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Daniella Weiss | Israel | The Guardian

Daniella Weiss

62, mayor of the Jewish settlement of Kedumim, near Nablus, in the West Bank

For Daniella Weiss, the war was a turning point. Born into a conservative but not an ultra-religious family in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, she was 22 at the time and married. She had finished her undergraduate degree in English literature and philosophy at Bar Ilan University and had become deeply religious.

In the first years after the war, Weiss became involved in the settlement movement as they began to build deep inside the now Israeli-occupied West Bank. She was first at Ofra, an early settlement just north of Ramallah, and then at Kedumim from December 1975.

Weiss does not talk of an "occupation", but uses the word "liberation" for the territory captured by Israel in the six-day war. She talks not of "settlements" but "communities," not of "building anew" but of "resettling" on the land. To her the Jews have a historic right to the land stretching back thousands of years, while the Palestinians are a "new formation."

"We felt literally the revival of the biblical narrative. So to return to it was to return to the glory of the past history of the Jewish nation. These are the terms by which I lived and live. I saw myself being a pioneer continuing the work that my parents and grandparents did in the coastal plain in Tel Aviv. I saw myself as privileged to continue the Zionist effort."

The settlements grew slowly but steadily, both under Israel's Labour and Likud governments, often with state support and almost always with military protection. Today, there are around 460,000 settlers living in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Some are there for their religious beliefs, others for economic incentives on offer. The number of West Bank settlers has doubled since the Oslo peace accords in 1993 and some of the largest settlement blocs are now within the path of Israel's West Bank barrier, suggesting it hopes to hold on to the land in any final agreement. Settlers in the occupied territories use what the Israeli military calls "sterile roads," which are set aside for Israeli-registered cars only. The settler community has become a vocal political lobby, exercising considerable influence over government.

Pioneers

At first, Weiss's settler community wanted to build inside the Palestinian town of Nablus. But the Israeli government refused permission, so they settled on the hilltops nearby. When her settlement first began, she lived with her husband and two young children in a tent. There was a generator for power, but little else. Later it became a small shack, then a trailer until it became effectively a small town, with properly surfaced roads, houses, parks, shops, electricity, telephone connections, running water and a guarded perimeter. It is home to around 3,000 settlers.

It felt a long way from her home in Tel Aviv. "After sundown it was as if you were on the moon. You didn't see a glimmer. I remember I said to myself: 'I am like Robinson Crusoe.' There was a real sense of being pioneers. We were thinking there are Arabs here and Jews here and for us it is a return to our origin ... We were two different cultures."

In the early days, she thought little of the Palestinian community around her, except to note that she saw little electricity or education. In later years, through the first and second intifada, there have been more and more clashes between the settlers and the Palestinians living around them. In 2002, Weiss's son-in-law Avraham Gavish, his parents and grandfather were shot dead in their home by a Palestinian militant.

Weiss believes that the land of Israel should be the Biblical "Promised Land", stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, which today would take in a large chunk of Egypt, Israel and the occupied territories, the whole of Jordan, and a broad slice of western Iraq.

"I feel myself being part of a Biblical scene. It was a very dramatic change in my life and when I see now over 200 communities and outposts and villages and 260,000 Jews in these communities I feel I am part of a huge Zionist miracle," she says. "The rights of the Jews to return to their homeland stem from a history of 4,000 years and then an intermission of 2,000 years was imposed. Did it take away our right? Or were our everlasting prayers a constant link? I, of course, believe it was a constant link that was revived with Zionism."

Illegal

Under international law, however, the settlements are illegal because an occupying power is not permitted to transfer its population on to occupied land. But Weiss disagrees, calling this "modern politics." "I don't think these changes in the world can in any way change the basic link between the Jewish nation and the Land of Israel."

Her sense is that the settlement movement of the past 40 years has made Israel a stronger nation. "No peace can be attained if the State of Israel is small," she says. The future borders of Israel, she argues, should include the West Bank. As for the Palestinians, those who accept Israeli sovereignty should stay, those who fight will be fought and those who don't accept sovereignty should leave. Those who stay, she says, could be offered passports but only if they pass tests of "loyalty and devotion" to the state of Israel. "100 years ago we were 10% of the population west of the Jordan River and now there are two-thirds Jews and one-third Arabs, so who says who will have the upper hand?"

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Martina Birk

Update: 2024-02-25