The Testing Ground of Shdema

Timna Katz
November 09

History: Past and Present

Shdema is an abandoned Israeli army base built in 1967 on the remains of a Jordanian army base. It is five minutes south of Jerusalem’s southern neighborhood of Har Homa and five minutes north of eastern Gush Etzion. Going further back, the Shdema area was densely populated by Jews during the First Temple period and resettled again during the Second Temple period. Despite the scant archeological attention the area has received, remains of Jewish settlement have been identified from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Mameluke periods. The Hasmoneans waged their final victorious battle there.

Shdema’s fate since Oslo is typical: designated as Area C, under full Israeli sovereignty, the IDF nonetheless began to abandon Shdema together with other army camps in Judea and Samaria despite the security disaster brought on by the Oslo Accords. Massive and politically directed illegal Arab building proliferates throughout Judea and Samaria, while Jewish growth is frozen. Recently, the double standard has become even more flagrant. The nearby municipality of Beit Sahur has illegally built a sports and entertainment center on Shdema lands with funding provided by European agencies and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In April 2008, a group of individuals led by Women In Green halted the total destruction of the base and determined to maintain a Jewish presence there to prevent a complete Arab take-over of the strategic hill overlooking the Jerusalem-Gush Etzion highway. The Committee for a Jewish Shdema was formed, and since then, Shdema has become a vibrant cultural center with weekly events and holiday festivities. The Committee, with the support of Women In Green, has plans to build an educational and cultural campus at the site that will foster Jewish and Zionist values and goals.


The Oslo vs. Shdema Paradigm

The lesson of Oslo is tragic but profound. Oslo turned the “peace process” into the country’s supreme value and goal. To keep this process going, the Israeli leadership was prepared to sacrifice almost every Jewish and Zionist truth. It exchanged the old values and ideals for a realpolitik that served the enemy’s narrative and goals. Even when the results of Oslo proved to be the polar opposites of its intended goals -- war instead of peace, increased Arab rejectionism instead of increased Arab acceptance, international isolation instead of international normalization – Israel continued down the same disastrous path. The one and only justification against total capitulation to Arab demands that Israel mustered was the ‘security’ card: Israel can’t immediately relinquish all of Yesha because she has no choice but to defend herself against ‘terrorism’.

While the damage of the above approach has been great, its bankruptcy has become so evident that even current leaders who continue to dance to the Oslo tune have started to pay lip service to the old values and truths: that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People and Jews cannot be ‘occupiers’ in the Biblical heartland and cradle of their civilization. However, it’s not enough to pay lip service to those truths: if the Jewish People won’t physically live those truths, it is now abundantly clear that we’ll lose our land – all of it.

That is where we stand today and that is the message behind the struggle for Shdema: the current government continues to follow the Oslo paradigm, even while knowing that it is untenable. The Jewish majority are becoming increasingly frustrated by leaders who talk the post-Olso talk but won’t walk the post-Oslo walk. Shdema has become a testing ground of these tensions and the opposing forces rumbling beneath Israel’s surface.

Thus the struggle to keep Shdema Jewish has not only been supported by the local populace, idealistic youth, and right-wing politicians, it has also received support from elements in the army and the political center. Meanwhile, however, the status quo maintains its hold and the Arabs continue to build illegally while a Jewish government ties Jewish hands.


A Tipping Point?

Positive change is occurring, though the evidence of it – whether in the Jewish cultural awakening within secular Israel or in the supporting visit of the Knesset speaker to Shdema – doesn’t yet indicate what its eventual force or impact will be. Unfortunately, destructive counter-forces maintain their momentum and time is running out. We of the Committee for a Jewish Shdema believe that Shdema will be a testing ground for this nascent change and hope that you will help us in making it happen. God willing, if we all act now and act forcefully, we can reverse the fatal Oslo tide and unleash the tremendous positive energies inherent in the Jewish return to Zion.

*Timna Katz, resident of Neve Daniel in Gush Etzion, is a member of the Committee for a Jewish Shdema and Women in Green
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Land of Israel Center-Shdema

(Click on poster to enlarge)

Illegal Arab Land Grab

1751 2^nd Avenue, New York, NY 10128

Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717

E-mail afsi@rcn.com Website; http://www.afsi.org/

Contact: Helen Freedman, Executive Director

September 8, 2009

To: Minister of Defense,

Mr. Ehud Barak

Re: Shdema

Dear Mr. Barak

I’m writing to you in the name of the thousands of members of Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI) in the United States who are concerned about the illegal Arab land grab taking place everywhere in Israel, and in particular in the abandoned army base of Shdema.

