Settlers: Violence to Do God's Work

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS

Jews fighting Jews. Jews killing Jews. The idea is anathema in Israel -- yet becoming thinkable to some of the 115,000 settlers who have laid claim to the West Bank land they call Judea and Samaria, an integral part of Eretz Yisrael, the land God gave to the Jews. Although none have yet been asked to relinquish their settlements, many fear the worst is soon to come, and they are determined to resist.

White-bearded, grandfatherly Rabbi Eliezer Waldman looks more like a prophet than a revolutionary. When he helped found Kiryat Arba, now home to 7,000 Jews near the Palestinian city of Hebron, in 1968, he says, "we felt that God had opened the gates and brought us back to the heart of Eretz Yisrael." As spiritual leader of the Jewish settlement movement, Waldman and a handful of other settlers must decide how they are going to force the Israeli government to renege on the peace agreement. The rabbi is convinced that with demonstrations, the blocking of some roads, interference in the routine workday of government officials in Jerusalem, the settlers will prevail. "If it's your homeland, you must say, It's mine," explains Waldman. "If you begin speaking about the rights of others, people will think it's not yours."

But some settlers are prepared to go much further: in the past, West Bankers have embraced violence, even against Israeli soldiers, as part of theirprotests. "We are reacting with violence," said Aaron Domb, spokesmanfor the Council of Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, "because thegovernment has acted with violence by forcing this agreement on the nation." Former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren asserted, "Arafat is responsible for thousands of murders. Therefore, everyone in Israel who meets him in the streets has the right to kill him."

Threats of violence and civil war horrify most Israelis and divide the settlers. Last week the most respected pollster in Israel asked Jewish settlers what they would do if the Gaza-Jericho first plan is adopted. Only 2% said they would take part in armed resistance against the Israeli authorities; 11% promised to take up arms but only against the future Palestinian police. Nearly half said they would actively resist the accord without the use of arms.

Settlement leaders are caught between the few who embrace violence to continue doing what they believe is God's work and those who have, after years of the Palestinian uprising, lost their taste for the hatred and death that violence breeds. Ahiram Nagar is 18 years old, and has lived in Kiryat Arba for the past three years. He is about to enter the Israeli army, and he is not averse to taking part in violence because "it can help." Far more typical is Michal Petel, 31, a Jerusalem-born mother of five who has lived in Kiryat Arba since 1981. "The peace proposal hurts, but if a few less people get killed, that would be O.K." Israeli security services are taking the threats of mayhem seriously. According to their assessment, there are at least 30,000 settlers who are armed legally with rifles and handguns, and have access to illicit stockpiles of grenades, mines and other explosives. Many of the men are well-trained reserve officers in the Israeli Defense Force. Half the 30,000 are considered hardcore troublemakers, and they live mainly in the West Bank. An informal vigilante police force of settlers already operates in the West Bank.

Shlomo Gazit, Israel's first coordinator of the occupation and now a senior research fellow at the Jaffee Center at Tel Aviv University, believes the militants will be heard from but will fail to stop the peace process. "Rabin's message is clear: they have lost the war for Greater Israel. They will try to mobilize public opinion, but public opinion will be happy with this agreement. If in the next five years there will be no intifadeh, and no terror, then who the hell cares about Greater Israel?"

With reporting by Robert Slater/Kiryat Arba