TRAGEDY ON THE WEST BANK
Litani, Yehuda
With this article—written by an Israeli journalist who for some years has been the West Bank correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz—we begin a series of articles about Israeli society and...
...Eventually 464 Jerusalem was surrounded by new Jewish neighborhoods: Ramat Eshkol, the French Hill, Ramot, Giloh, Neve Ya'acov, East Talpiot, and others...
...By the time of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Israeli government had developed the settlements in Gush Etzion, in the Jordan Valley (where most of these lands had been governmentowned and so were easily transferable to settlers), and also—and seemingly without alternative —Kiryat Arba, which then was viewed by most of the public as a "stepchild," despite the support it had received from the fringes of the cabinet and the Herut-Liberal bloc (by 1973 again part of the opposition...
...Those were cordial and even close relations...
...Since then the group called "pro-PLO" has grown and greatly increased...
...In an unprecedented ruling, the Mufti of Jerusalem gave his permission for the assassination of Hafez al Assad, the 462 president of Syria, explaining that it is a religious obligation to kill this "enemy of the Palestinians...
...but the Arabs see themselves as an integral part of the West Bank—separate from the Jewish inhabitants...
...In the center of the town several score of Jewish settlers have planted themselves in an old, cramped Jewish quarter (Jews were driven out in the late 1920s after a bloody Arab pogrom...
...In these elections, mostly pro-Jordan candidates were elected, such as Sheikh Muhammad Ali Ja'abri in Hebron, Hajj Ma'azuz Al-Masri in Nablus, and Elias Freij in Bethlehem...
...East Jerusalem was the center of Jordanian rule in the West Bank, although it then had fewer than 50,000 (47,000) inhabitants...
...I find myself wondering whether these settlements in Nablus and Hebron have some relation to the frenzied irrationality that led hundreds of thousands of Jews in the 17th century to the heresies and then disasters of Sabbatianism...
...And soon lives were lost, too...
...Now, facing an Israeli coalition determined to annex the West Bank de facto (if not de jure at a later stage), there is an Israeli opposition —a minority—ridden with contradictions regarding its ideas about a solution in the West Bank...
...by the ministers representing the National Religious party—and by Yigal Allon, who viewed their settlement as part of his plan...
...That committee included the mayors of the larger West Bank cities, representatives of labor and welfare organizations, editors of pro-PLO newspapers (Al-Fajr and A-Sha'ab, both published in East Jerusalem), women's and students' organizations, and others...
...In his book, Moshe Dayan: The Story of My Life, he writes: The most revolutionary innovation in our relations with the Arabs was the "Open Bridges" policy, facilitating free movement of people and goods between Israel and the Arab countries across the Jordan bridges...
...This was in sharp contrast to the relations that had begun to develop between members of the Military Government and the Defense Ministry (then headed by Moshe Dayan), and the mayor at the time, Sheikh Muhammad Ali Ja'abri...
...Their members now began supervising substantial areas of the life of their communities, both in the villages and in the towns (mainly in the Hebron area...
...their activities, which until then had been open, have become more secretive...
...A period of repression began for those Palestinian leaders who had united in the National Guidance Committee...
...Let us continue the game of "what if...
...he lost only one of his legs from the knee down...
...But then, at the time of the Camp David meetings, at the close of the '70s and the beginning of the '80s—first gradually and then more rapidly—Jordan and the PLO grew closer...
...A very serious deterioration in Jewish-Arab relations in Hebron occurred in March 1976...
...those who showed no interest in politics lived a good life, received respected positions, made money, and were free to travel...
...In the wake of the recent split in the PLO and the rebellion of certain Fatah commanders in Lebanon, the inhabitants of the West Bank and of Gaza stood united, to the last man and woman, behind Yasir Arafat...
...Thus the settlers were able to confront the government with an established fact...
...Arabs attacked Jews and Jews attacked Arabs...
...He was loyal to the Egyptians, and when they had to leave the area, he left with them...
...The problems between Arabs and Jews in Gush Etzion began to flare up only in recent years, when Jewish settlers aimed to expand their territory as part of a general campaign to proliferate settlements in the West Bank...
...From the start, the influx of the Israeli settlers made Hebron an ideal place for conflict...
...By then the whole area had become a free-fire zone for the Village League people, who were searching—with considerable assistance from some Israeli security personnel —for the murderers of Al-Khatib...
...But intelligence suggests that rights be exercised with decency and common sense, which means at times to restrain their exercise...
...At first the Arab laborers came alone and lived in rented rooms in the crowded Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City...
...It should be noted, however, that other adherents of Orthodox Judaism do not share this view, and opposite opinions are held by such eminent leaders as Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik of Boston...
...Arab society also has undergone great changes in the last 16 years...
...The Hebron settlers later established a Jewish neighborhood overlooking Arab Hebron, which they named Kiryat Arba, and then penetrated into the old Jewish quarter in the heart of Hebron near the Cave of Machpelah, the Tomb of the Patriarchs...
...Until the Camp David agreements and a few months thereafter, the Begin government maintained a tolerant attitude toward them...
...In Nablus the mayoralty was assumed by Bassam Shaka, a member of an important family in the city, who even before the elections had gained approval and legitimacy among the Jordan supporters...
...The defense minister at the time, Moshe Dayan, was hospitalized for an operation, and the coordinator of activities in the Territories, MajorGeneral Shlomo Gazit, was observing a period of mourning after the death of his father...
...But they still serve as an important support for King Hussein, to whom they have remained linked since the 1950s...
...another night, the windshields of more than 40 private cars and trucks were smashed in Halhul, north of Hebron—all in response to stone-throwing...
...But now, slowly and consistently, much of Israeli society has grown accustomed to the "burden" of the Territories...
...At first, Gush Emunim was a small minority, but slowly and surely it has imposed its opinion on a large part of the Israeli public...
...But they have not come to coexist...
...It now is a society that shows insensitivity to the suffering of another people...
...But four years later, in the municipal elections of 1976, a turn in public opinion had clearly taken place...
...Why change the arrangement that had existed for 19 years under Jordanian rule, when Palestine had actually been divided into two parts...
...And what remained now for King Hussein to negotiate about with Israel...
...The two settlements at Kfar Etzion and Hebron typify the two forms of Israeli settlement that have developed since then: official settlements, established with government encouragement and with public means, receiving the customary assistance given to new settlements —and illegal settlements, assisted at first by private and covert public means (at the independent initiative of one official or another), which only after a while will receive the retroactive approval of the government, usually because there is no longer a choice, and after the application of strong public pressure both at the site and within Israel...
...Since then, and to this day, these manifestations of vigilantism are continuing between the settlers and the Arab townspeople...
...The first municipal elections in the West Bank under Israeli rule were held in 1972...
...Since the mid'70s, in demonstrations and clashes with security forces in the West Bank's larger cities, at least 20 Arab youths have been killed by soldiers and border policemen...
