Idith Zerta: Co-authors book on Israeli settlements
There are two Israels: one inside the Green Line, the 1967 border, the other an occupying power extending beyond it. The first is a vibrant democracy, with Arab members of Parliament, university professors and lawyers, beauty queens and soldiers, and even a Muslim cabinet minister. There are no separate roads for Arabs and Jews in the name of that all-purpose explanation “security,” no villages made inaccessible because their roads have been dug up by army bulldozers, no checkpoints and no security fence cleaving farmers from their land and schoolchildren from their playgrounds.
Across the Green Line, the West Bank, captured in 1967, is another country, neither Israel nor Palestine, but a lawless place, where the Jewish settler, rifle in one hand and prayer book in the other, is undisputed king. The settlers have their own roads, guarded by the Israeli Army, water, electricity, supplies and — occasional if well-publicized crackdowns aside — substantial impunity from the law. Much of the land on which their settlements stand, was, as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar detail in this important book, simply stolen. The settlements are illegal, in contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territories. But for those who claim a divine mandate, the Geneva Conventions count for nothing. According to the United Nations, more than a third of the West Bank is now off limits to Palestinians. A web of Israeli Army checkpoints and obstacles further atomizes what is left of Palestinian society.
Read entire article at NYT Book Review
Across the Green Line, the West Bank, captured in 1967, is another country, neither Israel nor Palestine, but a lawless place, where the Jewish settler, rifle in one hand and prayer book in the other, is undisputed king. The settlers have their own roads, guarded by the Israeli Army, water, electricity, supplies and — occasional if well-publicized crackdowns aside — substantial impunity from the law. Much of the land on which their settlements stand, was, as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar detail in this important book, simply stolen. The settlements are illegal, in contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territories. But for those who claim a divine mandate, the Geneva Conventions count for nothing. According to the United Nations, more than a third of the West Bank is now off limits to Palestinians. A web of Israeli Army checkpoints and obstacles further atomizes what is left of Palestinian society.