We’ve ‘Come Home,’ Israeli Settler Says : Conflicting Claims Add to West Bank Unrest

The police here do not enforce Israel’s stringent seat-belt law. If you are a Jewish settler in this predominantly Arab area, you need to be able to get out of your car fast.

Dov Kalmanovitz is a believer in the law, and, besides, he had just been in Jerusalem, where people who fail to strap themselves in are likely to be fined heavily. So he was wearing his seat belt as he neared his home Sunday in this small Jewish enclave in what is otherwise Arab land.

Gasoline Bomb Thrown

As Kalmanovitz, a 32-year-old accountant with three children, topped a hill near the Arab town of Al Birah, a gasoline bomb was hurled through his windshield. The car burst into flames and crashed. Kalmanovitz was burned over 95% of his body. He told authorities he had trouble getting out of the car because he had fastened his seat belt.

The incident was a personal tragedy and a reminder of the violence that has come to be commonplace here. It was also a symbol of one of the root causes of the violence and a sign of what may be an impassable barrier to a lasting accommodation.

For Dov Kalmanovitz was driving toward home--a Jewish home--on land the Arabs say has been theirs for centuries and still is.

As Hazem Kutteneh, a 27-year-old Arab journalist, put it: “My great-grandfather was born here (in what is now occupied territory); the prime minister (Yitzhak Shamir) was born in Poland,” a reference to the background of most Zionists, many of whom came from Eastern Europe.

Kalmanovitz is one of the 60,000 or so Jewish settlers who have created 137 cities and towns on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Israel occupied those areas in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

To the settlers, this is their land. It was the land of their Jewish ancestors, the place where the Jewish nation was founded.

“We have simply come home,” said Meira Adilman, 27, who moved to Beit El 2 1/2 years ago from Chicago.

So much is it home in the eyes of the settlers--and, for the most part, the rest of Israel--that the West Bank area is called Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the region.

In the view of these people, God gave Israel to the Jews, an Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, from the Sinai to Lebanon. It is a claim made real by the strength of the Israeli army and by the political force of the settlers themselves.

But it is a claim that runs up against another, also based on religion--and the physical presence of nearly 1.5 million people.

The conflict of views is reflected in the intense unrest in the occupied territories, as Arabs attack Israeli cars and buses carrying settlers and confront Israeli soldiers with increasing violence, and the settlers and soldiers respond, often with gunfire.

Rising Level of Fear

It is making an isolated and defensive group of people even more afraid, and their fear has been manifested in a further retreat from contacts with their Arab neighbors and a willingness to strike out at people who are seen increasingly as the enemy.

“It is better to break Arab bones than to see my child’s life threatened,” said Merhu Yakerson, 20, a Beit El settler who was brought here as a child from the Soviet Union 14 years ago.

“We have to do something stronger than what they do,” she said in a quiet voice that belied her vehement views. “Any time someone throws a rock, we should go (to an Arab village) and break windows.”

In the past, this is what settlers often did--and worse. Last year, after a woman settler was killed by a gasoline bomb, Israeli vigilantes raided the Arab village of Qalqiliya and the refugee camp of Dahaisha, shooting, smashing windows, burning houses and beating residents.

So far, the settler reaction to the current round of Arab violence has been relatively muted. The settlers have allowed the army to react, which it has done with such force that it has brought international criticism. At least 40 Arabs have been killed by soldiers and police and hundreds have been injured.

The settlers, according to Otniel Schneller, a resident of the settlement of Ofra, near Ramallah, and a leader of the settlement movement from its inception, decided to let the military handle the problem while “we try to live normally and morally.”

Vigilantes May Return

But there is concern and restiveness among the settlers, and this may signal a return to the vigilante attitude of the past. Within hours of the interview with Schneller, a group of Ofra settlers entered a nearby Arab village and broke car windows.

That same night, settlers ignored an army curfew in the Arab town of Anabta, site of a particularly vicious confrontation in which Israelis shot and killed three demonstrators and damaged homes and vehicles.

The settlers also fear that Prime Minister Shamir, if he senses a loss of political support, may retreat from his position that Israel will never give up control of the occupied territories.

This, together with a fear that the army is not being severe enough in putting down the riots, was on the mind of a settlement spokesman Tuesday when he talked with an Israel Radio reporter.