...And this despite the fact that immediately following Camp David those mayors organized public gatherings in all the larger West Bank towns (with close cooperation of the Communist party, the strongest party in the West Bank because of its long tradition of underground activity under Jordanian rule)—gatherings aimed to demonstrate against the new agreements...
...There are strong ties between the two Banks in the social, economic, and religious spheres...
...another settler had been killed one night a few months earlier in a market street...
...in Israel too they set off protests...
...More than 10,000 dunams (a dunam is a quarter of an acre) were expropriated in the first years, and another few thousand later on...
...Arabs will keep throwing stones and Israelis "punishing" them as long as the occupation continues...
...Although the pro-Jordan and pro-PLO groups have become substantially closer in recent years—in no small measure owing to a common hatred of the Village Leagues—their relations have usually reflected those between the higher-echelon leadership of Jordan and the PLO...
...We can then assume that had Jordanian rule in the West Bank continued, the usually covert activity of political activists—mainly that of Ba'ath supporters and the Communists—gradually would have increased...
...The open bridges were primarily intended to prevent the severing of the residents of the [occupied] Territories from their people: to enable their children to study in the universities of Egypt and Syria...
...They permitted 30 families from the Elon Moreh settlement group to enter an army camp near the Arab village of Kaddum...
...This current reigned supreme in the late 1960s and early '70s, until the 456 • ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS MILES 30 MEDITERRANEAN SEA LEBANON olryat Shemona cc I } GOLAN I CO HEIGHTS (Annexed by Israel) Nazareth Afula© Tel AvIv-Jafo Cc Jerusalem' Amman Sea of Galilee Tiberias 457 Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Rabat Conference of 1974...
...As it was, even the Allon Plan had been vigorously opposed by the king, despite many attempts by Alignment leaders, who had met with him a number of times in the early '70s, to convince him of its merits...
...Such personalities as Anwar Nuseibeh (minister of defense in the Jordanian government), Anwar Al-Khatib (former Jordanian governor of the Jerusalem District), Hikmat Al-Masri (former speaker of the Jordanian Parliament), his cousin, Hajj Ma'azuz AlMasri (former mayor of Nablus), and Elias Freij (mayor of Bethlehem), all are loyal supporters of King Hussein in the West Bank...
...Moderates and radicals, supporters of Jordan and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, all declared that Arafat carried the flag of the Palestinian revolution, that a split in the Palestinian ranks at this difficult time was unacceptable...
...Huge new Arab neighborhoods now also were going up in areas of the West Bank not annexed to Israel—between Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, and the Atarot industrial zone...
...Israel is not prepared for future developments in the West Bank...
...VVhile ties between PLO and Jordan supporters in the West Bank were growing stronger, the Israeli authorities increased their pressure on the leaders of both camps...
...The settlers now were permitted to use their weapons in "self-defense...
...And soon a covert competition began between the Herut-Liberal bloc (later Likud) and the National Religious party over which of them was giving more help to these settlers—while Shlomo Hillel, minister of police, was supplying them with their first weapons, directly from the police depots...
...At the same time also began the harassment of the mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shaka...
...At that time they were considered extremists, and today they are considered part of the Israeli consensus...
...Vlfe now witness in the West Bank a struggle between two societies—one Jewish, and the other Arab...
...Appointed to head these leagues were usually people with a shady past, men like Bishara Kumsiyeh in the Bethlehem area—a former cab driver from Beit Shahur (a town near Bethlehem), who in the days of Jordanian rule had acquired a police record for drug-smuggling...
...It may have been this popular support that encouraged him to fight the rebels and not to surrender to them...
...If the occupation continues for another three years— and there are no visible reasons to expect its cessation—it will reach the same number of years as those of Jordanian rule (1948-67...
...But to an outside observer it seems that despite the great resentment the Palestinian inhabitants of the Territories harbor toward Israel, they know that such a solution, even if envisioned in the distant future, does not seem realistic...
...Many intellectuals were afraid and so surrendered...
...Thus most of the Arab employees of the West Bank government now receive a double salary...
...But soon after the war, Jewish laborers left construction work owing to the large influx of Arab laborers (most of them unskilled), who asked for much lower wages than most Jewish laborers and did not receive, at least in the first years, the social benefits customary in Israel...
...The fact that nearly one and a half million Palestinians in the Territories—who stand, in the PLO's phrase, "in the front line facing the enemy"—took Arafat's side, strengthened his position...
...All this gave the West Bank a new, legally elected leadership of PLO supporters...
...Some people in Israel claimed that our security services had nearly conclusive information on the persons who had planted the car bombs and that the perpetrators were Israeli citizens, some of them settlers...
...Sharp criticism was directed at then Defense Minister Shimon Peres (today the leader of the Labor Alignment), for having "put the PLO people in power in the West Bank...
...And why not use the areas captured in the war for negotiation with Jordan...
...All these are historical facts that are important to remember...
...What now remained of Yigal Allon's vaunted plan...
...Beyond internal disagreements, the inhabitants of the West Bank and of East Jerusalem are almost united in their massive, yet usually passive, opposition to the Israeli settlements that began to sprout immediately after the SixDay War...
...This is "punishment" for the throwing of stones by Arab youths at passing Israeli vehicles...
...The weapons have been taken away from most of their members, and the importance the authorities once attributed to them has diminished...
...But it is still a minority...
...For centuries Jews struggled to escape claustrophobic ghettos, and now, in Hebron, another is being set up—an enclave of fanatics in the very midst of the infidels...
...Although Fand Kawasmeh was considered one of the moderates in the National Guidance Committee, as opposed to such extreme members as Karim Khalaf, mayor of Ramallah, and Bassam Shaka, mayor of Nablus (both considered supporters of the PLO's "Rejection Front"), Weizman ordered Kawasmeh's immediate deportation...
...by Shlomo Hillel, minister of police (Labor party...
...But a kind of modus vivendi would have been achieved between the two main currents in Jordan on both the East and the West Bank: on the one hand, a desire for political and social change, a better future for Palestinians and, on the other, an increasing acceptance by those same Palestinians of the idea that this change could be achieved within the Jordanian state, and not by harming or destroying it...
...Dudeen stayed in Egypt for many years, and among other things served as special adviser to President Nasser...
...Just as the false messiah proposed to spear transcendence through the pleasures of antinomianism, so the messianic hunger is being corrupted on the West Bank into an impulse to conquest...
...Its population has almost tripled in one of the most interesting processes of the past 16 years on the West Bank...
...They were Fand Kawasmeh, the mayor of Hebron, and Muhammad Milhem, the mayor of Halhul, along with the Kadi (the supreme Muslim judge) of Hebron...
...However, while in 1967 the nationalist-Palestinian current was limited to intellectual circles on the fringes of Palestinian society in the West Bank, it now comprises most sectors of West Bank society...
...But that is what we hoped when the Gush Emunim was first being organized...
...Each side felt that the authorities were supporting its rival...
