I’ve been watching some of the coverage about the Gaza pullout on TV and it’s quite compelling, but I don’t trust the Israeli government and wonder what’s behind their decision. I’m also amazed at how the media is covering this so much and portraying the misery of the settlers in the way they have. I can’t help but wonder where they were when the Palestinian’s homes were being bulldozed and the people living in them were brutalized by the Israeli army when the illegal settlements were being established.
This article sheds some light on what is probably behind the pullout and the media frenzy surrounding it. Please take a look at the full article before commenting. Below is only an excerpt, but the full article isn’t really that long. Very interesting though.
By Jennifer Loewenstein
CounterPunch
August 17, 2005
“In the 5 years of Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinian uprising against the occupation, I never once saw or heard a segment as long and with as much sentimental, human detail as I did here; never once remember a reporter allowing a sympathetic young Palestinian woman, whose home was just bulldozed and who lost everything she owned, tell of her pain and sorrow, of her memories and her family’s memories; never got to listen to her reflect on where she would go now and how she would live. And yet in Gaza alone more than 23,000 people have lost their homes to Israeli bulldozers and bombs since September 2000 – often at a moment’s notice - on the grounds that they “threatened Israel’s security.” The vast majority of the destroyed homes were located too close to an IDF military outpost or illegal settlement to be allowed to continue standing. The victims received no compensation for their losses and had no place waiting for them to relocate. Most ended up in temporary UNRWA tent-cities until they could find shelter elsewhere in the densely overcrowded Strip, a quarter of whose best land was inhabited by the 1% of the population that was Jewish and occupying the land at their expense.
Where were the cameramen in May 2004 in Rafah when refugees twice over lost their homes again in a single night’s raid, able to retrieve nothing of what they owned? Where were they when bulldozers and tanks tore up paved streets with steel blades, wrecked the sewage and water pipes, cut electricity lines, and demolished a park and a zoo; when snipers shot two children, a brother and sister, feeding their pigeons on the roof of their home? When the occupying army fired a tank shell into a group of peaceful demonstrators killing 14 of them including two children? Where have they been for the past five years when the summer heat of Rafah makes life so unbearable it is all one can do to sit quietly in the shade of one’s corrugated tin roof – because s/he is forbidden to go to the sea, ten minutes’ walking distance from the city center? Or because if they ventured to the more open spaces they became walking human targets? And when their citizens resisted, where were the accolades and the admiring media to comment on the “pluck,” the “will” and “audacity” of these “young people”?”
Looks more like a rabid editorial about unbalaced media than a light-shedding article about what’s behind the pull-out. I still have no idea why they are pulling the settlers out, unless it’s to protect them from imminent Israeli / US military action.
Anyway, Jack, see if you can find “Jenin, Jenin”. Powerful documentary. Does a great job of revealing what daily conditions for Palestinians are really like under Israeli occupation. (Typically, the film-maker was later killed by Israeli soldiers.)
One way or the other, getting the settlers out seems like a great thing to me. A friend of mine who went over as a peaceful observer (you may have heard of the organization he was working with back when the Israelis ran over one of them with a bulldozer while she attempted to prevent the bulldozing of a Palestinian home).
Anyway, he was saying the settlers themselves were responsible for the most infuriating injustices the Palestinians had to deal with. By Israeli law, olive groves that weren’t harvested for a number of seasons (three I think) could be legally claimed by the settlers. So the settlers basically terrified, beat, and / or shot any Palestinian trying to harvest his olives until they could “legally” claim the land was neglected. Generally, beatings and / or killings of Palestinians by settlers who are after their land are not investigated or prosecuted and the settlers get little more than a wink and a pat on the back from their government.
The whole thing kinda has me on edge. On the one hand I think it is really wonderful but on the other hand I don’t trust either of the parties involved. I’m not on the ground there and I don’t know all the facts (even though I try to stay well informed). I just think it was the first positive step Isreal has made in a long time and I hope the Palestinians react in a similar manner. Both sides have too many excuses to prevoke each other so I don’t really see any hope of further Isreali pullouts considering the size and number of the other settlements in hte West Bank and East J. That being said, I hope this is a start of something new.
It’s in the first paragragh of the article – Israel’s US-backed takeover of the West Bank.
I own a copy of this film – yes it’s very good. And I’m aware of Rachel Corrie, what happened to her and the organization she was working for.
Right now they’re showing the Palestinians celebrating with trepidation about what the whole thing really means. On the surface it’s a 1% correction of a horrible wrong, but it’s only one piece of what will bring real peace to the region. I think we would need to see Israel withdraw to the pre 1967 boundaries before it could be truly resolved.
i have sympathy for the people too. it’s a bad situation, they are being torn away from their homes. that hurts. I don’t know if the fact per se that they need to leave is good or bad, i think there can be no consensus on that. I just feel sorry for the people forced away.
What were you feeling when the Palestinian’s were being forced out of their homes, watching as the Israeli army bulldozed their homes and uprooted their olive orchards? I realize you might not have been aware it was going on because of the media blackout about it, but what do you feel for those people? Do you think they deserve to have their land rightfully returned?
A better question might be: if you were kicked out of your own house illegally and someone else moved in knowing that you had been removed – would you feel sympathy for them when they were forced to return your home to you?
Probably not if it was my home, but I can feel sympathy for some of the settlers; they were encouraged to move there as pawns in a political game being waged by their government, mostly by Ariel Sharon. Yes, they’ve been squatting on someone else’s land and being MASSIVELY subsidized to do it, but no doubt they came to love it or they wouldn’t have stayed.
The ones who are peacefully giving it up have my respect, and sympathy for their position.
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However, I have far more sympathy for the displaced and refugee palestinian population.
I believe that if I was an Israeli child who had lived there my entire life, I would be very confused when someone told me that it wasn’t really my home.
Your reaction is measured and humanitarian. Personally I have a little less sympathy for the settlers than you do. Ignorance of the political situation is no excuse for swanning into someone else’s territory and taking it over. You don’t deserve to get your come-uppance any less because you’re ignorant. After all, Israel prides itself in being a democracy. Excuse me, but isn’t one very important aspect of democracy the education of citizens in political matters?
I just watched the BBC news and there was a story that corroborates the article I started this thread with. Many observers are realizing that this situation will ultimately be played out in the West Bank in some sort of tragic manner. They were saying that Sharon could be sacrificing the Gaza Strip to secure the West Bank settlements for Israel.
A lot of them are emigrant russians, who have or can plausibly claim jewish descent and therefore managed to get out of russia. They arrived in Israel and the government told them where to live and paid them to be there. I have some sympathy for them; Ariel Sharon manipulated them to achieve “facts on the ground”.
Some others are there out of sheer territorial aggression, and those I have no sympathy for at all.
I don’t claim any great knowledge of the politics involved here, but I have to say that, considering the history of violence and legacy of hatred on both sides, I think that in the face of what appears to be a major concession on the part of Israel, it’s very poor form to start complaining about how much sympathy the suffering Jewish settlers are getting. Let’s appreciate the moment. Forgiveness has to begin somewhere.
I don’t like the tone of your voice gilder. the way you state your question implies that i feel no sorrow for the palestinians, when they were forced out of their own homes.
for christ’s sake gilder. i’m not talking politics here. I said i felt sorry for people being forced away from their homes, ok? And i don’t care where they might live, what they believe in, or to which damn political party they belong to.