Price Tag Policy
Westbank / Palestine
Price tag policy (Hebrew: מדיניות תג מחיר), also known as ‘Mutual Responsibility (Arvut Hadadit), also referred to as a ‘tactic’, ‘strategy’, ‘doctrine’, ‘campaign,’ or ‘principle’, is the name originally given to “acts of random violence aimed at the Palestinian population, and Israeli security forces” by fundamentalist Israeli settler youths who, according to the New York Times, “exact a price from local Palestinians or from the Israeli security forces for any action taken against their settlement enterprise”. Price tag attacks now extend to acts of vandalism, and especially to acts of anti-Arab vandalism, suspected to be the work of lone individuals, against the Israeli army and security services, as well as against Christian and Muslim places of worship, and also against leftist institutions. In May 2014, Shin Bet said the price-tag hate crimes were the handiwork of about 100 individuals mainly hailing from the Yitzhar settlement and hilltop outposts, and were inspired by the ideas of rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg.
The price-tag campaign includes attacks on Palestinian villages and property by Israeli settlers as retaliation for attacks on Israeli targets and for government demolition of structures at West Bank settlements and the removal of outposts which are variously described as being either unauthorised or illegal, and in recent years (2012-2013), dozens of such attacks have targeted Christian sites and the Christian community in Jerusalem. They generally follow actions by Israeli authorities that are perceived as harming the settlement enterprise, or follow Palestinian violence against settlers.
B’Tselem has documented many acts of this kind, which have included violent attacks carried out against random Palestinian civilians, burning of mosques and fields, stone throwing, uprooting trees, making incursions into Palestinian villages and land. or curbs on Israeli construction in the West Bank, where 80% of the attacks take place, while some 10-15% take place in the area of Jerusalem. Such vandalism also embraces damaging the property, or injuring members of the Israeli police and the Israeli Defense Forces, and defacing the homes of left-wing activists.
Shin Bet estimates of the extent of the perpetrator group vary: one figure calculates that from several hundred to about 3,000 people implement the price tag policy, while a recent analysis sets the figure at a few dozen individuals, organized in small close-knit and well-organised cells and backed by a few hundred right-wing activists. Yizhar Hess, comparing hate-crimes against Arabs in Israel and antisemitic acts against Jews in France, notes that incidents of the former are proportionately higher, and argues that price tag acts are Israel’s anti-Semitism. The roots of the price tag policy were traced to the August 2005 dismantling of settlements in the Gaza Strip as part of Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan. Ever since then, extreme right wing settlers have sought to establish a “balance of terror”, in which every state action aimed at them generates an immediate violent reaction. The definition of such acts as terroristic, however, is the subject of considerable political controversy in Israel.
The “price tag” concept and violence have been publicly rejected by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have demanded that those responsible are brought to justice. Cabinet member Benny Begin stated: “These people are scoundrels, but we have not been terribly successful in catching them.” Many people across the political spectrum in Israel have denounced such attacks and some have made efforts to redress the harm. The attacks are widely reported in the Arab media, and have been strongly condemned by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The settler leadership have “fiercely condemned” the price tag policy, and the vast majority of Yesha rabbis have expressed their reservations about it. According to Shin Bet, the vast majority of the settlers also reject such actions.
