Israeli Settlers Angry, Fearful in Tense West Bank

With the grim willfulness that is their trademark, dozens of Israeli settlers tried Thursday to get to the place where the body of an Israeli taxi driver, slain by gunfire, was found a week ago. They were intent on building a monument to the victim, whom they see as a martyr and a symbol of their demands for greater security.

The Israeli army, to avoid trouble, blocked their way with a truck.

The insistent settlers left their cars and began to walk the 2 miles to the fork in the road where the body was found. But as they neared the place, soldiers arrived with a bus, herded them into it and took them back to their starting point.

“This is ridiculous--someone gets murdered, and they pick on us,” said Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, largest of the Jewish settlements on the West Bank. “But don’t worry. We will return.”

The incident illustrated the increasingly uncertain condition of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. After being encouraged by successive Israeli governments to settle on the disputed land, they find their future less and less certain amid increasing talk, in Israel and abroad, of trading the land for peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Meanwhile, they complain that the government and the army are failing to protect them from the hate and the stones of the Arabs, who regard them as aliens. Their clamor for protection is heard in Israeli enclaves from the hillside olive groves of the West Bank to the beaches of the Gaza Strip.

The settlers want their status clarified, although they seem to feel that in the end they will be allowed to stay on land controlled by Israel, that the Arabs will accept it or leave.

“We want some clear policy from the government,” said Saralee Glasser, a resident of Elkana who immigrated to Israel 18 years ago and moved to the West Bank four years ago. “As far as we are concerned, we are living in Israel. We want the same protection as someone would get in any Israeli town. We want Israeli law applied here.”

The demands of the settlers--about 70,000 of them in about 130 settlements--have kept Israeli politicians busy responding with rhetoric, if not substance.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir traveled to the bleak mountaintop settlement of Brakh to speak at a memorial service for a security guard killed last month by an Arab intruder--another example, the settlers say, of their vulnerable situation.

Shamir spoke passionately of Israel’s right to the land while a small group of enraged settlers, demanding a stronger hand applied to rebellious Arabs, tried to shout him down.

“Neither murders nor stones nor Molotov cocktails will destroy the will of the nation of Israel to redeem the Land of Israel and settle it with many Jews,” Shamir said. “Land of Israel” refers to the biblical Israel that Shamir wants to reclaim.

“The nations of the world talk peace,” he said. “. . . We tell them the danger to peace is not from Israel but from our enemies.”

This failed to satisfy the settlers huddled on the wind-swept crest. They screamed, “You’re responsible!” and held up signs lettered, “The Blood of Our Brothers Cries Out for Revenge,” referring to, among others, the taxi driver and the security guard.

The body of taxi driver Shlomo Edri, of Petah Tikva, was found a week ago on the road near the settlement of Yakir with two bullet wounds in the chest. It was in his memory that the settlers wanted to build a roadside monument.

The other victim, Yaacov Parag, was shot last month at Brakh, where Shamir spoke, by a Palestinian shepherd who was apparently angered over a pay dispute.

Both have become symbols of the settlers’ goals and fears.

“The people are angry,” Mayor Nachman said. “They want action. Instead, the army stops us from building a monument.”

In recent weeks, the settlers have organized more and more protests designed to wrest greater protection from the government. In Jerusalem, a group of settlers is holding a hunger strike near the prime minister’s office. In a tent, they display the crude weapons of the 13-month-old Palestinian uprising--stones, nails, spikes, bits of scrap metal.

A few weeks ago, settlers blocked highways in the West Bank to protest the stone throwing that makes a nightmare of their daily passage to and from work. On Thursday, the settlers who were gathered at Brakh criticized comments attributed to Gen. Dan Shomron, the army chief of staff, who suggested that the Arab uprising could not be crushed, only resolved politically. Some shouted, “Fire Shomron!”

On occasion, the settlers defend themselves, even take the offensive against the Arabs. Many travel with pistols or submachine guns in their cars.

