Fri, December 15, 2023
Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
Washington’s ban on travel to the US by extremist Jewish settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank has one gaping loophole.
American citizens have been at the forefront of the rise of settler violence in the occupied territories, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land, but as US passport holders they cannot be barred from their own country.
Many of the estimated 60,000 Americans living in the West Bank outside of occupied East Jerusalem moved to settlements for the lifestyle and have little to do with the Palestinians on whose land they live. But a core of ideologically driven US citizens were at the forefront of building religious settlements on land expropriated from Palestinians while others have led the rise of what has been described as “settler terrorism”.
The US announced the travel restrictions as settler violence against unarmed Palestinians escalated in the wake of the Hamas cross-border attack in October, including shootings, the destruction of Arab homes and entire communities driven out at gunpoint. The UN estimates that about 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year including dozens of children. While Israel claims many of the dead were associated with armed Palestinian groups, the UN said the army frequently works with settlers attacking Arab civilians.
Related: ‘A new Nakba’: settler violence forces Palestinians out of West Bank villages
Hadar Susskind, president of Americans for Peace Now, said these settlers militias draw inspiration from two Americans infamous as the godfathers of the campaign of violence against ordinary Palestinians.
An American doctor from Brooklyn, Baruch Goldstein, murdered 29 Muslim worshippers in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994. Goldstein was a follower of another American, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right religious Kach party that was eventually banned in Israel and the US under anti-terrorism laws.
“If you asked who are the most prominent examples of literally murderous violent settler extremism, the two answers are Goldstein and Kahane. Those people are the prophets of the settler movement,” said Susskind.
“Earlier this year I led a trip to Israel and Palestine. We went to Hebron and stopped in Meir Kahane park where they have a shrine to Baruch Goldstein. His grave is there. It’s shocking that they have a public park named after an American whose party was declared so racist that it was not allowed to be in the Knesset, a person who espoused violence and hatred. And then a shrine to Baruch Goldstein who took those lessons from Kahane and actualised them in murdering a group of people at prayer.”
The spokesperson for the Hebron settlers who maintain the memorials to Kahane and Goldstein was for many years an American from New Jersey, David Wilder.
Americans account for only about 15% of the total settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem but their influence outweighs their numbers.
Sara Hirschhorn, author of a study of Jewish American settlers, City on a Hilltop, said they were distinguished from many other Jewish immigrants who make “aliyah” to Israel and live the other side of the “green line” between Israel and the West Bank.
“Typically we describe American aliyah as an aliyah of choice because these aren’t immigrants like, say, today’s Ukrainians coming to Israel fleeing war or those fleeing persecution or poverty. Rather Americans are looking to fulfil a set of ideological, religious or lifestyle values that they find in Israel and particularly over the green line,” she said.
“Some of them wanted the lifestyle they lived in New Jersey which was not the lifestyle of Israel 20 or 30 years ago but they built it in the settlements.”
Hirschhorn said the bulk of American Jews arrived in the decade or so after the 1967 war and the start of the occupation of the West Bank. They were founders of settlements such as Efrat and Tekoa built on confiscated Palestinian land. She said many were Democrats who regarded the settlement project as enlightened.
“They brought with them a set of progressive values and tactics that they didn’t see themselves as leaving behind when they came to Israel. Rather they saw themselves applying the toolkit of the left in the United States, of the social movements of the 60s and 70s. They hoped that these settlements really would be a city on a hill as a shining beacon to the rest of the world. This is really the way Americans saw their project in the occupied territories,” she said.
That delusion was stripped away by the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, the Palestinian uprising against occupation and the expropriation of their land, when the immigrants could no longer avoid confronting the reality of the settlement project. Hirschhorn calls it “a moment of reckoning” for American settlers.
“They had to make certain choices about what direction they could go in. Could they continue to live in the occupied territories with a progressive set of values? Some chose to leave at that moment, some chose to abandon their progressive values, some chose to try to live with a sense of cognitive dissonance after the first intifada,” she said.
“There have been several watershed moments where the rubber has met the road when it comes to progressive values and settler realities. The peace process itself in the 1990s saw hardening of opinion amongst the settler movement who saw their own future in danger.”
Hirschhorn estimates that another 100,000 American settlers live in occupied East Jerusalem and the settlement blocs immediately around the city. They have been instrumental in the takeover of Arab homes through well-funded settler organisations.