...youths suspected of stone-throwing had to work in the Military Government building...
...later they brought their families...
...That sapper lost his eyesight...
...Arab youths throw stones at private cars or buses carrying settlers, and in response groups of settlers organize vigilante actions of revenge...
...It received the passive assistance of the minister of defense at the time and now the leader of the Labor opposition, Shimon Peres...
...Both of Shaka's legs had to be amputated...
...Land Day, at the end of March, is the Israeli Arabs' traditional day for organized demonstrations and protests against Israeli land expropriation—a day now observed in the Territories as well...
...Halabi, like other oppositionists, has received death threats...
...Paradoxically, there are fewer obstacles placed on residents of East Jerusalem who want to publish newspapers and magazines because, since the Israeli annexation, East Jerusalem has been subject to the relatively liberal Israeli law—liberal at least by comparison with the regulations enforced on the West Bank (a mixture of Jordanian law and the administrative orders of the Israeli occupation, nowadays called "the Civil Administration...
...The third mayor, Ibraham Tawil of Al-Bireh (close to Ramallah) was saved when an Israeli border-guard sapper checked his car (after reports had been received of the explosions of the mayors' cars in Ramallah and Nablus) and the explosive charge went of in his face...
...Prime Minister Begin promised a thorough investigation...
...The settlers are convinced that a significant increase in their numbers, along with a "strongarm" policy toward the Arabs, will reduce the violent clashes...
...Jerusalem Post, May 13, 1983 461 ately after the explosions some Israeli security officials claimed that, very likely, extremist Arab groups had settled accounts...
...The Israeli authorities sought to depict the leagues as something like "peace leagues...
...The most important political force in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem is the PLO...
...they are still at large and could possibly be preparing similar actions for the future...
...The actions against the mayors occurred exactly 40 days after the murder of the seven Israeli settlers in Hebron...
...A few months before the 1977 elections, the settlers, members of the Gush Emunim, launched their eighth attempt to establish an illegal settlement near Nablus to be named Elon Moreh...
...At the same time, in recent years, there has been a steep decline in the number of terrorist actions by the various PLO cells, both in the West Bank and in Israel proper, owing to the great efficiency of the Israeli security services on the one hand and, on the other, the concentration of the PLO's struggle against Israel on the northern Israeli-Lebanese border...
...And indeed, an investigation team of the Israeli security services (the Shin Bet) was established...
...And Palestinian artists have been forbidden to exhibit paintings in shows whose subjects appeared to be too nationalistic to Israeli government officials...
...but basic differences are not forgotten for even a minute...
...The residents of the West Bank (and those of East Jerusalem—despite its annexation to Israel about a month after the June 1967 War) carry Jordanian passports, which they must renew every few years...
...These Rejectionists advocate a "Greater Palestine"—a secular Palestinian state under majority rule (an Arab majority, of course, after the return of all the refugees...
...468 area, the Bethlehem area, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin—now were strewn with new settlements...
...Jordan did not join the Camp David accords, despite the Americans' concerted efforts...
...The settlements in the West Bank have become fortresses, surrounded by barbed wire...
...but rather, settlements were to be founded in sparsely populated areas, outside the limits set by the plan...
...Men and women from the other settlements (children and the elderly had been evacuated earlier) were taken prisoner by the Jordanians and returned to Israel only after the war...
...This, in turn, now offended the Jews...
...Now these mayors and public figures could no longer leave the areas of the cities where they lived without the military government's official permission...
...After the Likud came to power, Menahem Begin, Ariel Sharon, and other government leaders prepared to aid Gush Emunim in fulfillment of election-campaign promises...
...Since many Palestinian refugees now live in the Persian Gulf states, business ties have formed between these regions and the Arabs of the West Bank...
...children and their parents to visit their families [across the borders...
...Although, on the surface, the activities of the leaders identified with the PLO have ceased, they were revived by another source...
...Again and again they promise, "We shall return...
...Since the 1976 elections, the representatives of the West Bank population were—in the view of the Israeli rulers as well—pro-PLO leaders...
...Its popularity can be attributed to its relatively high journalistic level as well as to force of habit...
...To this day agricultural goods, such as citrus fruits from the Gaza Strip and vegetables from the West Bank, pass across the Jordan bridges to Amman and often go from there to such faraway places as Teheran, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait...
...The settlers also were sure of a sympathetic reaction among part of the public by means of the "Greater Israel" movement, which advocated the annexation of the West Bank to Israel, and whose leaders included such well-known intellectuals and writers as Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Uri Zvi Greenberg, and Moshe Shamir...
...Still, it can be assumed that if Jordanian rule had continued in the West Bank until now, the assimilation of Palestinians with original Jordanians would have increased, and the Palestinian problem would not have arisen as sharply as it has in our region since the end of the 1960s...
...Anyway, three whole years have passed since these terrorist attacks...
...And this despite the fact that part of the population disagrees with PLO policy on one or another issue...
...And all this the Jordanians pay in addition to pensions and various grants that go to thousands of West Bank residents who once served the Jordanian government...
...Now the Jewish religion does not prohibit prayer in a Muslim mosque (while prayer in a Christian church is forbidden...
...But usually the police were more effective and quick when the issue was harm done to Israeli settlers...
...Restrictions have been placed mainly on pro-PLO but also on proJordan political leaders...
...At the beginning of the '80s, two pro-PLO mayors and members of the National Guidance Committee were deported to Lebanon...
...to enable their delegates to meet, openly or secretly, with the leaders of the Arab states (and even with the leaders of the terrorist organizations...
...It is extreme and fanatic, and there are many hotheads among the city's Muslims who will latch on enthusiastically to any alleged religious dispute, because it gives them a chance to demonstrate how fervently they uphold their religion and its principles...
...censorship of newspapers and other publications was enforced...
...They drove into the center of the Arab city in a few cars, carrying their weapons, and began to "restore order": they ordered residents around (among them the Kadi, the supreme Muslim judge of Hebron) and made them remove rocks placed as roadblocks, and caught youths who they said threw stones at them...
...The National Guidance Committee has been outlawed and its activists put either under house arrest or city-limits restrictions...
...Builders, plasterers, stone-layers, molders, stone-cutters and whitewashers, all arrived in the course of an accelerated migration to Arab Jerusalem...
...The settlers sicked on these youths a huge Great Dane that bit them, forced them to stand in the sun for hours without clothes, and more...
...Some of the leagues' members abused the authority granted them: not only did they collect monies above and beyond what was allowed...
...Since the end of the '70s, many Israelis no longer travel freely in the West Bank for fear of stone-throwing or clashes with Arab inhabitants...
...They had planned their arrival there in secret...
...The Yom Kippur War provided the impetus for the establishment of the Gush Emunim movement ("Group of Believers"), which is responsible for Israeli settlement in many areas of the West Bank from then on...
...Most of the laborers who put up the new buildings in the Jewish neighborhoods surrounding Jerusalem came from the areas south of the city—from Bethlehem and Mount Hebron...
