Collaboration between IDF, settlers reaching point of no return

“Last night, at about 7:30 p.m., we were all in the house. Suddenly I heard a noise outside, including the engine sound of a military vehicle. We didn’t leave the house and I looked through the window. I saw a military jeep parked west of the house, some 150 meters down the road towards the town center. I also saw a large group of settlers moving on the road bordering my house. A military jeep was driving before the mass of settlers, with another jeep behind them. The sun had already set, but I could see what was going outside because there is a lamppost outside my house. The lights of the jeeps were on, and some of the settlers were carrying flashlights. Suddenly we heard stones hitting the house, the greenhouse and the courtyard. Luckily, all the windows of the house are covered, so no stones went in.

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In extreme cases, the collaboration between the army and the settlers is even tighter. After the murder of the Fogel family in Itamar, the army went on a rampage in the village of Awarta, with soldiers causing deliberate damage to food and property – but this wasn’t enough for the soldiers. Settlers reported (Hebrew) that soldiers allowed them to move through the roadblocks so they could reach the village and cause some more damage. In one case, it was claimed, a soldier gave a nightstick to a settler and asked him to use it in his stead.

The IDF insists on claiming it does not “choose its missions,” hence it is supposed to be above political conflict. However, in the last 30 years, the main mission of the IDF has been operating the occupation, and it is increasingly becoming a private-settler militia. This, by the way, would be true even if the settlers described in the complaint behaved impeccably: they come and go with military escorts, soldiers whose service is increasingly dedicated to providing security details to civilians who have willingly chosen to live in an area held under wartime conditions.

This has severe implications both for the IDF – militias are not all that good facing regular armies – and on Israeli democracy. The feeling is that events such as the one detailed above, which used to receive plenty of attention from the media, no longer do so. More and more, the citizens of Israel are getting accustomed to the occupation as the natural order of things; and when something is seen as normal, as normal as paying your taxes every month, it is that much harder to reverse.

http://972mag.com/collaboration-between-idf-settlers-reaching-point-of-no-return/66246/