Coteret

This morning’s (November 17, 2009) Israeli media runs a flurry of criticism of the settlers, settlements and government inaction against them.

Yediot’s senior military analyst, Alex Fishman, who is also chairman of the Israeli Military Correspondents Chamber and hardly a bleeding heart, is appalled. In an analysis piece placed alongside news reporting on the latest chapter of the settler-soldier rebellion in West Bank, he rails

What is the greatest chutzpah? To establish, in an illegal settlement, an illegal factory that produces temporary structures for more illegal settlements. And to do so openly, in the light of day, under the nose of the government and with the knowledge of the law enforcement agencies. In fact, this is not just chutzpah. This is anarchy.

[...]

we, with our own two hands, are providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the [Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic] negotiations.

Full text of the article is below, note that also contains a wealth of previously unreported details on the issue.

Stop the anarchy

Analysis, Alex Fishman, Yediot, November 17 2009 [page 7]

What is the greatest chutzpah? To establish, in an illegal settlement, an illegal factory that produces temporary structures for more illegal settlements. And to do so openly, in the light of day, under the nose of the government and with the knowledge of the law enforcement agencies. In fact, this is not just chutzpah. This is anarchy.

Such an illegal factory for trailers exists, for example, in Havat Gilad in the southern Hebron hills. There are two other such anonymous factories in the West Bank, and this is no coincidence. It is much safer and convenient there. The law enforcement agencies are liable to stop trailers that are manufactured inside the Green Line at the crossings, or at least monitor their passage into the West Bank. To drive trailers from inside the Green Line to the West Bank, you need permits, whereas in the West Bank, you don’t need any permission from anyone.

Moreover, the trailers produced have amazing qualities: they are capable of merging into the scenery, and then suddenly popping up, like mushrooms after rain, on these or those hills. In the settlements of Kochav Yaakov and Eli, for example, 12 trailers suddenly popped up to house new immigrants from France. Straight from the plane to the trailer. And how do they get water and electricity? The head of the local authority, who receives a salary from the Interior Ministry, approves it, the regional engineer signs, and everything is legal.

This is what the settlers call “natural growth,” and they expect, that using this argument, the State of Israel will face the Americans with clean hands. The prime minister and defense minister persuaded envoy Mitchell that there is childbirth in the territories, and indeed there is “childbirth.” Including new immigrants from France. Everyone seems to think that the Americans are idiots and that they can be sold a bill of goods forever. Then they’re insulted that Obama makes faces at Netanyahu and doesn’t believe him.

It doesn’t need to be mentioned that the prime minister and the ministers know very well about these tricks, but they prefer to close their eyes. There is no law, no judge, and nobody enforces any law in the territories. So is it any wonder that this anarchy has trickled down into the army as well? Why not, what will they do to them? Nobody should be surprised if the displays of protest in the army against the evacuation of buildings and settlements only continue and gain momentum. After all, these soldiers receive a few days in the stockade—as if they’d committed a traffic violation—and become, automatically, heroes.

Today the protest is by means of signs, tomorrow the protest will be expressed in acts, in disobeying orders, in sedition. The army is paying a price for the fact that there is no law in the territories, that everyone does as they see fit. The chief of staff will have no choice but to come to the defense of the army that is beginning to slide down the steep slope of politicization and put an end to this, even in a brutal fashion. Because there is already a smell of political mutiny in the air.

And what was the soldier’s protest about yesterday? About two illegal buildings that were demolished in the settlement of Negohot. An observer from the side might have thought for a moment that the State of Israel had decided to stop illegal construction in order to create an appropriate atmosphere to make a renewal of the negotiations with the Palestinians possible. But the building demolition in Negohot is a joke. In the last few months there has been a momentum of construction taking place in the territories, of hundreds of buildings in dozens of settlements. Ever since the American demand was raised to completely freeze construction in the settlements, and ever since Netanyahu’s Bar Ilan speech about two states for two peoples, there has been a race taking place on the ground: to squeeze in as much as possible. Along with the illegal construction taking place, old construction permits suddenly show up that have not been implemented for many years. Every concrete base ever poured and then frozen has come back to life and sprouted walls.

The prime minister and defense minister managed to reach a compromise with the Americans making it possible to complete the construction of about 3,000 units already in various stages of construction, all in order to buy industrial quiet with the settlers and appease them and their supporters in the government. 3,000? They’re laughing. Nobody, including in the government, has any idea how many legal and illegal construction starts there are on the ground today.

