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The Banality of Settlements

10 Sat Jun 2017

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Handel, Ariel, Marco Allegra, Erez Maggor (eds.) Normalizing Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. 244 pp.

Sara Yael Hirschhorn make the counter-intuitive argument in City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement that American Jews who made aliyah to Israel and went to live beyond the Green Line did not do so out of messianic zeal but as halutzim – pioneers – in the Holy Land. The overwhelming majority were liberals whose politics was shifted by experience in Judea and Samaria, especially the intifada. Yet these settlers number only about 60,000 – some 15 percent of the total, excluding the Jerusalem metropolitan area. What motivated the other 540,000 Jews living in the West Bank to move to the middle of nowhere? A new volume edited by Ariel Handel, Marco Allegra, and Erez Maggor, Normalising Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements, argues that most Israeli settlers do not partake in the ideology of the settler movement either but are driven by more quotidian considerations such as real estate prices, and the commute between home, office, the market, and school.

It should be stated at the outset that the authors do not believe that ideology has had no role to play in making settlements attractive to Israelis. Rather, their argument is that bureaucrats, real estate developers, and employers created secular conditions in territories beyond the Green Line that attracted large numbers of Jews who had not been persuaded by the Gush Emunim. To paraphrase Michael Billig’s depiction of contemporary nationalism, the actions of the subjects of Normalising Occupation could best be described as banal settlerism.

The proliferation of settlements, Danny Gutwein argues, is partially due to the dismantling of Israel’s welfare state in the since the late 1970s and the corresponding privatisation of the Israeli economy. The economically lower classes were compensated in a manner for their loss of welfare by the availability of cheap housing, schooling, lower taxes, and other material amenities beyond the Green Line. When the Likud came to power in 1977, there were about 5,000 settlers; a mere nine years later, that number had increased ten-fold. Today, that number has increased yet another ten-fold to approximately 500,000 settlers. Thus, Gutwein argues, just as the Occupation created settlements, privatisation created settlers.

Such economic and demographic change has naturally brought with it political change. For example, the Shas party is known today to be one of the fervently religious and hawkish groups in the Knesset, drawing its support mainly from lower and lower middle class Mizrahim. In 1992, however, its leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, gave religious sanction to an Israeli withdrawal from the territories that had been occupied in the Six-Day War. Ten years later, the party revoked that ruling as its support base had largely moved to the new settlements.

According to David Newman, even the Gush Emunim could not survive entirely on its ideological platform. He writes, “The earliest settler leaders were always conscious of the fact that in order to succeed, they had to seek a balance between their ideological and political objectives on the one hand, while working with the state system of planning and development on the other.” The movement registered its success partly due to the ability of its leaders to superimpose their ideology on the process of rurbanisation and suburbanisation that was going on in Israel at the time. The pioneering spirit in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War had disappeared by the mid-1980s and settlers would now need to be enticed by the amenities of modern (sub)urban life.

This is a bold statement, given that many historians of Israel and the Middle East agree that the Bloc of the Faithful almost single-handedly changed the history of the region. Admittedly, Gush Emunim dissolved in 1984, barely a few years into the dismantling of the welfare state, but its ideology has lived on through to later groups. It has also been politically expedient not to play up the economic motives for settlements because material causes could theoretically be made up upon relocation to Israel proper whereas even insincere ideological reasons are harder to pacify.

Israeli rurbanisation and suburbanisation have succeeded so well that a full third of the settlers do not view themselves as living in settlements. This is particularly true of those in neighbourhoods around major Israeli metropoleis like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Inhabitants of Ma’ale Adumim, for example, are a stone’s throw away from central Jerusalem and easy access by way of transportation and utilities have blurred the reality that the neighbourhood is technically beyond the Green Line and few Israelis would even recognise these as settlements. Ironically, residents of Ma’ale Adumim are more worried about a Haredi invasion of their neighbourhood than a Palestinian one, fearing that an Ultra Orthodox demographic would force a change in their lifestyle. In fact, Allegra believes that the debate over the reversibility of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank is less over the iconic Har HaBáyit and more over the “facts on the ground” created by Israel in metropolitan Jerusalem.

