"Price tag": West Bank settlers' terrorizing of Palestinians to deter Israeli government law enforcement.

• Author: Nir, Ori
• Position: International Law in Crisis

1. PREFACE AND SUMMARY II. INCEPTION OF PRICE TAG III. THE EVOLUTION OF PRICE TAG: FROM UNPOPULAR ANTI-GOVERNMENT HIGH-PROFILE RESISTANCE TO POPULAR ANTI-PALESTINIAN LOW-INTENSITY TERRORISM IV. CONCLUSION I. PREFACE AND SUMMARY

   "Price Tag," also known as "Arvut Hadadit" (Mutual Responsibility), is a set of violent tactics employed by national-religious Israeli settlers in the West Bank to deter Israeli law enforcement authorities from removing illegally-built structures from West Bank settlements. (1) The tactics employed include attacks on Palestinians and their property, as well as attacks on Israeli military and police officers. These tactics are designed to obstruct and deter law enforcement inside settlements, but their ultimate goal is to deter Israeli leaders from implementing a possible future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that entails removing Israeli settlements from the West Bank.

   This essay describes how a strategy that started as a reaction to a sense of powerlessness and ineptness morphed from an unpopular form of high-profile, anti-government resistance into a popular--and very effective--low-intensity anti-Palestinian terrorism campaign.

   By tweaking their tactics and using them in a determined yet controlled manner, its perpetrators--young militant national-religious Jewish settlers in the West Bank--have been successful in achieving two major objectives: first, they have deterred Israeli authorities from enforcing the law and demolishing illegally-constructed buildings in West Bank settlements; second, they have done so without alienating an overwhelming majority of Israelis.

   This essay documents the success of a form of terrorism unique in Western experience: politically-motivated violence directed against a foe, with the primary purpose of deterring the terrorists' own government from taking actions against their community.

2. INCEPTION OF PRICE TAG

   The adoption of the "Price Tag" policy by settlers is rooted in a trauma experienced by the settler movement in 2005: Israel's August 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from four northern West Bank settlements. (2) Before explaining the significance of that trauma, some background is necessary to understand who the players are and the political context in which they have acted.

   The West Bank and the Gaza Strip came under Israeli military occupation in 1967, following the Six Day War. (3) The West Bank is today home to some 2.5 million Palestinians and 305,000 Israeli settlers. (4) The settlers live in 121 officially recognized settlements (not including East Jerusalem). (5) These settlements are officially recognized, in the sense that they were constructed with Israeli government authorization. Most of the world's governments regard all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as illegal. (6) In addition to these "recognized" settlements, some settlers live in about one hundred illegal (under Israeli law) "outposts." (7) These are small communities built without Israeli government approval.

   The Gaza Strip is home to over 1,650,000 Palestinians. (8) Until 2005, there were also 8,600 Israeli settlers living in twenty-one settlements in the Gaza Strip. (9) In September 2005, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a sweeping, historical campaign to unilaterally "disengage" from the Gaza Strip. (10) He withdrew all of the Israeli settlers and all of Israel's military installations from the Strip. In addition, the Sharon government removed four small settlements in the northern West Bank. Today, Sharon is remembered as the Israeli leader who once (in the 1980s and 1990s) was the chief sponsor and advocate of the settlement enterprise, and then later became the first Israeli leader to start its dismantlement.

   In 2003, Israel accepted the U.S.-sponsored "Road Map" plan to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The plan stipulated that all Israeli illegal outposts that were constructed after 2001 would be promptly dismantled. In 2005, the government passed a resolution stating that Israel was committed to dismantling these outposts. (11) As the U.S. government made efforts to resume peace negotiations under Presidents Bush and Obama, it put pressure on three successive Israeli governments (led by Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, respectively) to make good on Israel's Road Map commitment. Indeed, at several points since 2005, ruling Israeli governments issued demolition orders against illegally-built structures in settlements and outposts, and moved to implement them.

   This essay discusses the reaction of a particular segment of the settlers' population to the demolitions and to threats of demolition. Ideologically-committed, messianic, and national-religious in nature, this segment mainly inhabits settlements deep inside the West Bank. Unlike the bulk of the settlers, who live in suburban communities adjacent to population centers inside Israel because of the West Bank's economic and "quality of life" benefits, the so-called "ideological settlers" tend to live in smaller settlements, in and around biblically significant landmarks. The ideological settlers see themselves as fulfilling a religious edict. This essay will address this segment of the settlers' population. For the sake of simplicity, this essay will refer to "ideological settlers" simply as "the settlers."

   Violent attacks by the settlers against West Bank Palestinians are not a new phenomenon. Deadly Palestinian attacks against the settlers are not new either. Violent friction has always existed between these populations, who co-exist in an environment of military occupation. What is new--and is the focus of this paper--is the use of violence by the settlers not only to influence the behavior of the Palestinians but also, chiefly, to influence the behavior of the Israeli government.

   Israel's August 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank, so-called "unilateral disengagement," or "Gaza disengagement" (12) traumatized the settlers in several ways:

   * The settlers' public perception and self-perception as a paper tiger: The eviction of settlers from Gaza--about 8,500 people--lasted eight days, and was carried out with mild resistance by the settlers. It was anticlimactic. (13) It followed a protest campaign by settlers and their sympathizers inside Israel that lasted ten months, and included mass demonstrations and two murderous attacks by Israeli Jewish terrorists against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, all in an attempt to derail the government's disengagement plan. (14) The settlers resisted the eviction from Gaza, but failed to mobilize a mass civil disobedience campaign or a broad conscientious objection campaign among Israeli soldiers. Israeli law enforcement authorities were successful in quickly and efficiently evicting the settlers and in dismantling the settlements in Gaza, a feat that deeply alarmed the settlers. They were concerned that the precedent would encourage Israeli leaders to later withdraw from most--if not all--of the West Bank.

   * The settlers' failure to capture the hearts and minds of most Israelis: At the time of its implementation, the disengagement was popular. Almost two-thirds of Israelis supported it. (15) Of those who did not, only a minority opposed it and did so on the ideological grounds that portions of the Land of Israel should not be compromised.

   * A generational rift between the settlers' older "traditional" leadership and the young...