Haim Yavin, the revered anchor of Israel’s Channel One news programme for more than three decades, has made a documentary in which he concludes that Jewish settlements are endangering the country and that the occupation of Palestinian land is a crime.
”Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people,” the 72-year-old, known as ”Mr Television”, says in the programme.
Even before the five-part series opened on Tuesday — on a rival channel that is about to go off air — settler leaders were calling for Yavin to be sacked, because they said he was no longer objective. They also said the series would ”divide Israeli society”.
The documentary would be sensitive in Israel at any time, but particularly now in the weeks before the government plans to remove thousands of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West Bank.
The series is the result of Yavin’s visits during more than two years to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, carrying a small camera to film ordinary people in the territories.
”It has strengthened my former opinion that we have to come to terms with the Palestinians; they are not all terrorists,” Yavin told The Guardian. ”I don’t hate [the settlers], I appreciate them … but I say in the documentary that I think they are wrong and they are endangering us.”
The experience has left Yavin more pessimistic about the prospects for peace. ”Hamas terrorism did such damage to both peoples that I don’t think it can be repaired.”
He also questions the commitment of successive governments, including Ariel Sharon’s, to curbing Israel’s hunger for land and the expansion of its colonies. ”This merrymaking will never be stopped,” he said. ”I regard this as a Greek tragedy. I don’t see any solution.”