PERSPECTIVE ON MIDDLE EAST PEACE : Choice: A Settlement or Settlements : Israel has ignored its promise not to expand the settlements, and the United States just looks the other way.

The Declaration of Principles signed by Israel and the Palestinians in September, 1993, stipulated that the West Bank and Gaza Strip “constitute a single territorial unit, whose integrity will be preserved during the interim period.” This was supposed to mean that Palestinian land in the occupied territories would not be confiscated and that existing Israeli settlements would not expand during the five-year negotiating process.

Despite such promises, Israel in the past 15 months has expropriated or sealed off about 20,000 acres of land in the occupied territories, violating both international law and the spirit of peace. Much of this territory, according to the Jerusalem-based Land and Water Establishment (which monitors such activity), lies just over the so-called Green Line that formally separates Israel from the occupied territories. The purpose, says Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and an expert on Israeli settlement policy, is to “obliterate” the legal border, which “from the government’s standpoint . . . legitimizes the absorption of an additional 12% of the West Bank (into Israel).”

Israel has also continued to build apartments in pre-existing settlements. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put a freeze on all new settlements, but not new construction in existing settlements. Development has gone ahead based on his government’s extremely elastic interpretation of what constitutes “existing settlements.” This fall, the housing ministry disclosed plans to construct about 1,000 apartments in the West Bank town of Alfe Menashe, which will double its population.

Like Hamas terrorism, such activity sows fear and distrust among the participants in the peace process. “On what condition,” asked one West Bank resident who recently watched Israeli bulldozers uproot olive trees on his just-confiscated farm, “can they come and take my land, on which I have worked for scores of years?”

“Olive trees are our main source of income and now they are taking it away from us,” said another victim of expropriation.

No one in the Israeli government seems eager to identify such confiscations as a violation of the Declaration of Principles. Many mainstream Israeli leaders who vocally condemn Hamas terrorism simultaneously hold that Israel has the right to seize and eventually absorb Palestinian land. Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur states candidly that Israel will create “territorial continuity” throughout much of the territories during the interim period, “an achievement that Israel will present to Palestinian negotiators as a geographic fact.” Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, a Labor Party dove, told me that one acceptable option for a “permanent solution” to the conflict with the Palestinians is the Allon Plan, the party’s unofficial guide to settlement policy from 1967 to 1977, which envisioned the absorption of nearly 40% of the West Bank into Israel.

The Clinton Administration has quietly winked approval of such plans. Recall that President Bush had arranged in 1992 to deduct from Israel’s annual loan guarantees the amount that Israel spent on settlements, a policy President Clinton pledged to follow.

This year, the Administration is withholding only $216 million in loan guarantees, even though it calculated that the Israelis spent $310.8 million on “non-security” settlement activity. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the House subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, has aptly charged the Administration with “weakening further U.S. opposition to Israeli settlement activity” by “acquiescing to $95 million worth of non-security expenditures.” When Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau denied that the decision had any impact on Israel’s subsequent announcement that there would be no settlement freeze, Hamilton replied, “There’s a connection in everybody else’s mind in the world but yours.”

The State Department now officially refers to Israeli settlements as a “complicating factor.” No longer are they considered an “obstacle to peace” (as under the Bush and Reagan administrations) or “illegal” (as under Jimmy Carter). While some U.S. policy-makers excuse Israel’s recent expansions as private rather than state construction, in reality the Israeli government is involved in both the financing and planning of this activity.

The softened rhetoric and massive aid from its most powerful ally send Israel a clear signal that it may continue to seize land regardless of the terms of the peace process. Israel’s willingness to depart from these terms was exhibited again Dec. 4, as several Cabinet members hinted that Israeli troops will not be withdrawn from the West Bank, despite the requirements of the Declaration of Principles. The State Department immediately agreed that Israel should not be expected to withdraw.

For those who claim that continued U.S. support for Israeli expansions makes Israel more secure, it is worth recalling what was said at the outset of the current peace process. “Settlements,” said Rabin shortly after he shook hands with Yasser Arafat, “were not established from any security point of view. Their whole purpose was political, to make any solution impossible.”

This is still the case: It’s either land or peace--a settlement or settlements--for the Israelis. To this point, Israel’s leaders, with much gentle but decisive U.S. backing, are still choosing wrongly.