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June
26, 2003
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June
26, 2003
Removing Potemkin
Outposts
The
Best Show in Town
By
URI AVNERY
The most talented director could not have done
better. It was a perfect show.
Television viewers all over the world
saw heroic Israeli soldiers on their screens battling the fanatical
settlers. Close-ups: faces twisted with passion, a soldier lying
on a stretcher, a young woman crying in despair, children weeping,
youngsters storming forward in fury, masses of people wrestling
with each other. A battle of life and death.
There is no room for doubt: Ariel Sharon
is leading a heroic fight against the settlers in order to fulfil
his promise to remove "unauthorized" outposts, even
"inhabited" ones. The old warrior is again facing a
determined enemy without flinching.
The conclusion is self-evident, both
in Israel and throughout the world: if such a tumultuous battle
takes place for a tiny outpost inhabited by hardly a dozen people,
how can one  expect Sharon to remove 90 outposts,
as promised in the Road Map? If things look like that when he
has to remove a handful of tents and one small stone building--how
can one even dream of evacuating real settlements, where dozens,
hundreds or even thousands of families are living?
This must have impressed George Bush
and his people. Unfortunately, it has not impressed me.
It makes me laugh.
In the last few years I have witnessed
dozens of confrontation with the army. I know what they really
look like.
The Israeli army has already demolished
thousands of Palestinian homes in the occupied territories. This
is how it goes: early in the morning, hundreds of soldiers surround
the land. Behind them come the tanks and bulldozers, and the
action starts. When despair drives the inhabitants to resist,
the soldiers hit them with sticks, throw tear gas grenades, shoot
rubber-coated metal bullets and, if the resistance is stronger,
live ammunition, too. Old people are thrown on the ground, women
dragged along, young people handcuffed and pushed against the
wall. After a few minutes, it's all over.
Well, they'll say, that's done to Arabs.
They don't do this to Jews.
Wrong. They certainly do this to Jews.
Depends who the Jews are.
I, for example, am a Jew. I have been
attacked with tear gas five times so far. Once it was a special
gas, and for a few moments I was afraid that I was going to choke
to death.
During one of the blockades on Ramallah
we decided to bring food to the beleaguered town. We were some
three thousand Israeli peace activists, both Jews and Arabs.
At the A-Ram checkpoint, north of Jerusalem, a line of policemen
and soldiers stopped us. There was an exchange of insults and
a lot of shouting. Suddenly we were showered with tear gas canisters.
The thousands dispersed in panic, coughing and choking, some
were trampled; one of our group, an 82-year old Jew and kibbutznik,
was injured.
I have witnessed demonstrations in which
rubber-coated bullets were shot at Israeli citizens (generally
Arabs). Once I was in the gas-filled rooms of a school at Um-al-Fahem
in Israel.
If the army had really wanted to evacuate
Mitpe-Yitzhar quickly and efficiently, it would have used tear
gas. The whole business would have been over in a few minutes.
But then there would not have been dramatic pictures on TV, and
George W. would have asked his friend Arik: "Hey, why don't
you finish with all the outposts in a week?"
In other words, this was a well-produced
show for TV.
A few days before, the leaders of the
settlers met with Ariel Sharon. As they left and faced the cameras
they uttered dark threats, but anyone who knows these people
and looked at their faces on TV could see that there were no
strong emotions at work. Of course, the "Yesha rabbis"
(Yesha is settlerese for the West Bank), a group of bearded political
functionaries, called on the soldiers to disobey orders and requested
the LORD and the messiah to come to their help, but even they
lacked real passion.
Why? Because all of them knew that everything
has been agreed in advance. The army chiefs and the leaders of
the settlers, comrades and partners for a long time, sat together
and decided what would happen, and, more importantly, what would
not happen: no sudden attack, no efforts to prevent thousands
of young people from reaching the place well in advance, no use
of sticks, water cannon, tear gas, rubber-coated bullets or any
other means beyond the use of bare hands. The soldiers would
not wear helmets nor be equipped with shields. The settlers would
shout and push, but would not hit the soldiers in earnest. The
whole show would be less violent then a normal scuffle with British
soccer hooligans, but would look on TV like a desperate battle
between titanic forces.
Ariel Sharon has some experience with
this kind of thing. A dozen years ago he directed a similar show
when, following the peace treaty with Egypt, he was ordered by
Prime Minister Menahem Begin to evacuate the town of Yamit in
the northern Sinai peninsula. At the time, Sharon was Minister
if Defense. And who was one of the leaders of the dramatic resistance?
Tsachi Hanegbi, now the minister in charge of the police.
All the arms of the establishment cooperated
this week in the big show. The media devoted many hours to the
"battle". Dozens of settlers were invited to the studios
and talked endlessly--while, as far as I saw, not a single person
belonging to the active peace camp was called to the microphone.
The courts, too, did their duty: the
handful of settlers that were arrested for resisting violently
were sent home after spending a day or two in jail. The courts,
who never show any mercy when Arabs appear before them, treated
the fanatical settlers like erring sons.
The whole comedy would have been funny,
if it did not concern a very serious problem. Such an "outpost"
looks like a harmless cluster of mobile homes on top of a god-forsaken
hill, but it is far from being innocuous. It is a symptom of
a cancerous growth. Not for nothing did Ariel Sharon--the very
same Sharon--call upon the settlers a few years ago to take control
of all the hills of "Judea and Samaria".
The disease develops like this: a group
of rowdies occupies a hilltop, some miles from an established
settlement, and puts a mobile home there. After some time, the
"outpost" already consists of a number of mobile homes.
A generator and a water-tower are brought in. Women with babies
appear on the scene. A fence is set up. The army sends some units
to defend them. They declare that for security reasons, Palestinians
are not allowed to come near, in order to prevent them from spying
and preparing an attack. The security zone becomes bigger and
bigger. The inhabitants of the neighboring Palestinian villages
cannot reach some of their orchards and fields any more. It someone
tries, he is liable to be shot. Every settler has a weapon, and
he has nothing to fear from the law if he uses it against a suspicious
Arab. All Arabs are suspicious, of course.
As it so happens, I have some experience
with Mitzpe Yitzhak, the particular outpost that figured in this
week's show. Some months ago we were called by the inhabitants
of the Palestinian village Habala to help them pick their olives
in a grove near this "outpost". When the pickers came
near to the outpost, the settlers opened fire. An Israeli in
our group was wounded when a bullet struck a rock at his feet.
The "unauthorized" outposts
were in fact established systematically, with the help of the
army and according to its planning. When several outposts take
root in a region, the Palestinian villages are choked between
them. Their life becomes hell. The settlers and officers clearly
hope that in the end they will give up and clear out.
Will Sharon really evacuate them by the
dozens? That depends, of course, on his friend George W. If the
"hudna" (truce) between the Palestinian Authority and
Hamas is achieved, Bush may perhaps exert serious pressure on
Sharon. When I visited Yasser Arafat yesterday, he seemed to
be cautiously optimistic. But he, too, said that there are no
more than four months left for getting things moving: starting
from November, the American President will be busy getting himself
reelected.
This means that Sharon has only to produce
a few more shows of this sort for television, and then he and
the settlers will be able to breathe freely once again.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He
is one of the writers featured in The
Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He can be
reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
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