The government and the army think some settlers are trigger-happy. This image was reinforced last fall when a settler shot and wounded two plainclothes Israeli agents trying to lay a trap for Arab stone throwers.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a frequent target of settler criticism, said that dissatisfaction among settlers in the occupied lands should not turn into a battle between Israelis--that is, between the army and the civilian settlers.

At an army roadblock near Yakir on Thursday, settlers chased a group of Arab villagers who were taunting them. They fired two rounds from an Uzi submachine gun carried by one of the settlers. Soldiers looking on from nearby did nothing.

A dozen Israelis have been killed by Arabs since the start of the intifada , or uprising, including a woman and her three children who perished in a bus that was firebombed last fall near Jericho. Hundreds of buses have been damaged by rocks and at least 40 gutted by fire, the government says.

About 13 Palestinians have been shot to death by settlers, and in all almost 340 Arabs have been killed in the intifada .

One settler, Israel Zeev, was found guilty in court recently of shooting to death a 28-year-old Arab shepherd last year near the West Bank settlement of Shiloh. Zeev said he fired in self-defense after the shepherd threw stones. Witnesses said Zeev fired without provocation. They said the victim recognized Zeev and shouted at him, “Israel, don’t shoot!”

Charges against two others accused in shooting cases are pending.

The settlers are a varied lot, perhaps as varied as the population of Israel. Some have come to the occupied territories in order to live cheaply, lured by concessions on costs and mortgage rates and knowing little of the area’s biblical symbolism, which is so important to some Jews.

Some believe that the land is biblically ordained for Israelis. Under almost every stone they see the footprint of a prophet. Others see the land as territory won by Israel in what they consider a defensive war, the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967, and they think it is necessary to retain this land for purposes of national defense.

“We are as Israeli as anyone else,” said Glasser, the resident of Elkana who is also a developmental psychologist. “We pay taxes and obey the law, and we demand to be treated like other Israelis.”

She has friends whose car windows have been smashed by rocks. One acquaintance suffered severe eye injuries.

The settlements are different from one another. Some look like American-style suburbs transplanted to the edge of the Arabian desert. Some are just a few inhabited boxes atop bare hills. Others consist of trailers jumbled on the sand. One, Ariel, has the flavor and boosterism of a small, growing, high-technology town.

“We are here to stay,” Mayor Nachman said. “We are not like other settlements, a satellite of some town in Israel. We are the center of things here.”

Nachman has ambitious dreams for Ariel. He has laid out an industrial science park and hopes to attract new business. He would like to expand the boundaries but is hemmed in by Arab farms.

“They planted these olive trees so we couldn’t say the land was vacant,” he complained.

While the settlers fret and protest, the government has undertaken a campaign to attract more Israelis to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Television commercials paint a rosy picture of life in the country. A recent campaign meant to attract settlers to the Gaza Strip, which like the West Bank is caught up in the intifada , urged listeners to “come enjoy the quality of life.” Bumper stickers extol the sun and sand of Gaza Strip beaches. “Live in a young, effervescent community,” a newspaper ad said.

The campaign was designed on behalf of Gush Qatif, a sandy beachside settlement with about 3,000 Israeli inhabitants. Gush Qatif is in the middle of the Gaza Strip, home to 700,000 Arabs.

“We think we have a lot to offer,” said Datya Herskowitz, a spokesman for the settlement. “Children are safe in our community, it’s quiet and there’s lots of sun.”

However, residents of the area note that automobile trips from Gaza into Israel can be risky.

“It’s a tense atmosphere outside,” tomato farmer Ehud Neor said. Like others, he referred to surrounding Arab land as “outside.” Neor said he once had to swerve his car sharply to avoid a gasoline bomb that had been hurled at him.

Still, the settlers persevere. Developers of the newly built and bankrupt Qatif Beach Hotel hope for a return of visitors. The hotel was completed before the intifada began, then was closed when both government funds and business dried up.

The government has plans for new settlements despite the problems of populating older ones. It is committed to starting as many as eight in the coming year, although it is not clear how much money is available for new settlements.

The United States, Israel’s principal ally and donor of aid, calls the settlements an obstacle to peace but has done nothing concrete to discourage them.