Last update - 08:19 10/04/2003
People and Politics / The olive tree chain saw massacre apparently stars settlers
By Akiva Eldar
Few Israelis have ever heard of the village of Assawiyeh, not far from Route 60, about five kilometers south of Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank. Ehud Kirnis of Kibbutz Shuval and the five other peace activists who visited there last Saturday cannot get the small village out of their minds.
They especially remember the thick-trunked olive trees with the dying branches. In each of those branches they found a few small precise holes - clear signs of a drill that someone maliciously used on the trees. Krinis says none of the holes are bigger than a centimeter in diameter and there were no bullets in the trees indicating the holes were from stray bullets. Branches of trees elsewhere in the grove, whose branches were not pierced, looked healthy. Kirnis has no doubt that the Palestinian villagers did not make up the story. He is convinced that settlers are the ones with the drills, and that they poured some kind of chemical into the holes to kill off the olive trees.
At the start of the harvest at beginning of winter, when Krinis went with members of Ta'ayush to help farmers in the south Hebron area, he learned up close that there are settlers for whom the commandment of occupation includes using such means as destroying the harvests of local farmers.
For the last three years, the settlers populating the collection of illegal outposts around the settlement of Eli have been making the lives of the people of Assawiyeh miserable. Particularly good at that are the residents of the mobile homes at a place known as Hirbat a-Shuna. Apparently, they have their eyes on the Assawiyeh spring, the historical source of water for the village, and the source of its irrigation water.
They poison some trees here, they saw off some branches there, say the villagers; at night they set the trees on fire and during the day they charge at villagers in their fields, driving them off at gunpoint, sometimes with shots.
Lately, the settlers have come up with a new method to burn trees. First they saw off some branches and then they hang tires from the stumps, and set them alight. The burning tires set the tree on fire. When the villagers see the smoke, they run out to try to stop the fire, but the tires meanwhile slip down and burn the entire tree.
In the first week of February a group of settlers equipped with chain saws showed up on the land of Yasser Salah and cut down 15 trees. A few days ago, a settler claiming to be a security officer, held a gun to Salah's head and ordered him and his wife off the land and never to come back.
Ibrahim Halil, Salah's neighbor, yesterday spoke of a white Suzuki jeep that ran his relatives out of their onion fields. He says they didn't get the license plate number because they were afraid of approaching close enough for the settlers to beat them. Last month, one of the children from the village was wounded by gunshots near the elementary school. The army hasn't "given chase to the terrorists." There's nothing new to the harassment.
In June 2000, Salah complained to the police about the vandalism to his olive groves. Police took his testimony and promised to investigate.
The investigation goes on to this day, and Salah and his friends realized there's not much point wasting time at police stations. Confirmation of the uselessness of going to the police can be found in State Comptroller Report 52a, which among other things deals with the Judea and Samaria police district.
According to the report, up to October 2000, 90 percent of the investigations against Jews in the territory were closed. The comptroller noted that 75 percent of the cases were complaints against settlers and most dealt with "land disputes" with local Palestinians. Not a single one of those investigations led to an indictment.
Perhaps Minister of Social Welfare Zevulun Orlev of the National Religious Party has something to say other than what he told TV this week - we don't want to rule a foreign people.
No toy gun
There's nobody like Ariel Sharon, who knows that forming a government can be as difficult and painful as pulling a tooth. But Sharon also knows that anything is possible when forming a government, and that an idea that two months ago would sound like a bad joke, like Silvan Shalom being received at the White House, and Benjamin Netanyahu clashing with Amir Peretz, has a way of seeming perfectly natural today.
The same holds for the Palestinian government, where the seemingly impossible replacement of Arafat's Hanni al-Hassan by Mohammed Dahlan as interior minister could yet happen. The apparent compromise will have Dahlan sharing the office with Gen. Nasser Yusuf, while Hassan makes do with a junior portfolio along the lines of "minister for regional development."
According to the compromise, in the initial stages, Arafat would still be responsible for the Palestinian general security services.
Abu Mazen yesterday asked for another two weeks before he presents his cabinet to the Palestinian Legislative Council. The top echelons of the PA know that Abu Mazen means every word when he says that if he can't have the government he wants, he'll be happy to return the mandate to form a government to the rais. That's not a threat with a toy gun.
