Hebronising the West Bank

Israel's "restraint" translates into the settlers' latitude and both are policies authored by Ariel Sharon. Graham Usher reports from Hebron
Taysir Zahdeh has unusual home movies. He slides one into his VCR. It shows a Jewish settler woman carrying a tray of steaming food up Taysir's stairwell to Israeli soldiers who, for the last nine months, have commandeered his roof. "This is my house," she says cheerfully to camera. "All Hebron is for the Jews."
A crowd of Jewish settlers swarm up the hill beside his home, smashing Palestinian car windows and overturning garbage containers. A few soldiers mingle among them, effectively trying to shove them back. One settler spots the camera and lobs a stone at Taysir's window.
Taysir lives in "Hebron Two," together with 30,000 other Palestinians and around 235 Jewish settlers and all, in theory, under the command of the Israeli army. But some inhabitants clearly are more commanded than others.
On a bluff above Taysir's house sits Tel Rumeida, officially an archaeological site preserving ancient Jewish ruins, actually a green-webbed army garrison ensconced to protect around 20 settlers who have squatted the site in three mobile homes.
One is Baruch Marzel, leader of the ultra-nationalist Kach movement. He is supposed to be under "house arrest" due to his repeated involvement in attacks on Palestinians in Hebron and elsewhere. He enjoys certain privileges, however. "Last week he came down and told the soldiers to stop the construction in my garden," says Taysir. "They did so."
Nor is this arrangement untypical, thinks Taysir, whether in Hebron, the West Bank or Gaza. "The settlers have the power. They are few and we are many but they control every facet of our lives. It is the army which gives them this power."
And with no greater latitude than since Ariel Sharon announced his "unilateral cease-fire" on 22 May. Coincidentally or otherwise, from the moment the Israeli leader declared "active restraint" as his policy for combating the Palestinian uprising the settlers have been acting with unrestrained abandon.
The most egregious example has been a wave of settler attacks on Palestinian homes, villages and farmlands in the last month -- always in areas under Israel's military control. On Sunday -- even as Taysir was running through his home movies -- settlers torched five Palestinian cars and acres of farmland on the main settler road that links the settlement of Kiryat Arba to Hebron proper.
The standard line on these vigilante raids is that the army will act against anyone who disrupts "law and order," be they Palestinian or Jewish. But the depth of the army's inaction against the settlers is now so conspicuous that "it must be concluded it stems from policy," says the Israeli Human rights organisation, Btselem, whose reports on settler violence in the occupied territories has exposed the collusion in fine detail.
There are other kinds of non-intervention. Last week, Israel's Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer caused a minor stir in Sharon's coalition by announcing 15 "illegal" settler outposts in the West Bank would have to be removed "by force if necessary."
In fact, even the army admits there have been at least 25 new outposts established in the occupied territories since Sharon's election victory in February. Some have been set up as "suitable Zionist responses" on sites where Palestinian guerrillas have ambushed settler cars. Others are on hills several kilometres away from existing settlements to enhance settlers' "confidence and sense of security." And the third kind are the usual mobile homes planted on the edge of older settlements.
But all will serve as the instrument that allows the settlements' expansion beyond their current boundaries. This is perhaps why Sharon was a little miffed by his Defence Minister's remarks. "A superfluous declaration," said one of his aides. Utterly superfluous- since all are aware hell will freeze over before Sharon would freeze expansion or uproot the outposts or reverse the new geo-political reality that is being created by their establishment. Outside the Jewish settlement of Efrat, the main Hebron-to- Jerusalem road bifurcates into two "separated" lanes. On the one side there is a snarl of Palestinian "blue-plated" cars, with soldiers and armed settlers laboriously poring over each driver's and passenger's papers. On the other "yellow plated" settler cars whisk in and out of Efrat at top speed and usually under escort of an army jeep. Between is a wall of mobile shields, three meters high and made of reinforced concrete.
The army recommends this arrangement not only because "separated roads" provide greater protection to the settlers but also because "it reduces friction between the two communities." But it is in fact "Hebron Two" writ large, extrapolated to the West Bank where two peoples enjoy different and discriminatory systems of rule in one geography solely by virtue of their nationality. In other words, it is apartheid.
This is why the ongoing settler vigils outside the Prime Minister's Jerusalem residence under the banner of "this restraint is killing us" should be taken with some salt. Sharon's "restraint" may be killing the settlers (though it is killing far more Palestinians) but it is also allowing him to use the settlers, as so often in the past, as the essential van and agent for his colonial design.
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