The world is no longer playing to the tune of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not even his trusted friends. The Europeans — French, Swedish, Germans and British — are livid, and the Americans under their new President Donald Trump are washing their hands and shying away from previous “chummy” commitments they made to Israel.
That’s why Israel may have found itself to be walking a tightrope when it declared to the world that it is establishing a brand new Israeli colony deep in the throes of the West Bank — an occupied area it is supposed to be giving up under the long-forgotten Madrid peace conference and the Oslo peace process that once gave a glimmer of hope to Palestinian determination and independence.
At a stroke of a pen, and against international law, conventions and commitments, the last being the December 2016 UN Security Council decision declaring Israeli colonies illegal, Netanyahu dropped his bombshell as if this was the most natural thing in the world.
Well excuse me, Mr Netanyahu, I know the peace process has long been comatose mainly thanks to you, but what about the deals Israel signed with the Palestinians and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in front of all prodigious dignitaries, politicians and American administration officials who could have sworn they were witnesses to deals signed for a modicum of understanding towards peace?
Are the 1993 Declaration of Principles and the accords made afterward water under the bridge or to use a better phrase water off a duck’s back? Indeed, are they supposed to be swept under the carpet simply because the ruling Likud coalition government and its lunatic fringe in Israel no longer want even to pretend there is an iota of a peace process, no matter how cosmetic it has become, and are now prepared for all-out grab of territories under the very noses of the international community?
The Israelis have not stopped building in the occupied territories, even when they handed some parts of the land to the Palestinian Authority. Although they were monitored by the world and United Nations, they never stopped building within the 130-odd colonies that straddle the West Bank. Now the Jewish population stands at 400,000-plus colonists on the West Bank, with 200,000 in occupied East Jerusalem, amid a Palestinian population of 2.8 million and one can be sure the figure will continue to go up.
The new development is, of course, more daring and scathing. This is the first colony created from scratch since 1992, a year after the beleaguered peace process started. It is a worrying development because it is sending all the wrong signals to the Palestinians and international community that the Likud government will do whatever it takes to boost the Israeli population even if it is armed to the teeth and secured by the presence of an Israeli army of tanks and gunships. The world is being told rather in the usual brash style characteristic of Netanyahu that the new colony will not only cater for 40 Jewish families, who, and surprisingly, were told to move by an Israeli court order that ruled in favour of the Palestinian landowner whose land they were living on.
Business as usual for colonists
The new colony will also have 2,000 more housing units, making it business as usual for colonists to ride roughshod on all of the West Bank territories.
The new colony, already christened as ‘Emik Shilo’ — because it is adjacent to the existing Shilo colony on the Nablus-Ramallah Road, also on confiscated land taken by the Israeli army under the pretext of security and carved out of the Palestinian villages of Qariout, Al Mughayer, Jaloud, Tarsmeha and Sinjal — means the insidious Israeli land grab is continuing.
It was contained “vertically” in the past within expanding Israeli illegal colonies. Now the dare is to expand “horizontally” by building more Jewish colonies.
This is another watershed for the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, the tip of a very large iceberg. It’s why many are putting their hands on their hearts once again, including the Americans. If anyone had an inclination that one day there might be a peace process leading to a two-state (Israeli and Palestinian) solution, this is quickly evaporating as a pipe-dream.
The new ‘Emik Shilo’ colony is significant because of the constant re-routing of the Palestinian areas, lands and territories according to Israeli whims.
It would not be an understatement to say Trump initially may have encouraged the bombastic, erstwhile, blatant Israeli prime minister. But he does not need any prodding or encouragement for Netanyahu knows what he wants as a long-time Israeli prime who has kept himself in power by continuing to pander to the Israeli right-wing religious psyche.
Indeed this is what is troubling the Israeli Peace Now movement which monitors Israeli colonies on the West Bank: they feel “Netanyahu is held captive by the colonists and [simply] chooses his political survival over the interest of Israel” moving “Palestinians and Israelis toward apartheid”.
Netanyahu has already snubbed the US president through his move to establish the new colony, especially since the new man at the White House had already advised the Israeli government to slow down the construction process. It seemed Israel surprised everyone, unwilling to budge on its real feelings with the new colony being proof of the pudding.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.