“Vacillation shown by Israel is prolonging the violence,” he said, referring to a government decision to allow a prominent Palestinian journalist to travel to the United States and meet with, among others, Secretary of State George P. Shultz. “This is, of course, a signal of weakness, of undecidedness, of having lost our way. . . . This is exactly pouring oil onto the flames.”

The willingness to use violence against the Arabs is made easier, it seems, by the settlers’ refusal to recognize that their neighbors have any legitimacy.

While Schneller sits in his office in the pleasant town of Ofra and says he feels bad about the killings, the literature distributed abroad seeking new settlers makes no mention of the Arabs, not even as a problem to be overcome.

“They don’t belong here,” said Meira Adilman while standing in Beit El’s grocery store, pushing her baby to and fro in a stroller. “Most of them have only been here for a hundred years, and they can go to any Arab country and live.”

Billy White, 29, a resident of a settlement called Ariel, southwest of Nablus and a center of anti-Israeli resistance, said that in the four years since he left Montreal for Israel, he has “met good Arabs and bad Arabs, just like I know good Jews and bad Jews.”

“But now,” he went on, “it’s very scary and very bad. I think we should put them all on buses and send them to Jordan.”

Security Tight

Although many settlers speak of their fear of the Arabs and worry about their safety on the roads, there is no real sense of fear within the settlements themselves. There are fences, but no barbed wire, and the entrance gates are either unmanned or have a single guard.

There is a defense organization, and every able-bodied person is expected to accept a rotating assignment on night patrols. In addition, members of the army reserve--nearly every male between the ages of 21 and 55--who live in the settlements are permitted to do their reserve duty near home, as part of a regional defense system, and this gives the towns and cities a professional security system.

Exactly what to do about the Palestinian Arabs is the thrust of domestic political debate as well as the focus of international efforts to negotiate a permanent settlement of the Israeli-Arab dispute.

Prime Minister Shamir proposes to allow limited autonomy for the Arabs in the occupied territories over a five-year period and then negotiate a final agreement, but without permitting creation of an independent, autonomous Palestinian state. He flatly opposes dismantling any settlements.

His principal opposition, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, is willing to give up some of the occupied lands and even close some of the settlements.

Shift in Support to Shamir

Many political experts believe that Shamir holds the upper hand in public opinion and that the government could not turn the West Bank over to a Palestinian state if it meant removing the Jews living there. This gives the settlement leaders confidence and cements their hard-line policy.

“It would be very difficult to destroy 140 settlements,” Schneller said, “and to throw out almost 100,000 Jews with more than half of Israel opposed. It is just ridiculous.”

It would seem to be, judging by the permanent nature of many settlements. Ariel, for instance, is situated atop a mountain (as are many settlements) with a strategic and commanding view of the countryside.

Since Ariel was founded in 1978 by a handful of families living in trailers, it has grown to about 6,000 people living in a variety of houses on large lots. There is a complete school system, restaurants, a hospital and an industrial park. The projection is for 160,000 people, which would make it the largest city on the West Bank.

Even smaller settlements, such as Beit El, have a feeling of permanence. This is so although Beit El, even with its twin settlement of Beit El Bet, has only about 1,000 people. Beit El is an intensely religious community peopled by believers who are likely to resist any efforts to move them.

“I would rather deprive someone of their political rights than lose my life,” said a man buying canned goods at the Beit El market, “and I would rather see Israel as a secular state destroyed rather than leave here, where God said I should live.”

But even with this sort of determination and the political support of the government and major elements in Israel, there are signs that the settlement issue could recede if left alone.

Growth Lagging

Growth is far behind original projections and hopes. The initial estimates were for 100,000 people by now, but there has been a serious slowdown since 1986, when growth fell from 20,000 a year to 8,000. It was about 8,000 again in 1987.

Even what new growth there has been has occurred either in the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, depriving the more rural settlements of needed people, or in the ideological and religious communities, which have a limited attraction for native Israelis.

Schneller says the main reasons for the lack of growth have been financial and political; that is, many prospective settlers have money problems, while uncertainty over the outcome of elections this fall has held others back.

Paradoxically, he said, the current strain of violence has not hurt recruitment.

“Just the opposite,” he said. “In the last three months, more people have asked to come than in the previous year. In a security crisis, Jews want to protect themselves. They know that their homes in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are not safe if we are driven out. As long as there are Jews, we will be here. This is our home.”