Are Israel's West Bank Settlers "Human Shields and Live Bait"? (Narwani)

Sharmine Narwani writes in The Huffington Post:

The video is graphic and revealing: "Sharmoota!" hisses the Jewish settler as she presses up against the bars of a home in Hebron in the West Bank, where she has forced a Palestinian woman to take cover. "Whore" in Arabic, the shameful word hangs in the air like verbal dynamite - and shocks again and again as rapid-fire "Sharmootas" are spat out at their victim. An Israeli soldier stands by and watches this provocation. He does nothing. [Later, the Jewish woman explains, "We've got King David's palace, fresh air, olive trees, fruit trees. The Hebron landscape --- it's the best."]

Another video: young teenage settlers hang around outside a Palestinian schoolhouse, waiting for the stream of Arab mothers and their children to make their way home. The settler youths --- all girls --- shriek abuses at the frightened Palestinian kids, kick the elders and pull headscarves off the heads of pious women - "terror games" to pass time on a Jewish holiday, all under the watch of armed Israeli soldiers who do not intervene.

There are 500,000 illegal Jewish settlers in occupied Palestinian territories today --- a number that has increased five-fold since the US-sponsored "peace process" began 19 years ago.

• Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, August 12, 1949, 6 UST 3516, provides, in paragraph 6: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

Peace advocates contend that this Israeli push to "settle" Jews in the occupied territories reflects the determination of an increasingly right-wing government to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Logic dictates that the physical presence of half a million Jews in illegal settlements and outposts --- connected through a maze of Jewish-only roads --- has stealthily destroyed the possibility of a land-for-peace compromise. And Israel's government has spent $17 billion on settlements since occupation began.

But here's something we don't talk about readily. Why would consecutive Israeli governments heavily subsidize and incentivize the relocation of young families - women and children - into hostile environments? Why would Israel - which claims security dangers wherever there are Palestinian populations - deliberately and systematically place its Jewish civilian population in "harm's way?"

The settlers are Israel's human shields and live bait.

More video: "Naatzi! Naaaatzi!" This word, amazingly enough, is a settler favorite. "Nazis!" they screech at foreign TV crews, while waving their infants around. "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi," they chant as they provocatively try to stop Palestinians from harvesting their olive crops. And the IDF soldiers wait and watch --- occasionally intervening to push a frustrated and humiliated Palestinian objector away from a taunting, threatening Jewish settler.

Eventually, a half-crazed Palestinian will fight back, even kill some settlers. Israeli authorities immediately step in and claim the "Security Risk" has increased and more Palestinian land has to be confiscated to ensure Israel's security. More Palestinians are detained, harassed, punished. More Palestinian homes are occupied or demolished. See how that works? Unleash your craziest Jews onto a Palestinian civilian population until someone blows a fuse and hits back. Then use that as the pretext to encroach further into the lives and onto the land of Palestinians.

Jewish settlers. Half a million of them in 121 illegal settlements and 102 illegal outposts. Human shields and live bait for Israel. The Jewish state's frontline army for depopulating Palestinian land.

International law recognizes the right of a person living under occupation to resist or retaliate against occupying forces - nobody would question a Palestinian lashing out at an Israeli soldier. But kill a Jewish settler, and the lines get blurred fast. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the "occupier" (Israel) may not settle its populations (Jewish settlers) in occupied areas (West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem), but these laws also do not permit the harming of civilians except in the case of self-defence during an act of violence. In other words, although Israel flagrantly violates the former law by incentivizing Israeli citizens to move into occupied Palestinian territory, these same international conventions do not allow Palestinians to willy-nilly defend their lives and property from Jewish settlers - except during actual hostilities, when they are usually at a considerable disadvantage.

But are settlers really "civilians" as intended by the protective language of the Fourth Geneva Convention? This is debatable on at least one score, as the language dealing with "protected persons" is often prefaced with "civilian persons who take no part in hostilities...."

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