Ideology alone does not make settlements bloom and though economic incentives are a strong motive, it does not provide psychological succour in the long term. This is an overlooked and underappreciated aspect of settler behaviour whose parallel can be found in the unrelated scenario of workplace fraud. Called the fraud triangle by psychologists, the theory is that even trusted employees will commit fraud if they have three things – need, opportunity, and the ability to rationalize their behavior.

The rising cost of living and the collapse of the welfare state becomes the need, the encouragement by the state and organisations like Gush Emunim provide the opportunity, and the ability to rationalise is aided by removing the process from the mind. This essential third component is achieved by cartographic aggression – as Miki Kratsman and Ruthie Ginsburg describe, the Arab names of places are replaced with their Hebrew equivalents on maps and street signs. El-Carmel becomes Carmel and Na’alin becomes Na’aleh.

It is also achieved by building settlements to resemble proper Israeli towns and cities such as Modi’in, Rishon LeZion, Carmiel, Rosh HaAyin, Netanya, and others. Gone are the sprawling individual houses of the halutzim; in their stead stand apartment blocs, avenues, shopping malls, and scenes from any crowded metropolitan city. If Modi’in Illit looks just like Modi’in and stand side by side, then surely they are both just Modi’in. Of course, from a strategic standpoint, it is much harder to demolish apartment buildings than it is individual houses.

Despite a stellar analysis of material modes of settlement, the editors do not consider what transformation might occur in settlers after moving across the Green Line. As Hirschhorn showed, liberal immigrants with idealistic notions turned over time into shockingly aggressive, angry, and expansionist. Jewish terror began in the settlements as inhabitants found the Army too passive and the politicians too meek to respond “appropriately.” Does the same phenomenon apply to economic migrants? If material benefits motivated them to cross the Green Line, would material loss persuade them to cross it back? Does their economic rationality make them less adamant in negotiations? These are several questions that immediately come to mind as one reads this collection of essays. By only following settlers from Israel into the West Bank but not staying with them a little longer, it feels like only half the story has been told.

Normalising Occupation does not argue that ideology is passe but that the situation is no longer monochromatic, if it ever was. It underscores the power of banality, already noticed by Aristotle, Pierre Bourdieu, Hannah Arendt, Michael Billig, and others. Yet Normalising Occupation also gives hope: if settlers are not uncompromising religious zealots and are swayed by material incentives like everyone else, it might be possible to negotiate and the peace process in the Holy Land may yet have a chance. Handel et al persuade the reader to reconsider preconceived strategies and mechanics of disengagement and is a vital contribution to the understanding of two peoples bound by land and hate.

American ‘Pioneers’ in the Holy Land

03 Sat Jun 2017

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Hirschhorn, Sara Yael. City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. 368 pp.

The image that comes to mind when one hears the word ‘settler’ is an angry man in a tallit with a kippah, probably toting a firearm with an ever-pregnant wife trailing him. His attire speaks for his conservatism even before he opens his mouth, telling you that is his land and that Palestinians do not belong there. Yet imagine this person was actually a liberal, probably someone who supported the Civil Rights movement back in the United States or other such causes. Here were liberals involved in an illiberal ideological project. That discordance is the theme of Sara Yael Hirschhorn’s book, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement. The book’s provocative argument stems from dozens of interviews of settlers the author conducted as well as newspapers and state and institutional archives.

There are approximately 60,000 Jewish-American settlers, about 15 percent, by the Hirschhorn’s estimate, of the total number of Israelis who live beyond the Green Line in the disputed territories. Like most humans, they represent a complicated amalgam of beliefs and values, “combining tropes of messianic redemption with modern-day pioneering, hawkish territorialism with Jewish history, sacred promise with suburbanization, [and] ultra-nationalism with utopian idealism.” Hirschhorn examines the American settlers along three axes of Israeli ultra-nationalism: territorial maximalism, exclusionary ethnonationalism, and cultural hegemony.

City on a Hilltop looks at three settlements in particular: Yamit in the Sinai and Efrat and Tekoa in the West Bank. Immigration to these three particular “Anglo-Saxon” settlements started in the early 1970s, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. The blitzkrieg Israeli triumph affected American Jewry like nothing else. Despite the Zionist call over the past 70 years – slightly less than two centuries, actually – for the diaspora to return to the Holy Land, American Jews had never really been swept by the Zionist fervour and had not made their aliyah. Instead, Jewish American Zionism took the form of political influence and monetary assistance to the new State of Israel. The reverberations of June 1967, however, had a profound impact on not just Israel and the Middle East but also American Jewry. In fact, it tore the community apart between liberal internationalism and Jewish nationalism. Hirschhorn’s work looks at those who chose Jewish nationalism and how they evolved from typical liberal American Jews to…settlers.

An interesting dynamic the book reveals is the ambiguity with which Israel pursued settlements and attracted settlers. On the one hand, there is plenty of vocal support for settlements in the Knesset as well as Israeli society but on the other, it was a struggle for the newcomers to extract assistance from the government in terms of loans, infrastructure, employment, or security, nor did it hesitate to give up the settlements in negotiations. In fact, American settlers were frequently displeased with the Jewish Agency and the Ministry for Immigrant Absorption and exchanged scathing correspondence over the failure of the Israeli government to deliver on their promises.

Americans also ran afoul of the Gush Emunim, the Israeli settler movement, now known as the Ne’emanei Eretz Yisrael. While the Americans saw themselves as pioneers in the Holy Land, wanted clean land records before settling in, and often reached out to Palestinian communities in the vicinity, the Israelis had a more realistic understanding of the situation and were willing to squat on the land, provoke the locals, and kept to themselves. The American immigrants felt alienated by the Israeli government and the could not fit into the sabra social settings either, making the start-up settlements more appealing to them.

The new arrivals from America were usually young, single, highly educated, upwardly mobile, and traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious practice; they came for personal reasons rather than financial ones, struggling with their Jewish identity in the American melting pot. As historian Matthew Frye Jacobson explained, “the question was asked: ‘Given who I am, where do I belong?’ Many even saw their role as an antidote to the increasing “Levantinization” of Israeli civilization and spoke of a “white man’s burden” incumbent upon immigrants from the United States!

The culture clash is visible even earlier, when Jewish American plans for a Shalom City were nixed by the Israeli government upon advice from a prominent Canadian Zionist. The “‘Americans know best’ theme would antagonize many Israelis,” the Canadian observed, “and that the native population would not ‘accept kindly a campaign— let alone an actual city— whose second major goal is to teach Israelis how to live and do things in the American way.'” Later on, the settlement at Efrat would prove these observations accurate.

American idealism came in for a rude awakening when the First Intifada broke out. Palestinians who had interacted with the Jewish Americans for so long suddenly turned their back on them. Worse, the settlements were rocked by violence which the settlers did not see as deserved: it was beyond them to understand that their very presence in the West Bank, despite their earlier friendliness, was an affront to Palestinians. The two intifadas, combined with the Arab-Israeli peace talks and what they perceived as callous attitude by the Israeli government towards their security and holding the land that had been promised them by G-d, served to radicalise Jewish American settlers.

A string of incidents of Jewish terrorism, from the attempted assassination of the mayor of Nablus to the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, struck the disputed territories. Hirschhorn’s interviews reveal that although most condemned the terrorist attacks, there was still some support for it. Living in a war zone for years, the original liberal ideals of many Jewish Americans frayed. A few returned to the United States but a handful crossed the rubicon into extremism. In a scene reminiscent of that West Wing episode where an Israeli soldier tells Donna Moss that his comrades are good people who were driven to do a bad thing because of the unremitting hostile situation they were in, Hirschhorn also discovered that some of her interviewees who had once marched with Martin Luther King Jr were now contemplating or condoning violence against Palestinians.

This is deeply concerning – if incessant low-intensity conflict drives even some people to extreme acts, that Israel has been at war ever since its creation does not bode well for the peace process or the mental health of its people. It is unlikely, however, that this urgency will be heeded and we risk the creation of more Baruch Goldsteins, Era Rapaports, and Yaakov Teitels.

By the very questions it asks and to whom it asks them gives City on a Hilltop the feeling of a micro-history – there are no great (wo)men driving history nor are there particularly cataclysmic events that realign the priorities and beliefs of millions. Yet history rolls on, shaped by the daily choices made by hundreds of ordinary people. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is the way the author condemns the settler movement for the dispossession and cycle of violence it causes yet at the same time is sympathetic to the experiences of American Jews. Rather than usurpation or some other politically slanted descriptor, Hirschhorn argues that aliyah is ethnic return migration; despite viewing settlements as an illiberal project, she condemns violence of the Palestinians.

