Then-prime minister Shimon Peres in settlement of Ma'ale Efraim, West Bank. 1985 Hananiya Herman, GPO
In the heart of the
settlement of Ofra there’s a 41-year-old tree residents say was planted
when the community was founded by then-Defense Minister Shimon Peres.
On
Wednesday they made sure to distribute the picture of Peres planting
the tree in a place that for journalists became one of the symbols of
ideological settlement in the West Bank.
Peres
and the settlers had a complex relationship – more complicated than
what ultimately became entrenched in global public perception. He was an
architect of the Oslo Accords, and even as president he was a driving
force behind promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The West Bank settlement of Ofra, in 2012.Chaim Levinson
The
statement issued by the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and
Samaria upon his death pretty much summarizes this complexity.
“At
this time, we choose to remember the great contribution Shimon Peres
made to establishing Israel’s security infrastructure from its first
days, and his substantial contribution to Jewish settlement in Samaria.
“He
was one of the founders and trailblazers of the state, and despite the
various disputes over the years we will remember his consistent support
for settlement as the defense minister who brought about the
breakthrough in Samaria and the establishment of the settlements of Ofra
and Kedumim, and for his laying the groundwork for the establishment
and consolidation of additional communities.”
Indeed,
Peres made a very significant contribution to the establishment of Ofra
and Kedumim. In 1975, when members of Gush Emunim, the prominent
settler movement of the time, tried to set up an outpost at the
abandoned train station in Sebastia, Peres came to visit them.
Although
he did insist that the settlers leave the site, he subsequently allowed
a few dozen families to settle in the nearby Kadum military base, which
eventually became the settlement of Kedumim. That same year, the first
settlers moved in to Ofra, as well.
Benny
Katzover, one of the early Gush Emunim members among those who
demonstrated in Sebastia, says that when Peres came to the site he was
welcomed with cries of happiness.
“We
were happy because the assumption was that the issue would finally be
taken care of,” he said. “Eight times we went there, and eight times we
were removed. He would express publicly that we had the right, that we
have settle the Samarian mountain ridge, and there was the feeling that
his arrival pointed to some kind of arrangement.”
They were surprised to hear Peres say he had come to remove them.
“He
told us he’d been sent by the government to demand that we leave.
[Ariel] Sharon, who was with us the whole time, gave us the feeling and
many hints that things could work out,” Katzover said.
“During
that period Zionism had been condemned by the United Nations as a
racist movement. [Then Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin recruited all the
world’s Jewish leaders to come to Jerusalem. Some of them we even
managed to bring to the train station at Sebastia. The feeling was that
it was going to work out, but against all expectations, Peres insisted
that we leave.”
Peres left the site, but a short time later summoned the group's leaders to his office in Tel Aviv.
“We
come to the office in Tel Aviv, and there Peres opened with the
announcement, ‘I’m interested in closing this up. Let’s not conduct
negotiations like the Histadrut.’
"We
wrote up three-four clauses, after each clause he went to a side room
and spoke to whomever he spoke to – I understood it to be the prime
minister, but he never told us – about every clause, and that’s how we
ended up with what is now called the Sebastia compromise, when we were
moved to Kadum,” Katzover said.
The
connection with Peres continued, and the feeling was that he supported
the West Bank settlers, Katsover said. “When he was still the postal
minister he set up four telephone centers for us in Kiryat Arba, and his
opinions, which today are considered right-wing, were well known. He
visited us afterward in Kadum.”
As Katzover sees it, Peres veered leftward at the end of the 1970s.
“He
contended for the Labor party leadership twice against Rabin and he
came to the conclusion that if he didn’t turn left he had no chance. He
donned the cloak of a left-winger in a pretty sharp turn, and I think
that since 1979 or something like that he was already talking like a
leftist. Until then he had been clearly right wing.”
After
a while, Peres was viewed by many of the settlers as a bitter political
rival, particularly after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, giving
Palestinians a measure of self-rule in parts of the West Bank.
“In
my opinion he brought about this disastrous agreement, the Oslo
agreement, which led to 1,500 murders,” said Katzover. “It was out of a
desire to benefit the people of Israel, I have no doubt about that, but
it did incredible damage.
