Democratic Palestine : 37 (ص 15)
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- Democratic Palestine : 37 (ص 15)
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said, «We don’t see Arabs and don’t have social contact with
them.»
Although the uprising was from the start directed against the
occupation army, the settlers obviously sensed it as a threat
because it reasserted the Palestinian ownership of the land they
hadcolonized. This was seen in a dual response: Settler attacks
on Palestinians began four days after the uprising; meanwhile,
there was a settler exodus from the Gaza Strip, where many of
the settlements serve as weekend farms, and the residents have
houses in Israel as well. The second phenomenon contrasts shar-
ply with data from the height of the settlement drive when 90%
of applications were for places in the Strip, it being considered
relatively safe (A/ Fajr, June 17, 1983).
In purely physical terms, the settlers have not been particu-
larly threatened; in the first year of the uprising, they killed at
‘least 16 Palestinians and wounded 107 more, whereas three
settlers were killed, one of them shot by a fellow settler sup-
posedly guarding her, in the march on Beita village in April
1988. Despite these objective realities, the impact was
immediate:«Suddenly it is dangerous to drive on the roads andit
is impossible to sell a flat. With more time passing, the situation
becomes worse. The settlers suddenly found themselves on the
margin of the Israeli society. They are aware that the society is
no longer willing to pay for them,» wrote Dan Margalit in
Haaretz, May 12, 1988.
The settlers’ reaction has clearly shown that they perceive the
army as their protection rather than that settlements as such are
defense assets. In the wake of the army’s failure to stop the
uprising, i.e., to protect the settlers according to their expecta-
tions, there were unprecedented confrontations between politi-
cal and military leaders on the one hand, and settlers on the
other. Shamir was called a traitor when he went to the West
Bank to culogize a settler killed by a Palestinian with his own
knife in June. In May, an Israeli settler had been banned from
entering Palestinian population centers after he assaulted an
Israchi soldier in Hebron- something that had never occurred
before. West Bank Commander Mitzna told a Knesset commit-
tee that «Jewish settlers are the primary problem as far as IDF
operations (in the territories) are concerned» VJerusalem Post,
May 29, 1989). Mitzna was not worried about the settlers’ vio-
lence against Palestinians, but about their challenging the
army s competence at a time when its stature was on the wane
due to failure to halt the uprising.
The confrontations with the settlers raised a new danger: civil
war. In late June, after a stormy Knesset debate concerning
whether ¢~itler vigilantism could lead to civil war (among Jews),
Shamir said on Israeli radio: «We must do everything to make
sure such a war never happens. This ts the most dangerous
thing.» A poll published in Yediot Ahronot, June 8th, showed
that a three to two majority of Israelis .cxpect such acivil war. In
September, Isracli newspapers reported the arrest of some
settlers suspected of having attacked other settlers’ cars earlier
in the year with stones and firebombs, to incite them to «re-
taliate» against Palestinians. That settlers’ own actions pose the
biggest threat to their security was dramatically highlighted by
an incident in the West Bank in August. Driving to his settle-
Democratic Palestine, February 1990
ment with his children, a settler fired on Israeli soldiers on the
roadside, whom he took to be Palestinians. His own baby sun
was killed when the soldiers returned the fire.
The specter of civil war was much discussed in the heyday of
settler terror in the early eighties, due to the state’s concern for
maintaining its monopoly on power, and dovish Israelis’ wishes
not to have the Zionist colonial project appear so barbaric.
Today, the discussion is much more serious because it isnot only
a question of long-standing tactical differences within Zionism
being aggravated. Today internal Isracli contradictions are
aggravated because the whole Zionist occupation is besieged.
While Israelis may disagree on the means for resolving this
dilemma, almost all have interests in an end to the intifada and
restoration of the prestige of their most central institution, the
military. Thus, how internal contradictions are resolved is a
much more volatile issue in this round. That explains that even
Shamir spoke out against civil war, whereas the extreme right
tried to dampen talk of this danger in the early eighties. The
question is raised: Can the Israeli system tolerate challenges
when it is besieged by the masses of the intifada?
Security from abroad?
Comprehensive views of Israeli security place high priority on
Israel’s international allies, as we saw in the first section of this
study. And never has Isracl faced such international condemna-
tion as during the uprising. The moral justification for support to
the Zionist state dissolved as the world saw Israeli soldiers treat-
ing Palestinian children in ways associated with Nazi war crimes.
At the very least, Israel’s friends are being forced to view their
support in more practical terms: Is the occupation viable? Can
Isracl survive if this situation continues?
Israeli leaders, for their part, have dealt with international
criticism mainly in line with their own partisan interests and the
views they hold on how to end the uprising, territorial com-
promise, etc. The only new common element in the Zionist
leadership's reactions to international relations is that the
«Sovict threat» is no longer mentioned, even by those who pre-
viously used this as justification for the dangers of a Palestinian
state. Perhaps this argument became too ridiculous in a war
being conducted, from the Palestinian side, by unarmed
youngsters. Surely, in the light of their increasing international
isolation, Israeli leaders want to try and take advantage of the
new foreign policy thinking in the Soviet Union and other
socialist countries.
Most western European countries now appear convinced that
Isracl’s interests lie in dealing directly with the Palestinians,
including the PLO, and addressing at least their right to self-
determination. The US is also aware that Israel may be forced to
deal with these issues, even though its official position on the
PLO and Palestinian rights is more circumspect. Secretary of
State James Baker’s May 1989 statement reinforced what his
predecessor had discovered a year earlier, that the occupation is
a deadend. Baker told the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, that :«For
Israel, nowis the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealis-
tic vision of a greater Israel. Israeli interests in the West Bank
and Gaza - security and otherwise - can be accommodated.
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