Israeli Militants Poised to Resettle Gaza After Assault

By Linda Mamoun, AlterNet. Posted January 7, 2009.

As with the unilateral disengagement from Gaza, the Israeli government occasionally dismantles overly controversial settlements, amid great fanfare, but new settlements continue to be built and existing ones expanded. In the three years since the state of Israel removed its settlers from Gaza soil, it has authorized the construction of thousands of new housing units for West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements. To make room for these settlements, thousands of Palestinian homes have been demolished, and in East Jerusalem, entire Palestinian neighborhoods are still being cleared. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, 19,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967. All the while, mainstream political elements decry "radical" settlers as violent extremists even as they celebrate their achievements and help establish new colonies.  

Israelis differentiate between "economic settlers," those who move to the occupied territories for subsidized housing and a better "quality of life," and "ideological settlers," nationalists who seek to establish a "Greater Israel" from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. But the distinction is overstated. Residents of the large suburban settlements that encircle Jerusalem (Ma’ale Adumim, Pisgat Ze’ev, etc.) are embedded in social networks that include radical leaders from the so-called ideological settlements (Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba, Hebron and the smaller outposts). And many suburban settlers have an intensely militant outlook, feeling themselves to be under siege just as they view the Gush Katif and Hebron "refugees" as demonized and besieged.  

For the Beit Hashalom supporters the mood at the Great Synagogue in late December was jubilant, coming just days after the settlers' zealous stand against the Israeli army and with plenty of time to implement what they refer to as their new "price tag" policy of payback for evacuations carried out by the Israeli army and police.  

In Hebron, as elsewhere, the price tag has come in the form of fiery pogroms against Palestinians. According to a recent United Nations report, there has been a surge in Israeli settler violence across the West Bank, with at least 290 incidents of violence against Palestinians documented between January and October 2008. 

The increase in violence may be related to the "price tag" policy, but the settlers' strategy reflects nothing new: the price Palestinians have paid throughout Israel’s 60-year history is incalculable in economic, social and demographic terms.  

Nonetheless, because of their humiliating departure from Gaza and years of displacement, the Gush Katif settlers believe they have paid the greatest price. Not a day seems to go by without media coverage of their plight. On Dec. 31 the Jerusalem Post published an editorial on Hamas rocket attacks by Rachel Saperstein, a settler from Gush Katif who lamented, "From our homes in Gush Katif to cardboard caravillas in a refugee camp to a sewer pipe. We have certainly hit rock bottom." On the same day, Arutz Sheva, a right-wing Internet news site, published an editorial by Nadia Matar that calls for Israel to "free Gaza from its Arab occupation ... and rebuild the 25 beautiful Jewish communities of Gush Katif." 

Although government agencies have attempted to move the former residents of Gush Katif to new settlements in the West Bank and the Negev, most have stayed in southern Israel, waiting for their day of return to resurrected Jewish enclaves in the ravaged Gaza Strip. 

That day, and the promise of redemption revived by Israel’s bloody price tag policy in Gaza, draws closer with each hour of "Operation Cast Lead."

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