"Perhaps
only Sharon’s disengagement was comparable in terms of a cow spilling
all the milk it had given,” the settler leader added, referring to a
2005 pullout under Sharon's rule, in which thousands of settlers were
evacuated from Gaza and the northern West Bank
Se Israele non accetterà di sospendere definitivamente l’embargo sulla Striscia di Gaza sarà impossibile avviare una ricostruzione del territorio: ne è convinto il portavoce dell’agenzia Onu per i rifugiati palestinesi (Unrwa) Chris Gunnes secondo cui “la strategia israeliana consiste nel deviare l’attenzione della comunità internazionale, parlando di un sacco di cemento qui o un progetto là, mentre la questione vera riguarda l’accesso garantito a tutti i materiali attraverso tutti i valichi”. Intervenendo a margine di un convegno in corso al Cairo il responsabile si è detto “poco fiducioso” che il nuovo sistema possa risolvere le limitazioni incontrate dall’Unrwa per poter portare aiuti alla popolazione civile della Striscia. “La lista di beni consentiti ai valichi cambia continuamente. E non è detto che qualcosa che non è iscritto nelle liste sia fatto automaticamente passare” fa osservare Gunnes, secondo cui “l’embargo israeliano è un embargo contro le Nazioni Unite”. Intanto ieri ...
Associare allo Stato d'Israele gli aggettivi “ebraico” e “democratico” equivale a produrre nitroglicerina: il paese è la versione contemporanea della Germania degli Anni '30 ». Chi turba così le celebrazioni sia pur problematiche del quarantennale della Guerra dei Sei Giorni non è il presidente iraniano Ahmadinejad, sommo teorico del parallelo tra sionismo e nazismo, ma un israeliano blasonato come Avraham Burg, ex presidente della Knesset tra il 1999 e il 2003, ex direttore dell'Agenzia ebraica per l'immigrazione, dirigente storico del partito laburista, ebreo ortodosso e al tempo stesso punto di riferimento della sinistra di governo. Nell'intervista pubblicata oggi dal quotidiano Haaretz sotto il titolo di «Explosive Material», materiale esplosivo, Burg, interpellato sul suo nuovo libro «Lenazeach et Hitler» (Vincere Hitler), invita i connazionali «raziocinanti» a espatriare: «Questa è una nazione militarista, non ce l'hanno ancora detto ma siamo tutti...
*** HAARETZ.COM Many will take credit, but this is the real reason Netanyahu delayed his annexation plan *** Benjamin Netanyahu may be a Litvak, but 17 months ago, facing a deadlocked election, he followed the advice of the Hasidic rabbi in the old story: He brought in a goat. You know the story. The Hasid goes to his rabbi to complain about his living conditions in a tiny stuffy cottage, with a complaining wife, noisy children, in-laws. The rabbi advises him to bring a goat into the house and next week the Hasid is back complaining that on top of it all, he now has a goat bleating, shitting everywhere and chewing up whatever it can get hold of. Remove the goat, the rabbi says, and you’ll finally appreciate your home as it is. Since he first brought it up in a Channel 12 interview on the eve of the first of the three consecutive elections, annexation has been Netanyahu’s goat. It has been and continues to be an excellent diversion for the Israeli electorate from the prime mi...
Mentre le proteste infuriavano di nuovo in Medio Oriente, Benjamin Netanyahu, primo ministro d’Israele, ha offerto la settimana scorso la sua valutazione della Primavera Araba. Era, ha detto, una “ondata islamica, antioccidentale, antiliberale, anti-israeliana e antidemocratica”, aggiungendo che i vicini arabi di Israele si stavano “muovendo non in avanti, bensì all’indietro”. Ci vuole una bella insolenza – o, al minimo, un’epica autoillusione – perché il primo ministro d’Israele dia in questo momento al mondo arabo lezioni di liberalismo e di democrazia. Nelle settimane recenti, una piena di misure antidemocratiche si è guadagnata il sostegno del governo di destra di Netanyahu, giustificata da una nuova dottrina della sicurezza: non vedere il male, non ascoltare il male e non parlare male di Israele. Se le proposte di legge saranno approvate i tribunali israeliani, i gruppi per i diritti umani e i media israeliani e la comunità internazionale saranno trasformati nelle tre prover...
Commenti
Posta un commento