WARRING STORIES : Israeli settlers & the Palestinians

Commonweal, April 20, 2001 by David B. Burrell

A recent appeal from the General Union of Palestinian Women relates the following story: "The latest victims of settler aggression have, unfortunately, fallen on the eve of the blessed Eid Al Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice). Ubai Darraj, yet another child of nine, had just had a haircut in excited anticipation of the Eid, when his life was terminated by gunfire from the settlement of Pisgot built on the lands of El Bireh, as he was helping his father paint their new home. Aida Fteiha had just finished her Eid shopping and was rushing back home to bring a measure of joy to her three young children when she was fatally shot by a bullet from that same settlement."

Ask nearly any Israeli about such things, and you will be told that this must have been in response to fire from the Palestinian village; Israeli settlers don't just shoot people randomly. Yet the fact is that they do. The tracer shells aimed at Beit Jala on the evening I arrived at Tantur from Cairo, which killed a young man in his room, were not provoked but were reportedly fired when a "suspicious group" was spotted from the artillery station across the vast wadi in the urban settlement of Gilo. Victims of settler vigilante activity, plus those felled by lethal fire from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), have been assiduously catalogued by the Palestinian Committee on Human Rights. If a peace and reconciliation commission should ever be inaugurated, all the relevant data will be available. But, of course, each of these lives is far more than a bit of data, and the greatest tragedy in the current "situation" (the going euphemism for all that is taking place) is that few friendships span these two societies so that stereotypes prevail. In fact, two distinct stories of recent events are emerging, each of which tends to cancel the other.

Israelis who supported the "peace process" feel massively "let down" by the Palestinian leadership, symbolized by Arafat, and many of them are now paralyzed by their society's pervasive fear. (The ingrained habit of carrying arms may project a macho image; yet, in fact, it betrays a massive fear.) Self-examination is replaced by Arab-bashing, with a fixation on Arafat: "Barak gave them the best they could hope for; indeed, he went far beyond the Israeli consensus, and they turned it down! How can there be any progress?"

These are the words of someone who longed for peace, who realized that Israel could not retain its own integrity by continuing the occupation, but who became deeply disillusioned when Arafat would not "play ball." The next step is to attribute venal motives to the entire Palestinian leadership, insisting that they organized the al-Aqsa intifada in advance while Ariel Sharon's provocative incursion of the Haram al-Sharif on September 29, 2000 is defended as "his right." And then the refrain: "Arabs can't be trusted; these reports you cite are propaganda; not even settlers would (or could) act with such impunity."

Beyond the exculpatory character of this account lies a presumption yet more insidious. The entire peace process is innocently regarded as one in which Israeli generosity is met with Palestinian ingratitude: "We gave them the best they could ever expect, and they rejected it!" There is little sense that, despite its overwhelming power, Israel alone cannot set the rules; negotiations are not simply horse-trading. Palestinians are quick to detect that premise which seems to escape Israelis (yet, Henry Siegman exposed it astutely in his comment in the New York Review of Books, February 8).

The Palestinians' story does not contradict my Israeli friend, but rather calls attention to facts that have impinged on Palestinian lives since Oslo, when they were praised for entering the arena of horse-trading. With a few prominent naysayers, most of us were thrilled that the Palestinians seemed willing to swap land for peace. Yet our endemic Western presumption has always been that half a loaf will gradually yield more. The seven years since Oslo told the Palestinian public otherwise: they had been invited to play on Israel's turf, to exchange freedom from the patrols of the IDF in their cities for yet more settler encroachment into the territory they anticipated recovering on the basis of international law. Moreover, playing ball on terms set by Israel and the United States hardly benefited the average Palestinian. Rather, principals in the Palestinian Authority profited. As a consequence, the intifada was directed as much against the Palestinians' own leadership as releasing pent-up frustration against continual humiliation at the increasing number of Israeli checkpoints.

Descriptions cannot serve as justifications, of course, yet the descriptions proper to each side in any conflict must be heard. Here lies a further source of frustration for Palestinians: the overwhelming bias of reporting. We read about Israelis killed by Palestinian mobs, yet are seldom, if ever, given the scantiest biography of a defenseless villager executed by settler vigilantes. A recent Palestinian lament is especially poignant: