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29 October 2010
By
Jonathan Cook As
US-sponsored peace talks have stalled over the issue
of settlements, Israel's national police force has
revealed that it is turning to the very same illegal
communities in its first-ever drive to recruit
officers from among the settlers. The
special officer training course, which
is chiefly aimed at discharged combat soldiers,
includes seven months of religious studies in an
extremist West Bank
settlement. The
programme has provoked widespread concern among
Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of
the population. "The
police have already repeatedly demonstrated their
hostility to Palestinian citizens, but this move
proves that the authorities want to extend and deepen
our oppression," said Jafar Farah, the director of
Mossawa, an advocacy centre for the Palestinian
minority. "Is it
really credible that these religious extremists who
have been educated to hate Palestinians in the
West Bank are going to
behave differently when they police our communities
inside Israel?" The
first 35 cadets in the officer-training programme --
known as "Believe in the police" -- are to start their
studies next month. More than 300 settlers are
reported to have expressed an interest in the course
so far. The
police command is said to have taken up the idea,
originally proposed by right-wing groups, in the hope
of reversing years of declining recruitment levels
that have led to a national shortage of officers. Cadets
will study for three and a half years, mostly at Haifa
University in Israel, at the end of which they will be
awarded a degree and the rank of officer. But
their studies also include seven months in a religious
seminary in a small extremist settlement, Elisha, deep
in the West Bank. Although all the settlements are
illegal under international law, Elisha is one of
dozens of wildcat settlements also illegal under
Israeli law.
Gershom Gorenberg,
an expert on the religious settlers, said Israel's
"future police commanders" would graduate from the
course after an early lesson in law-breaking.
Yonatan Chetboun, the head of the Raananim movement, a
right-wing group overseeing the programme, described
to Olam Katan, a newspaper popular with the religious
community, one way the organisers might win over
settlers to a career in the police. He
said taking potential recruits on night-time patrols
of Ramle and Lod -- Israeli towns notorious for
containing deprived, crime-ridden Palestinian
neighbourhoods -- would quickly open their eyes to one
of "the most meaningful national issues". The
police spokesman was not available for comment. A team
of rabbis has been appointed to resolve potential
conflicts between the settlers' religious principles
and their police duties, which could involve
desecrating the sabbath and dealing with "immodest"
women. A
right-wing settler activist, Hor Nizri, who has
clashed with the police in the past over the
evacuation of settlements, has been put in charge of
recruiting young settlers. He
told the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper that the
programme was "a historic reconciliation", adding: "We
want to fill the ranks of the police as we fill the
ranks of the army." His
comments have sparked concern among Palestinian groups
inside Israel that the programme is the first phase of
an attempted settler "takeover" of the police,
replicating their growing dominance of sections of the
army. The
first official figures on the number of settlers in
the Israeli military, released last month, show their
massive over-representation in combat units. About a
third of all officers in such units were settlers, up
from only 2.5 per cent in 1990. The
police hope that a career in the force will be
attractive to many of the settlers after they are
discharged.
However, Mr Farah said there was plenty of evidence
that religious settlers were becoming ever more
extreme in their hostility towards Palestinians. He
pointed to the growing influence of extremist rabbis
in promoting anti-Palestinian views. Over
the summer, two prominent rabbis from the settlement
of Yitzhar, near Nablus, were questioned on suspicion
of incitement after publishing a book, The King's
Torah, in which they sanctioned the killing of
non-Jews, including children. In one passage, the
authors write: "There is justification for killing
babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm
us." The
book has been endorsed by a number of senior rabbis in
the settlements.
Similar sentiments have been gaining a foothold among
army rabbis. Early
last year, in the immediate wake of Israel's
three-week operation in Gaza, it was revealed that the
army rabbinate had handed out a booklet to combat
soldiers about to enter Gaza calling their attack ‘a
war on murderers' and warning them against
"surrendering a single millimetre" of territory. Some
1,400 Palestinians were killed in the attack,
including hundreds of women and children. The
Palestinian minority's relations with the police are
already marked by deep distrust, following the killing
of 13 unarmed demonstrators and the wounding of
hundreds more in 2000, at the start of the
second intifada. A
subsequent state commission of inquiry accused the
police command of viewing the minority as "an enemy". Mr
Farah also pointed to the unexplained deaths of 36
Palestinian citizens by the police over the past
decade. In only two cases have
police officers been convicted. Some Israeli observers have
expressed concern that the settlers' greater influence
on the police could also make implementing the
dismantlement of West Bank settlements much harder in
any future peace deal. Mr
Gorenberg said previous evacuations, including the
2005 withdrawal from Gaza, had been handled chiefly by
the police because so many army units were dominated
by settlers. The police, he added, "could acquire the
same weakness".
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel.
His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations:
Iraq,
Iran
and the Plan to Remake the
Middle East"
(Pluto
Press) and "Disappearing Palestine:
Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is
www.jkcook.net
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