I was recently in Israel, viewed the situation in Shdema firsthand, and took part in one of the weekly cultural events put on by The Committee for a Jewish Shdema. I have followed the Committee’s evolution from a small group of activists, to an established organization with ambitious plans for the area and strong support by the public, local authorities, and governmental figures and MPs.

I believe the Committee’s goals of keeping Shdema in Jewish hands is an imperative for both practical and principled reasons. As a practical matter, Shdema overlooks the highway connecting Jerusalem with Eastern Gush Etzion and southwards. Controlling Shdema is therefore vital to the safety and security of Israel’s Jewish citizens that reside and travel in those areas. As a matter of principle, for Israel to abandon sovereignty over its territory de facto and out of inaction will lead to chaos, violence, and a tsunami of Arab lawlessness, as we are already seeing everywhere in Israel, in the Galilee and the Negev as well as Gush Etzion.

The illegal Arab building in Shdema is a striking example of brazenness that was actually funded by the American (USAID) and European governments. AFSI has every intention of raising a furor over U.S. governmental funds going to fund illegal, politically motivated construction in the Israeli territory of Area C. The Internet sites of some of the international organizations active in Shdema are full of hatred for Israel and lies and incitement against her.

The Arabs have plenty of land under their own jurisdiction on which to build whatever they’d like. We at AFSI hope that as defense minister you will defend Israel’s vital interests and ensure that Shdema remains Jewish.

Sincerely,

Helen Freedman

Executive Director, AFSI
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West Bank: slowly, determinedly, settlers bid to build new town

Rory McCarthy
guardian.co.uk
23 August 2009

(Not exactly a friend but considering the source it could've been worse. As a matter of fact, on his blog it was worse. Second thoughts can get you everytime.)

Nadia Matar, a leader of the settler group Women in Green, puts an Israeli flag on a hilltop near the former Israeli army post Shdema, where activists are claiming the land. Photograph: Gali Tibbon

Early in the morning, Nadia Matar drove to the hills south of Jerusalem, near the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, and turned into a dusty, unmarked road. There she planted a sign which read "Welcome to Shdema". She drove on, stopping every few metres along the route to jam into the rocky ground a series of fluttering blue and white Israeli flags. Israeli soldiers let her pass unhindered as she drove up to the concrete ruins of what was until a few years ago the Israeli military base of Shdema.

Here, just a stone's throw from Palestinian homes and only a few minutes from the city of Bethlehem, Matar and her friends are intent on building a Jewish community, the next settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank.

It is a glaring challenge to the Obama administration, which is trying to halt all Israeli settlement growth as a precursor to renewed peace talks. But recent history suggests it is the highly-motivated settlers like Matar, 43, a mother of six born in Belgium and now living in the settlement of Efrat, who may in the end triumph on this particular dusty patch of land.

Tomorrow, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrives in London for a series of key meetings, including four hours of discussions on Wednesday with the White House's special envoy, George Mitchell, and talks with Gordon Brown tomorrow. The continued colonisation of the West Bank, an extraordinarily successful project over the past 40 years, will dominate the agenda. Settlement on occupied land is regarded as illegal by the rest of the international community, but nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Shdema is even beyond Israel's West Bank barrier, which runs deep into Palestinian territory and which many believe will one day be the final border of Israel.

Matar's goal is "redemption of the land". In her view, the land on which the Palestinian homes sit belongs by Biblical and historical right to the Jewish people and is, for now, "temporarily under Arab occupation". She is trying to build a "Jewish Shdema" and to prevent the land from remaining Palestinian. After the military evacuated the base there were plans, since shelved, to build a hospital for Palestinians. "They want more pieces of land that belong to the Jews. They want to take it away from us," Matar said.

"The Land of Israel was given by God to the people of Israel," she said. "Some will tell you God gave it to us, others will say Jewish history of 4,000 years is our historical right … You don't have to be a religious Englishman to see London belongs to the British."

This is a rare insight into how outposts get built: with determined settlers and eventually complicit Israeli authorities.

