FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT – BATTIR (WEST BANK)
A truck, a green tent, four beams. And woe to anyone who comes near. It didn't take much for settler Yehuda and his men to raise the flag again two weeks ago. “They arrived on Christmas Eve,” recalls Abu Bashar, an old Arab Christian farmer, “as they did on Christmas 2018. The army had sent them away then.” But now the entire army is in Gaza and they took advantage of it.. .” A few hours, and on December 25, the Battir outpost was already taken: on the hill that controls the asphalt towards Jerusalem, between vineyards and dry stone walls declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and now the legacy of the settlers .
“Battir is only one of nine cases in these three months,” says an activist from the NGO Peace Now: “Since October 7th we have been witnessing an unprecedented increase in settlements in the West Bank.” Outposts, roads, fences, checkpoints…” This is shown by the “Settlement Clock”, the database that pacifists have updated every minute since 1978. 156 illegal colonies, a hundred very illegal outposts, 670,000 illegal workers. And at the end of 2023, 300 percent more new Israeli flags were planted on Palestinian land compared to the previous year.
The “disc” and the “holes”
A record. “Another piece of Emmental,” to quote John Kerry, who once used the image of Gruyere to explain the situation. It was Christmas seven years ago: The then American Secretary of State was now on his way out, closing a gala dinner, speaking at the cheese moment, toasting Happy Hannukkah with the many Jews in attendance and giving the famous Emmental speech: Israeli settlements , he said, the Palestinian territories were looking more and more like “hole Swiss cheese.”
Kerry looked at a map: “Sixty percent of the West Bank, known as Area C, would largely come under Palestinian control. This was decided a long time ago on the basis of the Oslo Accords. But today this land is largely off-limits to Palestinian development.” Let us therefore “be clear,” he added, finally freed from diplomatic obligations: “Settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israel’s security.” Seven years later, there is there are more holes than cheese.
– The new geography
Area C is the part of Palestine under the complete military and administrative control of Israel. And never before, international observers charge, has the Netanyahu government allowed things to happen during this period of bombing raids on the Gaza Strip: nine camps were created and 18 illegal roads were built connecting the outposts.
Asael, Amihai, Givat Haktora, Or Meir, Sde Yonatan, Yachish Zion: The new settler geography is often a return to settlements like Battir that have already been dismantled. The settlers also reappeared in Amona, from where they were expelled in 2017 following the ruling of an Israeli civil court: the judge had also ordered financial compensation and a new renovation in return for the demolition, but the place has become a flag extreme right-wing government – Amona commemorates the fifteenth king of Judah – and in short, it had to be reclaimed.
Ultra-Orthodox traction
Today, not even one in three settlers is secular: it is the ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionists who, with the approval of the Israeli soldiers who look the other way, are placing the chess pieces at the risk of the West Bank. “The permissive military and political context of Area C – comment the pacifists – enables reckless construction and almost uncontrolled land grabbing.” The result is not only physical damage to the Palestinians and their land, but also significant political change in the West Bank.” For example the old Huwara road: it always served to connect a million Palestinians from Nablus, but was closed with the war and the new connection is practically only used by settlers. “Instead of clearing the settlements, they are also building ring roads around them.”
The last protest
When an attack occurred in Jerusalem last February and three Israelis were killed, Netanyahu responded by announcing that he would legalize numerous outposts in the West Bank that had previously been considered illegal even by his government. It was the last time before the Hamas massacre on the kibbutzim that the UN, the USA and the EU protested a little louder than usual.
Then there was silence and the war came: the opportunity to get the concrete mixers running again, the Palestinian Authority accuses, and to create 13,000 new houses for the settlers, 300 percent more. “The tragedy of Gaza has overshadowed these stories,” says Jamal Al Ziadi, who was spokesman for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man the US and Israel nominated to lead the postwar government: “But true peace must not forget that. “Another part of the story.”