A Balcony Over Jerusalem

by John Lyons

  Known in Hebrew as ‘Mista’arvim’, these units include the Dovdevan, who dress as Palestinians. Often they are Sephardic Jews or Druze, both of whom speak Arabic. They blend in with protesters, sometimes even going to Friday prayers. Once a protest starts, they pounce on the Palestinians. Part of their training is to go from complete calm to complete violence within seconds. Because the Dovdevan go into crowds of protesting Palestinians, Israel gives them Rishaon laheshel – licence to kill. To minimise the risk of infiltration, Palestinians now insist that those who join protests tie their shirts above their waists to reveal they are carrying no weapons.

  Well-placed sources say that Israeli security services recruit from Palestinian crime groups. They sometimes approach crime gangs and tell them they are aware of their activities but will not prosecute them on two conditions: that they never sell drugs to Jewish Israelis and that they become informers for Shin Bet.

  It was 8 September 2014, and as I walked up several flights of stairs in an old Bauhaus-style building in Tel Aviv, I felt enormous excitement. It’s a sensation that – every so often – journalism presented. I didn’t know who I was about to meet but what I did know was that the people waiting in the apartment had been working at the heart of Israel’s military intelligence. They knew many of the country’s deepest secrets. And they were prepared to talk to me.

  The meeting had been months in the making. The process began when an Israeli military contact came to our apartment – he wanted to meet privately. He explained that there could soon be major defections from Israel’s most elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the US National Security Agency. Unit 8200’s main role, he said, was electronic surveillance of the 2.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank to monitor any security threats and to gather material that could be used to blackmail them into becoming informants.

  Israel’s electronic capability is brilliant. Israeli journalist Shimon Shiffer gave an insight into it when he recalled a visit to the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv. ‘Trying to impress me with the depth of the intelligence blanket that covers Gaza, an aide to the minister opened a map on a screen and offered me a tour of a specific street in Khan Yunis,’ Shiffer wrote. ‘In seconds, we had a close-up view of the goings-on in the street.’

  The contact who visited our apartment stressed that the defectors would be branded as enemies of Israel and might even be sent to jail. He said that in a couple of months a selected group of journalists would be given access to some of the defectors and I would be one of them.

  Months went by. Finally, I found myself walking up four levels in this old apartment building. My contact introduced me to four men – reservists from Unit 8200. They had put their names to a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu signed by 43 members of the unit. But with us they asked to be known as Nadav, ‘A’, Daniel, and the fourth said he would prefer not to speak.

  Before telling us what their letter concerned, they gave us some background to their action. ‘We know what’s happening inside,’ said Nadav. ‘We’ve been there and we are the ones who did those things. We are in favour of Israel defending itself. However, the occupation is a choice; when it lasts for almost 50 years it’s not self-defence.’

  Daniel said: ‘We realise the occupation is detrimental to the safety of Israel because it’s perpetuating a cycle of violence. We were a part of this cycle of violence and we think it would be better for both Palestinians and Israelis if this situation, this occupation, would end.’

  Aspects of 8200’s operations that disturbed several of the letter’s signatories were the use of blackmail against gays or those who needed medical treatment for their children. Palestinian society, whether Muslim or Christian, is conservative, and homosexuality is something people often try to hide. One officer said: ‘If you’re homosexual and know someone who knows a wanted person – and we need to know about it – Israel will make your life miserable. If you need emergency medical treatment in Israel, the West Bank or abroad – we searched for you. The State of Israel will allow you to die before we let you leave for treatment without giving information on your wanted cousin.’

  One-third of Unit 8200 were women and it had a large number of gay officers who each year held a concert where one of the men is crowned ‘Miss 8200’. The targeting of gay Palestinians by the unit added to the anger that many of the officers felt. Nadav said: ‘An 18-year-old soldier sitting in the intelligence forces can say who is a target and who is not a target. In this way every Palestinian basically can be a target … Every country has its military intelligence and it’s legitimate because it’s against other countries. But the Palestinians do not have a country. They are under our military regime. It’s not another country that can protect itself. They’re like citizens of Israel except with no rights like the citizens of Israel.’

  According to one of the defectors, there is no limit on the information-gathering; Israel’s aim is to strengthen its grasp on ‘every aspect of Palestinian life’.

  The use of Palestinian informants is a daily fact of the occupation, said AFP journalist Philippe Agret. ‘I don’t like to make a moral judgment on collaborators – I would not, as a French person who knows French history. Palestinians have been under occupation since 1967. It’s a tragic story and a human story: you live in Gaza, you send your wife to the hospital and she’s going to die because she has cancer, and you’re asked to collaborate with Israel if you want her to be treated in Israel. It’s part of a daily, grim reality. It’s a major story.’

  The most secret – and feared – of Israel’s intelligence machines is Mossad. Its motto says: ‘By way of deception, thou shalt do war.’

  The most extensive information about Mossad has come from Victor Ostrovsky, who worked as a secret agent for four years but became disillusioned. In By Way of Deception he wrote:

  The [first] intifada and resultant breakdown of moral order and humanity are a direct result of the kind of megalomania that characterizes the operation of the Mossad … This thing is uncontrollable. In Israel, they’re still beating Palestinians, and [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Shamir says, ‘They’re making us become cruel. They’re forcing us to hit children. Aren’t they terrible?’ This is what happens after years and years of secrecy; of ‘we’re right, let’s be right, no matter what’; of keeping the officials deliberately misinformed; of justifying violence and inhumanity through deceit, or, as the Mossad logo says: ‘by way of deception.’ It’s a disease that began with the Mossad and has spread through government and down through much of Israeli society … The strongest curse inside the Mossad that one katsa [agent] can throw at another is the simple wish: ‘May I read about you in the paper.’ It might be the only way to turn things around.12

  The longevity of Israel’s occupation could not have been achieved without settlers.

  In a settlement deep inside the West Bank, Daniella Weiss is Queen of Greater Israel. In December 2012 this matriarch of the settlements made Sylvie and me a cup of tea and gave us a tour of her home and its collection of Judaica – this home could have been on the leafy north shore of Sydney.

  But when the conversation turned to Palestinians, her warmth evaporated. She had a clear message for Palestinians: you will never have your own State.

  Daniella Weiss had been one of Israel’s first settlers. In the early 1970s, she and her husband had moved to Kedumim in the West Bank, where they put up tents on Palestinian land. By the time their children were born they’d put up caravans and eventually they built a permanent brick home. The local Palestinians were not game to try to force them off, as the Israeli Army was always close by to intervene should the Weisses call for it.

  As well as having an army on call, Daniella Weiss developed a close relationship with Ariel Sharon, then Minister of Housing. She told us: ‘With my work with Ariel Sharon, there was a clear understanding, a very clear planning of spreading the communities, the Jewish communities, in the way that there will be no option for a Palestinian State in Judea a
nd Samaria.’

  For Daniella Weiss, the vote by the United Nations in 1947 to divide Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab State was irrelevant. ‘We came to a land where there were other people living, but this land was promised to the Jewish nation by God,’ she said. ‘And if the Palestinians behave themselves then they can stay. As long as they are good guests. This is the only way I see it, so those who accept it live nicely. Those who do not accept it encounter confrontations.’

  We asked Weiss, as a grandmother, what message she had for young Palestinians. ‘It’s true that in the course of history Arabs came to this area from all over, but the promise of God is more important than the changes in history and the political changes. That is why you have to put it deep, deep into your mind, that you do not have any chance whatsoever in any point of history, neither you nor any of your offspring, to ever have an independent State of your own here.’

  She continued: ‘The settler leadership should not by any means criticise any element of settler behaviour, no matter how extreme it is. The Arabs keep threatening our lives every day and every night. I very much believe in creating a situation where the Arabs are afraid of what we do.’

  In February 2014, after Sylvie and I had done two years of research, I would present a report for the ABC’s Four Corners, on the trials of Palestinian children in the Israeli military court in the West Bank. It would be my use of Daniella Weiss in that report that most angered the Israeli lobby in Australia. To have an Israeli saying that the settlements had been deliberately planned to ensure there could be no Palestinian State was far more confronting for the lobby than to have an Australian lawyer, Gerard Horton, talking about abuses by the Israeli Army of Palestinian children.

  Weiss took Sylvie and me to visit the Hilltop Youth, a group of Jewish youth who target a hilltop or piece of land – often privately owned by Palestinians – and, heavily armed, take it over. Like Daniella Weiss, they believe they are entitled to take such land because of a biblical mandate from God. The owners of the land know that if they try to take it back they are likely to be met with gunfire. The Hilltop Youth are usually armed, but if not they know that they can call on the army should they get into a confrontation. Videos abound in which the Hilltop Youth attack Palestinians while soldiers stand by.

  In the West Bank, the settlers have become the law enforcers. When you spend time with people out here – both Israeli settlers and Palestinians – it becomes clear that the settlers are in total control. Each settlement has a security committee that is able to summon the army at any time. Former Israeli soldiers say these committees are able to give orders to the army. Over several months in late 2013, I researched a case in which one complaint from a settler in Hebron led to the arrest of a five-year-old Palestinian boy by six soldiers. When the boy’s father intervened – peacefully – the soldiers blindfolded him. The settler had been able to activate the army within minutes of one unsubstantiated allegation that the boy had thrown a stone.

  Once a small settlement is established the army will often come and set up a ‘monitoring point’ and have two or three soldiers staying there, and if it becomes big enough, they will form a small army base. This suits the settlers because they are being returned the land they claim God gave them; it suits the army because it gives them more bases throughout the Palestinian Territories and it means that they can enforce the occupation and have army bases ‘looking out’ across Jordan and towards the Arab world should they come under attack.

  Given the power of the settlers, it would be a brave, or naïve, soldier who countermanded a settler security chief. ‘I saw one settler threatening a colonel in the Israeli army,’ Israeli journalist Gideon Levy told me. ‘The settler stood with a gun and told the colonel, “If you do one more step I’m shooting you,” and the colonel went away.’

