Experts See Room for Compromise in Occupied Lands : Settlements: The concentration of Israeli enclaves on the West Bank, Gaza may offer a solution.

Occupied West Bank--The striking sense of permanency of this Jewish settlement on the disputed West Bank would seem to spell doom for any attempt to trade Israeli-held land for peace with the Palestinians and Arab states.

Complexes of stone-faced apartments, the junior high school, the public pool, the synagogues and playground certainly appear to be here to stay.

In a curious way, however, the configuration of this settlement and several others--highly concentrated, close to Israeli cities and connected by roads that circumvent their despised Arab neighbors--point to possible solutions to the tangled question of land.

According to figures compiled by settler organizations, more than 70% of the Jewish settlers live in enclaves occupying less than 15% of the land area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The rest are scattered helter-skelter throughout the territory. Many settlements are in areas without viable economic activity, some placed simply to make a political statement about who runs the territory.

Despite the best efforts of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli housing minister who has worked tirelessly to sprinkle the territory with settlements, there are still contiguous Palestinian areas that could be joined in bulk to Jordan under confederation, the solution preferred by Washington and one that the Palestinians have indicated they strive for.

Some variation of land compromise is on the lips of Israeli observers as the Madrid peace talks approach--but not on the lips of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who has vowed not to give up Israel’s hold on any of the land.

The issue is coming into focus: How can Israel divide the land with minimum political backlash from the militant settler population that is leading a charge against land-for-peace formulas?

“When Israel considers ceding territory,” wrote university educator Clinton Bailey in the Jerusalem Report magazine, “security is indeed a legitimate concern, as is political stability.”

He added: “The removal of Jewish settlements for the sake of peace must not inflict deep wounds that would create a permanent schism in our body politic.”

Bailey’s solution is to cut up the West Bank into “Arab enclaves” that would contain 80% of the West Bank population while leaving 95% of the Israeli population in place in existing settlements. The population of the West Bank includes more than a million Palestinians and about 100,000 Israelis.

Israel would retain 40% to 50% of the land under Bailey’s plan.

Bailey doesn’t offer a formula for the Gaza Strip, where a scattering of 3,000 Israelis live among 600,000 Palestinians. In polls, most Israelis say they are willing to give up the Strip outright.

Once the psychological barrier is broken, other compromise possibilities unfold.

Under a scheme published in the Israeli press, about 70,000 of the Israeli settlers could be joined to Israel by annexing nine areas, including communities near Jerusalem, others that run along a ridge south of the city, still more that border the old 1967 frontier, a triangle of settlements with its apex at the town of Ariel and a scattering of others in the Jordan Valley and near Hebron.

That would leave 95% of the Palestinian population on about 80% of the land. In all, the sum of about 1.7 million West Bank and Gaza Palestinians and more than 1.5 million Palestinians in Jordan would be more than half of all Palestinians in the Middle East.

This kind of thinking worries ideological militants who believe that the land, by historical right as well as defense needs, belongs to Israel.

“The issue is psychological,” said Ben Greenberger, the deputy mayor of Maaleh Adumim, which lies southeast of Jerusalem. “It is totally inconceivable to me to gerrymander the land so that the only places that belong to Israel are the ones where Jews are in the majority. This would be to reverse decades of a pioneering effort.”

Maaleh Adumim, with a population of 15,000, is the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Another 1,000 houses are under construction on a hill across the highway to Jericho.

The community, which is on the verge of gaining the bureaucratic status of city, has more area than any city in Israel or the disputed land. The residential and industrial areas occupy only a fraction of the 9,000 acres designated for the town; its boundaries extend several miles into the Judean desert toward Jericho on land used mainly by Bedouin shepherds for grazing.

“We can’t accept to have an Arab border close to our capital,” Greenberger concluded.

The idea of staying put but becoming an autonomous region of a Palestinian state--the opposite of Israel’s proposal that the Palestinians accept limited self-rule under Israeli sovereignty--is also unthinkable.

Bedroom communities such as Maaleh Adumim are a key element in the Shamir government’s drive to hold on to all the land. They are the fastest growing and most developed of the settlements and have been fully integrated into Israel’s road and electricity network.

That has not stopped the government from steadily putting down new settlements in out-of-the-way places. Land was cleared near Medzad, south of Hebron, for a tiny community of mobile homes. Existing settlements are also undergoing expansion, even without sewer and electric connections in place.

Dense Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem are also targeted for new Israeli colonies. Militant nationalists moved into houses in Silwan, a working-class Palestinian area, in the dead of night, rousting residents from their sleep and squatting if the inhabitants happened to be away.

In the Old City, the Housing Ministry has given the ultranationalist Ateret Hacohanim movement buildings in Muslim neighborhoods, even though the move violates the traditional status quo that keeps Jews, Muslims, Christians and Armenians in segregated quarters.