It’s not that the Palestinians are saints and constantly seeking ways to return to the negotiations. But we, with our own two hands, are providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the negotiations.

A responsible government can stop this anarchy. Even if there are no negotiations with the Palestinians, it must instruct the OC Central Command to issue a military order to freeze all construction in the territories—with or without a permit—until further notice. Every construction will be discussed separately. With no winking. When the army realizes that the political echelon is serious, that will help it instate order in its ranks.

UPDATES

• November 19 2009 – Jonathan Cook also comments on the ruling.

ORIGINAL POST

After Yediot’s legal affairs editor, Judge (ret.) Boaz Okon, dared use the “A” word last week, another mainstream Israeli jurist, Yuval Elbashan, follows suit.  Elbashan is a well known name in the mainstream Israeli debate, usually identified with social justice issues. In a Maariv op-ed this morning (November 15, 2009) he praises a rare ruling by an Israeli judge who refused to convict a young Palestinian-Israel rock thrower Based on an argument of “selective law-enforcement” — the fact that Jewish teenagers who commited the same crimes were not convicted. He adds, however, that “until now, however, most of the judges chose to ignore the big picture and practically helped creating judicial apartheid between Jews and Arabs.”

Restoring professional honor

When Justice Shadmi stated that “sectarian discrimination” and “selective law-enforcement” is practiced here, he made the court feel like a hall of justice again.  So far, most of the judges chose to ignore the big picture and practically helped creating judicial apartheid between Jews and Arabs.

Op-ed, Yuval Elbashan, Maariv, November 15 2009

Routinely, Israeli courts do not give us too many reasons to be proud of them.  The overburdened courts — which often entail intolerable delays of justice, combined with the ill-treatment of the misrepresented poor, and the mediocrity that spread in the system — often leave visitors feeling they are sitting in a Turkish Bazaar, where only the fittest survive, and not in the great halls of justice.  Very rarely does a miracle take place in a courtroom that leaves behind a feeling that justice was served, which makes anyone involved in the world of justice feel proud of their profession.  This is what happened to me last week, when I read the bold sentence that was handed down by Justice Yuval Shadmi of the Nazareth District Court.

Justice Shadmi rejected the stand of the state, which asked that an Arab minor who threw rocks at a police car be sentenced to time in prison.  The parties did not argue about the facts of the case.  The minor pelted police vehicles with rocks, protesting the fact that the IDF launched Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.  No one disputed the minor’s misdemeanor or the fact that it was perpetrated against an ideological background when he wished to stage a protest against what he called “the killing of children in Gaza.”  The prosecution asked the court to issue a guilty sentence and send him to prison.  His attorney argued that, in recent years, the Israeli law-enforcement authorities have been employing a “selective enforcement” policy, a discriminating policy that throws the book at Arab minors while showing Jewish minors excessive mercy even when they perpetrate the same crimes, attacking security personnel for ideological reasons.

The state shamelessly argued (as if the lawyers who represented it have never heard that equality before the law is one of the bedrocks of our legal system) that the broad picture should be ignored and that each case should be judged separately because judgment should be “individual” by nature.

Admitting that the state’s argument is tempting for judges because it offers an easy solution, Justice Shadmi stated:  “The more I pondered over this, the more I realized that if I accepted that, I would be lying to myself.”  He established then that indeed the State of Israel takes different kinds of action when addressing ideologically-based misdemeanors by juveniles.  When the accused are Jews — for example, when dealing with national-religious youths who attacked police officers during the disengagement or when buildings in the settlement of Amona were demolished, or when minors of the ultra-Orthodox community attacked policemen during a demonstration against violations of the Sabbath, as they saw it — the cases against them were put on ice or otherwise closed.  At the same time, when the accused is an Arab minor who did similar things based on similarly ideological motivations, stay of proceedings, frozen charge sheets, and pardons are tossed out the window and the prosecution shamelessly demands that the court throw the book at them.

Shadmi established that “We should no longer accept the perpetuation of such sectarian discrimination, where the various courts’ verdicts join together to form an ongoing chain of selective law-enforcement.”  Therefore, he stated, “If the state believes that ‘ideological’ crimes justify lenient law-enforcement against minors, this should be the practice vis-à-vis all minors, regardless of their national or religious affiliation.”