Later American arrivals were often Orthodox Jews who included Goldstein. But while some responded to the intifada with their own violence, US citizens were also at the forefront of selling the settlement movement to the rest of the world.
“We see Americans using their skills, both the English language but also their deep ability to connect with western audiences over vocabulary and values, to really radically transform the public relations of the Israeli settler movement to market and justify the project to western audiences,” she said.
Hirschhorn said that in turn has had an important impact on Israeli politics with American settlers serving in key roles including chief of staff to prime ministers and top aides to members of the Israeli parliament.
“As much of Israeli politics has become increasingly Americanised, you see these figures making very significant appearances. So they certainly have an impact on Israeli domestic policy even if it’s not always as visible to everyone
Fri, December 15, 2023
The Israel Gaza Briefings - Lucy Williamson
There was speculation over whether another uprising was brewing in the West Bank, even before the Hamas attacks on Israel in October.
Frequent raids by the Israeli army, emboldened by a hard-right Israeli government - following deadly attacks by Palestinians, and violent attacks on Palestinians by settlers - had already increased pressure on Palestinians there.
Since the war in Gaza, those pressures have spiralled: Israeli raids into West Bank towns have become more frequent and more forceful, and many families are suffering economically after Israel withheld tax revenues used to pay public servants in the West Bank, and banned Palestinian workers from entering Israel too.
Smoke and fire rises from a Palestinian house in the Jenin refugee camp after it was targeted by the Israeli army on 13 December
There is anger at almost 20,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, and support for Hamas is rising.
But despite all this, calls by the armed group for an uprising in the West Bank over the past couple of months have come and gone.
Popular mood
Support for Hamas - and armed resistance more generally - has risen sharply since the war in Gaza began.
An opinion poll by the Centre for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah found that support for Hamas in the West Bank had more than tripled. Meanwhile, support for the West Bank's ruling party, Fatah, had dropped significantly. More than 90% of respondents thought Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should resign.
But it seems that support for armed resistance, and disillusion with politics, is not translating into action on the ground.
Palestinian inspects the damage inside a destroyed house in the Jenin refugee camp after it was targeted by the Israeli army on 13 December
Since the war began, weekly demonstrations have been held in West Bank cities. The slogans chanted there are against Israel - but also against the Palestinian Authority. But they're usually held in city centres where there is much less risk of confrontation with Israeli soldiers, rather than at checkpoints - as happened during the last Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
And the numbers turning out for these weekly demonstrations are smaller than they were during previous moments of tension.
"People hesitate to come when Hamas calls for demonstrations, because there is a clear security price to be paid from the Israeli response," said Raed Debiy, a political scientist and youth leader in Fatah.
But they also don't come when Fatah calls for them, Debiy says, because "people have lost hope in political parties".
Destruction in Jenin after the Israeli army operation
Hamas
As the actions of Israel's army in the West Bank have become harsher, and the Palestinian security services more efficient, many people fear that becoming an active member of a militant group could make them a target for arrest or assassination.
More than 270 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October - including 70 children - according to the UN. That's more than half the total number killed this year.
Four Israelis - including three from the armed forces - have been killed by Palestinians there in the same period.
An operation to arrest Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp this week lasted several days, with frequent bursts of heavy gunfire, rocket attacks and air strikes. Hundreds of people were detained, with 60 of them handed over to the security services for further questioning.
An ambulance trying to reach Jenin Hospital is stopped for search by the Israeli forces
The Israeli army has also been trying to destroy infrastructure used by armed groups.
This time, it claimed to have found more than a dozen underground tunnel shafts in the camp, as well as facilities for making explosives and "observation control rooms" to monitor Israeli forces.
One young man from the camp, who was among those detained this week and released after questioning, said the reason people ignored calls by Hamas to rise up in solidarity was that the group did not supply the West Bank with enough equipment to fight the Israeli army.
"Hamas in the West Bank has not done a good job of organising itself over the last decade," said Khalil Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
"The Israelis have been arresting a lot of their members. Hamas is just incapable right now in the West Bank of mobilising and organising an eruption of violence that would be sustainable."
But previous uprisings here did not rely on Hamas. The second intifada (uprising), which began in 2000, was led by members of the West Bank's ruling party, Fatah.
The role of Fatah
The current leader of Fatah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is widely seen as trying to avoid an escalation in violence against Israel - a major shift in position from his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.