...There they were cruelly mistreated...
...A typical neighborhood of this kind is Dahiat AlBarid, which now is very crowded, while before the Six Day War it was sparsely settled...
...There were people in Israel who then said that if it was possible to have the children of Kfar Etzion return to their land, why should the Arab refugees from Jaffa and Haifa not return to their homes too...
...We, here in Israel, are repeating the classic mistakes of colonial occupiers in Asia and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, without recognizing that right under our noses a nation has formed that has national aspirations much like our own...
...So far, the Israelis have had the upper hand, for they are the rulers and the Palestinian Arabs the ruled...
...The residents of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, then the largest Jewish settlement in the place, were mercilessly slaughtered by the legionnaires and especially by the villagers...
...Even the latest war in Lebanon can be attributed to an Israeli attempt to destroy the basis of identification of West Bank residents with the PLO, an attempt that, so far, has not particularly succeeded...
...Two of the mayors, Bassam Shaka and Karim Khalaf, were seriously wounded...
...Such public gatherings now were prohibited...
...Soon after the Likud victory, beneath the canopy of a Jewish prayer shawl, at the consecration of 467 the new synagogue in the Kedumin Settlement, Menahem Begin promised that "scores of Elon Morehs will be established...
...It is difficult to say whether this policy broke the West Bank people's resistance to the settlements, to land expropriation, and to Israeli rule, though it surely has had a deterrent effect and has reduced the number of demonstrations...
...And in the meantime the ruling coalition proposes archaic solutions...
...most of the society no longer views them as that burden but as "new territories" that are undergoing a process of Israelization...
...Al-Quds was the first Arabic daily published under Israeli rule and is the most widely read daily in the Territories, although its line is no longer accepted by most of the Arab population...
...Some weeks later, terrorists— as yet unidentified—burst into the Islamic College and started shooting indiscriminately...
...Similar restrictions were imposed on mayors identified as pro-Jordanian...
...And indeed, in this undertaking they were receiving assistance from within the cabinet...
...But for the Muslims, the drinking of wine, especially in a holy place, is absolutely forbidden...
...Every month the Jordanian government still pays the salaries it used to pay to its old government employees and to most of the teachers...
...This writer believes—and so do quite a few like him in Israel—that the end of Jordanian rule and the beginning of Israeli rule in the West Bank stopped a process of Jordanization...
...but a joint system for the distribution of funds began to develop, as well as a common ideological basis...
...So far, the problem has not yet reached the frightening dimensions of Northern Ireland or Algeria...
...In July a yeshivah student was murdered in the Hebron market...
...This is how "improvised" settlements began —even in the days of the Labor Alignment government...
...Even if the Gush Emunim wins, even if the West Bank is annexed to Israel, the problem of the Palestinians will remain...
...The final violation of all taboos and prohibitions, however, was the establishment of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus...
...And so Ariel was established in Central Samaria, and Elkanah just across the Green Line...
...Most of the 463 population considers them the West Bank's semi-Quislings...
...They also aroused massive public opposition, and the Supreme Court ruled against the right to settle on privately owned land in the Territories...
...Large budgets have been funneled to these leagues (this year, for example, slightly less than half the total budget of the Civil Administration is designated for the Village Leagues...
...ImmediAbba Eban on the West Bank If we were to hear that some people in Holland were eager to incorporate 4 million Germans into their country against their will, we would conclude not that the proposers of that idea were patriots, but that they were demented...
...The Alignment government approved a few settlements in sparsely populated areas of Samaria, according to the rule "not [to settle] in heavily populated areas...
...Others, mainly local West Bank residents, operated in the areas of Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, and Jenin...
...Jewish holy books were desecrated, and Muslim religious objects were damaged...
...Partition was not a diplomatic accident when it carried Israel to statehood, national identity, international recognition, and Jewish self-reliance...
...Harry Kahn and we wish here to express our gratitude to him...
...And so, in recent years there has been a cultural flowering within the population of East Jerusalem that is unprecedented in this century...
...Why, asked the government officials, should the minority lead the majority...
...The Jews, on the other hand, wanted to "res469 cue" the old Jewish quarter from its state of ruin and return to the Jewish people an area where brutally murdered Jews had once lived...
...Despite the Jordanian government's discrimination against West Bank residents in the late '40s and most of the '50s, an easing of policy began to emerge in the late '50s...
...These leaders are restricted to their places of residence and not allowed to meet and organize for political purposes...
...There is, for example, a large group on the fringes of the pro-Jordan camp that advocates a combination of the two programs: an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank in confederation with Jordan, with a leadership that would include supporters of both Jordan and the PLO...
...Jordan and mainly its King Hussein despaired of any chance of arriving at an understanding with Israel after the Likud's rise to power in 1977...
...Ens...
...Seven Israeli settlers were murdered near Beit Hadassah, the Israeli squatters' settlement in Hebron...
...Milson wanted to establish a more moderate Arab leadership, willing to cooperate with Israel in most areas...
...For, at that time, Yigal Allon, a minister of the government and prominent member of the Labor party, began to formulate the plan that was to be named after him...
...the day I left Israel, the tires of his car were slashed and his mailbox broken open...
...In 1976 he met with the new adviser on Arab affairs to the Israeli military administration, Professor Menahem Milson of the Hebrew University...
...By the time they made their eighth and last attempt, the Gush Emunim people had succeeded in arousing massive public pressure, and now they staunchly refused to evacuate the area...
...East Jerusalem, which under Jordanian rule had 47,000 Arab inhabitants, now has more than 130,000...
...they planned to establish a Jewish Hebron—a city with a Jewish majority that would in effect "swallow up" its Arab inhabitants...
...This creates an important dependence on the Jordanian bureaucracy...
...A similar situation was later created in Hebron as well...
...There are those in Israel who trust that, ultimately, it will be possible to "convince" hundreds of thousands of Arabs to emigrate at their own initiative or, more correctly, at our initiative...
...If these settlers had come to Hebron saying they wished to live peacefully with the Arabs under whichever national authority prevailed, then no one could legitimately object to their presence...
...The sale, circulation, and possession of hundreds and even thousands of books have been banned, and strict censorship has been imposed on the newspapers published in East Jerusalem...
...That promise was fulfilled by Ariel Sharon...
...It's an eerie feeling: you ride through a village where every door is shut, every window blind drawn, and some houses are marked with ominous Xs...
...According to the Allon Plan, Gush Etzion was part of the government's new settlement program...
...What does this remind you of...
...They warned of "bloodshed," and some of them chained themselves to the site...
...The most acute problem was sparked at the initiative of the young Rabbi Moshe Levinger, originally from Jerusalem, who arrived at Hebron's Park Hotel just before Passover 1968 with a few dozen followers, most of them Orthodox Jews, ostensibly to celebrate the Passover holiday in this Arab hotel...
