I wrote previously about Bibi’s building freeze in the settlements, from an Israeli’s point of view. But perhaps, in honor of yesterday’s large demonstration outside Bibi’s office, a settler’s point of view would be in order.
While a settlement freeze lacks the obvious risk to life and limb of a land giveaway or a unilateral withdrawal from territory, it also comes with some risk attached. What makes anyone think that it will only last for 10 months? Who’s to say it won’t be extended? Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman says that when the 10 months is up, bulldozers will be back to work, and working overtime. But experience has shown that those high hopes are easily dashed.
What are the facts? Israel has a serious housing shortage. The lands won in the Six Day War of 1967 legally belong to no one else but Israel. Ten thousand Arabs rely on building in the settlements for their livelihood. Settlements are not now, nor have ever been, at all related to the peace process.
And frankly, settlers are sick of being blamed for the stalled negotiations. Our homes, our presence here, and our right to this land have nothing to do with why there has not been a peaceful settlement to the conflict here. The stalemate has much more to do with culture, politics, culture, history, culture, rhetoric, and culture. Several work-arounds have been suggested by Israel to give the Arabs the amount of territory they want, and the Arabs have refused.
Settlers are viewed by everyone (but ourselves, it seems) as fanatically religious, racist, land-grabbing megalomaniacs. Anyone who thinks so should come out here and talk to some of us. Many of the people who live here are not at all religious. (And few are fanatical.) Most could not be called racist, and there are settlements here because a Labor government told Israelis they could build here, and encouraged them to do so! Housing out here is less expensive , and a buyer can get much more for his money here than in the overcrowded, insanely overpriced cities in the center of the country. The air is cleaner. The streets are safer. The community is smaller. We are surrounded by nature including vineyards, orchards, a Roman-era aqueduct, the Path of the Patriarchs, and the site of one of the great battlefields in the Chanukah story. This land was Jewish before 1948, when the Jordanians massacred the handful of fighters who stayed out here on the kibbutzim to protect the southern entrance to Jerusalem. There is an expression about Hebron which describes this land too—“me’az u’l’tamid”—“always and forever.”
And now the government has changed its tune. Now, despite the fact that Bibi and most of his cronies know that the settlements are not the problem, or even part of the problem, he is playing along with the international community’s anti-Israel (and especially anti-settler) attitude, and kow-towing to a naïve, dippy American president’s embrace of that same attitude. It makes no sense. There is no truth or justice in it. It is as though our prime minister, whom we helped put into office, who we believed understood us and would stick up for us, has gotten up on the table and, cheered on by the world, dropped his pants and is doing the can-can.
I have sometimes wondered what it would feel like to live in a world where, Cassandra-like, only a handful of people either knew or could face up to the truth. Now I know. In a world where most people hold that whatever the majority believes is the truth (even if it’s arrant rubbish), it is very painful to see how little effect hasbara (public relations), first-person accounts, expert knowledge and analysis, history, and the facts have on people.
There was one way to avoid this whole mess. Had Israel made up its mind after the Khartoum Conference to annex this land, there would have been no argument over ownership. Israel, of course, hoped (even when there was no hope) to trade it for peace with its neighbors, but the neighbors didn’t want it. It hoped to unload the burden of governing Arabs in the conquered territories, but didn’t have the stomach to transfer them. And as time passed, and the PLO made the Palestinian population about as welcome to Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East as the bubonic plague (by orchestrating coup attempt after coup attempt—think Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait) any chance of relocating Arabs in neighboring Arab countries was dashed. (I have thought that if all this was part of Arafat’s plan to cement the PLO’s claim to the West Bank and Gaza strip, it was nothing short of ingenious—and more effective than any public relations campaign.)
And to this day, Israel still hasn’t decided that this land is ours. Arabs who live out here, whether they’re technically in PA-governed villages or not, live more or less by their own rules. (Some settlers refuse to employ Arabs to work in or around their homes, since if something untoward happens, a Jew can be tracked down and held accountable, but an Arab cannot.) Lefties hold this land in escrow until the Palestinian leadership can be induced to say “yes” to an offer of peace, whatever that involves. And no one else seems determined to make it ours. The settler movement would like to pursue this settlement freeze through the legal system, but since we live under military rather than civil law, we have fewer venues for legal action relating to our homes.
The world has dumped on the Jews for generations, since they have traditionally been some of the most powerless members of society. The family of nations enjoys dumping on Israel, since we have few friends (and fewer every day, it seems) and are a ready target for anyone wanting to bleat about “oppression” and “injustice.” And the world, including much of Israeli society, reserves the settlers, some of the least powerful people in Israeli society, for much of its wrath and scorn.
My dear mother always says, “Shit rolls downhill.” Ain’t it the truth.
Shimshonit 
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