The cold blooded killings of several students at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem cannot for a second be justified by anyone. At the same time, it should not be used by the Zionist far-right to justify harsher measures against the Palestinians and further colonization of West Bank land. In this diary, I will document how the Israeli right has been sabotaging attempts at peace with the Palestinians and are ultimately responsible for much of the violence that results.
First, it needs to be noted that the Mercaz Harav was widely considered to be a training ground for foot soldiers in the settler movement. These are people who think they have the right to steal Palestinian resources and subject them to second class treatment on their own territory. As Gideon Levy writes:
No one can explain in depth the magical powers of extortion this group has obtained. Nor can anyone ignore the damage it has caused the country. Without the settlement enterprise, peace might have reigned here already; without the Gush Emunim movement, supported by successive Israeli governments, there would be no settlements; and without the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, there would be no Gush Emunim.
More below.
This institution, then, was the cradle of the settlement enterprise and its driving force. Most of the students killed in the terrorist attack were second-generation settlers.
The settlers often like to paint themselves as rugged individualists facing off against the uncivilized Muhammedan hoardes. Nothing could be further from the truth. The settlers depend on the Israeli state for subsidies and the IDF for security. They are a net drain on the state of Israel. The average settler will receive 10,000 dollars more from the government than residents of Israel proper. In total, Israel may have spent as much as $50 billion on the settlements since 1977.
The settlements create numerous hardships for the Palestinians. For one thing, they are often built on land that was confiscated from their original owners: around 40% of all land the West Bank settlements use is estimated to have been taken from the Palestinians. They also use a disproportionate amount of water taken from the West Bank's water aquifers:
Across the main road from Qira, deep inside the West Bank, is the Israeli settlement of Ariel, where water is supplied to irrigate gardens, wash cars and fill swimming pools. The water in Ariel and other Israeli settlements is never cut off. Ironically, we feel lucky because we look out onto beautiful settlement houses with green yards, while Israeli settlers view the gloomy scene of our poor, parched community.
The Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), a nongovernmental organization, reports that there are .75 billion cubic meters of total groundwater potential in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are allocated only .25 billion cubic meters of that groundwater.
Another way that settlements make every day life harder for the Palestinian people is that the security measures they require impede on the freedom of movement of the West Bank's residents. The Washington Post explains:
Karim Edwan's skepticism about the U.S.-backed Middle East peace process is rooted in his morning commute.
To travel from his home in this West Bank village to his job as an emergency room doctor, the 35-year-old must take at least two cabs, skirt a barbed-wire fence, climb a dirt mound, talk his way through multiple Israeli checkpoints and remove his shoes for a full-body security check.
Before the obstacles were imposed, the trip to his hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus took 30 minutes. Now it takes two hours.
"It's my daily humiliation," he said.
[...]
"There has been no significant improvement in movement or access. And in fact, there's been an increase in the number of physical obstacles since Annapolis," said Allegra Pacheco, head of information and advocacy for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem.
The organization's latest count of barriers in the West Bank is 580, up from 563 recorded in November and about 50 percent higher than it was 2 1/2 years ago.
In a 2002 journal article for Middle East Policy, Sara Roy explained to us how the settlement activitity actually increased while the Oslo accords were in play. She describes how the Palestinian economy was routinely suffocated by the security measures the settlements required. One of the most shocking facts contained in the article is that Israel has criss-crossed the West Bank with 250 miles of "Jewish only" roads, severely limiting the ability of Palestinians to move goods and people throughout their own territory. Between 1993 and 2001, 70,000 acres of Palestinian land was confiscated for the purpose of building more settlements.
One of the cruelest things Israel has done recently to secure the settlements is the demolition of Bedouin Arab tents and houses. As John Dugard wrote recently:
In September 2007 the Special Rapporteur visited Al Hadidiya in the Jordan Valley where the structures of a Bedouin community of some 200 families, comprising 6,000 people, living near to the Jewish settlement of Roi, were demolished by the IDF. This brought back memories of the practice in apartheid South Africa of destroying black villages (termed "black spots") that were too close to white residents.
In conclusion, the families of the students who were massacred at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva deserve our sympathy. However, we must at the same time condemn attempts by the Zionist right to cynically exploit the incident by building more settlements. The Palestinians have withstood enough collective punishment from these religious fanatics and their colonial wet dreams.
Here is a speech given by the head rabbi at the Yesheva:
In an address to his followers on Sunday night, yeshiva head Rabbi Yaakov Shapira criticized the government, saying: "under this hollow leadership, a strong government, which reflects the real interests of the people, will arise."
"At these difficult times we must bring about the hidden strengths of the entire nation, praise and practice the torah, and establish righteous and rigorous education system for the sake of the whole public, until the ministry which is in charge of the education in this country will get to the very bottom of these strengths," Rabbi Shapira said.
He added that "our slain brothers are calling to us from this very soil. Here, in this holy place, the blood of the best of our sons was shed. May God avenge their deaths."
"When the torah is absent," Rabbi Shapira continued, "people do as they like. When, God forbid, there is no faith in our righteousness, there is no spiritual strength, and our physical strength is also deficient. This is why we are constantly on the defense. I believe, like the rest of the public, that the nation expects and yearns for a change of perception, of policy, of action. The time is ripe. We are united."
Funny how if "torah" had been replaced with "Koran," people would likely accuse this school of being a madrassa.