...During those visits to Jordan, the Jordanian government tries to strengthen ties with the West Bank people and to obtain information on events and conditions in the occupied areas...
...Add the half-million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which until 1967 was under Egyptian rule, and the halfmillion Arabs in Israel itself—and there are, all told, almost 2 million Palestinian Arabs living in "Greater Israel," while there are 3.5 million Jews...
...This solution means wiping Israel off the map...
...Lately there have been signs of a sobering in the Civil Administration regarding the Village Leagues...
...Seven times they had been removed by the Alignment government, then headed by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, from the places where they tried to found their settlement: the village of Rujeib, on a mountain southeast of Nablus, and the old Turkish train station in Sebastia, west of Nablus...
...Every month Jordan dispatches these funds to its loyalists, funds now called in Arabic amwal sumud ("steadfastness funds...
...Nablus indeed was an object of settler aspirations— envisioned as the final point, completing a continuous line of settlements that were to be established—along a longitudinal line—within the West Bank, running from Hebron to Nablus, through the heart of the Arab population centers...
...That joint committee was greatly strengthened by the 1978 Baghdad decision to use it to funnel funds to supporters in the West Bank...
...And there were incidents of physical violence in the neighborhoods near Kiryat Arba...
...Thus a major line was breached, in the days of the Alignment government: there was to be no more talk about the Allon Plan...
...By contrast, apart from a supply of cheap labor, the West Bank sends virtually nothing to Israel—almost no industrial goods or agricultural products...
...later he was removed from his post...
...They have come to dominate, they have come to rule...
...Rabbi Levinger and his settlers could not have chosen a more propitious moment...
...Ever since the settlers appeared in Hebron's Park Hotel and then stayed in the area allotted them in the courtyard of the Military Government building, relations between the settlers and the citydwellers have been explosive...
...Israeli officials were appointed in their place...
...An important Jordanian organ in the West Bank is Al-Quds, a daily newspaper published in East Jerusalem, mostly funded by the Jordanian government and run by one of its prominent supporters—Mahmud Abu-Zalaf, a veteran journalist born in Jaffa...
...The settlers, however, now proceeded to celebrate weddings and circumcisions in the Cave, and performed the regular Sabbath and holiday blessings, all of which required the drinking of wine...
...But the residents of the West Bank consider East Jerusalem its capital...
...For the Jews, bringing a corpse into a house of prayer is considered profanation of a holy place, but for the Muslims of Hebron, the greatest honor accorded to the dead is to carry the body on the way to the graveyard through the Cave of the Patriarchs, where the people pay their last respects...
...Since then there has been a steep decline in the public activity of pro-PLO figures in the Territories...
...But in the second stage of the campaign—and Gush Emunim had planned this correctly—it would sweep along Israel's "silent majority...
...Sixteen years have passed since Israel occupied the West Bank in June 1967...
...Because of the strong feelings many Israelis have for these old abandoned Jewish settlements of the Gush Etzion the Israeli government (at the time a National Unity government) adopted a decision to return the children of the murdered members of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion to their home...
...The Ramallah journalist Raymonda Tawil relates in her book, My Home, My Prison, that despite the Jordanian regime's brutal repression of its opponents, especially of the Communists...
...I can only hope that those who advocate this—considered extremists today— will continue to be an insignificant minority...
...And this despite the fact that according to Jordanian law, which is officially in force in the West Bank, elections should have been held in 1980...
...Later Mustafa Dudeen served as Jordanian ambassador to Kuwait, got involved there in a scandal, and was compelled to resign...
...In early June 1980, explosives were placed in the cars of three prominent pro-PLO West Bank mayors...
...In the early '60s, an increased integration of the two Banks, East and West, began...
...In those discussions, Jordanian government leaders reinforce their supporters vis-à-vis both the PLO supporters in the Territories and the Israeli occupation...
...To be sure, with Israel's military might behind them, they don't expect to remain besieged for very long...
...But this is hardly what they are...
...In 1978, the Israeli authorities decided that such public meetings went too far and were too dangerous, and so restrictions were imposed on the pro-PLO leaders in the West Bank...
...Economic restrictions have often been imposed, prohibiting the transfer of goods to the other side of the Jordan River, as collective punishment of a city or an area...
...But now this society conscripts a significant number of its young men for guard and police duty in the Territories, to be jailers and security-service investigators...
...But, it was said, the security services wanted to avoid the kind of investigation procedures they used with the residents of the Territories—that is, methods more brutal than were customary in Israel proper...
...They [actually] began to fear freedom...
...Jews have a historic right to live in Hebron, where Father Abraham is said, authoritatively, to be buried...
...Since the Likud came to power in 1977, there have been repeated attempts by the Israeli government to weaken the pro-Jordan elements in the West Bank as well, but the main thrust of the attack by both Labor and 459 Likud governments has been directed against the PLO...
...He was nearly the only minister of Palestinian origin who agreed to be part of the Jordanian cabinet in this period of suppression of the Palestinians...
...Despite the fact that in Israel Jerusalem is officially considered a "united city" and all its neighborhoods receive their services from one central municipality, there is an invisible curtain between the Jewish and Arab residents...
...They still exist today...
...Now, if the 130,000 people in East Jerusalem are added to the West Bank inhabitants (800,000), the total comes close to a million Palestinians...
...Not only did they want to return to the city's old Jewish quarter, whose residents had been massacred in the 1929 riots by extremist Arabs of Hebron...
...The combination of the Gush Emunim's idealism and devotion with Sharon's energy and singlemindedness wrought a real change on the West Bank map...
...These settlements were built in three centers: the area surrounding Arab Jerusalem, the Etzion Bloc, and the Jordan Valley...
...The "strong-arm" policy has been used throughout the Territories: in political and economic matters, and in matters of the people's cultural and daily life...
...They see the West Bank as an integral part of the Land of Israel, land that God has commanded the Jews to settle...
...The settlers began to walk armed in the streets of Hebron, and hundreds of files on cases of physical injury, harassment, and attempted murder began to accumulate at the Hebron police station...
...I went with Rafik Halabi, a Druse journalist who works for Israeli television...
...They were born under Israeli occupation and do not know or have forgotten the fact that Jordan has ruled there for 19 years...
...they have molested peaceful citizens at night, and constantly harassed political opponents...
...It is surely worth noting that not a word was heard in the Territories on behalf of the Syrians and the PLO rebels...
...When Israelis speak of "the West Bank," the term does not include East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in July 1967...
...In the early '60s the Jordanians permitted him to return to the West Bank (then, of course, under their rule)—and Shaka then resumed his family business (raising agricultural crops on the huge Shaka estates in the Nablus area and in the Jordan Valley...
...Along with Gush Etzion and the areas surrounding Jerusalem, Allon's settlement program was comprised of the Jordan Valley and parts of the Judean Desert adjacent to Hebron...
...The wounded mayor of Ramallah, Karim Khalaf, was deported to Jericho upon his return from extended medical treatment...
