Israeli Officials Wary of Keeping Small Settlements : Mideast: Peres questions nation’s ability to protect settlers. Statement unleashes resentment in Gaza.

On a windy strip of coastline between the Mediterranean and the turbulent slums of Gaza, painted like a still life of white stucco, red tile and sandy gardens across a landscape of conflict, stands this unlikely wedge of suburbia.

It is home to 28 Jewish families who, protected by armed guards and a high fence of barbed wire, have taken up residence in the very maelstrom of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their tranquil homes lie just three miles south of the birthplace of the Palestinian uprising, and their future as Jews lies in a land that may soon be flying the flag of Palestinian autonomy.

As negotiators debate a final agreement on Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, Israel’s determination to ensure security for settlements like Netzarim is raising troubling questions about how far the protective arm of the Israeli army can stretch.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres gave the strongest voice ever to those doubts over the weekend when he expressed skepticism about whether Israel could afford to continue protecting small Jewish settlements like Netzarim.

“There are some questions that have to be asked aloud,” Peres told Israel Radio. “What is the point of maintaining a settlement with 28 families that needs workers from Thailand, that needs an army platoon to guard it and needs to have its road guarded by patrols? Where is the logic? Where is the point?”

With his remarks, which unleashed a flood of resentment among Jewish settlers in Gaza, Peres became the most senior figure in the Israeli government to raise questions about the future of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian lands.

Two other Cabinet officials, Immigration Minister Yair Tsaban and Environment Minister Yossi Sarid, expressed similar sentiments Sunday.

“This tiny settlement is stuck like a bone in the throat in the Strip. . . . We have to seriously discuss the possibility of evacuating it,” Tsaban said of Netzarim, and Sarid called the settlement “a hole in the head, and you have to plug a hole in the head.”

Peace talks are scheduled to resume today in the Egyptian resort town of Taba to work out further details of a Palestinian autonomy agreement, even as other Arabs reopen parallel peace talks with Israel in Washington. Yet the issue of the 5,000 Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip, one of the most difficult points in the preliminary agreement initialed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in Cairo last week, promises to be one of the most difficult security issues as the Palestinian autonomy plan unfolds.

While the majority of Gaza settlers live in the cluster of Jewish communities known as Gush Qatif in the south of Gaza, three settlements--Netzarim, with 28 families, Kfar Darom, with 30 families, and Morag, with about 25 families--lie farther north along a major thoroughfare that is scheduled for transfer to Palestinian control.

Protecting them and the Gush Qatif communities will involve Israeli control of at least three east-west thoroughfares in Gaza and difficult decisions on issues like joint road patrols with Palestinians--a subject that consumed a great deal of the discussion in Cairo. The Cairo agreement specifies that expensive road overpasses will have to be built to allow Jewish settlers to leave their enclaves without crossing Palestinian thoroughfares.

Even so, many Gaza settlers are troubled that the agreement does not go far enough to protect their safety at a time when they are about to be surrounded by an autonomous Palestinian enclave, much of it hostile to Jewish communities in its midst.

“The protection they’re offering in no way looks proportional to the danger that is going to happen,” said Datya Herskovitz, spokeswoman for the Gaza Coast settlers association.

“Everybody says, ‘Get rid of Gaza, give it to the Palestinians, all your problems will be solved.’ But . . . Gaza will not go away,” she said. “People next will say, ‘Get rid of the West Bank, get rid of the Golan Heights.’ And next is someone going to say, ‘Get rid of Jerusalem’? “

In Netzarim, there is a sense that Peres’ comments betrayed Israel’s longstanding commitment to protect Jewish settlements, wherever they are, whatever their size--and also a nagging memory of the settlements in the nearby northern Sinai that were forcibly dismantled when the area was returned to Egypt.

“I am very sorry to hear Peres saying these statements. I hope these thoughts will go away, because the importance of this place is huge,” said Ronen Harari, a yeshiva student who lives with his wife and two young children in the 2-year-old Netzarim settlement, a community built on the site of a former kibbutz opened in 1984.

Like other Netzarim residents, Harari believes the settlement provides a crucial strategic role for the Israeli army in maintaining a foothold in northern Gaza once Palestinian self-rule takes effect. And like other residents, the Hararis are not optimistic that the current talks are about to produce peace.

“We see the new bases and facilities being built by the army now in preparation, and to me, these facilities are preparations for war, not peace,” said 26-year-old Meri Harari. “The animosity and the conflict is a conflict of thousands of years, and there is no instant solution to it.”

Standing near the blooming greenhouses that fill the outskirts of the settlement--up to half of Israel’s tomato exports now come from Gaza settlements--Eliyahu Uzan, 33, said most settlers feel confident that Peres was not speaking for the majority of the government.

“One thing I know very well: The government of Israel won’t do anything to abandon us or to compromise our personal safety,” he said.

Last year, 150 Jewish families moved into Gaza. Nearly 500 new homes stand ready for additional families in the months ahead, and the settlement council is busy trying to attract new industry to provide jobs for settlers. The people of Netzarim hope it will no longer be an outpost of just 28 families.

“We’re convinced that in the next few years, whoever comes to Netzarim will find hundreds and hundreds of families,” Meri Harari said.