At first, after the army withdrew from the base three years ago, soldiers closed the area off and prevented all settlers from approaching. But the settlers sneaked in and kept coming. Eventually Matar, a leader of the group Women in Green, and her supporters convinced the military to allow them in just once a week, on a Friday. They cleaned the buildings up, painted over graffiti, tidied the rooms and held workshops and discussions. Sometimes they have stayed the night, sometimes they have been allowed to come twice a week and eventually, they believe, settlers will begin to live here.

Similar struggles take place every week on other hilltops across the West Bank. All this is happening even though the Israeli government says in public it will allow no new settlements.

"At the beginning we fought against the army to come up here," said Matar. "But when they saw we were adamant they let us come on a Friday … But it's not enough for us. We don't want to ask permission to be in our homeland."

Now every time they come the army far from preventing them in fact provides them with security, deploying several soldiers and armoured vehicles but not interfering with their activities. In April the military also halted the construction of a Palestinian park, part funded by the US government, because it was at the foot of the hill claimed by the settlers at Shdema.

Already the settlers have produced a glossy brochure with architectural plans of the Shdema they would like to see: it has grassy lawns, lines of trees, a cultural centre and a small but thriving Jewish community.

On this day around 30 settlers of different ages gathered, among them several children, a rabbi and at least two women carrying discreetly holstered pistols. They sat in one room on plastic chairs as Tomer Karazi, 34, a rabbi with five children, discussed a Biblical text and the importance of building a new village in this Biblical land.

Later Karazi said he and his wife Hannah were ready to move from their home in the settlement of Nokdim to Shdema as soon as possible. "It's our duty not to escort the process of redemption from the outside but to be involved and active from the inside," he said. "We don't need to wait for things like water and electricity. And we really love the place. It's beautiful."

Then out came large tubs of white emulsion paint and several brushes and the group began painting over the grey concrete walls, stopping occasionally for glasses of water and slices of watermelon.

Yosef Ziggerman, 18, a settler from Efrat had been involved in several other, often unsuccessful, attempts to establish new outposts on nearby hills. "I believe every single piece is ours and I don't see many pieces of land as beautiful as this," he said. "We aren't doing anything crazy or fanatic. We're painting and making it look nice."

Several spoke of their frustration with other Israelis who enjoy the more secular lifestyle of cities like Tel Aviv or Eilat but who seemed not to understand or endorse the settlers' millenarian ideology and their effort to claim the West Bank as their own. Since Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza four years ago, many fear more compromises and would rather take a more radical and practical stand to expand Jewish settlement of the West Bank.

They described themselves as a frontline in a wider struggle against what they see as radical Islam, insisting that settler outposts protect the larger settlement blocs, which in turn protect Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and which in turn protect the Western world.

"People like to present us like crazy lunatics," said Matar. "But one day these people in the West will see. The Muslims are taking over there too. You better be on our side for your sake, but you guys in Europe are not. Those who curse Israel will be cursed, and those who bless Israel will be blessed.
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US Financed Illegal W. Bank Building

By Tovah Lazaroff
JPost
31 July 09

The United States admitted this week for the first time that it accidentally helped fund the illegal construction of a Palestinian building in a park located on the edge of the former Shadma military base in the West Bank's Gush Etzion region.

In 2007, the nearby Beit Sahour Municipality constructed the park with funding from abroad, in an area which Palestinians call Oush Ghrab (crow's nest).

The park, which is used by Beit Sahour residents, hosts a building with a small kiosk for events, a stone terrace, a soccer field, a playground and the largest wooden rock climbing tower in the area.The spokesperson did not know how much of the money went toward the stone building in the park, which was built illegally. When the funds were given, USAID believed that all the necessary permits had been obtained for the structure.

Some $281,000 was provided for the park by the United States Agency for International Development, an independent federal agency that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance world-wide.

A large white sign stating that USAID contributed to the "Peace Park" hangs on the gate at the entryway to the complex.

A spokesperson for the US Consulate in east Jerusalem told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that American funding was given to the project in two installments, the first in November 2007 and the second in August 2008.

The spokesperson did not know how much of the money went toward the stone building in the park, which was built illegally. When the funds were given, USAID believed that all the necessary permits had been obtained for the structure.

It realized its error several months ago and has been working with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories to see a solution.

The issue was brought to the media's attention by MK Arye Eldad (National Union), who visited Shadma earlier this week in his capacity as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
(For full article)
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