Global IssuesMIDEAST: In a Muddle Over Mixed Signals
'Get your hands off the Land of Israel and the people of the Land of Israel - that's what we need to tell Mr. Obama - get on the phone to the White House each and every one of you!'
That's the message from Danny Danon, a parliamentarian of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, when ten thousand irate Israeli settlers rally Wednesday night outside the Prime Minister's residence to protest his government's proclaimed partial freeze on settlement building in the West Bank.
It is the latest in a campaign of angry protests mounted by the settlers against the decision last month of Netanyahu's security cabinet to impose a ten-month partial freeze on the building of new homes in all the settlements.
At the gates of the settlement of Kedumim near the major Palestinian town of Nablus, hundreds of Jewish religious teenagers lie down on the road. They are backed up by their rabbis, the inspiration behind settler attempts to foil the Israeli government curb.
On this occasion, it takes three hours until the contingent of 200 Israeli policemen and women manage to clear a path into the settlement, guiding government building inspectors into the settlement through a fence that separates Kedumim from the Palestinian village Qadum.
The inspectors are finally able to deliver stop-work orders to the settlers. They tell them they will be back in a fortnight to check if they are abiding by the government building freeze injunction.
The settler activists are pledged to stepping up the resistance.
Says Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, an extremist leader from the settlement of Yitzhar, 'If Jews in Judea and Samaria (the Biblical name settlers use for the West Bank) are stopped in their tracks, we will make sure Jews are unable to move about all over the country.'
Rabbi Yosef Elitsur, another Yitzhar settler, is even more ominous: 'If there's no quiet for Jews, there will be no quiet for Arabs.' Two nights previous, in the Palestinian village Ein Aboun, settlers burnt a number of cars and tractors. A Palestinian home was also torched. There were no injuries, villagers reported.
But there's little sign the mounting settler anger is influencing the government.
Ministers close to Netanyahu confide that the measure which has set the right-wing government against its right-wing constituency is aimed at Washington, not really at advancing peace.
One of the hardliners in the cabinet, the former army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon, was quoted by Israeli public television channel as saying, 'Every single member of the cabinet knows the decision was not intended to induce the Palestinians back to the negotiating table and was geared entirely to relieving U.S. pressure on us.'
At the same time, military officials say that in contrast to previous reported moves against 'illegal' setter activity in the West Bank, 'this time, we understand the government means business. It's no longer just a nod and a wink from the politicians,' one officer, described as intimately involved in the West Bank for more than a decade, told Israeli newspapers.
'It's the first time we've received cleared detailed instructions on how to deal with settlement building. No one is trying to cut corners - instructions were given, and we operate according to them,' the officer was reported saying.
The contrary assessments have unveiled a major question mark over whether Netanyahu is genuine about intending to put a brake on the settlements.
The Israeli leader himself is purposefully not making the resolution of the puzzle any easier: Is he serious in trying to nudge the Palestinians back to negotiations? Or, mindful of an international community increasingly impatient with Israeli settlement policy, is his main purpose to 'expose' the Palestinians as the real recalcitrant party?
Either way, Netanyahu is giving mixed signals a bad name.
When concerned settler leaders come to his office to protest the freeze, Netanyahu declares: 'We are making it clear to key players around the world that Israel is serious about achieving peace, while the Palestinians are refusing to enter negotiations. One side wants to talk, the other does not. Our move has made clear who is refusing peace.'
Netanyahu hardly makes it easy for the Palestinians to respond positively to his 'peace advance'.
The following day, to his cabinet, he lays out a flourishing future for the settlements: 'Even if Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) comes in eight months and says, 'Peace now', we will still begin building again, as we did before. I would like to clarify that the suspension is for a limited time. It is a one-time and temporary decision, not an endless and unconditional one.'
Then, to his Likud colleagues, he explains what he says he really thinks of the freeze - that it in no way presages the removal of existing settlements: 'Some might say we're going to dismantle the settlements in Judea and Samaria...but you must understand that the intention is exactly the opposite. The bottom line is that it will protect Israel's interests.'
He goes on to convey what he says he really feels: 'The decision is certainly not easy for the heads of the communities in Judea and Samaria. Nor, for us. These are parts of our homeland, and these are our brothers - they are part of us and we are part of them.'
In any event, Netanyahu doesn't need to stress to his domestic opponents from the right that his proclaimed freeze will not interrupt the building of 3,000 settler homes already under construction, public buildings in the settlements, or Israeli building in occupied East Jerusalem at all.
The virulence of the settlers' response may in fact serve to bolster Netanyahu's argument to Obama that he is taking domestic political risks for peace - and that he dare not make greater concessions. Some skeptics note that it actually emboldens the settlers in their uncompromising stand against the moratorium.
'The key question with respect to Netanyahu's ambiguity,' prominent Israeli political analyst Leslie Susser of the Jerusalem Report magazine told IPS, 'is whether the settlement freeze is in any way linked to a broader purpose to get peace on the road again.
'The answer must be a resounding 'No'. In the ten months since he's been in power, discussing peace strategy with the U.S., he could either have simply resumed talks with the Palestinians where they were left off by his predecessor, or have convinced Obama that he has in mind a final peace goal that would be acceptable to the Palestinians.
'Had he done either of those things,' argues Susser, 'the relevance of a settlement freeze would never have come up.'
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service