August 17 2005

Press release:

The assassination of the Palestinian workers at Shilo settlement is another crime in the long list of settlers’ violence. The assassin settler was probably angry about the Gaza pull out and hoped to impede it.

The struggle surrounding the disengagement created, undoubtedly, a deep breach in the Israeli society, causing pain to some Israelis. However, the victims of the internal Israeli-Jewish struggle surrounding the unilateral disengagement are, surprisingly, Palestinian: Palestinian citizens of Israel at Shfar’am and Palestinians under occupation at Shilo. This strange phenomenon, unnoticed by the mainstream Israeli media, portrays the racist face of the Israeli society. When settlers and the military embrace each other and weep together in front of T.V. cameras, when settlers and their supporters scream the racist slogan “Jews do not expel Jews” – their own “crazy” extremists shoot Arabs.

In this moment of profound identification of the Israeli media with the evacuated owners of fancy villas and the exploiters of Thai and Palestinian workers at Gaza, it is worth remembering that the settlements are the main obstacle for any possible peace agreement. The settlements are products of dispossession of Palestinian population from its land, and a continuous source of violence, harassment and plunder towards their neighbors.

There is no, and there cannot be, peace with settlements.