TerrorismIsrael mulls designating Jewish extremists as “terrorists”
The State of Israel has been struggling with profound questions about terrorism these past three days – Jewish terrorism, that is. On Friday, Jewish extremists went a step-further: they threw Molotov cocktails into the home of a family of four in the Palestinian village of Duma, killing a toddler and severely injuring the toddler’s sister and her father and mother. All three are in critical condition in an Israeli hospital. To make sure the family would be killed in the attack, the Jewish terrorists blocked the doors to the house from the outside, so the family would not be able to escape and instead burn alive inside. The right-wing coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu may be especially uncomfortable making this decision because it may alienate the many settlers who are not violent – and who support the government — but who would not like to see fellow settlers designated as terrorists. The extremists, however, may be forcing the Israeli government’s hand.
Israeli security forces removing extremist from hotel // Source: commons.wikimedia.com
The State of Israel has been struggling with profound questions about terrorism these past three days – Jewish terrorism, that is.
There are about 400,000 Jews who have settled in the Palestinian territories – many in the suburbs north, east, and south of Jerusalem, in areas which Israel has annexed after it had occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day Wars. Most of the other settlers are in three “settlement blocks” – one in the northern part of the West Bank; the other in the Gush Etzion area near Hebron; and the third east of Jerusalem’s eastern most suburbs, filling the area between Jerusalem and Jericho.
The rest of the Jewish settlers, around 25,000-30,000, are dispersed in settlements of various sizes – some of them no more than a few RVs on a barren hill top — all over the West Bank.
The international community sees all these settlements as illegal, because they violate the Geneva Convention which forbids an occupying power from moving its citizens into, and settling them in, territories occupied in war. This is also the official position of the Palestinian Authority, although in negotiations between different Israeli governments and the Palestinian Authority – especially, in 2000 and 2006 — it was more or less agreed that Jerusalem’s post-1967 suburbs and the three settlements blocks would remain under Israeli rule in any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the Palestinians would be compensated by Israel ceding land to them of equal size to the total territory of the Jerusalem suburbs and the three settlement blocks.
The more serious problem for both Israel and the Palestinians has always been about what to do with the 25,000 or so settlers who have settled outside the suburbs and the blocks. The problem is especially acute since this group of settlers consists mostly of Jewish religious fundamentalists and fanatics who have made no secret of their willingness to die and to kill — and by “kill” they mean not only Palestinians, but also Israeli soldiers — in order to keep under Jewish control what they regard as a land promised by God to the Jews.
For three decades or so, members of this hard core of extremists satisfied themselves mostly with destroying Palestinian private property – their “specialty” has been the destruction of decades-old olive groves and burning Palestinians fields. The incidents of the destruction of Palestinian proerty by Jewish settlers have numbered in the hundredes each year, year in and year out. There have also been a few instances of settlers killing Palestinian civilians.