This was not the first time that Arab defendants raised such claims.  Until now, however, most of the judges chose to ignore the big picture and practically helped creating judicial apartheid between Jews and Arabs. The bold verdict of Justice Shadmi no longer allows them and other parties enjoy the privilege of turning a blind eye to such intolerable discrimination which, shamefully enough, was kept alive in institutions that should be the first to defend the persecuted, downtrodden, and suffering.

The crossing where the incident occurred was ceremonially opened on November 10 with much fanfare and hailed as an example of ‘economic peace.’

US Diplomats who refused to identify themselves detained for hours at roadblock

Ahikam Moshe David, Maariv, November 15 2009 [page 3]

Tensions between the US and Israeli administrations appear now to have filtered down to the lower-level officials. Passengers in a convoy of cars from the American Consulate in Jerusalem that pulled up to the Gilboa (Jalame) border crossing between the Palestinian Authority and Israel refused to identify themselves. As a result, their entry into Israel was delayed by approximately four hours.

The embarrassing incident began on Friday afternoon when five cars with diplomatic license plates arrived at the new border crossing in the northern West Bank—a border crossing that was officially opened just last week to motor vehicle traffic with American funding to boot. When the passengers were asked to identify themselves by the Israeli personnel, the Americans refused even to roll down their tinted windows and to present their diplomatic passports, which would have exempted them from any further inspection. Given the situation at hand, the Israeli security personnel refused to permit the convoy to pass.

At a certain stage Defense Ministry and police officers were called in to the border crossing, but despite their repeated requests, the Americans refused to roll down their windows and claimed that that was the arrangement with them. “What can I do?” a dismayed Israeli police woman asked her superior officer, “the driver doesn’t want to give his ID.”

The Israeli security personnel, who appeared to be unnerved by the Americans’ arrogant behavior, tried to explain that they were afraid that the drivers were not diplomats but, rather, East Jerusalem Palestinian residents. Those efforts were made in vain. Ultimately, the incident ended only a number of hours later, when two security officials from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv arrived and persuaded the people in the convoy to present their passports as required.

“There are always provocations at the roadblocks with people from the consulate in Jerusalem,” said yesterday a security official who was involved in the incident. “Their cars are driven by drivers from East Jerusalem who insist not to be inspected, despite the fact that they don’t have diplomatic immunity. We need to make sure that the people in question are diplomats, but that can’t be done through opaque black windows.”

The incident resulted in the closure of the border crossing for the entire day, which made many Israeli Arabs who wanted to use the crossing to visit their Palestinian relatives turn back. “They finally opened the border crossing,” said a young man from Turan in the Galilee, “and we thought we’d be able to go easily to Jenin. Are they shutting us in all over again?”

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said: “We operate in keeping with the procedures that were set by the Foreign Ministry and in keeping with the accepted rules in the world with respect to the bearers of diplomatic passports.”

An American diplomat said last night: “There was a misunderstanding that was resolved in the end.”

Friday’s Makor Rishon, a right-wing Israeli newspaper, ran a feature on the Israeli reaction to Palestinian threats of either demanding a democratic bi-national state in the whole of Mandatory Palestine or unilaterally declaring a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders. Minister  of Information and Diaspora, Yuli Edelstein, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, was quoted as saying that he doesn’t see a bi-national state as a threat because it doesn’t necessarily imply full voting rights for the Palestinian population.

Excerpt from “And if the Palestinians declare a state”, Makor Rishon Political Supplement, November 13 2009 [page 8]

Yuli Edelstein thinks that the bi-national scenario will not pose a substantial problem for Israel. “It’s a threat that was always waved but there a thousand and one intermediate paths and examples from all over the world that stray from the principle of ‘one man – one vote.” There are all kinds of federations and confederations and other varied arrangements that can provide an answer to the right to vote.”

If this is the line of strategic thinking prevalent among the Israeli right-wing elite, it may help explain why the Jerusalem Post’s hardliner columnist, Caroline Glick, started advocating, also on Friday, the ‘integration of the West Bank’s Palestinian population into Israeli society.’

As Netanyahu knows, there is consensus support among Israelis for his plan to ensure that the country retains defensible borders in perpetuity. This involves establishing permanent Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and the large Jewish population blocs in Judea and Samaria. In light of the well-recognized failure of the two-state solution [horse feathers edited cause I just ate my dinner] … Israel should strike out on a new course and work toward the integration of Judea and Samaria, including its Palestinian population, into Israeli society. In the first instance, this will require the implementation of Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and the large settlement blocs.