  In addition, settlers are often armed with weapons the army gives them; this is official Israeli policy if settlers say they feel threatened. Sylvie and I visited a firing range attached to the settlement of Gush Etzion where Israelis are trained in how to use hand and machine guns. A significant number of settlers has become heavily armed gangsters who roam the West Bank taking over Palestinian houses and destroying property and – sometimes – lives.

  Many of the settlers I spoke to had come from the US originally. They loved the pioneer spirit, they were fanatical about how God had ‘given’ them this land, and they felt they had an obligation to take it and protect it.

  But why are the settlers so powerful? Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said: ‘They are the only group in society which is ready to do something for collective reasons. There’s no other group in Israeli society today which is ready to sacrifice, to fight for something collective. Israel is totally individualistic now – people here would not go on the street for anything. Settlers would. They care about something. This must be appreciated – they are fighting for an idea. From day one they were very powerful. They can blackmail any government here.’

  On 25 February 1994, US-born doctor Baruch Goldstein left his settlement of Kiryat Arba and drove to nearby Hebron, where he entered the Ibrahimi mosque and shot dead 29 people as they prayed. Goldstein’s tomb carries the epitaph ‘He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land. His hands are clean and his heart good.’ In 1999, the Israeli Government passed a law outlawing monuments to terrorists. After pressure to dismantle Goldstein’s tomb, the army took down the shrine but left the tombstone. Israel’s District Court ruled that ‘lauding’ Goldstein does not constitute incitement. The BBC covered the sixth anniversary of Goldstein’s massacre, when settlers dressed up as Goldstein, wearing doctors’ coats and fake beards.13

  In this war for land, the settlers are the advance unit. The most common way that Israel takes Palestinian land is for armed settlers to take it in the first instance. Because Palestinians are not allowed to carry weapons, the land is taken relatively easily. If a settler kills a Palestinian, they will not be prosecuted if they say that they believed they were in danger. The only complication is if someone captures it on video and it is clear the settler killed the Palestinian in cold blood – though, based on statistics, the settler still has a high chance of being found not guilty. Data from the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din indicates that there is only a 1.9 per cent chance that a complaint filed by a Palestinian will result in a conviction of the perpetrators.14

  Yehuda Shaul is a former Israeli Army commander who founded human rights group Breaking the Silence, which has collected the testimonies of more than 1000 current and former Israeli combat soldiers. ‘The Israeli occupation of the West Bank has certain checks and balances,’ Shaul told me:

  but there is one thing about which Israel is ruthless and for which there are no checks and balances: land. With everything else there are boundaries. Today, rather than the assumption being that it is Palestinian land and Israel needs to prove a claim, it is the exact opposite: the assumption is that it is Israel’s land and Palestinians are the ones who have to prove it is their land. This is the way it works: a Palestinian comes to cultivate his land and the settlers who have moved in come and beat him up. There is no point calling the army or police because you know which side they will support. Then the Palestinian comes back to try again to work his land, and he gets beaten up again. Without farming he has no money so finally, after a number of beatings, he decides to leave and move to the closest town, Yatta, to look for a job. He moves on with his life, which means moving off the land. The settlers then control the land with no opposition from the owners.

  The settlers then farm the land for 10 years – which means that legally it becomes theirs. As Yehuda Shaul told me: ‘The less land the Palestinians have to farm means the less chance they have of surviving.’

  When their land is taken, Palestinians often appeal to the Israeli Army. The army often tells the Palestinians that it is not up to them, but the Supreme Court, to decide the ownership. Appeals to the Supreme Court can take up to 15 years, during which time
settlers build houses, schools and synagogues on the land. Once enough time has elapsed, Israeli authorities sometimes say it is too late to reverse the decision. Even if the Supreme Court makes a ruling that it is private Palestinian land, the army will not enforce that or, if it does, the settlers ignore the ruling. It surprised me how often that happened. The Palestinians rarely get their land back. This is a pattern that has been occurring since Israel began its occupation in 1967.

  Israel uses a range of laws and devices to take private Palestinian land. One of these is to apply a ‘state of emergency’ law. Until I lived in Israel, I had no idea that it was still operating under a state of emergency The law is renewed by the Knesset every three or six months, and gives it almost total power regarding Palestinians.

  The legislation is called the Defence (Emergency) Regulations and began under the British Mandate in 1945. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, it means the Israeli Army can imprison someone indefinitely, demolish and seal homes, impose indefinite curfews and deport residents. In 2011, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee extended the powers to cover enterprises by Palestinians including ice-cream production, selling tickets for artistic performances and conducting amniocentesis tests for pregnant women – such enterprises can be shut down.

  One emergency power that has had an enormous impact on Palestinians is the Absentee Property law. Award-winning British journalist Jonathan Cook, who lives in Nazareth, has reported that since this law was established in 1950 Israel has used it to transfer millions of acres of privately owned Palestinian land, as well as thousands of homes, bank accounts and other properties, from the 800,000 or so Palestinian refugees. Essentially, the law says Israel is entitled to seize any Palestinian house or property that was vacant in 1948. Cook said: