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Analysis: Sharon and the settlements
3:51 p.m. & 2003-06-24

United Press International

www.upi.com

Analysis: Sharon and the settlements

By Joshua Brilliant

Published 6/24/2003 12:57 PM

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 23 (UPI) -- The clashes in the West Bank settlement outpost of Mitzpeh Yitzhar last Thursday made for dramatic television footage.

Mothers pushed baby carriages in front of an army bulldozer and squatters lay in front of armored-personnel carriers to block them; protestors hurled purple paint on jeeps' windshields while others tried to climb onto the APCs and were pushed off; smoke emerged from burning fields and tires; and then -- there was punching, kicking, dragging and the blood of injured people.

Some 1,200 soldiers and policemen confronted several hundred squatters and supporters for almost 10 hours until they completed knocking down a stone structure and several tents.

Those scenes served Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the settlers well.

They demonstrated Sharon's point that it was not easy to implement the "road map" for peace that the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia have presented.

That plan says the government of Israel should "immediately" dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

In the two weeks since the Aqaba, Jordan, summit meeting, which launched the peace plan, Palestinians have shown how difficult it is for them to do their share and undertake "an unconditional cessation of violence."

A senior aide to Sharon told United Press International the clash at Mitzpeh Yitzhar showed the "road map's" demands are "also difficult for us."

The confrontation took place a day before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in the area and met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The clash also served the interests of 213,000 West Bank settlers.

They can't quite figure Sharon out. He played a major role in building the settlements, but as defense minister, in 1982, he destroyed the town of Yamit and several villages in the northern Sinai Peninsula before returning the area to Egypt.

The settlers' resistance at Mitzpeh Yitzhar was designed to make him realize that if the battle over a small, flimsy, unauthorized hilltop outpost was so tough, just imagine what it would be like to try and evict well-established settlements and towns.

"When you believe in something, you have to fight for it or else, tomorrow, you will be without any communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza," said Dina Yeshurun of Shavei Shomron West, another outpost earmarked for eviction. Judea and Samaria are the Biblical names for the West Bank.

"The picture of Yamit was in front of my eyes," during the elections, she recalled.

The settlements have changed the West Bank's landscape. In between the seemingly haphazard Arab towns and villages, which grew over centuries, are the Jews' town-planned settlements with bright-colored houses and sometimes red roofs. Often they are located at controlling sites, a security measure that enhances their prominence.

About 260 Jewish outposts and settlements now exist in the West Bank, the Defense Minister's Settlement Adviser Ron Shechner said. Some 70 to 75 of them have received only partial authorization and five are illegal, he told UPI. The five are located on privately owned Arab land "whose purchase procedures have begun but were not completed."

The settlers account for some 10 percent of the West Bank's population.

Their outposts vary from uninhabited, rusty, windswept, lone containers on hilltops, or a dummy antenna to justify assigning guards to protect it, to full-fledged settlements such as Maaleh Adumim, southeast of Jerusalem. Maaleh Adumim has a population of 26,000, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Most of the towns encircle East Jerusalem.

The first sites rose in the Etzion bloc, south of Bethlehem. They were built under the British mandate before Israel's creation as a state. When war between Jews and Palestinians erupted in 1948, the Arabs overran them, and after Israel reoccupied the area in 1967, the Jews returned.

Other places began after obtaining government permission: a "workers camp" for overnight stays started Ofra, an "archaeological dig" launched Shiloh, and a stay in an Arab hotel in Hebron for Passover evolved into one of the most hard-line settlements. After the holiday, the guests refused to leave and had to be lured away.

Sharon gave the settlements their big push. A map with purple blotches indicated where he thought settlements should be established. In almost every ministerial position he held, be it minister of industry, construction, infrastructure or defense, he helped establish settlements.

Joining his tours was an experience. He loved it, and he showed it. He would take visitors to a lawn in the settlement of Peduel, or to a road near the Israeli Arab village of Kafr Qassem, unravel maps and demonstrate on the map and on the ground how narrow the old Israel was, and why he thought he needed an extra strip as a defense barrier. Then he would take visitors to a site overlooking the Jordan Valley and explain why Israel needed a strip over there to protect it against the eastern front. In between, it needed secure roads.

Labor governments sought to curb expansion and promised not to build new settlements, but were ineffective. That explains, in part, the current mess about those sites' legal status.

The authorities encircled the established settlements with large areas earmarked for future growth. The area assigned for Maaleh Adumim is 11 or 12 times bigger than the town itself, noted Dror Etkes, who monitors settlements for the dovish Peace Now.

The settlers then established small outposts at the edge of those areas, even miles away from the existing settlement, and called each one "a neighborhood" of the parent settlement. This way they claimed the sites were not new, just extensions of the existing settlements.

"It's a fiction," Etkes said.

In other instances, they built outside those areas and called the new sites an "outlook," an "educational institution," or an "agricultural farm," Etkes added.

A long list of permits is required to build a new settlement, so settlers moved out after receiving initial authorization. Once there, they waited for the final permits that, in recent years, did not come. Thus they were on the ground but without a final seal of approval that would break Israel's pledge not to establish new sites.

These sites, Shechner said, "are in an advanced process, a very advanced process (of authorization)." A minister who authorized planning cannot say he did not intend the site to be established, Shechner added.

Some outposts were established at sites where Palestinian militants killed Jewish motorists. That expressed the ethos that "a proper Zionist response" to the killing of Jews is to settle right there. Often those sites are named after the dead Israelis.

The Arabs are dead set against the settlements. They consider them an indication that the Jews do not intend to leave the area. The United States and other countries have also opposed settlements as impediments to the peace process.

In recent years, Israel undertook not to expand settlements beyond meeting the need for "natural growth." But what that means is open to interpretation.

The Central Bureau of Statistics calculated the settlers' natural growth rate at 5.8 percent a year, way above the average Israeli rate of 2 percent to 3 percent a year.

The settlers maintained natural growth cannot be limited to counting births and deducting deaths.

"We've got tens of thousands of pupils. Do we need teachers? Because of the security situation, we want a doctor and a nurse in every settlement. Natural growth means (meeting) the communities' needs to grow," argued Pinhas Wallerstein, who heads the Binyamin Regional Council.

Wallerstein estimated the population thus grows by 10 percent each year.

The "road map" seeks to plug the loophole. In addition to an immediate dismantling of all outposts established since March 2001 -- Sharon became prime minister on March 7, 2001 -- it demands Israel freeze "all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."

Israeli officials balked at the demand. "It's like telling a family not to bear children," protested Uzi Keren, the prime minister's adviser on settlements.

Faced with international pressure to get moving on the "road map," Sharon summoned the settlers' leaders and reportedly told them the game was up. The time for tricks was over. The Americans photograph everything and know exactly what Israel builds and what it destroys, he said, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

The head of the Central Command that includes the West Bank, Major Gen. Moshe Kaplinksy, gave the settlers a list of 15 sites he intended to remove. Five of them were inhabited.

That's not much according to Peace Now's Etkes. Since February 2001, 62 new settlement sites were established, he said.

The army evicted eight of the 15 sites on General Kaplinsky's list. Only one -- Mitzpeh Yitzhar -- was inhabited, Etkes said. He flew over the area Saturday, and discovered nine new sites. At one of them, there were eight caravans, and he concluded that site is inhabited.

Wallerstein confirmed mobile homes were sent out in recent days but said they augmented sites where such homes already existed.

Sunday the issue came up before the Cabinet. Sharon said he had to evacuate sites to honor a two-year-old promise to the United States not to establish new outposts.

"Israel took upon itself a commitment and must honor it, even if nothing happens on the other side," he said, according to a participant in the meeting.

However, there was also another message to the ministers, one the government was less keen to make public.

Sharon said building permits were being issued in the settlement town of Ariel, for example. He advised his ministers not to attract attention by "going out dancing" about such permits, but to "launch a building momentum," a participant in the meeting said.

It was typical Sharon. A year ago, he expressed verbal support for Palestinian statehood, drew fire for doing so, and quietly let settlers strengthen their hold on the ground, the head of the Alfei Menashe local council, Hsdai Eliezer recently noted.

What Sharon is really up to is anybody's guess. Wallerstein burst out laughing when asked what he thought the prime minister really wanted. "It's unbelievable. I don't understand it. I can't understand it."

Ten years ago, Wallerstein considered Sharon an ally. Having failed to get the government to build a 6-mile-long road so settlers would not have to go through Arab towns to school and work, Wallerstein raised the money and launched the project.

He concealed the road building even from the army. It was impossible to hide the massive earth moving, seen from the Jerusalem-Nablus highway, but he put up fake signs saying a water company was laying a pipeline there.

When the road was ready he invited Sharon, then a member of the opposition, to see.

"It was an experience seeing his excitement... At that moment, he was not only an ally," Wallerstein recalled.

Politically, Sharon has the power to evacuate settlements, estimated Professor Asher Arian, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Sharon has a majority for such a move in the Knesset, though "a very fierce minority will not agree with it," he predicted. If Sharon moves gradually he might even keep his hawkish coalition together, Arian added.

Most Israelis would back such a move, he noted. A recent public opinion poll showed that 59 percent of the 1,113 Jews interviewed agreed to abandon all but the large settlement blocks. That is 9 percent more than in the 2002 survey.

Sharon has already proved his ability to undertake such evictions. During the peace negotiations with Egypt, he built phantom settlements in the Sinai, hoping to keep the land. However, when he had to evacuate all the Jews from the peninsula, he did so relentlessly. He even pulled out walls of homes and moved them to Israel. Toward the deadline, cranes with steel balls crushed remaining walls, and as a last act before moving out, the army blew up the rest, except a synagogue. The Egyptians were furious that the Israelis even put a hole through a water tower rendering it unusable. They had offered to buy it.

Recent Sharon statements suggest he realized Israel couldn't hold on to the entire area. His statement that Israel cannot keep 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation was blunt.

Those statements "are like toothpaste. The minute they were out, it was impossible to return them to the tube," Haaretz columnist Yoel Marcus wrote Friday.

"A weak leader, unsure of his power, does not speak this way. Sharon, who was elected twice with an unprecedented majority is at the peak of his political power," Marcus maintained.

Does this mean more evictions are in store?

A senior aide to the prime minister said there is no set timetable for evacuations.

The army spokesman's office said that, "If, when, and if at all there will be more evacuations, we will announce it, but not prematurely."

At Sunday's Cabinet meeting, Sharon distinguished between outposts "of great security importance," sites that are "really a provocation against the government for no reason," and a whole lot that are in between.

"If there will be complete quiet, we'll have to consider what to do" with the latter group, he said according to a participant in the meeting.

Keren said in an interview that "at this stage, the prime minister perhaps does not want to touch" sites that may have arisen illegally but are strategic assets.

That would include settlements in controlling sites. "They can be authorized even if the authorization is controversial," Keren said. Eventually Sharon would opt for "minor" movement of settlements, he continued.

Israel would keep settlement blocks in the West Bank and move settlers there from smaller locations that would be evacuated. The settlers have to remain "in their natural periphery," the adviser said. They would thus move from one home to another in the same zone, and their new homes and infrastructure would be prepared in advance.

There is not much time left to prepare it all by 2005 if the "road map's" deadline is to be met, Keren said. Ideas are now being tossed about but "no orders have been issued," he added.

The promise to give the Palestinians contiguous territory in the West Bank would require bridges and tunnels that would help link Hebron and Bethlehem, that are south of Jerusalem, with Ramallah and other cities north of it. Similar plans are needed to link Palestinian areas north of Israel's Trans-Samaria highway with the rest of the West Bank south of the road.

Keren said the technology is available. It is only a question of funding and he believed the United States would help.

In the meantime, at Shavei Shomron West, Yeshurun was preparing to fight for her home. She tried to bloc the eviction in court and is now fighting for public support.

Evacuation means surrender to Palestinian terror, she argued.

"It's as if your neighbor, a robber, kills a member of your family and you give him the porch and the living room too!" she said.

Elsewhere painters were putting the final touches to new homes at Beracha, near Mitzpeh Yitzhar.

A phone call to 972-2-9942485, northeast of Ramallah, Sunday elicited the following recorded message: "Shevut Rahel Shalom. We are now in the midst of a campaign to absorb new families. Good conditions to those who join, and Housing Ministry benefits to those who buy apartments. So what are you waiting for? Please leave your message and we shall return to you, God willing."

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