His security services co-operate with Israel to arrest members of armed groups - something that is widely criticised by Palestinians.
Sabri Saidam, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, denies that the party's position is at odds with public feeling in the territory, or that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is somehow avoiding a fight.
"To say that Fatah is in control and keeping the calm, [it's] as if you are hinting that there is a forceful implementation of a state of calm," he said. "Nobody is forcing anything on anyone."
"People in the West Bank know that Netanyahu is throwing down bait, through persistent attacks every night against the people of Palestine regardless of their political affiliation - because he wants to provoke the Palestinians into a confrontational mood that he will use as an excuse to escalate the situation."
The US is pushing Israel to allow a "revitalised" PA to govern Gaza once the war there ends. Israel has so far said it will not consider it.
But the chance to govern a unified Palestinian bloc for the first time since 2006 is another incentive for the Fatah-dominated PA to prove its credentials and stop the situation in the West Bank from spiralling out of control.
"It's very clear that Fatah don't want any intifada," explained Raed Debiy, the party youth leader. "They are still very keen to keep the status quo. But the grassroots of Fatah will not be controlled forever. How can you stay silent under daily assassination, daily invasion, daily violation of settlers - this will definitely lead to explosion."
Possible sparks
In 2000, the spark for the second intifada was a visit by then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to a contested holy site in Jerusalem, known to Muslims as the al-Aqsa compound and to Jews at the Temple Mount.
Sharon's visit happened amid smouldering Palestinian frustration at the failure of the Oslo peace process - and, Dr Shikaki says, was "exploited" by Fatah's young guard to launch the uprising.
A small event like this could still trigger something significant, but the situation has shifted since 2000.
Now, far-right ministers in the Israeli government visit the compound, and make inflammatory claims about Israeli control of the site, without triggering a major response - at least not in the West Bank.
"We told the American administration many times that the pressure would definitely lead to some sort of reaction," said the senior Fatah leader, Sabri Saidam. "But no-one anticipated that the reaction would come from Gaza."
A map illustration showing the wider region of Israel, the occupied West Bank, Gaza, Tel Aviv and Jordan. Gaza and the occupied West Bank are highlighted in red, and show the locations of Jenin, Jerusalem and Nablus.
Where the West Bank goes from here depends partly on what follows the war in Gaza.
That transition is likely to be a precarious time for the West Bank, with hopes of a unified Palestinian leadership - possibly opening the door to talks on a future Palestinian state - clashing with the opposition of Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
And lifting restrictions imposed by Israel after the attacks - separating Palestinian and settler vehicles on some roads, for example - could prompt a spike in friction.
But a sustained uprising, of the kind seen two decades ago, will likely require a change in the policy of the West Bank's main political movement - and possibly even a change in its leader.
"It seems Fatah remains critical for an uprising to happen," Dr Shikaki told me. "And as long as Fatah and the security services are not directly involved in the preparation for such an intifada, it seems highly unlikely we'll see one emerging.
"I don't yet see Fatah or the security services on the verge of a turning point," he continued. "But we're moving in that direction."
Others point to the dwindling faith in Palestinian politics to provide peace, a state, or just a better life.
"If we had anything on the political agenda, things could go quiet," Raed Debiy told me. "But I'm not sure with this right-wing [Israeli] government whether there is anything solid on the table - so the only scenario I see is explosion. It's just a matter of time."
More from the Israel Gaza briefings
The status quo is smashed. The future is messy and dangerous
Bowen: US sets clearer red lines for Israel as ceasefire ends
Stephan Miller
Fri, December 15, 2023
The polls are clear: While at war with Israel, Hamas defeated Abbas and Fatah
Fewer things are more certain to drive the news cycle in Brussels, Washington DC or Jerusalem than a new poll, yet not enough attention has been given to Israeli and Palestinian polling since the 7 October Hamas massacre in Israel.
Policymakers need to understand what the public thinks "beyond the beltway" or "outside the Tel Aviv bubble".
In developing foreign policy goals for the day after the Israel-Hamas war, the US and European allies simply can’t ignore what Israelis and Palestinians really think.
Recent polling shows that Palestinians are long done with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and are now ready for Hamas leadership in both Gaza and the West Bank, while Israelis are certain of the need to eliminate the Hamas terrorist organisation once and for all — militarily and politically.
Toppling Hamas priority number one, Israelis say
The million-dollar question for policymakers about the Israel-Hamas war is: who will govern Gaza at the end of it?