[h/t Grumpy Old Man]

This is from the Friday, November 13 2009 edition of Makor Rishon, a right-wing newspaper (original clipping after the jump.)

Note that one of the leaders, Pinchas Wallerstein, was convicted of killing a Palestinian teenager in 1988. The victim and another youth who survived, were both shot in the back following a 100 yard pursuit. Wallerstein later admitted that the act was not one of self-defense but of deterrence and punishment for the burning of tires on a West Bank road (Zerthal and Eldar: Lords of the Land, pp. 383-385.) More recently, he has proudly proclaimed his role as facilitator of outpost establishment and expansion. Just this week the State Department refused MK Michael Ben-Ari a US visa and yet, apparently, Wallerstein is not only allowed in, but also received at Foggy Bottom.

Settler leaders in PR battle in US against Palestinian State

Hodaya Karish-Hazoni and Hagai Segal, Makor Rishon, November 13, 2009

The prime minister’s latest diplomatic moves, including his meeting this week with Barack Obama, have caused grave concern to settler leaders in Judea and Samaria.  They talk about a “total ideological collapse,” which began with Netanyahu’s Bar Ilan speech and could end in a withdrawal to the 1967 borders.

In internal correspondence that reached Makor Rishon, Etzion Bloc Council Chairman Shaul Goldstein, who visited Washington this week at the time of Netanyahu’s visit there, reports that he met with Netanyahu’s aides, “and I heard great anxiety for the future of the settlements, if we do not rally and try to change direction.”  Goldstein was referring to the desperate need for a vigorous right wing PR campaign against a Palestinian state.  He is convinced that “there is a desire to listen, but there is almost no one to speak, it is all based on volunteer work.”

In other words: PR costs a great deal of money, and there is no body in the right wing that is currently able to raise it.  The large settler campaign from last year—“Judea and Samaria, every Jew’s story”—was abruptly interrupted due to a lack of budget, whereas the public that supports the settlers is still not sufficiently aware of the severity of the situation and is not mobilizing to extend financial aid.

In an emotional letter to the members of the Settlers Council, which was sent this week by Amnon Shapira of the Religious Kibbutz Movement and Professor Elisha Hess from Professors for a Strong Israel, they call to declare a USD 50 million fundraising campaign, but sources in the Settlers Council believe that it will not be possible at the moment to raise even a fifth of this amount.

Meanwhile, small-scale PR activities are being held.  Settlers Council Director General Pinhas Wallerstein recently held a meeting in Washington with senior State Department officials. Goldstein, as stated above, met this week with senior officials in the Obama administration, and consulted former senior officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations.  “You are criminals for not working on PR,” Goldstein quotes reprimands he heard there.

Here in Israel, Settlers Council Chairman Danny Dayan has been holding a series of meetings with foreign ambassadors.  Some of the meetings, such as the one with the British ambassador to Israel, were conducted at the request of the ambassadors.  “The Bar Ilan speech and the adoption of the two-state policy created a large gap between our messages and the government’s messages,” Dayan said yesterday.  “The burden of PR against a Palestinian state and in favor of settling in Judea and Samaria is on our shoulders alone, from now on.”

Read more…

Channel Ten TV’s military affairs correspondent reported Monday evening that “these [see video below] pictures give the IDF a serious headache,” because

They show soldiers who join rioting settlers and using their IDF-issue weapons.  Soldiers manning an observation post of the Etzioni Brigade, which is the Bethlehem brigade, were amazed when their security cameras spotted two of their comrades out there. Corporal Baruch Brandoi of the anti-terror school and Sergeant Nahman Alfasi of the Artillery Corps, both residents of the settlement of Bat Ayin, took their M-16′s and joined their friends on a revenge campaign against the nearby Palestinian village of Hirbat Zafa. The incident took place shortly after the lethal ax attack in Bat Ayin. The settlers wanted revenge. A group of settlers started throwing rocks at the Palestinian village. The Palestinians responded in kind, but then came the two armed soldiers. Brandoi fired 26 rounds and kept firing even after the Palestinians have fled.  Alfasi fired 12 rounds. [Full translated transcript here.]

The “headache” was not bad enough, apparently, for the IDF to put some serious effort into disciplining these soldiers, despite the extraordinary evidence.

Presenting the pictures before the court, the military prosecution argued that the two soldiers were under no life threat and thus had no reason to open fire, but was forced to make a plea bargain deal with them, and each of the shooters was handed down a sentence of 21 days in the military prison.

