They create the terror, then cooperate like "peas in a pod" or cells...
The Cancer Cells
Uri Avnery
November 1, 2003
In the Six-Day War, hundreds of Israeli soldiers
were murdered while storming the Sinai desert,
the West Bank and the Golan heights.
In the Yom-Kippur War, more than 2000 Israeli
soldiers were murdered in the defense of the
conquered territories.
In the 18 year long Lebanon War, more than a
thousand Israeli soldiers were murdered while
conquering and occupying South Lebanon.
They would have been surprised to learn that they
were "murdered". Perhaps they would have been
insulted. After all, they were not helpless Jews in
the ghetto who were killed during a pogrom by
drunken Cossacks. They fell as soldiers in war.
Now we are back in the ghetto.
Again we are poor, fearful Jews.
Even when we are in uniform.
Even when we are armed to the teeth.
Even when we have tanks, airplanes, missiles
and the nuclear option.
Alas, we are murdered.
The application of the verb "murder" to combat
soldiers who fall in action is a semantic novelty of
the present intifada in the Sharon era. It was very
conspicuous last week, in the wake of two military
incidents.
In the Palestinian village of Ein Yabroud, three
soldiers were ambushed and killed. Their job was
to safeguard the road to the nearby settlement
Ofra, north of Ramallah. They were patrolling the
main street of the village on foot, following their
regular route. On the way back, three Palestinian
fighters lay in wait for them, killing three and
wounding one. The attackers got away.
A classic guerilla engagement. Not terrorism.
Not an attack on civilians. The action of guerilla
fighters against armed soldiers in an occupied area.
If it had involved German soldiers in France or
French soldiers in Algeria, nobody would have
dreamed of saying that they were "murdered".
But on our television, military correspondents talked
of the three being "murdered" by "terrorists".
A few days later, an even more shocking event took
place. One single Palestinian fighter cut through
the fence of Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip,
entered a military camp and killed three soldiers -
one male, two female. He was pursued and killed.
In connection with this event, too, the military
correspondents said on TV, without blinking,
that the three were "murdered" by "terrorists" in a
"terrorist" action.
Murder? Terrorism? Against soldiers in uniform?
Inside a fortified settlement?
It is worth analysing this incident in order to
understand the current military campaign as a
whole.
Netzarim is a small, isolated settlement on the sea
shore, in the heart of the Gaza Strip, far from any
other settlement. It was implanted in the middle
of a Palestinian population of a million and a
quarter, half of them refugees, in the most densely
inhabited place on earth. A whole battalion of the
IDF defends it, and that is not enough. To reach it
from Israel, one has to cross the entire width of the
Gaza strip. All traffic is by armored vehicles. Up to
now, more than twenty soldiers have been killed in
the defense of the settlement and the road leading
to it.
Crazy? The settlers themselves maintain that it was
the army that had demanded to set up the
settlement as a base for observation and control.
The fanatical nationalist-religious founders have
since disappeared, their place taken by adventurers
who risk their own lives and the lives of their
children - not to mention the soldiers, male and
female, who have no choice. The government
sacrifices them on the altar of the settlement.
The Palestinians, of course, suffer more than
anyone else. Any who come near the settlement
are shot. Anything that was standing or growing
nearby, or along the road, has been destroyed or
uprooted long ago. This week, the army
demolished two Palestinian high-rise apartment
blocks, each 12 floors high, some hundreds of
meters from the settlement, because from there the
goings on in the settlement could be "observed".
This is typical: like a cancer in the body that
gradually extends its malign influence, every
settlement slowly destroys its surroundings in an
ever-widening circle.
The process can be outlined as follows:
(1) On a hilltop, an "outpost" consisting of one or
two mobile homes is set up without government
permission.
(2) The government declares that it will not tolerate
such illegal actions and talks about removing it.
(3) The army sends soldiers to defend the outpost,
saying that it cannot leave Jews in a hostile region
without protection as long as they are there,
even illegally.
(4) For the same reason, the outpost is connected
to the water, electricity and telephone networks.
(5) The discussion in the cabinet is postponed,
and in the meantime the settlement expands.
(6) The cabinet decides to accept the accomplished
fact and the outpost becomes a legal settlement.
(7) The Military Governor expropriates large
stretches of cultivated land for the development of
the settlement.
(8) A bypass road is build to allow for the safe
movement of the settlers and soldiers. For this
purpose, the army expropriates more stretches
of cultivated land from the neighboring Palestinian
villages. The road with its "security area" is 60-80
meters wide.
(9) Palestinians try to attack the settlement that
stands on their land.
(10) To prevent attacks on the settlement, an area
400 meters wide around the settlement is declared
a "security zone" closed to Palestinians. The olive
groves and fields in this area are lost to their
owners.
(11) This provides the motivation for more attacks.
(12) For security reasons, the army uproots all
trees that might afford cover for an attack on the
settlement or the road leading to it. The army has
even invented a new Hebrew word for it, something
like "exposuring".
(13) The army destroys all buildings from which the
settlement or the road could be attacked.
(14) For good measure, all buildings from which the
settlement can be observed are demolished, too.
(15) Anyone who comes near the settlement is
shot, on suspicion that he has come to spy or
attack.
This way the settlement sows death and
destruction in a ever-widening circle. The life of the
Palestinian villages in the neighborhood becomes
hellish. They lose the sources of their livelihood.
Hundreds of such villages find themselves trapped
between two or more settlements, which close in on
all sides, sometimes right up to their courtyards.
Their lives and their property are at the mercy of
gangs of settlers.
This process has already been going on for
decades all over the occupied territories. It is a
slow, continuous, day-to-day offensive, unseen by
Israeli eyes. Last year, the "separation fence" was
added, a monster that snakes its way deep into the
West Bank in order to "defend" the settlements.
It makes the life of hundreds of thousand of
Palestinians well-nigh impossible.
The fence is supposed to cost 10 billion shekels
(more than two billion dollars). It is impossible to
calculate the cost of the settlements themselves,
which certainly runs into many billions of shekels
every year.
It is much easier to calculate the price in human
lives. The killing of the three soldiers in Netzarim
has caused a shock. Many Israelis are beginning
to ask - perhaps for the first time - Why? What for?
The father of one of the soldiers killed in
Ein Yabroud has called this "Israeli roulette".
The mother of a female soldier killed in Hebron
gave vent to her anger on TV: "She died because
of the settlers!" There are many signs of a general
sobering-up, even in the army command.
Is this the beginning of a change in public opinion?
That could well be.
Map:
gush-shalom.org |
