Following the news one might get the impression that Gaza is the only game in town these days. You can watch live feed of settlers being dragged out of their homes, catch timely updates with statistics of whos left and whos holding on, view a diagram of the Israeli militarys deployment, and read endless stories of sad soldiers and sad settlers in sad circumstances.
But in West Jerusalem last night there was no such sense of this "historic" moment. As a group of twenty orange-clad youth carrying placards in Hebrew meandered through downtown, pedestrians were barely noticing them. They might as well have been out for a stroll with the rest of us for all the attention they attracted.
This dejected, plodding anti-evacuation march through the bustling downtown of West Jerusalem underscores the contradictory nature of Israel, the elasticity of tensions within and a deep ambivalence brought on by exhaustion.
Tensions Pulled Tight
The evacuation of settlements in Gaza is breaking seams in tight-lipped Israeli society. The leaders of the Yesha Council, the directing body of the settler movement, have been throwing everything they can at the plan to evacuate settlements, raising a protest movement verging on open revolt. This has raised the ire of secular Zionists in Israel, who have long uncomfortably tolerated violent settlers in the West Bank and Gaza through a combination of ignorance, reluctance and displaced vengeance.
Amidst the tension between secular and religious ends of the political spectrum, a settler-soldier who had gone AWOL to avoid participating in the evacuation got on a bus in northern Israel and killed four Israeli-Palestinians. This opened the door for politically expedient criticism of the settler movement. Now that the majority of Israelis were united against �" and a little frightened by �" the settlers vehement and aggressive opposition to evacuation, the Israeli press was willing to take a critical look at its cousin in the territories. As Graham Usher wrote in Al-Ahram Weekly,
Now the analyses were more sober and more realistic: it was an individual act, yes, but one nurtured in a collective, racist ideology the calculated intent of which … was to draw a Palestinian reprisal and so scuttle the disengagement plan.1
The settlers ideology, however, has always dictated or skirted Israeli policy in the occupied territories with appeasement and support from the Israeli government. Because of this history of cooperation, it is interesting to note how the Israeli government, now that the settlers "collective, racist ideology" has been turned on the state, is willing to expose this ideology to accomplish their own political goals.
In an article in Haaretz, Tom Segev reports, "In a clumsy attempt to blur this fiasco, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz prohibited Eden Natan Zada's burial in a military cemetery, as though he had not been a soldier or had served in a different army."2 Settler violence was never an issue before, even when it was funded heavily by the Israeli government. As Segev remarks, "if we were to remove from the military cemeteries all the soldiers who are tainted with moral opprobrium, in some cases for illegal killing of Palestinian civilians, quite a bit of space would become available."
And so the critics have opened up. The handful of Israeli commentators who for years have been writing about the lawlessness in the settlements are now being joined by a flood of editorials criticizing the settlers' open defiance of the state, their predilection for resorting to harassment and intimidation, and the influence of hard-line rabbis on state policy.
Uprooting is Upsetting
While Israel and the world mourn the removal of people from their homes, the policy of displacement continues in the West Bank. Unlike the settlers, who are receiving considerable financial compensation, Palestinians who have their land confiscated and their homes demolished in the West Bank are given nothing -- not even a couple minutes of news coverage, an acknowledgment of their story.
In Silwan, in East Jerusalem, the Israeli government has declared the Al Bustan neighborhood a historical site, issuing demolition orders for 64 homes. No one in the Israeli government is debating the level of compensation Israel should offer, let alone their legal right to demolish homes in occupied East Jerusalem.
No, there is no soul-searching involved in the expulsion of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, no public debate on the trauma of being uprooted. The Palestinians are busy organizing educational visits, lobbying political leaders. Theyre not setting the streets on fire, locking down transportation and intimidating the public with fake bombs. The Border Police who deal with them are not given special training in handling civilians and there is no comprehensive plan for their security. Their houses will be demolished, so long as the world doesnt hear too much about it. The bulldozers will come and bring the walls down and a little more of East Jerusalem will be free of Palestinians, and if one of them decides to barricade himself in their house they will be dragged out, gassed out or left inside for the bulldozers.
"Let there be no qualms about it: we want this to be a Jewish neighborhood,"3 says Gary Speiser, one of the first Jewish residents to move into the Silwan area. He need not worry. When it is Palestinians being kicked out of their homes, there are no "qualms" to be found in Israel.
Dominating Discourse
On a bus in West Jerusalem an American Jew was speaking loudly on her cell phone, chastising the Israeli government and, mustering her indignation, said to her friend, "I wish the press was here to see this, to see Jews being dragged out of their homes. But the world doesnt care. No one cares about the Jews."
It was estimated recently that 6,000 foreign journalists have flooded Gaza to cover the evacuation of settlements. The Israelis took a cue from the U.S. and have set up a large media facility near Gaza, insulating the journalists and providing on-the-spot information from the Israeli military. Journalists are with the settlers, with the soldiers, with the military, and with the Israeli government.
Meanwhile, Israel is stepping up its political end game, looking to the U.N. and the U.S. for its reward. The Israeli envoy to the U.N. recently said, "We hope we will see a more positive and a less combative General Assembly, recognizing that something dramatic, historic has happened."4
Kofi Annan has said the evacuation is "a moment of promise and hope"5 and the U.N. Security Council recently rejected a proposal to address the Wall, claiming that the evacuation of the settlements in Gaza is of sole concern at the moment.
Israel has reportedly asked the U.S. for $2.2 billion to develop the areas designated for resettlement and the U.S. is sending an assessment team to investigate.
So, the world is watching the removal, reading reports about the suffering of the settlers in Gaza. The Israeli discourse -- that this is a hard decision, but a historic move towards peace -- has been adopted internationally, painting a reluctant Israel taking one more tough step towards reconciliation. The U.N. and the U.S. are scrambling to bestow their praise on Sharon.
The Palestinians are once again forgotten, assumed to enjoy or comply or, if not, well, then Israel has helicopters to deal with such ungratefulness. If Israeli control over all of the borders is not enough they can always invade again.
Footnotes
1 Days to Come, Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly
2 By the grave of Eden Natan Zada, Tom Segev, Haaretz
3 Silwan -- Ethnic Transfer Continues?, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, News from Within, Vol. XXI, No. 4
4 Envoy to UN: Pullout should end UN hostility toward Israel, Haaretz
5 Road map sponsors to meet in mid-Sept., Annan says, Haaretz