Arabs Face ‘Thickened’ Settlements : Mideast: Israelis concentrate on expanding existing developments in occupied lands.

By day, the settlers and the army planted fence posts to block off the land, and by night, Sabri Ghurayeb tore them down.

Finally last spring, soldiers caught Ghurayeb at his nightly chore and put him in jail for 70 days on charges of taking down a “security barrier.”

Although a suit over the ownership of the 10 acres is pending in court, troops supervised the completion of the fence, and the property was in effect annexed to Givon Hadasha, a settlement a few miles northwest of Jerusalem.

Not only is Ghurayeb, a Palestinian, cut off from the disputed land, but the fence almost surrounds his house. His home is like an island connected to his village by a narrow, fenced causeway. While he was in jail, someone ransacked his home and shot his dog.

“The settlers come right up to the fence and peek in like we are in a zoo,” his wife, Sakina, said.

The conflict between the Ghurayebs and their Israeli neighbors is part of a quiet phenomenon proceeding apace on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although much controversy surrounds the issue of new settlements and who might go live in them, it is the growth of existing settlements that is most notable.

Israelis who are committed to keeping all the occupied lands call the process “thickening,” and they believe that it is more critical to Israel’s claim to the land than increasing the number of new settlements, at least for the moment.

“The more of us who live there, the less anyone can say we have to give it away,” said Elyakim Haetzni, who belongs to an annexationist party aligned with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s government.

Israel is taking steps to convince foreign governments that Soviet immigrants will not be funneled to the West Bank and Gaza. Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, an ardent booster of settlements, said Sunday that the government will focus on housing the newcomers inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

His statement was designed to allay the U.S. and Soviet concerns that Israel might flood the territories with immigrants. About 1.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Bush Administration has withheld loan guarantees for Soviet immigrant housing as it waits for Israeli assurances. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev threatened to curtail migration of the Soviet Jews.

While trying to mollify superpower concerns, Israel reserves the right of Israelis to move to the territories. On Monday, Prime Minister Shamir reaffirmed Israel’s contention that, in principle, the West Bank and Gaza are open to Israeli settlement, even by Soviet immigrants.

“Everybody in a democratic country has the right to settle where he wishes,” Shamir said.

Settlement adherents are suspicious that any retreat might put Israel’s claim to the territories in jeopardy. The United States views trading of occupied land for peace as the key formula for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III have repeatedly referred to settlements as an “obstacle” to peace.

In the meantime, the thickening process picks up pace. In Betar, southwest of Jerusalem, a complex designed for strict Orthodox Jewish residents is nearing completion.

Buyers get government-backed breaks: Interest-free, 30-year mortgages of up to $40,000 are available; needy families can qualify for $75,000 interest-free loans. In Israel itself, such incentives are available only in the far corners of the country; Betar is 10 miles from Jerusalem.

The government has provided roads and sewers. The land was expropriated from nearby Arab villages.

New highways are crisscrossing the West Bank to circumvent Arab villages, weaving in and out of rough valleys, while narrow and heavily traveled roads serving Palestinians go without repair. Israeli researchers have estimated that government investment in the West Bank alone has reached $3 billion. Tax breaks are given for developing Israeli businesses.

The independent newspaper Haaretz predicts that, based on the number of new housing units planned for the next 2 1/2 years by Shamir’s government, 120,000 Israelis will reside in the West Bank and Gaza. About 88,000 live there now, the newspaper estimates.

In Givon Hadasha, thickening takes the form of new, stone-faced, two-story houses with peaked tile roofs and little front gardens, modest unless compared with cities in Israel where most people live in cramped apartments.

Tzion, a resident of Givon, is getting ready to move from his trailer, the housing available in the settlement when it was founded in 1978, into one of the villas.

Tzion finds nothing controversial in what he’s doing, based on his community’s closeness to the city. “We’re really part of the capital,” he said, “a single bloc of population.”

As for Ghurayeb, Tzion offers a conspiracy theory.

“He is paid by the PLO to cause trouble,” Tzion assured a visitor. The land never belonged to Ghurayeb and is destined for new housing, Tzion said. The fence is meant to protect the settlement from the Arab uprising, he added.

Who ransacked his house?

“I think it was Arab workers who built the fence,” Tzion said.

Ghurayeb claims he has papers approved by the Israeli government to back his claim to the land. He says that the settlers have charged him with inciting riots and throwing stones in order to convert his case into a terror issue.

Next month, a court will hear Ghurayeb’s complaint that the fence was built illegally. Then another hearing over the land itself will be judged simultaneously with the charges of stone-throwing.

Even if he loses the land, Ghurayeb says he will stay in the house.

“My father was on this land, my grandfather and his grandfather,” Ghurayeb lamented. “All the power of Israel and America cannot get me to go.”