More importantly, the author makes a genuine attempt to walk a mile in the shoes of the American settlers. The result is an uncomfortable picture of rational, idealistic people who yet hold some strong views about Eretz Israel. Some of them, under different circumstances, may have easily been her friends. This brings a sensitivity to the subject that is rarely seen – normally, researchers warm up to their subjects or simply abhor them. Hirschhorn, however, demonstrates a capability to embrace the settlers but reject their project. Readers, even those who strongly oppose settlements, are left with an appreciation of how the other side thinks.

City on a Hilltop is an important contribution to not just the understanding of the settler movement but also to Israel’s relations with the United States as well as its relations with the diaspora. Given how Israel continues to speak for all Jews and how the diaspora has begun to hold the state to a higher standard – such as the recent spat over conversion and a pluralistic prayer space at the Kotel – understanding of such micro-dynamics will be in dire need.

Israel’s Day At The Ballot Box

18 Wed Mar 2015

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March 17 is an important day for many reasons, but it is known primarily for being the death anniversary of Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland. On this day in 180, Marcus Aurelius died, very unwisely, leaving the Empire to Commodus; in 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, perhaps equally unwisely; and in 2015, Israel went to the polls and elected Binyamin Netanyahu…how wisely, is yet to be seen. These elections have evinced interest from important capitals in the West and the region, for Israel’s policies could influence a very volatile region at a crucial juncture.

Netanyahu’s reelection is a big blow to the Democrats in the United States. The difficult relationship between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is no secret; Jerusalem and Washington have differences on the Palestinian question but Iran has made the relationship even more acrimonious. While the White House has sought to engage diplomatically with Tehran and come to a negotiated settlement, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office has insisted on a harsher interpretation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Iran’s obligations under it as a signatory. In September 2012, Netanyahu made a speech in the United Nations that urged the United States to draw clear red lines on Iranian nuclear development beyond which to consider a military solution to the issue. Israel has stuck to this stance despite several public statements from Israel’s own former intelligence chiefs that downplayed the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel.

In January of this year, the Netanyahu-Obama relationship became even more acrid when the Israeli prime minister accepted an invitation from John Boehner, the leader of the US House of Representatives, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, to address a joint session of the US Congress. The Republicans, who were critical of Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Tehran, were incensed at the US president’s threat to veto any bill that proposed passing new sanctions on Iran and broke diplomatic protocol by inviting a foreign head of state to Congress without the knowledge of the White House. This saga unfolded in the wake of ugly allegations that the US State Department had funded a tax-exempt organisation to undermine Netanyahu’s bid for reelection. In February 2015, senior US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, publically criticised Netanyahu and some even took to the social media platform Twitter to attack him.

Israeli elections 2015It is important to understand this background for it informs the outcome of the Israeli election. The most important issue that concerns Israel today, according to Netanyahu, is the nuclearisation of Iran. On this, he has shown willingness to damage Israel’s relations with its closest ally and even weaken the bipartisan support it has enjoyed in the US Congress. This brinkmanship and fearmongering on the international scene finds strong support domestically. Netanyahu’s victory confirms that many ordinary Israelis agree with his assessment even over the opinion of their military and intelligence chiefs. While opinion poll after opinion poll tells us that Israelis are concerned about the social issues such as the cost of living, housing, and employment, Netanyahu’s Likud surged ahead of Isaac Herzog and his Zionist Union upon promises that Netanyahu would never accept a Palestinian state and continue to expand settlements in the disputed territories. Moshe Kahlon and his Kulanu, who had actually run on an economic platform, managed only fifth place with 10 seats, behind the Likud, Zionist Union, (Arab) United List, and Yesh Atid. Similar behaviour was observed even in 2013, and with 72 per cent voter turnout in these elections, ideology and identity seem to mean far more to Israelis than socioeconomic well-being – not a surprising conclusion but one that militates against the logic of the rational actor. Perhaps because for Israelis, ideology and identity is synonymous with security – a higher order need than bread alone.

