Filenews 21 November 2023 - by Ruth Pollard
It seems that US President Joe Biden has finally opened his eyes to the threat posed by extremist Israeli settlers.
While Israel's military campaign in Gaza continues, the West Bank has been allowed to reach a "boiling point," encouraged by hard-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
Escalation of violence
Since Hamas launched its brutal offensive on October 7, massacring 1,200 people, mostly Israelis (along with dozens of foreigners from other countries, including the US, France and Thailand), there has been a significant increase in violence in the West Bank. Israeli troops there have repeatedly either pretended not to see or helped armed settlers who have forced Palestinian families to flee their land.
At least 190 Palestinians, including 43 children, have died at the hands of Israeli security forces and settlers, while more than 2,000 have been arrested and detained. Nearly 1,100 have been evicted from their homes. In nearly half of the cases, according to the United Nations, Israeli security forces accompanied or actively supported the settlers. Biden says he has made clear to Israeli leaders that the attacks must stop, noting in a Washington Post op-ed that the United States is considering issuing a visa ban against extremist Israeli settlers attacking civilians in the West Bank.
Showdown
Some military operations appear to be pointless, aimed at destroying symbols of Palestinian identity. Soldiers bulldozed a statue dedicated to the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat last week and destroyed a memorial to much-loved Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, erected on the spot where she was killed by Israeli forces while reporting last May.
There is deep concern in Washington over images of Netanyahu's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, handing out weapons to civilians in so-called "community security detachments." Fears that U.S.-supplied assault rifles could end up in the hands of extremist Israeli settlers threatened to block a shipment of weapons to Israel last month.
Everyone from Biden to the European Union to Israel's own Shin Bet security service has warned Netanyahu that if the settlers are not reined in, their violence could spark widespread violence in the West Bank, in Israel itself, and spill over into the wider region.
If increasing attacks lead to large-scale displacement of Palestinians, Hezbollah may feel compelled to dramatically escalate its attacks on Israel, says Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the United States Institute for Peace. "Similarly," he notes, "Iran's proxies scattered in the region would certainly increase the pace of their attacks on U.S. targets."
Charged story
While the numbers in the West Bank may pale in comparison to the estimated 12,000 people in Gaza who have died in the past month, settler violence feeds back a traumatic, emotionally charged story. As Walid Khalidi meticulously reports in "All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Populated by Israel in 1948," more than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or deserted in 1948 after the creation of the state of Israel. They were replaced by Israeli settlements.
Since then, in more than five decades of military occupation, up to 670,000 settlers have moved to the West Bank, in settlements considered illegal under international law. The region has become a dystopia for Palestinians. A 711-kilometer-long separation barrier cuts off farmers from their land and families from each other. Meanwhile, endless checkpoints, roads reserved only for Jews, night raids on villages, and the arrest – often without charge – of thousands of civilians, including 500-700 children each year, constantly reinforce the privileges of one ethnic group over another.
Palestinians see the latest settler attacks not as isolated explosions, but as part of a coordinated plan to contain them to an increasingly small part of that territory. At the UN, on September 22, Netanyahu himself presented a map of the "New Middle East" which shows Gaza and the occupied West Bank as parts of Israel. Ben-Gvir and other cabinet members have openly pledged to annex the West Bank in its entirety. Israeli ministers have speculated about the possibility of Gaza's civilians being driven across the border into Egypt.
Whether Netanyahu shares their ambitions or appeases members of his hard-right coalition in order to cling to power doesn't really matter. The result is the same: Israeli troops may soon face a third front, in addition to those in Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon, while any hope of seeking the Palestinian Authority's help in governing Gaza is rapidly fading.
The need for new leadership on both sides
A long-term solution will require new leadership on both sides. Israel must rejoin a peace process that it has effectively abandoned years ago and recognize that its "eternal" occupation must end. Until Palestinians have their own state, the conditions that led to every large-scale outbreak of violence, from the first and second intifada to – yes – the October 7 attack, will remain. It will not be enough to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza – although that should be the immediate priority.
If a Netanyahu-led government seems incapable of making such a leap, so does the Palestinian Authority, the governing body created a year after the 1993 Oslo Accords. President Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected in 2005 to serve a four-year term and is still in office, is unpopular, nor is the Palestinian Authority itself. There is no doubt that she would not be welcome back to Gaza in its current form. It also needs to be completely reformed.
In the meantime, however, Israel's government may at least not exacerbate its own problems. The incredibly high death toll in Gaza, Netanyahu's disregard for the fate of the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas, and Israel's continued rejection of a ceasefire have already seriously damaged the cause of the Jewish state. The last thing he needs is to encourage a minority of settlers whose actions undermine security for all Israelis and Palestinians and increase the risk of a wider conflict.
