers for his having pushed an aggressive policy of building settlements in the face of intense international pressure and United Nations resolutions declaring the settlements illegal.

Settlers, for their part, have interpreted the Israeli government's policy as a blank check to make more than their own lives in the Occupied Territories. They make their own laws. The results were bound to be incendiary. As the Haaretz editorial notes,

In recent years, as radical elements in the settlements and outposts have proliferated and become more powerful, the coexistence approach often seems to make way for a violent struggle that aims to deprive the Palestinians of their land. Jews who presume to be upholding the duty of settling the land openly discuss their intention of making the lives of Arab residents a misery and pushing them out of what they call Judea and Samaria.

Many Israeli and Palestinian organizations work tirelessly to advocate for Palestinian rights in the Occupied Territories. But there's only so much they can do against an institutionalized system that proscribes a double-standard: settlers have the privileged protection of the occupation forces while Palestinians are considered guilty until proven innocent. As Haaretz concludes,

As long as there is no political agreement on the fate of the occupied territories, the State of Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Palestinian population there. Just as the Defense Ministry allocates forces and funds to protect the settlers, including trespassers and illegal builders, the Public Security Ministry must give the police the resources they need to protect law-abiding Palestinian citizens. The law-enforcement agencies, including the prosecution and the courts, must treat Jewish criminal behavior as severely as they do Palestinian crimes. One cannot expect the Palestinian Authority to deal harshly with those who attack Jews when Jewish violence against Palestinians is tolerated.

See Also:

• Israel's Separation Barrier in the West Bank
• Road Map to Nowhere