The Countersettlement

Last Friday 200 Palestinians [2] made their way to the top of the hill east of Al Zaim, a village near Jerusalem, in a zone known as E1, which the Israeli government has designated for Israeli settlements. Setting up 20 tents amid boulders and balding patches of grass, they announced the establishment of the village of Bab al-Shams [3] (Gate of the Sun, in Arabic) “by order of the people, without permission from the occupation, or any other body.”

“This land is ours [4],” they declared, “as is the right to build on it.”

So that its plan would not be foiled by the Israeli Army, the group, which includes activists from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee [5], had announced it would hold an event in Jericho on Jan. 10-13; it revealed its real destination, and purpose, to supporters only at the last minute.

It was a short-lived effort: After camping out for two days in freezing weather, on Sunday morning the protesters were removed [6] by 500 Israeli police officers. But as a rare attempt by Palestinians to claim land by settling it — the way some Israelis have long been doing — the Bab al-Shams operation was a breakthrough. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Palestinians have rarely taken such daring action. Why not? And why do so now?

On Tuesday in Ramallah, I put these questions to a young taxi driver from Nilin, a village northwest of Jerusalem where every week for almost a decade there have been nonviolent demonstrations against Israel’s efforts to build its security fence, a.k.a. annexation wall, on village land. In the past, he explained, Palestinians “could only think in terms of armed resistance as a means of ending the occupation.” Now, “they believe it can be done through different tactics.”

He did not participate in the Bab al-Shams operation, but other residents of Nilin did. “It was not a simple matter to plan this new initiative, find the right location, bring the material to the site — the poles, the canvas, all carefully measured — without arousing the suspicion of the Israeli side,” he said.

Of course, but why not try something like this sooner?

After a pause he ventured, “Perhaps because they now realize more than ever the failure of the negotiations and the political leadership in resolving the conflict.”

Could things really be changing? I wondered, and as I did I remembered the 1980 prediction by Ariel Sharon, then the minister of agriculture, that by building Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Israel was “going to leave an entirely different map of the country [7] that it will be impossible to ignore.”

The Israeli government has been swift and thorough in implementing this goal. One of its strategies, starting in the late 1970s, has been to reclassify areas of the West Bank as “state land” and make that available to Jewish settlements. By the late 1980s, it had drawn up plans restricting the expansion of Palestinian towns and villages. Any construction beyond the designated areas would be immediately demolished by the Israeli Army [8].

Then came the Oslo Accords, which divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority was given some jurisdiction over Areas A and B; Area C, amounting to 60 percent of the West Bank [pdf [14]], was placed under exclusive Israeli control. This helped create the impression among Israelis that settlers in Area C would be safe from eviction because under any final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians the zone would be fully annexed to Israel. Since the beginning of the occupation, 120 settlements [15] sanctioned by the Israeli government and 99 unofficial outposts have been erected in the West Bank.

Yet while no Palestinian would hesitate to describe that territory as Palestinian land unlawfully occupied by Israel, over the past two decades the Palestinian people have taken little concrete action to claim it and inhabit it. It’s as though Sharon’s prediction was realized: Palestinians seem to have internalized the boundaries set by Israel, the very boundaries they oppose.

Seen against this historical background, the momentary establishment of Bab al-Shams last Friday was more than a defiant stunt. Those 200 Palestinians who camped out in the cold on a hill claimed by Israel weren’t just challenging facts on the ground. They were challenging their own consciousness.