Paying compensation to settlers.. Adaptation and normalization

Written by: Kaddoura Fares

With or without the occasion, the political, military, and security leaders of the Israeli occupation repeat the saying that they aim through their criminal measures to “raise the cost of the struggle for the Palestinians.” Therefore, vandalism, intentional destruction, confiscation, and theft of money or vehicles become associated with every arrest, not only that, but also We have to occupy from time to time with a new repressive tradition that falls in the same context as the aforementioned declared goal, "raising the cost of the struggle."

Perhaps one of the most dangerous of these measures is forcing the prisoner, through his lawyer, to pay compensation to the settler who was harmed by the work done by the prisoner and to appease him. A financial fine, and thus the prisoner has incurred three material losses, the first of which is the damage to the house, which usually exceeds several thousand shekels, then the compensation that is paid to the affected settler, and sometimes it reaches tens of thousands of shekels, in addition to the fine, which varies from one prisoner to another. In the account of the Ministry of the Occupation Army, therefore, I estimate the size of the sums that are looted from the pockets of the families of the prisoners in the occupied territories, especially Jerusalem, at fifty million shekels annually, and this does not include the damages resulting from the storming of the house and the harm caused to it.

What I referred to is just a small aspect of the consequences of the arrest process and its costs on our families and our families. Perhaps the slogan used by the fascist settlers and their gangs, “Paying the price” is derived from the statements of the official leaders, “Raising the cost of the struggle” within the framework of a role-sharing process that aims primarily at exhausting and despairing the Palestinian people ability to achieve its national goals.

It is very dangerous to look at the procedures, laws, and military orders as an inevitable destiny, and that we have no choice but to accept them and resort to measures to relatively mitigate their impact on us, as this encourages the wrong approach, and opens the occupation’s appetite for more measures, while the occupation preserves for itself the line of return. In many of the measures he takes, since at the beginning they are a test balloon, if things go smoothly, he devotes and organizes them, and if there are obstacles, opposition, and rejection, we soon find him retreating, and there are hundreds of examples of that. If we want to oppose the occupation in a serious sense, we must first and in terms of The principle is that we reject any decisions issued by it, and secondly, we must scrutinize and reflect on their reasons and motives, the parties behind them and the contexts that brought them into existence, then formulate a position and examine the possibilities of strengthening the initial rejection of the occupation measures with action plans, decisions and policies, so that we keep some of the initiative for ourselves and not We turn into complacent recipients of what is imposed on us on the grounds of believing that it is impossible for the occupation to back down from a decision it has taken. This is a wrong rule that we must free from because it is one of the expressions of recognition of the occupation.

Everyone agrees on the golden rule that says that "turning the occupation project into a losing project" is the way that leads to defeating the occupation and expelling it from Palestine, and although this represents an axiom and a postulate and a place of national consensus, the collective behavior on our part as Palestinians does not suggest at all that the rule The aforementioned matters are of interest and application, and therefore we find that the Israeli parties and forces, and given that the occupied territories have come to represent a gigantic economic project for Israel, are striving to perpetuate and root the occupation, and falsely try to give their project fabricated historical and religious meanings, and this is only in order to give legitimacy to the occupation. And mobilizing Israeli public opinion among the common people in favor of this economic project.

Let's go back to the beginning and so that we do not delve deeply into this issue away from the issue that we have dealt with, which is compensation for the settlers, it is not addressed through persuasion and awareness only of its importance, as specific measures must be taken by the competent authorities to cut off some phenomena or reduce them at the very least. The detainee who demands his family and insists on it to pay compensation to the settler and then the fine for the purpose of shortening the period of his detention should have remained in his house. It is not permissible to go out to fight against this occupation and turn overnight into a person who pumps money into the treasury of the occupation, this money that is used in Funding the brutal military operations they carry out, and according to the new tradition, “compensation” also turns into financing for the settlers.

Therefore, I call for the adoption of the following measures to contain and besiege this dangerous phenomenon, which are as follows:

A- Carrying out an awareness campaign and informing citizens of the danger of this approach, which will expand more and more if it is not addressed.
B- Deciding not to adopt the file of any prisoner who concludes a deal that includes compensation under any circumstances, so that his ruling becomes the ruling on arms trade files.
C - Termination of the contract of the lawyer who participates in concluding this type of deal if he is contracting with any official or private body working to support the cause of the prisoners.
D - After clarifying the dimensions and seriousness of the issue of compensation to the Palestinian Bar Association and its promise to take trade union actions against any lawyer who is a member of the bar.

My confidence is high that with awareness and firmness together we can cut off this phenomenon and its promoters as a prelude to moving to deal with other dangerous phenomena that affect the essence of our struggle, this Israeli occupation.

* President of the Palestinian Prisoners Club