Lords of the Land

I attended a briefing this morning with Akiva Eldar, political columnist for Ha'aretz and coauthor of Lords of the Land, one of the first comprehensive histories of the Israeli settlers movement published in either Hebrew or English. I haven't read the book yet, but it certainly sounds interesting, and the topic is crucially important. I've long been confused, given the settlement's moral indefensibility and their obvious spoiler effect on peace deals, why the government allows for their construction. According to this review of the book, it may not be that simple:

Consider, for example, one incident at the movement's beginning, told in detail in the first section of the book: In the spring of 1968, less than a year after Israel acquired new territories in the lightning victory of the Six-Day War, a group of young men, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, approached the military administration of the occupied territory with a modest request. They asked to celebrate the Passover Seder in Hebron, the newly occupied city of our biblical forefathers and foremothers.

Armed with a military permit signed by commander of the Eastern front General Uzi Narkis, they arrived in the ancient town on the night of April 12, and rented rooms in the Park Hotel. It later turned out that they neglected to keep their promise to leave the city when the holiday was over. The government had already rejected plans, submitted by Minister Igal Alon, hero of the War of Independence, to create a Jewish neighborhood in Hebron. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was not happy with the whole Seder affair, but he failed to grasp the full meaning of this little bridgehead, and he did not put his foot down...His minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, another war hero, came up with a compromise: to move the group temporarily to the military administration's building, until a permanent solution could be found. The settlers took this to be a kind of official recognition. They were already busy creating an improvised school for their children (inside the Park Hotel), followed by a yeshiva.

When the issue was brought up in Cabinet again, rather than deciding on creating a Jewish settlement, the government first decided not to evacuate those already there. By and by, a settlement sprang up. A fact on the ground. The army mobilized to protect it. And since it was there already, by September of the same year, a government that never intended to settle any of the territories approved construction of a Jewish neighborhood in the city. This would become a pattern: Facts on the ground are created, army and bureaucracy follow, and finally the government grants retroactive approval.

Of course, even rogue elements require some sort of government support, less future settlements be left in the cold. And on this, it seems that there were always powerful enough groups within the Israeli government willing to exert pressure on behalf of the settler's. The book explains "how land grabs were disguised as military zone restrictions; how new settlements were disguised at first as "neighborhoods" of existing ones; how legal terms were twisted and devoid of meaning, creating double standards and lax enforcement; how government funds were diverted in clandestine, roundabout ways; how bureaucratic hierarchies grew strange humps to bypass regular procedures, and so forth." And once the settlement was constructed, the government couldn't, politically, leave it undefended. So at the end of the day, "a small group of zealots, a mere 2% of Israel's population, managed to exploit the nation's inability to decide the fate of the territories to an extraordinary extent. With various degrees of sympathy and antipathy from different governments, they were able to drag a whole country into a state it never really debated, let alone decided on." It's like the worst Mircotrend ever.