LORDS OF THE LAND
The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007
By Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar
Translated by Vivian Eden
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Nation Books, 451 pages, $36
When Lords of the Land was first published in Hebrew in 2005, Israel's disengagement from Gaza and the evacuation of 7,000 settlers from 17 settlements there hadn't yet occurred. In spite of concerns that settler violence against the soldiers would slide the country into civil war or that young soldiers charged with forcibly removing whole families from their homes would crack under pressure, the operation proceeded relatively smoothly. So today, when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert talks about retreating from most of the West Bank and evacuating numerous settlements, most Israelis don't blink.
The Gaza disengagement frames the updated, English-language translation of Lords of the Land - Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar's chronicle of what they describe as the "settler state" alongside the state of Israel. (Today, close to 270,000 out of seven million Israelis live in the West Bank, and 200,000 live in the eastern part of metropolitan Jerusalem - in areas beyond the Green Line, Israel's pre-1967 border.)
In painstaking detail, the authors provide the first comprehensive history of a phenomenon that's become synonymous with Israel's image as an "occupier" and of Palestinians as "occupied." Eldar, a respected journalist at the left-leaning daily Ha'aretz, and Zertal, a historian specializing in the period between the Holocaust and Israel's establishment in 1948, are anything but neutral on the matter. What could have been an effective, informed text is polemical in tone and replete with condemnation of the settlers' fanaticism, sense of superiority and contempt for the law of the land. In so doing, the authors oversimplify the diverse motives that drove many Israelis to make their homes in the territories.
This isn't an easy book to read, even in the Hebrew original. Its structure is repetitive and its style verbose. Moreover, the English translation is laborious and literal - and when it comes to Hebrew idioms, extremely awkward.
There are other weaknesses. Zertal and Eldar acknowledge their failure to provide an economic analysis of the cost of the settlements. That's because like so much else in the story, funds were indirectly funnelled through various channels and the data are hidden in numerous sources. Still, in the absence of this component, their record remains incomplete.
There's another lacuna: The Palestinians, who the authors feel are most grievously affected by the settlements, are absolved of all responsibility. True, the book tells the Israeli story, but there's an obvious conclusion that jumps off its pages: Time wasn't on the Palestinians' side. Instead of moving to conclude a deal, the Palestinian leadership repeatedly counted either on international pressure ( a futile strategy) or violence (which inevitably backfired) to change Israeli policy. In failing to seize opportunity, they became their adversary's unwitting accomplice. More on this element would have rounded out the story.
But these shortcomings don't mar the value of this work in pointing a finger at those actually responsible for the settlement saga. Zertal and Eldar unmask the complicity of all Israeli governments and state institutions from 1967 on - including the "moderate" Labour Party. Aided by support from politicians on the right and ambivalence from many on the left, and abetted by the military's deliberate obfuscation of security imperatives and civilian use of land, the small settler lobby was unparalleled in its ability to create facts on the ground. Once there, an entire infrastructure of military protection and basic services followed - and the landscape was transformed.
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