Dani Dayan is the leader of a settler group in Israel called the Yesha Council, a larger player in right wing Israeli politics, and he has now flung down his gauntlet in today's NYT Op Ed page, entitled Israeli Settlers are Here to Stay. Just in time for Mittens to get to Israel and react to it. Hold onto your hats, folks.
All of this is happening during Ramadan, which even the Israeli government occasionally notes, when trying to get delays from the High Court, is a sensitive time.
Dayan's position is blunt. There is not going to be any removal of settlers, and settlements will continue to grow. There is nothing there about what is supposed to happen to the Palestinians of what Dayan calls Judea and Samaria, and most here call the West Bank. He calls 'pathetic' the attempt by what he calls Israeli leftists the attempt to get settlers to move west of the Green Line by paying them, although this is the premise by which various Israeli pols are forever insisting that settlers can keep Palestinian owned land, by taking it and then making a payment. He also claims that at least one US diplomat unnamed has reportedly been shocked by finding how content the Palestinians and Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel are with the current situation. He also says that a WB state is not acceptable because the influx of refugees from Lebanon and other places will make that state a hotbed of extremism, which would force Israel to recapture the area militarily, but this time with more people in it.
The article is also a gauntlet throw against Western governments holding other views, who should reassess their approach, realize that no final settlement is imminent and use their efforts to make the current situation more viable. Nothing is said about what is supposed to happen to the Palestinians affected by this supposedly now immutable position. It doesn't matter what happens to them.
One of his points is that supposedly Palestinians are secure because not presently subject to en masse evacuation. This he says during a week when reporting has appeared in Israeli papers and Ma'an that:
- IDF is destroyng outright eight villages to make way for another training ground, although there is a Court injunction in place against the last time IDF tried the same thing with the same villages.
- Reports have been released of an event in March in which Jewish visitors to the Mosque sort of shared in Hebron because sacred to both sides, used their visit to tear up Korans, and nothing was done about it by the Israelis, not even taking names. Those who follow this will recall that last week's destruction of holy works of another faith was done by a Member of the Knesset who tore apart publicly and threw into a wastebasket a copy of the New Testament.
- Another illegal settlement has been set up near Bethlehem,
- Israeli police raided the Al Aksa Mosque during Ramadan night prayers and cleared it out.
- Demolition is being conducted publicly to the Mughrabi Gate to the Al Aksa mosque, with a related announcement that a synagogue for women is to be built there, with this also publicized during Ramadan.
- A graveyard in a Palestinian village has been bulldozed rather than cleared, leaving the bones around.
And then there is this report about whether or not, probably not, Israel expects to admit refugees from the conflict in Syria into Golan in direct contrast to its position that surrounding states should admit and keep refugees from Palestine driven out by Israeli armies and governments.
That all of this should happen or be first publicized in one week, both the first weekof Ramadan, a holy Muslim holiday, AND the week Romney comes, seems to me to be highly improbable to be coincidence. While we have not seen the final to do list, the Knesset is now in summer recess, no new elections in Israel have been set, the Tal matter which involved service by Haridim in Military will pass its deadline without being rresolved or the matter stayed in the court which made the ruling.
So why now? Some possibilities below the squiggle.
First, this is the best time for right wing pols in Israel to try to push Obama and the US into a corner, by doing this in the face of a US presidential candidate, in a close race followed relatively closely in Israeli papers, telling both him and Obama that in their view this is the only acceptable resolution of the matter, and whatever objections either may have are entirely irrelevant and not even being treated civilly. An assertion that the settler party is now dominant, and will not be denied. The US in particular can forget that promise of no new settlements - this is a new day. They probably view themselves as having been invited to do so as Romney did say that his notion of proper Holy Land policy is to see what Obama said and do the opposite.
This also goes to the matter of interreligious matters. It is now not fatal that Israeli persons can publicly destroy copies of the holy works of those 'other' religions who also have the Holy Land as precious to them. Without any material consequences. It also addresses the many small scale violations of rights, some of which of this week's crop are listed in the intro, to contrast that as acceptable over against en masse expulsions, as were done in prior times.
The timing is critical to them because of the closeness of the race at this point in time, and the huge publicity given to efforts to persuade US Jews to support Israel at any cost, and abandon Obama to do it, in a race where even a little might be material to the outcome or so it now appears. There will be no better time after the election to exercise such leverage, and this will tell them what they can get before having to decide whether to have their government start its own war against Iran with nukes or whatever, just before the election.
Second, if they are lucky or Romney is as usual, he may actually voice support for some or all of this, and make promises which they will not allow him to forget if he ever does get elected. For such political gifts, little mistakes like scheduling a fund raiser of a solemn religious fast day can be overlooked for now, until they need to start calling him foul names.
Third, this appears to the diarist to be the a major shot in a round in the battle for control of the now somewhat dilapidated Israeli government by this segment of the Israeli right. No more mincing around as Bibi tries to walk the lines of international law and international norms. Those DO NOT apply to Dayan's version of Israel or to settlers, and those who think otherwise had best think again. And they would not mind if Bibi gets decried as a wimp compared to them, for trying to keep the Israeli State out of international legal holes, so confident are the settlers that nobody will do anything to stop them. They don't care about what the international reaction will be. In the worst way, they literally do not care.
There is also the issue of the Palestinian Authority, which has announced that this September it will apply to the UN for recognition as a non member state, which is state enough to qualify for International Criminal and ICJ jurisdiction. This effort is complicated by a review that some international bodies have done which continues to verify that under the present circumstances WB will probably not succeed as a state because of the various problems discussed here on DKos previously which prevent its development of a serious private sector. Israel taking all tax and duty money, barring installations such as water purification, and controlling all imports and exports, can have that effect.
And the patience of EU is running out. They have developed a different rule for what will happen to aid projects in Area C, as reported here, as a way of limiting the ability of Israeli civil development authorities barring aid by manipulation of the development permit procedure, given the abuse of those procedures and the substantial destruction of Palestinian homes and property by people waving such procedures.
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Comments on the points and sources in the diary are invited. No thread jacking, no violations of Godwin as applied at DKos, no matter what you think of Godwin, cite sources and link them for your arguments. No personal attacks on diarist or commenters or the rules for this diary being here stated. Please note that I am not linking Ha'aretz, most of whose reporting is now behind a paywall.