Israel Steps Up Land Takeovers in West Bank

In the wake of a highly visible expansion of settlements on disputed land, Israel has quietly begun a new round of confiscations of Palestinian property, contending that it is needed for defense.

The land takeovers came to light on the eve of a surprise visit by Secretary of State James A. Baker III to Israel and other Middle East countries to discuss ways to lay the groundwork for peace talks. The Bush Administration has objected to the expansion of settlements, especially programs to house newly arrived Soviet immigrants in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

During the past month in Bilin, a farming village on hardscrabble terrain northwest of Jerusalem, landowners have received notice that 200 acres of property are being taken by the occupation government for “security purposes.”

“Tell Mr. Baker, when he comes, to visit us,” Abdel Hamid Samarra said to a reporter Saturday. “We will take him and show him what the Israelis are doing.”

Baker is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday from Turkey. He made his first visit in March and urged the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to take measures to ease tensions with Palestinians. Baker suggested that a freeze on settlements would be one place to start.

During his first trip, Baker was taken on an aerial tour over the Israeli heartland, and his guides directed the helicopter westward to impress upon him the narrowness of Israel’s midsection between the Mediterranean and the West Bank. If he had flown east, Baker might have been impressed by another phenomenon: the rapid pace of settlement construction in the West Bank, home to 1 million Palestinians and about 90,000 Israeli settlers.

Proponents of the settlement program say that by altering the population balance on the disputed land, they can preclude the chance that any Israeli government could reasonably trade the territory for peace. The land-for-peace formula is a keystone of Bush Administration efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Baker has proposed a second track toward peace that centers on persuading Israel and hostile Arab nations to sit together and discuss regional problems, including arms control.

While expressing interest in the second track, Israeli officials dismiss the land-for-peace trade-off. “I object to the notion that settlements are a key issue,” said government spokesman Yossi Olmert.

The Bush Administration sees the issue differently. “We continue to view such activity as an obstacle to peace and to current efforts to revive the peace process,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said last week. “We have been told in the past that the Israeli government would have to approve expanded settlement activity and that no decisions had been made by the government. We trust that that is still the case.”

Tutwiler said Baker’s decision to revisit Israel “underlines our commitment to work actively to promote peace and real conciliation among Israel, the Arab states and the Palestinians.”

The Administration has been pressing Israel for the past year to curtail the construction of settlements and made loan guarantees for $400 million in immigrant housing contingent on a promise that the government would not develop areas in the West Bank and Gaza for the Soviet immigrants.

Last fall, Housing Minister Ariel Sharon announced that Israel would undertake no special programs to house immigrants on the occupied land. However, existing programs offering interest-free mortgages for the newcomers are available for property in the West Bank and Gaza. The Housing Ministry also delivered new mobile homes to shelter immigrants in several settlements.

In Beit Horon, an Israeli settlement near Bilin, hillside terraces have been shaved and a dozen mobile homes put in place during the past month. In Efrat, north of Hebron, a real estate agent showed visitors rows of mobile homes and told them they were reserved for 40 new immigrant families.

In Kiryat Arba, a militant nationalist settlement half an hour south of Jerusalem, newly arrived Soviets told the Jerusalem Post that they were assured that the community is a five-minute drive from the capital.

Construction for longtime Israeli citizens also continues apace. In Efrat, an advertisement for a series of new homes promised special interest rates for veteran Israelis and newcomers alike. Such deals are subsidized by the government. Baker has previously expressed concern that American aid to Israel frees up funds for the settlements.

New roads are being cut through the hills of the West Bank to serve settlers’ needs. Many avoid passing through or past Palestinian towns and villages, in an effort to create an Arab-free road network. The smooth blacktop roads contrast with the potholed streets and farm-to-market roads serving Palestinians, who nonetheless are required to pay high taxes to the military government or face confiscation of equipment at their workplace or appliances and furniture from their homes.

Despite the defense reasons given for land takeovers, the confiscations appear to point to new settlement activity, some Israeli observers say.

“This is how huge lands come under government control and are used for settlements,” Haaretz, an influential Israeli newspaper, said of the wave of confiscations.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said only that “from time to time, it is necessary to take land for defense purposes, as happens in any country.”

In Bilin, home to 900 Palestinians, landowners began to receive confiscation notices in March. Forty families hold plots surrounding the village. Some of the land is planted with olives and figs, and some is rocky and used for grazing. One area of oak trees encloses the shrine of Abu Lamoun, a long-dead Muslim preacher; his modest tomb attracts villagers who pray to it for rain.

“This land was my father’s and my father’s father’s,” said Samarra, who plows his small field with a donkey. “If the government comes with guns and tanks, they can stop me from working, but they will have to kill me. What can I do? Live on American aid?”

Samarra and the other family heads refused to sign documents acknowledging the takeover and plan to fight it in court.

When Israel entered the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War, it inherited 10% of land controlled in trust by Jordan, which had governed the area. Most of the rest was owned by Palestinians who held legal title or owned it by custom, having refused to register with officials of the Ottoman Empire that ruled much of the Middle East for 400 years.

Since 1967, Israel has added to its control of common land; the government now owns 50% of the acreage. Some was converted into military target ranges, some into nature reserves, some into settlements, and some was merely designated “state lands” by successive Likud Party governments headed by Menachem Begin and now Yitzhak Shamir.

“It was via the (state land) approach that the Likud governments began grabbing up almost all the non-cultivated land in the West Bank,” Haaretz wrote.

Likud has offered Palestinians limited self-rule, a formula that does not include control of the confiscated land. Besides Bilin, confiscation efforts are reported near 15 towns and villages along the 1967 Israeli border, as well as areas near the West Bank cities of Nablus and Ramallah, involving hundreds of acres.

Within the Shamir government, the most vocal promoter of settlement policy is Housing Minister Sharon, who while holding various posts in a succession of governments has dedicated himself to expanding the size and number of settlements. Recently, Sharon lobbied the Cabinet to annex existing settlements to make a land-for-peace deal unfeasible.

During a recent tour of West Bank settlements, Sharon said construction of 13,000 housing units has been approved for the next two years. He asserted that Israel faced “political dangers” if the settlement pace were not stepped up. His remarks were widely interpreted as a call to head off the land-for-peace scheme.

Last year, about 2,500 Soviet immigrants moved into the territories, a small percentage of the 200,000 newcomers who arrived in Israel but a significant part of the estimated 10,000 Israelis who homesteaded on the land.

“I think settlement . . . is a plan which advances peace and does not hurt it,” Sharon said. “This settlement gives Israel a feeling of security. And in my opinion, as long as Israeli security is increased, it will be more possible to advance towards peace.”

Aides to Shamir have tried to place the blame for recent, quickened settlement activity solely on Sharon, contending that he is out to embarrass the prime minister and win points among Israeli rightists in preparation for an eventual run for power. But Shamir has yet to condemn his housing minister or to curtail either the placement of mobile homes for Soviets or the special deals offered home buyers.

The settlement program is an element of the platform of Shamir’s ruling coalition, which he put together last year after the collapse of a national unity government.

Critics of the policy describe the Shamir-Sharon rivalry as a kind of Punch-and-Judy show in which they pretend to squabble with each other but in fact are guided by the same ideology.

“Shamir only disagrees with Sharon on the issue of whether to inflame the Americans,” said Aryeh Naor, a former high official in the Begin government of the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Shamir believes no less in settlements than Sharon.”