The de facto parallel hierarchies – military and rabbinical — that the many fundamentalist combat soldiers owe allegiance to have been a major problem for IDF operations in the West Bank for some time. One only needs to skim through Yesh Din‘s numerous publications in order to understand how blurred the lines between the IDF and settler paramilitaries have become.

LATEST UPDATE — August 30 2010: Max Blumenthal reports from a conference supporting the rabbi (older updates at bottom.)

The ultra-fundamentalist Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar is infamous for its involvement in settler violence against Palestinians. Memorably, one of the students fired a homemade “Kassam” rocket at the neighboring village of Burin in June 2008. This morning, Maariv reports that the Yeshiva’s dean has just published on the proscribed dos and don’ts (mainly the former) regarding the killing of gentiles. Here are some choice excerpts.

“In any situation in which a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives, the non-Jew may be killed even if he is a righteous Gentile and not at all guilty for the situation that has been created…When a non-Jew assists a murderer of Jews and causes the death of one, he may be killed, and in any case where a non-Jew’s presence causes danger to Jews, the non-Jew may be killed…The [Din Rodef] dispensation applies even when the pursuer is not threatening to kill directly, but only indirectly…Even a civilian who assists combat fighters is considered a pursuer and may be killed. Anyone who assists the army of the wicked in any way is strengthening murderers and is considered a pursuer. A civilian who encourages the war gives the king and his soldiers the strength to continue. Therefore, any citizen of the state that opposes us who encourages the combat soldiers or expresses satisfaction over their actions is considered a pursuer and may be killed. Also, anyone who weakens our own state by word or similar action is considered a pursuer…Hindrances—babies are found many times in this situation. They block the way to rescue by their presence and do so completely by force. Nevertheless, they may be killed because their presence aids murder. There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”…In a chapter entitled “Deliberate harm to innocents,” the book explains that war is directled mainly against the pursuers, but those who belong to the enemy nation are also considered the enemy because they are assisting murderers.

A full translation of the Maariv article can be read after the jump.

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In a column examining the Netanyahu-Obama meeting farce, Ben Caspit, a senior political-diplomatic commentator in Maariv, Israel’s second largest circulation daily, asserts that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, Israel is the one holding up negotiations with the PA.

Netanyahu can take comfort in the fact that Abu Mazen’s situation is much worse than his own.  At least at the present stage.  The Palestinian version that Netanyahu is playing a double game and actually wishes to eliminate Abu Mazen is taking hold in Washington as well.  Saeb Erekat has said in the past few days on more than one occasion, that since the grotesque three-way summit in New York he tried at least three times to arrange a meeting with Uzi Arad, and was turned down time after time.  The rejection on Arad’s part was not personal, it was system-wide.  Apparently, Netanyahu’s people are simply not interested.  Publicly, they call to start negotiations without preconditions, but discreetly, they thwart any attempt to hold such negotiations.  As of now, they are succeeding.

You can read a full translation of the relevant part of the column after the jump.

Read more…

UPDATES

• November 15, 2009: Mainstream Israeli jurist: Most Israeli judges helping to create ‘judicial apartheid’

ORIGINAL POST

It’s not really news when a well-known Israeli leftist, like poet Yitzhak Laor, calls the Israeli regime between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River “Apartheid”. Even (perhaps especially) if it’s in an Haaretz op-ed.

When a senior editor at Yediot, Israel’s largest circulation daily, dares inscribe the “A” word, it’s remarkable. This morning, Judge (retired) Boaz Okon, former director of the Israeli Court System and now the newspaper’s legal affairs editor, went one step further. In an op-ed, he charged that a recent ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice, which ordered desegregation of a West Bank road based on utilitarian rather than principled arguments was the first step towards institutionalizing Apartheid in Israel:

The court thus ruled against this specific arrangement, but its ruling was still based on the assumption that segregation is allowed. The apartheid regime has already been implanted in our subconscious minds. All that is left to do now is to check whether it is proportionate…Segregation is charging at us from the territories, where apartheid already exists because there are two judiciary systems there. The court could have quelled that phenomenon by unequivocally ruling against separate roads. It did not, and thus created a situation whereby practical separation has turned into legal segregation.

Yediot’s English-language website hasn’t put up a translation and, based on past experience, it’s unlikely that it will later, so I had the entire op-ed translated. You can read it in full after the jump.

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