When the State becomes an Ethos of Destruction

I skirt around certain issues in Israeli politics such as the settlement movement and rarely blog outright about them. It is not that I don’t have opinions but it is such a complex and contentious subject and I am very aware of all the holes and gaps in my personal knowledge of the settler movement. Frankly, I am often not sure I have the gist of it - let alone the right of it. Certainly there are individuals in the settler’s movement that capture my attention and I have to say that I hold a kind of grudging admiration for them. People like Avi Ran, who ask absolutely nothing from their government but to be left alone to live out their lives in the best way they see fit and who cannot be bought or placated to tow any government party line.

My grandfather taught me never to scorn the religious among us as they live their lives according to the truth of their beliefs and have the courage to make that belief the center of their lives. They are our light in an all too often fickle world. It is in fact, far easier to give into secular pressure than practice faithfully a religious credo in everyday life - I am living proof of that. In Israel and the world, I have watched the settlers being vilified and demonized by successive current Israeli administrations and in the western press for their allegedly uncompromising positions and my ire is raised. But how does one remain religiously faithful and not compromise one’s belief to suit the fashion of the day without becoming a kind of secular outlaw? And whose law shall the religious obey in times of direct conflict when the laws seem to collide?

It is easy to look casually at Amona and condemn the settlers outright and say that the settlers have no one but themselves to blame for crack of Israeli security forces’ batons that rained down on their and their children’s heads for flaunting the law. And yet, what of the law, and for those who sent the security forces to take up arms against their fellow citizens? If laws are only selectively enforced against certain citizens and then used as a weapon to beat them into submission by the state - what does that say for the law or the state? Why is there one law for the settlers and another for others? This article is taken from a YnetNews Online reports that illustrates my concern:

Illegal building by Israelis in the West Bank is considered a criminal offence, requiring expedited moves to obtain demolition orders. That's how the justice ministry flexes the muscle of the judicial system. But is that really the case? More than 1,000 illegal buildings have been built each year by Jerusalem Arabs since 1997. Only 30-40 are destroyed each year. Tens of thousands of illegal buildings are built each year by Arabs in the Galilee, the Arab Triangle, the Negev, Ramla and Lod. About 100 are demolished each year.

Since 1967 there has been more Arab building in Jerusalem – a majority of which is illegal – than Jewish building. But the Israeli government flexes its muscle against a few dozen Jewish buildings in Hebron and the rest of Judea and Samaria, while keeping its eyes tightly closed in the face of the plague of illegal Arab building.

The government is impotent judicially and politically in the fight against illegal Arab building, which threatens Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and the rule of law in general. Palestinian documents found in Orient House, the now-closed PLO headquarters in the city, show that illegal Arab building in the city is part of an overall strategy to prevent the "Judaization" of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority supports such building in the capital (Shuafat, Beit Hanina and A-Zaim) in order to prevent Jewish neighborhoods from linking to one another (French Hill and Pisgat Zeev; Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem.) Illegal building runs rampant along Route 443 from Jerusalem to Modiin, in a drive to turn it into an internal Arab road while threatening Jewish freedom of movement between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

But the Israeli government enforces the law with regard to a few dozen Jewish buildings in Hebron and throughout the West Bank. In 1999 a Palestinian document reported the Israeli government's "stubborn intent to destroy 400-500 illegal houses in Beit Hanina and Shuafat." But in 2000 a different document said, "There is nothing to worry about," because Israel would only destroy a few dozen buildings, and building could therefore be accelerated." And so, with PA support, Saudi funding and under the tightly-closed eyes of Israel, illegal building became a norm, to the benefit of many Palestinian functionaries.
(…)
By forging title documents for land and buildings has become a thriving "business" that is taking control of state lands, on absentee assets and the "small Palestinian." It feeds a phenomenon of blackmail, threats, gang warfare and illegal inhabitants and provides a feeding ground for terror. But the Israeli government enforces the law against a few dozen Jewish buildings in Hebron and around Judea and Samaria.

Administrative and legal processes have made slow process in trying to uproot the clear and immediate threat of illegal Arab building. These usually stand to support open violations of the law. For example, a demolition order is signed only if it is impossible to obtain a retroactive building permit – a clear incentive to break the law! Demolition orders are signed only if the building was built on state land that was intended for public building, roads, parks or absentee property. Demolition orders are signed only if building was completed no more than 30 days before the order was signed if people live there, and 60 days if it is empty.

So why do the sum total of 9 homes in Amona suddenly become the special focus of a caretaker government for immediate action? It becomes even more outrageous when looks at the vast numbers of security forces (in excess of 7,000) that were deployed to evict 9 homeowners while kassam rockets rain down daily on Israel from Gaza and Hamas controls power in the Palestinian Authority next door.

What you won’t find in accounts in the Globe and Mail concerning the eviction of the settler’s homes in Amona is that the settler’s themselves petitioned the courts and asked for time to remove their homes physically from land and relocate them elsewhere. It seemed a relatively benign compromise that could have averted not only confrontation but also bloodshed. And yet, the court ruled in a 2-1 decision that it cannot be so and not only would the court allow their eviction, it would not lift a judicial finger to save their homes from the purely punitive action of the State razing the buildings to the ground. From the Jerusalem Post:

The tumultuous events at Amona on Wednesday began early in the morning, when the High Court of Justice cancelled an interim injunction preventing the security forces from dismantling the nine illegal houses. The request for the temporary injunction was submitted by the Binyamin Regional Council and the Bar Amana building company, which promised to remove the houses themselves and move them across the road to Ofra while the injunction was in force.

Attorney David Rotem, who represented the petitioners, told a panel of three justices that his clients wanted a peaceful resolution of the dispute, like the one the army and the settlers had found for the illegally occupied houses in the Hebron wholesale market.

Osnat Mandel, head of the High Court section of the State Attorney's Office, told the court it was too late for compromise. "There are 7,000 security forces deployed at Amona," she said. "Fifteen of them have already been injured in clashes with the protesters, including one who was hit by a rock and seriously hurt. The fight is already going on... The moment of truth has arrived." Justices Ayala Procaccia and Edna Arbel rejected the petition and cancelled the interim injunction. Justice Elyakim Rubinstein voted to extend the interim injunction for seven days, to give the settlers time to remove the houses themselves.

"There is no basis in law or moral or public justification to order the state to stop the implementation of the demolition orders at this stage and give the petitioners more time to remove the buildings themselves," wrote Procaccia. "The time for the occupants of the buildings in Amona to consider their actions and propose alternatives to the demolition orders is over.

Yesterday, watching Israeli security forces decked out in black riot gear a la Darth Vader while mounted on horseback and stomping on civilians as they struck their batons indiscriminately on the heads and backs of men, women and teenagers appeared more than a tad surreal. Far more reminiscent of reports I have read concerning the pogroms of Czarist Russia rather than the lawful functioning of a modern western democratic government. It is hard for me not to conclude that the evictions at Amona and Hevron are nothing more than a cheap political ploys designed to further Olmert’s claim to “bulldozer” credentials on the blood and backs of others. Israel may need a bulldozer from time to time but it is also written that a house divided cannot stand. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert leads a caretaker government until elections are formally held at the end of March, but if Amona is the new gold standard in relations with between the settlers and the State, his tenure can be realistically characterized as more “undertaker” than “caretaker.”

Update: I came across these truly heart rendering pictures of yesterday's clash in Amona at Sultan Knish.