Israeli and Palestinian public opinion couldn’t be more divergent, and this chasm in public opinion reveals a deeper challenge for the future of the region.
A survey of the Israeli public (including Jews and Arabs) conducted between 19-20 November by the independent Israel Democracy Institute asked: “On a scale from 1=not at all important to 5=very important, how would you grade the importance of [...] toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza and destroying its political and military infrastructures?”
The vast majority of the Israeli public (75%) said it was “very important” to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza, including a near-universal 87% of Israeli Jews.
Israeli troops are seen near the Gaza Strip border, December 2023 - AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg
The vast majority of the Israeli public (75%) said it was “very important” to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza, including a near-universal 87% of Israeli Jews.
This is understandable not only because of the 7 October massacre but also based on Hamas' founding charter, which calls for the death of Jews (Article 7) and jihad as the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Article 13).
Israel Hamas war: US and Israel agree conflict will take months to reach conclusion
EU mulls sanctioning violent Israeli settlers, tougher restrictions on Hamas
Yet for Hamas, support from Palestinians has only risen since the 7 October massacre. In fact, Hamas is now perceived as the most deserving group to lead Palestinians.
Among Palestinians, Hamas' popularity skyrockets
The independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) conducted a survey of Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza from 6-9 September and again from 22 November through 2 December.
When asked in September “who was most deserving to represent and lead the Palestinian people,” just 27% said Hamas, 24% said Abbas’ party Fatah, and 44% said neither.
As of this month, a majority (54%) say Hamas, with 13% saying Fatah, and 26% saying neither.
Hamas' support isn’t exclusively due to the war it launched against Israel. The sheer hatred of President Abbas amongst Palestinians can’t be ignored.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas walks towards the podium to address the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 2023 - AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
Hamas' support isn’t exclusively due to the war it launched against Israel. The sheer hatred of President Abbas amongst Palestinians can’t be ignored.
Between 76% and 80% of Palestinians consistently said they were “dissatisfied” with Abbas’ performance as PA President in polls conducted in March, June, and September of this year. The number of Palestinians dissatisfied with Abbas rose to 85% this month.
Similarly, between 77% and 80% of Palestinians said Abbas should resign from office in March, June and September of this year. Today, 88% of Palestinians demand his resignation while 12% say he should remain in office.
Fatah no more
Which leads to the most alarming and obvious finding. The Palestinian Authority is the internationally recognised organisation that represents the Palestinian people and serves as the governing authority of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Prior to the 7 October massacre, in a hypothetical election for president of the Palestinian Authority between incumbent Abbas and Hamas Chairman Ismail Haniyeh, Abbas would have lost to Haniyeh, 37% to 58%.
Now, polling released this month shows a landslide victory for Hamas Chairman Ismail Haniyeh, earning 78% of the vote to Abbas’ 16%.
Mahmoud Abbas, who is 82, re-elected as Palestinian president
Thus the challenge to Gaza’s future governance is clear: Israelis are set on destroying Hamas militarily and politically while Palestinians are set on elevating it.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier this week to block Abbas from gaining control of Gaza after the war, he was repeating what the Palestinian public already believes: Mahmoud Abbas is not the answer to Gaza’s future.
Stephan Miller is an American-Israeli Emmy, Pollie, and SABRE award-winning admaker and pollster, and partner at CreoStrat. He has worked for Democratic campaigns in the US for president, Senate, governor and mayor, as well as for the Israeli centrist Kulanu party, the Israeli Labour Party, and former Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat, among others.
Fred Kaplan
Fri, December 15, 2023
A new poll shows that Palestinian support for Hamas has grown significantly in the West Bank since the war with Israel began 10 weeks ago. The finding suggests that the stated goal of Israel’s invasion and bombing of Gaza—to destroy Hamas as a political and military force that can never again threaten Israel as it did on Oct. 7, murdering 1,200 Jews—may be unachievable. And even if many militant leaders and fighters are killed, the death and destruction inflicted by Israel’s army and air force may just be strengthening Hamas in the future.
More than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war so far, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (the number includes an unknown number of militant fighters), and almost 1.9 million civilians—80 percent of Gaza’s population—have been displaced from their homes.
According to the poll, which was released on Wednesday, support for Hamas among Palestinians in Gaza has risen since September from 38 percent to 42 percent. Among Palestinians in the West Bank, it has surged from 12 percent to 44 percent. (The poll of 1,231 Palestinians was taken by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2 and is said to have a 4 percent margin of error.)