Netanyahu was also helped by the fact that many of those who voted for him did so only because they could not see any viable alternative. To the middle class, he has been a disappointment though most admit that he is their man on security. What might put a spanner in the works is President Reuven Rivlin had earlier indicated that he would seek a national unity government. Given the political landscape, it would be very difficult for Herzog to produce a winning combination: he would have to seduce the Yahadut HaTora HaMeuhedet away from the Likud with concessions to synagogues, unite Meretz, the United List, and Yesh Atid behind him, and hope that Kahlon does not return to his Likud roots. Instead, the size of Likud’s victory might just persuade Rivlin to invite the leader of the largest party to form the governing coalition rather than maintain his earlier desire.

Netanyahu has used two issues to rally his base – the fear of a nuclear Iran and the undesirability of Palestinian statehood. His victory now puts Israel on a collision course with both the European Union and the United States, the former over Palestine and settlements and the latter over Iran. Unfortunately, the Israeli prime minister has no solutions of his own to offer either. On Palestine, Israel has two choices – accept their statehood or incorporate them into a larger, multicultural, non-Jewish Israel. The only other option is to use military force to initiate a mass exodus of the people of Gaza and the West Bank, a thoroughly unpalatable course of action with dire consequences for Jerusalem.

To become prime minister, however, one needs 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset and the Likud’s 30 means there will be a coalition yet again. A coalition of the religious parties and Likud alone will not suffice to give Netanyahu the majority he needs and so he will have to reach out to the centrists at least. All centrist and leftist parties support Palestinian statehood though each have their own caveats. Nonetheless, this means that there will be support for Palestinian statehood within the ruling coalition and that could restrict the prime minister’s hand during his term.

From Iran, Netanyahu expects total supplication. No country could accept such terms short of total conquest, especially not the proud Persians. To be fair, Israel’s concerns are not unfathomable, especially to Indians. Jerusalem fears the nuclear veto Tehran will possess on Israel’s range of options if Iran ever crosses the nuclear Rubicon, much the same way Pakistan holds India hostage today. Unfortunately for Israel, its options are constricted for war with Iran without the backing of the United States – even with the backing of the United States – will be a thoroughly taxing affair and not be limited to the deserts of the Middle East but spread to all Jewish assets across the globe. Furthermore, Israel’s greatest patron, Uncle Sam, is exhausted after over a decade of military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Even worse for Israel, sanctions alone have proven ineffective against Iran for several reasons.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and interestingly, Israel is not alone in its fear – paranoia? – about the possibility of an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Netanyahu has the silent backing of at least Saudi Arabia and the majority of the Persian Gulf states such as Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. For reasons of political optics, it is a safe bet that this will not materialise into public support of Israel by the Arab monarchies and Israel will be remain isolated.

It would be an interesting exercise to study where the Likud got its votes. Compared to the results of the 2013 elections, it appears that the largest share of Likud’s votes came from other right-wing parties: while Likud jumped from 19 to 30, HaBayit HaYehudi and Yisrael Beiteinu fell from 12 and 11 to 8 and 6. On the whole, the right-wing parties have gained only one seat, from 43 to 44. It would, therefore, be inaccurate to consider this a landslide victory for the Right.

For India, the Israeli elections mean nothing. Delhi’s relations with Jerusalem are not so close that the finer differences between Israel’s political actors matter much to Raisina Hill. India plays the role of the deaf-mute in the Middle East for lack of capability (and willingness?) and has little influence on any side of any conflict. India would like to boost trade with Iran but Delhi has so far followed the American line and reduced its oil imports from the Middle Eastern state. Similarly, Israel is hardly likely to strike an alliance with Pakistan’s non-state friends – terrorists – nor is it likely to develop a strategic relationship with either Pakistan or China in the near future. Any government in Israel will be willing to develop its military and civilian relationship with India.

In sum, Netanyahu has come to power by playing on two major concerns, it appears, of the Israeli people and yet he has no solution to either. In fact, his preferences would put Israel squarely at war or at loggerheads with its close allies. At this moment, it is difficult to see how this will actualise into a successful prime ministership. One possibility is that Netanyahu will hope for a Republican victory in the next US presidential election; he will bide his time until January 2017 when Obama finally leaves office and hope to repair some of the damage done these past few years. Europe will be a tougher but less valuable nut to crack. For now, a sombre mood hangs over the Tehran, Washington, and a few pockets of Israel.

This post first appeared on Swarajya on March 19, 2015.