Even Abu Mazen's greatest rivals don't want to let Arafat take away their only hope. Maybe that's why the reports coming from Ramallah about the complications Abu Mazen is facing putting together his new government are not making much of an impression in Jerusalem.
Sharon and his advisers are getting ready for the day after the war over the Palestinian ministries. According to all the signs, including initial reports from the Bush-Blair Belfast summit, that's the day the road map will appear in public.
Visitors to Sharon's office discovered signs of panic in Dov Weisglass' office. Over the past few months, Weisglass calmed everyone down by saying that his friend, U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice would never let the president impose anything on Jerusalem the government could not handle, like freezing settlements, dismantling outposts, the term "independent" in reference to Palestinian state, or an accelerated timetable.
Now the scuttlebutt in Sharon's kitchen is that Condi betrayed them. Some are suggesting her name be added to Colin Powell's as people the Jewish-Christian lobby in Washington should target.
Lieberman's road
The discomfort about the plans to publish the road map doesn't mean there's fear President Bush will actually make Sharon implement it. It might be true that Silvan Shalom told the president the Palestinians have to make the first step, and the president said they already have by naming Abu Mazen as prime minister.
But that's still a long way to clashing publicly with Sharon.
Senior officials in the Foreign Ministry say the level of envoy the Americans send to the region is the best evidence of the White House's involvement in the process. The ministry can't remember the last time any presidential envoy visited. Richard Ardman, meant to head the American inspectors of the road map implementation, serves as head of a department subservient to William Burns, one of Powell's many assistant secretaries of state.
So far, everything points to the administration not departing from the principle that Israel does not need to take any serious step until Abu Mazen starts arresting Hamas leaders.
And while Powell sends U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer to lodge a protest over the new separation fence's including Ariel on its western side, the work is going on full steam ahead to build a new road to Nokdim, at the cost of NIS 120 million.
American diplomats who visited the scene stood open-mouthed at the sight of Lieberman Road, named for Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who lives in the settlement. The route is tearing up entire Palestinian villages, destroying the livelihood of hundreds of families.
M. - a senior officer for Palestinian affairs in the Shin Bet - said again and again over recent months that the demand the PA arrest wanted men while Israel consolidates its occupation and offers nothing in return is like putting obstacles in front of a blind man.
M. realized that, in the best of cases, his warnings were falling on sealed ears, so he has decided to quit the service.
Referee's whistle
According to people who met with Joschke Fischer over the past few days in Jerusalem, the German foreign minister's behavior has changed. Apparently, the conflict with the U.S. and the rapid American military decision in Iraq did something to the visitor's self-confidence - and to his certainty that Bush will force Sharon to implement the road map. Either way, he regards as extremely important the fact the U.S. has taken the referee's whistle out of Sharon's mouth.
Fischer said that giving the role of the referee in regard to the Palestinian security services operations to the Quartet's inspection mechanism is the most important achievement of the road map. He warned everyone he met that if Israel tries to rule out the Europeans with a red card, it could pay a heavy price for it.
Fischer, the leader of the German Green Party, was not particularly enthusiastic about Sharon's coalition partners. He barely remembered Tommy Lapid's name. On Tuesday, meeting Labor Party Chairman Anmram Mitzna, he asked if the road map would bring Labor into the government.
Mitzna reiterated that "Labor will support from outside the coalition" any government that cooperates with peace initiatives. But suddenly he blurted out, "We may be there." One of his advisers volunteered that if Sharon proposes a Likud-Shinui-Labor government that promises to get out of Gaza, dismantle illegal outposts and implement the road map, Mitzna won't reject it.
The Peace Coalition isn't waiting for Sharon to decide on the map. On Sunday, there was a meeting at a-Ram in Jerusalem between Israeli peace activists led by Yossi Beilin and their counterparts on the Palestinian side, led by Yasser Abed Rabbo.
They decided unanimously to back the road map and to campaign for its dissemination throughout the territories and Israel. That took place only three days after MK Yossi Sarid, the former Meretz chairman, surprised his parters in the party when he said Meretz "should stop reacting to everything, take a breath of air, and let the public digest the election results."