bs"d
Asagidaki makale Wall Street Journal'in websitesinden.
Siteden direkt okuyamayanlar icin tum makaleyi kopyaladim.
Her turlu yolu denemis makalenin yazari hakkinda bilgi: Yossi Klein Ha'Levi
Bu makalenin ana hatlari bir cok gercegi cok guzel ortaya koyuyor. Ancak yazarin vardigi sonuca katilmasam dahi, Israil solunu her zaman elestiren biri olarak bu makalenin adilce yazilmis oldugunu gorup paylasmamayi gunah saydim.
Yazarin solcu, sagci veya futbolcu (biografisini okursaniz ne demek istedigimi anlarsiniz) olmasi beni zerre kadar ilgilendirmiyor. Ama kisaca Israil toplumunun duyarliligini ve ozellikle "yerlesimciler" diye adlandirilip dunyanin basindaki butun sorunlardan sorumlu tutulan Yahudilerin gerek toplum, devlet ve ordu icindeki konumlarini guzel bir sekilde ozetlemis.
Ozellikle Amerikan ve Avrupa solu ile Israil solunun bazi durumlarda bir birlerinden ne kadar farkli olabilecegini de gosteriyor. Bu bolumleri ozellikle isaretledim.
Sari zemin ile isretledigim bolumler sozunu ettigim sol bakisini, kirmizi harfler ise toplumsal yapinin bir gercegini gostermekte.
Makaleyi Turkce'ye cevirmeyi cok isterdim, belki baska zaman.
By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI
Jerusalem
Two issues related to West Bank settlements are on the current agenda
of Israeli Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak. The
first is Mr. Barak’s attempt to persuade the Netanyahu government to
extend a freeze on settlement building. The second is his attempt to
legalize two houses in a tiny West Bank settlement called Hayovel that
were built without government permission and face possible demolition.
The houses were built by two war heroes. Major Eliraz Peretz fell in a
skirmish on the Israeli-Gaza border a half year ago; Israelis were
especially touched by his story because his older brother died in
Lebanon 12 years ago. The second hero, Major Ro’i Klein, was killed in
Lebanon in 2006 after leaping onto a grenade to save his men.
Fallen soldiers have a sacrosanct status here. Demolishing the houses
that Peretz and Klein built for their families seems to Israelis,
whatever their politics, an unbearable act of ingratitude. Even the
bitterly anti-settlement movement Peace Now informed the Supreme Court
that while it seeks the removal of illegal houses in Hayovel, an
exception should be made for these two dwellings. “We are not
indifferent to the feelings of the public on this matter,” a Peace Now spokeswoman explained.
The story of the Peretz and Klein houses has significance beyond what
it tells us about Israeli sensitivities. Increasingly, Israel’s
military elite is coming from West Bank settlements and, more broadly,
from within the religious Zionist community that produced the
settlement movement and passionately supports it.
Perhaps 40% of combat officers are now religious Zionists (not to be
confused with ultra-orthodox Haredim), nearly three times their
percentage in the general population. In the early 1990s, the number
of religious combat officers was barely 2%. The newly appointed deputy
chief of staff, Yair Naveh, is a religious Zionist.
Once it was kibbutzim, or collectivist farms, that produced the
nation’s combat elite. Now it is the religious Zionist community that
raises its sons to sacrifice. Every Sabbath day the same scene is
repeated throughout the settlements: Young men wearing knitted
skullcaps precariously pinned to close-cropped hair gather outside the
synagogue and exchange stories from their combat units—while their
younger brothers eavesdrop and decide which units they will one day join.
The prominence of religious Zionists in the Israel Defense Force (IDF)
explains in part why the prospect of a West Bank withdrawal is so
traumatic to policy makers and to IDF commanders. If the army is sent
to dismantle settlements in the West Bank—as it did in Gaza in
2005—there is the very real threat of widespread disobedience and the
collapse of entire units.
During the Gaza withdrawal, only a handful of radical rabbis urged
soldiers to refuse orders. Today that sentiment has grown among even
mainstream religious Zionists like the former Supreme Court justice,
Zvi Tal, who recently declared that if he were a soldier sent to
evacuate a settlement, he would refuse.
The “settler” has assumed a near demonic image around the world, but
most Israelis know that only a radical fringe is responsible for
uprooting Palestinian olive trees and vandalizing mosques. Most
settlers are part of the mainstream. Israelis encounter them in the
army, in the workplace, and in the universities.
Shaul Mofaz, a leader of the pro-withdrawal party, Kadima, was a
founder in the mid 1970s of the Elkana settlement in the northern West Bank. Mr. Mofaz’s party colleague, Knesset member Otniel Schneller, still lives in a settlement.
Crucially, few Israelis regard settlers as interlopers on another
people’s land. The political wisdom of the settlement project is
intensely debated here, but only a leftwing fringe denies the historic
right of Jews to live in what was the biblical heartland of Israel.
Still, while settlers remain widely appreciated for their idealism,
their political agenda has become a minority position. The left has
won the argument that ending the occupation is an Israeli existential
need. If Israelis believed that peace were possible, a majority would
opt for painful compromise and support West Bank withdrawal.
But given the absence of a credible Palestinian partner able to
deliver a majority of his people for a compromise Israelis could live
with, the public will continue to avoid a traumatic confrontation with
settlers that could rupture the military and lead to civil war.
“For all the ambivalence toward the settlements, there is good reason
why the Israeli government should heed Defense Minister Barak’s advice
and extend a settlement freeze. If nothing else, a freeze would prove
that the obstacle to Middle East agreement isn’t the
settlements—blueprints exist, after all, for resolving the settlement
issue in a comprehensive peace agreement—but the more basic refusal of
the Palestinian leadership to accept the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty over any part of the land.”
And if the international community wants to understand why the Israeli
public doesn’t share its antipathy toward the settlers or its urgency
to uproot settlements, a good place to begin is with Mr. Barak’s
effort to legalize two houses on a West Bank hilltop.
Mr. Halevi is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem,
and a contributing editor of the New Republic.
