The ball is in Israel's court

[Violet_Crumble]

To sum up in a few words the position that has crystallized among the Palestinians in recent months with regard to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, it could be said that as far as they are concerned, the plan is irrelevant. In scores of Palestinian statements it has been said that the plan is bad and that it has been drawn up and advanced without an agreement with them and without taking them into account. From the Palestinians' point of view, if Sharon succeeds in implementing his scheme, it will be bad for them. But the opposite is also true: If Sharon does not succeed, the situation will remain as it is and then, too, things will be no better for them.

<snip>

From the Palestinians' perspective, and apparently not only theirs, the real battle has recently moved entirely onto the Israeli side of the court. There, one of the sides in Israel is well-defined. These are the Jewish settlers in the territories and their allies, who are doing with the territories what they think is good for Israel - that is, doing whatever they please. They grab land and properties, for the most part in accordance with plans that are defined in advance and with government budgets. They set up settlements and outposts, mark what they think should be Israel's border, and shape the way the Arabs who live there are controlled.

The other side - the Israeli government and its mechanisms - is harder to define because at least in the West Bank, the government of Israel does not exist. If it does, it appears in the form of Jewish settlers. On the weekend, for example, Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim declared that the Israel Defense Forces will not be able at this time to demand that Jewish settlers who have illegally seized shops owned by Arabs in Hebron's wholesale market, clear out.

The IDF will also not be able to protect Arab olive-harvesters who are attacked by Jewish settlers, and the evacuation of the outposts has already become a joke. Palestinian spokesmen cite many examples of how the settlers and the Israeli government in the territories are one and the same. A significant proportion of the people in Israel's administration and security forces in the West Bank are inhabitants of the Jewish settlements there, and many of them see the rulings by the rabbis of Yesha (the settlers' acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, which also means "salvation" in Hebrew) and the decisions of the Yesha Council as authoritative and legitimate.

In this context it can be said that the political battle that has moved onto the Israeli side of the field is abandoning the territories of the West Bank and is moving inside Israel proper. The state of the Jewish settlers, which has won in Yesha, is now trying to rule all of Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/489922.html

[bemildred]

1. Nothing like a nice civil war to straighten things out. nt