...The Cave of the Patriarchs, the traditional place of burial of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is, of course, a holy place for both Muslims and Jews...
...The city's Arab population felt that the settlers not only wanted to live in the area of Kiryat Arba, but that they planned to advance house by house, aiming to turn Hebron into a Jewish city, thus totally obscuring its Arab character...
...And there was conflict, not only between the two peoples, but between their religions as well— since the Kiryat Arba settlers, led by Rabbi Levinger, created a synagogue in the Cave of the Patriarchs, which until then had been strictly a mosque...
...First mild and then brutal, occupations must, by their very nature, be oppressive...
...They provoked waves of anger and frustration among the residents of the West Bank...
...I went to Hebron, a West Bank town with some 70,000 Arabs...
...Moreover, most of the terrorist PLO bands that used to operate in the West Bank and in Israel were caught in the early stages of their activity...
...Jews have a moral right to live wherever they please...
...They began building houses (most of them illegally constructed) in the open spaces, the gaps between the new Jewish neighborhoods, mainly in the areas stretching eastward toward the region overlooking the Jordan Valley...
...Although the Hashemite kingdom's political influence on the West Bank has diminished in recent years, there are still many important ties between the residents of the two Banks...
...The settlers then established a settlement named Kedumin adjacent to the army camp, and thus the final stage of the Gush Emunim's struggle concluded with a resounding victory...
...With undaunted energy, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon performed this mission...
...Jordan, however, did not permit the PLO to bring armed fighters into its territory—its relations with the PLO had not become that cordial—but senior PLO commanders, mainly of Fatah, began arriving in Amman for weekly meetings...
...It is a society that ignores the national aspirations of its Arab neighbors...
...Such a "strong-arm" policy was implemented in recent years by former Defense Minister Sharon and former Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan...
...Walking through Hebron, I felt that I was encountering some profound malformation in Jewish life...
...The difficulties started with and still center on Hebron...
...As with other issues (arrests, cultural restrictions, book banning, strict censorship of newspapers, and strict supervision of subjects and material studied at the universities), they usually let others fight their battle— the Arab states, or liberal elements in Israel...
...others were rounded up at night and forced to "count the stars in the sky" or to sing the Israeli national anthem...
...In the cultural realm, schools and universities have been severely restricted in one subjects they may teach...
...Yet those among the PLO supporters who are close to the Rejection Front people oppose any cooperation with the Jordanians...
...In the first years of the Israeli occupation, it was still possible to formulate more moderate solutions within some type of Jordanian framework...
...Here Dayan does not mention a matter to which he refers extensively in other pages: the passage of agricultural and industrial goods from the West Bank to Jordan...
...In the mid-'70s he returned to the West Bank, after an absence of more than 25 years...
...Thus a new situation has been created in which each people believes that the other is encircling it or, in other words, that "we are being choked" by a ring of "their" neighborhoods...
...The mayor of El-Bireh, Ibrahim Tawil, also was removed from office, along with a number of small-town mayors identified with the PLO...
...The domain of religion is ruled absolutely from Amman, and the largest part of the budget for construction and maintenance of mosques and religious services is brought weekly across the bridges to East Jerusalem, Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin...
...The first to be founded outside the limits set by the Allon Plan was Ofra, north of Ramallah...
...Its members knew that the first stage of their campaign would be difficult, and that their small, but determined, forces would often have to defy the government...
...Today there are more than a hundred Israeli settlements in the West Bank with some 30,000 Israelis...
...Is this what Zionism meant when it proposed to make Jewish life "normal...
...Despite all this, its members have maintained their political ties...
...The calculation was simple: 70 percent of the West Bank population lives in villages, and only 30 percent in cities...
...Most of Israeli society then believed that the conquered Territories would serve as a bargaining chip—to be exchanged for peace between Israel and the Arab states...
...Both Jordan and the PLO, and especially its main organization, Fatah, found that by now they had more common than conflicting interests...
...In addition, the open bridges provide an opportunity for contact between Israel and the Arabs...
...Now the plan is to sweep along the Israeli middle class in a rush to buy land on the West Bank at absurdly low prices in order to build villas on the expropriated land under the apolitical slogan, "Improve the Quality of Life...
...Not only have the perpetrators not been brought to justice...
...Immediately upon Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in July 1967, preparations were begun for large land expropriations in the area surrounding the eastern part of the city...
...The first Jewish settlement activity began in late 1967 in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, with government approval...
...It was the expression of an authentic and immutable duality in the human landscape of the territory between the river and the sea...
...a society that serenely rests assured that the needs of the neighboring nation are only daily bread and a livelihood...
...three were left dead, and more than 30 were wounded...
...With this article—written by an Israeli journalist who for some years has been the West Bank correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz—we begin a series of articles about Israeli society and politics, all of which will be written by Israeli contributors...
...A process of unification is now under way and if it continues, it may bring in its wake interesting political developments, and perhaps a new position toward Israel on the part of the inhabitants of the Territories...
...But regarding these areas too, there is really no general consensus in Israel...
...But every year tens of thousands more of the young people in the West Bank join the circle of PLO supporters...
...A significant minority, however, for example "Peace Now," opposes these processes...
...At first, when additional settlements were established in Gush Etzion under the Allon Plan, that process went forward rather easily, since the lands being settled had been owned by Jews before 1948...
...But this process of "Judaization of Jerusalem" created an opposite process, not particularly desirable to the Israeli authorities—an "Arabization of Jerusalem...
...The stage of the founding of "idealistic" settlements like Elon Moreh has long passed...
...a society that has forgotten that only a few score years ago its people were treated as it now treats the Palestinians...
...For then the PLO candidates won in the major West Bank cities—Nablus (the biblical Shechem) and Hebron...
...The attempt to deport him focused attention— not for the first time—on this man, who became for both Israelis and Palestinians the symbol of the Palestinian struggle against Israel in the Territories...
...Seeing these ardent young settlers and their demure young women as they slid past the silent Arabs, I kept wondering: what is it about the Jewish experience or the Jewish psyche that prompts so bizarre a re-creation of the ghetto...
...It is a society that has almost completely rallied around the PLO as the focus of its national aspirations...
...The only exception concerns those Israeli factories that in recent years have established branches in the towns and villages of the West Bank...
...The Village Leagues collected money for travel to Jordan, for registration in the agricultural associations, for receipt of seeds and various licenses...
...Since the Likud has come to power in Israel in 1977, two distinct periods can be discerned in which the government pursued different policies in its relations to these pro-PLO mayors...
...If there is harassment by the authorities, as in recent years, they try to form a united front...
...But if the current trends continue unchecked, without an honest attempt to resolve the problems 471 between the two peoples on a national basis, this writer has no doubt that we will shortly reach the situation of Belfast, or even of Algeria...
...Since 1976, a new concept had developed in Israeli security circles: "personalities" from the West Bank village sector were to be encouraged to assume leadership positions at the expense of the old urban leaders...