Israelis may take some assurance from the finding that less than half of the Palestinians in the territories support Hamas—and that this support has risen hardly at all in Gaza, which Hamas controls. In fact, the findings lend some credence to anecdotal reports that many Gazans blame Hamas at least as much as Israel for their present plight. The pollsters also add: “It is worth noting that support for Hamas usually rises temporarily during or immediately after a war and then returns to the previous level several months after the end of the war.”
Even so, the sharp rise of pro-Hamas sentiment in the West Bank is alarming. Hamas has no official standing in those territories; the Palestinians there are relatively moderate. Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, which is headquartered there, has long recognized the right of Israel to exist.
The new poll suggests that a peaceful settlement will be much harder to reach. Fatah’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is widely viewed as decrepit, corrupt, and ineffectual—92 percent of West Bankers surveyed want him to resign (up 10 percent since September). Rising support for Hamas’ more militant approach may be a response to the drastic spurt of violence—murders, beatings, and burnings of property—committed by Jewish settlers against longtime Palestinian residents. Biden has recently imposed a visa ban on some of these violent settlers, but Netanyahu has done nothing. The ultranationalist minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israeli police in the West Bank, has even distributed rifles to the extremist settlers. (Some of the rifles may have come from the United States, which is why Biden has stopped the latest pending delivery.)
The war, which has sparked massive protests around the world, is straining U.S.–Israeli relations, even among the Jewish state’s otherwise strong supporters. President Joe Biden, while upholding Israel’s right to self-defense, has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu many times to minimize civilian casualties. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, meeting in Jerusalem on Thursday, told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that Israel had to wrap up the “high-intensity” phase of the war in a matter of “weeks.” Gallant replied that defeating Hamas would take “more than a few months.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israeli officials earlier this month that international support—already diminishing—might not last as long as months.
In what may be the most eyebrow-raising indicator of tensions between the two countries, Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, a Jewish lawmaker and prominent supporter of Israel who has close ties with Biden, tweeted on Thursday, “Netanyahu has gone way too far,” and “the bombing must be greatly limited or Israel will be without its last real friend, the USA & Joe Biden. The President is finished with Bibi’s Putin-like no holds barred war.”
At least so far, Israeli leaders seem to be waving off the pressure. Perhaps they don’t take it seriously. Except for halting the delivery of 20,000 M16 rifles, Biden has done nothing to stem the flow of larger weapons to Israel; nor has he scaled back the $14 billion worth of additional military aid that he requested last month along with $60 billion in various forms of aid for Ukraine.
In a statement released after the meeting with Sullivan, Netanyahu said that Israel will continue fighting “until victory and the achievement of the common goals, which are, first and foremost, the elimination of Hamas, the release of all the hostages, the dismantling of Hamas’ military capabilities, and the end of its rule in Gaza.”
No one, least of all Netanyahu, has explained how Israel can achieve all of those goals without killing many tens of thousands more Palestinian civilians—or how they can achieve those goals at all.
Biden has endorsed a two-state solution and has hopes that a revived Palestinian Authority might govern Gaza after Hamas is ousted. Netanyahu doesn’t want a two-state solution and doesn’t want to cede the security of Gaza to any Palestinians. This is yet another reason for his insistence on continuing—even stepping up—the war. It is also aggravating tensions—even threatening a rupture—between Jerusalem and Washington.
Biden said at a private gathering on Tuesday night that the far-right members of Netanyahu’s government have to go. But when it comes to the goals of the war in Gaza, there seems to be little space between Netanyahu and the two voting members of his unity war cabinet—Defense Minister Gallant and former Deputy Prime Minister Benny Gantz—who are centrists. Netanyahu is almost certain to lose power in the next election, whenever that takes place—but even if he were somehow to leave office now, Israel’s war policy is unlikely to change much.
That being the case, what happens next? If Israel keeps up the “high-intensity” phase of the war not for weeks, as Biden has requested, but for “several months,” as Gallant insists, what, if anything, does Biden do?
And what happens to the 135 remaining hostages in Gaza, some of whom may be in Hamas’ tunnels, some of which Israeli troops are starting to flood with seawater? Some Israelis, especially the families of hostages, are urging Netanyahu to secure their release, no matter what compromises in the war this might require. Politics within Israel are on the verge of rupturing, too.
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