The bigger crime is settlement existence

The latest settler crime against a Palestinian family in the village of Duma near Nablus, is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively rare.

Jewish settler extremists have been routinely committing crimes against the Palestinians, indiscriminately and with similar callousness and brutality. Over the decades, Jewish extremists have treated Palestinian life as worthless. Under the Israeli government’s eyes, and with official Israeli army protection, zealous fanatics, driven by hatred and weird ideological myths, have murdered and maimed innocent people, ransacked private Palestinian property, destroyed trees, burnt crops, demolished houses, terrorised defenceless inhabitants under occupation and, on several occasions, burned people alive.

One does not need to search hard to find hundreds of examples of such heinous Jewish extremist crimes against helpless occupied Palestinians. Baruch Goldstein, the American settler who stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in February 1994, gunning down 29 worshippers in that holy place before being overpowered, was honoured with a monument not far from the site of the crime.

In July last year, settler extremists kidnapped a young boy, Mohammad Abu Khdeir, from Shuafat in occupied East Jerusalem, tortured him and burned him alive.

Mohammad’s cousin, Tariq, a resident of Florida in the US visiting for the summer, was randomly picked up, not by settlers this time, but by official uniformed Israeli police, who were filmed brutalising, kicking and fiercely beating the 15-year old boy. Without the clandestine filming, the crime against a helpless child would have disappeared in the same manner as hundreds of its kind must have.

The crime against the Dawabsheh family in Duma is no doubt one of the ugliest, but clearly neither the first nor likely to be the last.

Masked settlers firebombed the family home early last Friday morning while they slept. Eighteen-month-old Ali was burned to death. His mother tried to rescue him and in the process suffered life-threatening burns. She, her husband and another son, four years old, are fighting for their lives.

Witnesses saw the attackers escape to a nearby Israeli settlement.

This horrific crime offers more proof, if it were needed, that there is no chance for peaceful “coexistence” between Palestinians and settlers who constantly call for “death to the Arabs” and who forcibly expel them from their land.

The condemnations as well as calls for accountability seem to be louder this time, obviously due to the cruelty demonstrated.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is joining the chorus, describing the attack as “terrorism” and promising justice.

That sounds bizarre, for neither Israeli leaders’ condemnations nor the many others worldwide seem to be genuine, let alone convincing. There were similar condemnations as well as calls for ending the settlers’ lawless and devastating behaviour before, but none proved to be of any value.

Jewish settlers act in accordance with official government policy. They are financed, protected and officially endorsed by their government. The only difference is that settlers’ excesses cause embarrassment to Israel’s leaders by exposing their hidden official agendas and unmasking their real intentions.

Most condemnations, therefore, are only meant to shield their authors, particularly those who routinely endorse Israel’s larger scale crimes — such as last summer’s massacre in Gaza — as justified “self-defence”.

As far as we know, not a single crime against the Palestinians was ever properly investigated or its perpetrators duly brought to justice. Neither will there be any consolation to the Palestinian victims in calling the latest crime as an “act of terror”.

Should we understand from this generous gesture that all the other settler crimes, the confiscation of Palestinian lands for building settlements and the ongoing eviction of Palestinian families from their villages and homes are not acts of terror? Should we understand that the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza, the mass killings and the unprecedented destruction there in many Israeli wars were not acts of terror?

There is no question that the Dawabsheh tragedy is devastating. It reminds us of how callous human beings can be in demonstrating their hatred and hostility towards others.

The settlers and the government that sent and supports them, are free to pursue their lawlessness assured of total impunity by a paralysed international system, by a complicit “international community” and by Arab states that are too busy preserving themselves or fighting each other.

But worse is the performance of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security coordination with the occupation — termed “sacred” by Mahmoud Abbas — that protects the settlers and occupation army at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.

By assuring Israel that the Palestinians would not rise to defend themselves against such aggression, by repeatedly promising Israel that there will never be a third intifada and by collaborating with Israel to crush any legitimate Palestinian resistance to the occupation, the PA stands responsible for such crimes even when perpetrated by Israeli extremist settlers.

That also applies to Arab states as well as the so-called international community, which at best condemns Israeli crimes while taking no action to stop or punish them.

It is easier for everyone to pretend that this latest atrocity is just another isolated incident, to be dealt with as such, than to recognise that it is part and parcel of a decades-long occupation that many have been complicit in supporting and tolerating and whose next brutal outrage is only a matter of time.

It is not this new settler crime that should consume attention. The settler movement in its entirety and the existence of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Arab lands should be placed at the top of any discussion agenda from now on.