...Scores if not hundreds of thousands of its members have moved from work in agriculture to work in industry (this is one of the reasons for the neglect of agricultural lands in the West Bank, which later became Israeli...
...Most of these terrorists, however, were captured, and so they did not succeed in carrying out their attacks on centers of Israeli population across the Green Line (the original 1948 borders of the state of Israel...
...This minority believes that the continuing occupation of the Territories costs Israel the heavy price of a change in the basic moral values of a Jewish society that wanted—and part of it still wants—to be a light unto the nations...
...Returning to the reality as it happened, these two currents within the West Bank continued into the period of the Israeli occupation...
...After the murder of the yeshivah student, the Israeli authorities disbanded the city council and put an Israeli official into the mayor's place...
...Since the mid-'70s, relations between Israeli settlers and their Arab neighbors have been deteriorating...
...The bridges across the Jordan River (Allenby and Damia) have remained open...
...Bassam Shaka was dismissed as mayor of Nablus and in effect put under house arrest...
...Settlers driving on West Bank roads often carry firearms, and almost every week there have been reports of stone-throwing, demonstrations, and arrests of Arab youths...
...He has a communications radio in his home that is in round-the-clock contact with the Hebron Civil Administration...
...If "common enemies" appear, such as the Village League leaders, they will briefly unite against them...
...Then the Military Government, and later the "Civil Administration," supplied members of the leagues with arms, and they began moving through the streets with these weapons...
...And in the West Bank, such proJordan leaders as Elias Freij began to form ties with the PLO leadership (and this despite his reservations about connections with the more extremist factions in the PLO...
...The initiative in this matter was taken by Mustafa Dudeen, a resident of the village of Dura (south of Hebron...
...At this point, for the Israeli government the struggle focuses on the question of how to seize more land and bring more settlers there...
...The city lives its life with the two communities brushing against each other during the day...
...Suspicions were directed at extremist groups in Israel and among the settlers in the Territories...
...teachers have been forbidden to work in institutions of higher learning without signing declarations in which they must promise not to 470 be active in, join, or support the PLO...
...The Military Government (after changing its name to "the Civil Administration") now began forming the Village Leagues, first in Hebron, Dudin's area, and later in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jenin, and even in Nablus...
...Many on the West Bank do not forgive him to this day...
...The Israeli Military Government and the Defense Ministry wanted to deport Shaka, but after being imprisoned, he was granted an appeal...
...Prominent pro-Jordanian West Bank personalities often visit Amman and meet with King Hussein, with his brother, Crown Prince Hassan, and with their ministers...
...In Bala'in, a village in the Ramallah District that is the home of the head of the regional Village League, Yusuf Al-Khatib, a life-and-death struggle began after Al-Khatib's appointment between his clan and a rival clan...
...Most of them would be content with an independent Palestinian state in the Territories, with East Jerusalem its capital and with one tie or another, strong or weak, with Jordan...
...It is a society where the desire for education and vocational training in almost all areas is reminiscent of that of Jews at the beginning of the century...
...In the period from 1964 to 1969, PLO terrorist bands tried to infiltrate the Jordan Valley from the eastern shore...
...There have been prolonged curfews, sometimes for months, and various harassments and humiliations: men were lined up at night in their pajamas...
...The terms for these settlements are called by many Israelis "the minimum consensus...
...In the 1960s he returned to Jordan and served there in a number of government posts, most prominently as a cabinet minister during the Black September in 1970...
...If the West Bank is Israel's cancer—and I believe it is—Hebron now is the place where the malignant disease rages most...
...In addition to religious disagreements and conflicting rituals, instances of violence began to occur between Jews and Arabs in the Cave of the Patriarchs...
...Yet only a small segment—by a rough estimate less than onequarter of the population—believes that the return of Jordanian rule represents the political solution for the 800,000 residents of the West Bank...
...The first settlements in the West Bank were started during the term of a Labor Alignment government, headed by the late Levi Eshkol...
...There are two nations, not one, in that area, so that any unitary political structure is bound to be coercive, artificial, and morally fragile...
...but these signs of hooliganism, a growing problem in Israel, have not kept him from telling the truth, week after week, about the character of the Israeli penetration into the West Bank...
...And thus, in effect, that government acted against the principles of its own general policy...
...There are nuances and interim solutions among the various groups on the fringes of these camps...
...They established, in Amman, the Joint Jordan–PLO Committee...
...In many ways, the West Bank is reminiscent of other places in the world—such as Northern Ireland, or Algeria in the 1950s...
...Before the War of Independence in 1948 this area had five Jewish settlements, most of them Orthodox...
...There was indeed no authorized person in the government who could have decided to evict them after the celebration of Passover was over, for which they allegedly had come to Hebron...
...In accordance with the PLO line, it was said at these gatherings that it was the intent of the agreements, and especially of the proposed autonomy agreement, to annex the West Bank to Israel without satisfying the national aspirations of the Palestinian people...
...Until the Six-Day War, most construction workers in Jerusalem had been Jews...
...This action was taken because of the influence and clout of the Hebron settlers who were headed by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, the founder of "Jewish Hebron...
...In Hebron the victor was PLO candidate Fand Kawasmeh, a member of the city's largest clan...
...When the issue is money, a West Bank resident knows what's good for him...
...In the last 16 years, the West Bank leaders tied to Jordan have grown old...
...So far, however, no basis has been found for these stories...
...The king remembered his bad experiences with the Labor Alignment leaders, with whom, at least, he had found a common language on certain issues...
...All the areas of the West Bank—Gush Etzion, southern Mount Hebron, the Hebron The following is excerpted from an article by Irving Howe, The West Bank Trap," which appeared in the New Republic, July 4, 1983...
...There were rumors in Israel that the car bombings were meant to cut down the enormous influence the West Bank mayors had gained among their people, and thereby to restore the influence of the PLO leaders abroad...
...For most residents of the West Bank and of East Jerusalem, the connection with Jordan is a geographic, economic, and social necessity, since Jordan is their gateway to the Arab countries, their market for agricultural and industrial products, and the place where friends and relatives live...
...Land was declared state-owned by the occupying authorities, and the Arab owners had to prove in local courts and before Military Government committees that the land is private, The inhabitants had difficulty in meeting this requirement since most of the land in Samaria had not been entered in the land registry...
...For a month the village of Bala'in looked and sounded at night like a battlefield: shots were fired from light and heavier weapons, grenades were thrown—it was an outright war, until the Civil Administration stepped in...
...That is what it means to occupy someone else's place...
...In addition to the natural increase, the high birth rate of the Arab population, there has been a sharp increase in migration from Arab areas near Jerusalem, mainly from the Hebron region...
...Among the Jewish settlers in Kiryat Arba and Hebron proper, there also were some religious fanatics and extremists along with Jews who had immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union and the United States...
...and now, in light of the Likud government's policy in the Territories, King Hussein saw no chance at all of an understanding...
...And then, in 1977, the Likud came to 465 power...
