While domestic media coverage in Israel, and the international media coverage of Palestine/Israel, have almost exclusively been focused on the preparations for and enactment of the Gaza withdrawal, the Israeli government has been actively at work expanding settlements in the Occupied West Bank, and solidifying the Segregation Wall throughout the OPT, especially in East Jerusalem.

Kobi Bleich, a spokesman for the Israel Housing Ministry, announced plans on 6 August, to build 72 housing units in the Beitar Illit settlement southwest of Jerusalem.

Additionally, throughout July and into early August, the Israeli military has been demolishing Palestinian homes in El Khader, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem (on land that is coveted by the illegal settlement of Efrat) and in Abu Tor, in East Jerusalem, among other places.

This utter disregard for almost any other news coverage except the withdrawal, especially within the Israel media, reached a peak (or should we say nadir) after a Jewish settler murdered four Palestinian workers in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh on 17 August. On Israel?s Channel 10 television nightly news broadcast, for example, only a token reference to this terror act was provided. This is in sharp contrast to the coverage that would have taken place had the victims of this terror attack been Jewish Israelis. The coverage then would have included biographical background and interviews with grieving family members, etc. This shortage of adequate reporting continued into the 18 August newspaper coverage of the attack. Of the three major Israeli dailies, only one of them, Ha?aretz, had a news item about the attack on the front page. Ma?ariv had onesentence about the attack at the end of a headline at the top of their front-page (above a full-page picture of a crying Gazan settler which had its own headline, many times larger, stating ?The Gush has Fallen?). Yideoth Ahronoth had it as the fourth item in a textbox at the bottom of the front-page, and then it is only mentioned in reference to the possibility of a retaliatory Palestinian attack.

Regardless of the Israeli government?s desire to define and project a certain interpretation of their reasoning and actions concerning the Gaza disengagement, and despite the settlers? great efforts to portray themselves as the victims, and the disengagement as a period of collective mourning for the Jewish people, the responsibility of the fourth estate?the press?is to come with a critical eye and to look objectively at the situation and the players involved. The press is not required to report ?neutrally,? yet nor is it to act as a mouthpiece for the government, or to empathize with the  settlers. However, this sadly appears to be what has occurred. Much too often, both the domestic and international media have taken a line halfway between the Israeli government?s and the settler?s: On the one and, they portray the soldiers as doing a noble, yet heart wrenching job. On the other hand, they have relayed an overabundance of empathetic pictures of weeping settlers pleading with the soldiers not to ?transfer? them, ripping their clothing in mourning, and a horde of settler psychologists discussing the deep traumas that the ?poor settlers? are being subjected to as the sacrificial victims of Sharon?s inhumane policies.

Moreover, since the disengagement has been proposed, the government, the settlers and the Israeli media have been incessantly evoking the ghost of Yamit?the Sinai settlement bloc that was removed by the Israeli military in 1982. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim in his book The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World writes of the possibility that ?Sharon made the whole process more traumatic than it needed to be so that the Israeli public would balk at the dismantling of any other settlements, even for the sake of peace.?1 Up until the present disengagement, the ?tragedy? of Yamit had been exploited successfully to keep the question of additional settlement removals off the negotiation table.

What we see in the present Gaza disengagement standoff is the re-staging of the staged event of Yamit. Again, like Yamit, the final standoff was enacted by a small group of rightwing extremists, who by and large do not come from the settlements which are being removed?instead they are individuals who infiltrated Gaza from Israel and the Occupied West Bank. The same rooftop standoffs are being acted out, similar threats of mass suicide are being uttered, similar slogans are being shouted, and even the same tactic of leveling the settler homes are being implemented. It makes one think of the famous quote of Karl Marx from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, ?that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice [...]: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.?

Yet, it is unresolved whether the Israeli government and settlers will be able to recreate the feeling of collective ?trauma? in the Israeli conscience this time, which will keep them from perceiving calls for the removal of more settlements?this time from the Occupied West Bank?as a realistic possibility. Though the Israeli press covers nothing but the disengagement, unlike in 1982 (when there was only one television channel), this is now the era of cable and satellite. Public opinion, therefore, is more difficult to control. Israelis may watch news of the disengagement, but they are also likely to flip channels to reruns of Friends or the latest episode of A Star is Born (the Israeli version of American Idol). And, as media analyst, Daniel Dor comments in this issue (see pages 30-39), it is impossible to ever be able to completely control the way that media content is received and reframed by the spectators.

For years now, the Israeli government and media have deftly kept any practical discussion of the removal of major settlement blocs from the West Bank off the agenda. Interestingly, the ?security? argument has actually often been a secondary justification. Instead, the major rationalization for characterizing their removal as ?unrealistic? has been that it would create an unbridgeable ideological rift within Israeli society and likely contribute to a outbreaking of intra-Jewish violence or even civil war. Yet, we have seen from the case of the removal of settlements from Gaza, the bark of the opposition is much worse than their bite.

On the one hand, we who are fighting for human rights, an end to the Occupation with justice for the Palestinian people, must recognize that Sharon?s intention is not an end of the military occupation of the Gaza Strip. Alternatively, Sharon?s real intentions (which are publicly expressed) are that the disengagement will free up the Israeli military, in order to facilitate the redeployment of force to the edge of Palestinian populated areas? with tight Israeli control over the importation and exportation of goods, Israeli control over land* and sea borders, and even airspace.

Additionally, the disengagement is a political tactic by Sharon, to appease domestic and international pressure over issues such as the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.

This is why it is vital that on both a local and an international level, we must take disengagement as an opportunity to break down the myth that the removal of all settlements is not realistic. Instead, the momentum of the present situation must be used to demand the removal of all illegal Israeli settlements, and to insure a sincere end to the military, political, social and economic Occupation in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

* Though there will be 750 Egyptian border guards along the Philadelphi route on the border with Gaza, Israel still has every intention of maintaining security and inspection control over people and goods entering the Gaza Strip from Sinai. An Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release on 15 August states: ?International border crossing: Israel would like to move the Rafah international border crossing to Kerem Shalom, with the cooperation of the Palestinians and the Egyptians. If this cannot be arranged, the necessary customs and security procedures would have to be transferred to Israel?s boundary with the Gaza Strip at the Karni and Erez crossings, following the implementation of the Disengagement Plan and the withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor.?