I fail to understand how a Jewish family building a house down the road from a Palestinian village, raising their children and studying the Torah, is an "act of terror" of the same magnitude as blowing people up at bus stops and pizza parlors. I simply can't see how these two things are equally evil or that the settlement thing is "more evil" than mass murders.It would not be. But the settlements are rarely that benign, and the entire settlement movement is based on the premise that the West Bank should be annexed to Israel. Typically, the settlements are armed camps. While many of the settlers are people who are there for cheap housing or because that's where Israel put them, a large number are zealots who hate the Arabs and believe they should be expelled from their homes.
In the past this has lead to tensions, and the IDF has sided with the settlers. If there was trouble between a settlement and a Palestinian village, the IDF would destroy houses in the village, regardless of who started the trouble.
Even today, the settlements get preferences which harm the Palestinian villages. They have "by-pass roads" which chop up the Palestinian territories, making travel and trade difficult or impossible. They have preferences on water, up to 85% of the water in some areas is reserved for the settlements. They fill swimming pools and water lush lawns while Palestinian groves and farms dry up and fail.
As I said, many of the settlers are as hateful as any Hamas activist. If an Arab community in Israel built a shrine to a suicide bomber, the outcry would be tremendous, for good reason. In the settlement of Kiryat Arba, a shrine was built at the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who shot and killed 29 Palestinians while they prayed in a mosque. This was too much even for the IDF, who dismantled it after getting a court order to do so. Zealots protested the dismantling and even threatened to desecrate the grave of Yitzak Rabin, the former PM who was killed by a zealot.
So in the eyes of the Palestinians, the settlers aren't the innocent family you described. Their viewpoint is largely justified, and international law is on their side. Indeed, the situation is a textbook example of why the Geneva Convention forbade the transfer of a Power's citizens into occupied territories.
-Eric
Or, as many Israelis hold out that the British Mandate signed by the League of Nations and the Arabs give the Jews all of Mandate Palestine and Transjordan, only to have the British take back Transjordan under Arab threat of terrorism or to protect their imperialistic designs?
Was Mandate Palestine divided not once but twice then fought over not once but 5 times?
And was Resolution 242 thrust upon Israel who had the wording changed from the occupied terrorities to occupied territories?
And some would argue that Geneva 49 would only referred to the forced transfer of popultion. Something that is not happening (technically) here since the settlers are volunteers. (which if you bought that you would have to strain the gnat and swallow the camel)
Just questions that I have heard attached to the West Bank "occupation."
Your bringing up of Dr. Goldstein is a red herring. Unlike the homicide bombers, who are admired by many people who praise their deeds, the grave of Goldstein is a "shrine" to a minuscule cult of fringe crazies. Not one person has repeated his act in the 8 years since it was committed, and the overwhelming majority of the Jewish population has condemned him and those who say that they admire him.
The same can not be said about the cult of the homicide bomb.