...But since King Hussein agreed to give up his claims, most residents of the Territories, including the pro-Jordan elements, view the PLO as the only organization that represents the Palestinians...
...In cases of stone-throwing, collective punishments have often been imposed on cities and towns...
...But these voices found almost no response among the broad public...
...Since his election to mayor of Nablus in 1976, he has led the struggle, throughout the West Bank, against Israeli settlement...
...In the struggle, he was murdered, whereupon his family began to wage a retaliatory campaign against the rival clan...
...their elected officials to be members of the Parliament and Senate in Amman...
...So these areas began to be systematically bitten off from the West Bank, chunk by chunk, and were allotted for Jewish settlements by the various Alignment governments...
...The Israeli government chose to consider as state-owned any plot of land that could be used for Jewish purposes —as if the overwhelming majority of the local population were not Arab at all...
...The heads of the leagues are protected by the authorities, and Mustafa Dudeen has at his disposal, 24 hours a day, the support of a "border-guard" command car, with armed bodyguards at his side...
...Because it is located in the heart of the West Bank and has enormous religious importance for both Muslim and Christian Arabs, East Jerusalem is the natural center of attention for the West Bank Arabs...
...Not only have the leagues failed to become popular, they are a focus for resentment and hostility...
...The mission of the various settlement bodies now is to reach a count of 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank by 1987...
...The war caused these young people—all of them fer466 vently Orthodox Jews and members of the Yeshivah of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Cook, Mercaz Harav, in Jerusalem—to become convinced of an urgent need to embark on their settlement campaign throughout the West Bank...
...In March 1976, on Land Day, Hebron's Arabs demonstrated, blocked roads, burned tires, and threw stones at Israeli security forces...
...But the limits of self-defense were overstepped more than once, and as a result Arab youths were killed...
...Many accepted the situation because of the fear of political involvement...
...Such illegal settlements have been established under both Alignment and Likud rule...
...There does not exist on the face of the earth a single democratic country that would resemble what Israel would look like if it were permanently to control a foreign nation with a sharply defined personality, recognized as such by the entire world and, paradoxically, by the prime minister in his signature of the Camp David agreement...
...Indeed, to this day no further municipal elections have been held in the West Bank, for fear of the renewed election of PLO supporters...
...And here the Gush Emunim counted on the many people who are longing to leave the cramped housing-development apartments in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and aspire to a bit of land and a house of their own, without consideration for Arab neighbors or for the fact that the land, in most cases, has to be taken away from those neighbors...
...And they consider this "commandment" one of the most important in Judaism...
...By contrast, the current now called "pro-Jordanian" has greatly diminished...
...Still, Rabin and Peres feared the first sparks of a budding civil war and yielded...
...Who knows what different processes might have taken place...
...One night, in Ramallah and El-Bireh, the windshields of more than 120 Arab-owned cars were smashed...
...Because of old animosities, not all the difficulties between these two claimants to Palestinian representation were smoothed over...
...Dudeen, today more than 70 years old, began his career during the period of Egyptian occupation of the Hebron area in 1948...
...Far-reaching changes have taken place in both these societies since the June 1967 SixDay War...
...Then, in the war, Gush Etzion was captured by the Arab Legion, assisted by armed villagers from the area...
...But right now they have locked themselves into a ghetto, surrounded by hatred and guarded by Israeli draftees, some of whom surely look upon this project with distaste...
...These three were charged in 1980 by then Defense Minister Ezer 460 Weizman with incitement to riot, and so having caused the murder of seven Israeli settlers in Hebron...
...It is in East Jerusalem—now surrounded on almost all sides by old and new Jewish neighborhoods —that the economic, cultural, and political life of the West Bank is concentrated...
...A significant part of the West Bank's agricultural and industrial export goes to Jordan over these bridges...
...Khalaf was luckier...
...A number of different groups, mainly "doves"—the left, most of "Peace Now," and others—don't agree to settlement in any part of these regions...
...His name did not arouse any particular excitement in the West Bank, since his past had not been marked by any great achievements for the Palestinian people...
...Recently relations between Jews and Arabs in Hebron have reached an unprecedented low...
...Most West Bank residents have relatives and friends in Jordan, and there is much mutual 458 visiting...
...They were helped by Menahem Begin, then minister without portfolio...
...Several Arab youths were brought up to Kiryat Arba for a few hours...
...From 1980 on, restrictions have been imposed on the movements of West Bank mayors identified with the PLO and on other public figures (among them the leaders of the West Bank's Communist party, which is organizationally tied to the Jordanian CP—both adhere strictly to the Moscow line...
...Forthcoming features will include studies of the Israeli economy, the relationship between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Israel and the shifting political configuration, and more...
...The main reason is the discovery of criminal elements in the leagues, people that now are standing trial...
...Despite repeated Israeli attempts to weaken its political base, the PLO has remained the dominant force in the West Bank...
...he will not easily give up payment in the very stable currency of Jordanian dinars while he is under occupation by Israel, whose economy is plagued by one of the world's highest inflation rates...
...Yet the idea that Israel can permanently impose its authority over a foreign population that constitutes 30 percent of its own size is solemnly put forward as if it were a rational alternative...
...Let us be clear...
...Until the late '50s Bassam Shaka had belonged to the Ba'ath party (whose center is in Syria) and had been deported for this activity from Jordan in 1957...
...In the context of history, it is difficult to use the words "what if...
...Zealots who make nationalism into a pseudoreligion and religion into ultranationalism, these settlers believe the Bible grants them unconditional sovereignty over this land...
...The two apparently hit upon a new policy idea for the West Bank...
...Until the Yom Kippur War, and mainly until the Rabat Conference in 1974, the political scales for most West Bank residents tipped in favor of Jordan...
...This series has been made possible by a grant from Mr...
...heavy monetary fines were imposed on the parents of youths caught throwing stones at Israeli vehicles...
...The late Moshe Dayan, defense minister during and after the June 1967 Six-Day War, is responsible for maintaining this important lifeline...
...For the Arabs, the aim is to prevent this process...
...Tens of thousands of dunams were taken from Arab inhabitants both by direct expropriations and legalistic ruses...
...The Arab community of Hebron has always been known as more extreme in its Muslim belief than that of any other place in the West Bank...
...Hebron is about an hour from Jerusalem, and along the way we saw Arab villages upon which the occupying authority had clamoed a curfew...
...By now he was actually unemployed...
...They are guarded by Israeli soldiers perched on rooftops and stationed in front of the Cave of the Patriarchs, sacred to both Jews and Moslems...
...Rabbi Levinger's people in Kiryat Arba decided to "help" the security forces— although they had not been asked to do so...
...Translated from the Hebrew by JOEL GREENBERG 472...
...Thus began the period marked by the government's policy of encouraging the rise of what were later called "the Village Leagues...
...In smaller towns too the PLO-supported lists won...
Vol. 30 • September 1983 • No. 4
