Stage Is Set for Next Skirmish Over Settlements

When Benjamin Netanyahu stood beside President Clinton in Washington earlier this month and declared his intent to develop Jewish settlements, the Israeli leader’s voice reverberated through the craggy hills of the West Bank and the crannies of East Jerusalem.

The new prime minister’s words rang pleasantly in the ears of Pinhas Wallerstein, chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. After four years of butting heads with the former Labor government, the settler leader felt vindicated. “I heard what Bibi said to Clinton, and for me it was like a good concert,” Wallerstein said with a satisfied smile. “We’re not in the opposition anymore.”

But the expansionist policy that gives renewed legitimacy to settlers on lands that Israel captured in 1967 sounded more like a declaration of war to Palestinian leaders. They heard in Netanyahu’s words a bold contradiction of U.S. policy and a violation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, which leave the fate of Jewish settlements, as well as East Jerusalem, for final negotiations. Netanyahu, they said, was making unilateral decisions that augur a new period of confrontation between Palestinians and Jews over land.

“Peace and settlements are two poles of a magnet that can never meet,” the Palestinian Authority said in a statement. “Those who choose settlements definitely do not want peace.”

The first conflict could well ignite in Um Tuba, a Palestinian village whose goats, chickens and pastoral setting belie the fact that it is within the boundaries of Jerusalem. Here, on a pine-covered hill forested by the Jewish National Fund, Israel plans to build the 40,000-unit Har Homa housing development, which undoubtedly would become home to Jews only.

Palestinians call the hill by its Arabic name, Abu Ghniem, and view this project as a “settlement,” although Israelis reserve that term for West Bank communities. In this rocky, back end of Jerusalem, there is no clear demarcation between the city Israel considers its capital and the West Bank.

Palestinians say the proposed development is politically motivated, with its backers seeking to increase the Jewish population of East Jerusalem--and, therefore, Israel’s claim to the territory--and to further separate Palestinians in East Jerusalem from Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israelis say Har Homa is meant to meet growing demand for housing in their undivided capital. The project is to be built on a combination of Jewish-owned property and land confiscated from Palestinians in Um Tuba--the proportions of which vary according to the source.

Palestinians and Jewish activists from the Israeli peace group Ir-Shalem have stalled the development for five years with court challenges to the expropriations. But they appear to be at the end of the legal line and expect ground to be broken any day.

“When the first bulldozer comes here, we will confront it,” said Ali Abu Tair, an Um Tuba landowner who has been fighting Har Homa in court. “You cannot understand the anger I feel.”

Ghassan Andoni, an activist at the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between Peoples in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, added: “The issue here is not only one of ownership. It is that the decision on the sovereignty and future of the land cannot be made from one side.”

The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War. In the 1970s and 1980s, Labor and Likud governments encouraged development of West Bank settlements, particularly on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Although some Israelis moved there simply to take advantage of cheap housing, most settlers view themselves as flag-bearers of Judaism and Zionism. They call the West Bank by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria and believe that the land was given to Jews by God and so must remain in Jewish hands. In their view, the more than 1 million Palestinians who live there should acquiesce to Jewish rule or leave.

Under a previous Likud government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, with Ariel Sharon as housing minister, the settler population grew rapidly at the expense of relations with the U.S. government, which views settlements as an obstacle to peace.

The late Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor Party’s successor to Shamir, froze government funding for settlement construction in 1992 and, in 1993, negotiated the historic land-for-peace accord with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Under that and subsequent accords, the Gaza Strip and six of the seven West Bank cities were turned over to Palestinian autonomous rule. Israeli troops pulled out of 400 or so Palestinian villages but retained the right to reenter them for security reasons.

Although Rabin did allow considerable growth in the settlement population, particularly around Jerusalem, he had a contentious relationship with the settlers. They saw themselves being pushed away from mainstream Israel and potentially cut off in a future Palestinian state. Rabin also seemed to find the radical settlers insufferable; they, in turn, felt abandoned by the government.

In protests last summer, they illegally occupied barren West Bank hilltops, forcing soldiers to drag them off and the government to arrest them. Some blocked highways and demonstrated each week outside of Rabin’s house, branding him a “traitor” and “murderer.”

Rabin was assassinated in November by Yigal Amir, a Jewish student who believed that the prime minister violated God’s will by giving Jewish land to Palestinians. Settlers and religious Jews--along with Likud--were blamed for the hostile environment that led to Rabin’s murder.

The vast majority of Israelis turned to Shimon Peres, Rabin’s liberal successor, and the settler movement seemed all but dead--until a wave of Islamic suicide bombings catapulted Netanyahu to power at the head of a coalition of right-wing and religious parties formed after May 29 elections.

Most voters were more concerned with security than with Jewish domination over the West Bank, where many Israelis have not set foot since the intifada, the seven-year Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. They feared that Peres would give up the West Bank and still not guarantee peace and that Arab terrorists would use the Palestinian-controlled territory as a base to continue attacks against Israel.

Still, Netanyahu’s election revived the settler movement. The new government’s guidelines, crafted in negotiations with the prime minister’s coalition partners, call for strengthening settlements and opposing Palestinian statehood. Instead, Netanyahu wants Palestinians to have limited autonomy.

About 70% of the West Bank is still in Israeli hands, including the problematic city of Hebron, which was supposed to be handed over in March. About 450 Jewish settlers live in the center of Hebron amid 100,000 Palestinians.

Under the accord, Israeli troops are to keep withdrawing from areas of the West Bank if Palestinian leaders show they can control terrorism. The final borders and status of the Palestinian-ruled territory are to be negotiated by 1999.

Noting that the settler population had grown from 96,000 in June 1992 to 145,000 now, Netanyahu told Clinton: “No one expects us to do less than the Labor government.” As for building settlements, he said: “This is obviously something we don’t preclude. But the precise pattern, the decision of how, when, where, is something that I will deliberate with my colleagues.”

The settlers have their own plans and expect backing from religious and hawkish Cabinet ministers such as Sharon. He heads a new agency in charge of roads, water and other areas of infrastructure that could provide means for West Bank expansion.

Having shelved their worst-case scenario--in which Peres was victorious and Palestinians won statehood--the settlers now call for Netanyahu to allow the sale of 3,000 apartments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They want a quick expansion of the largest settlements close to Jerusalem, such as Maale Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion--blocs that even a Labor government planned to annex in a final settlement. Construction there would be less visible, and, the settlers believe, less subject to clashes with the Palestinians.

They then envision constructing businesses and factories on Israeli-built bypass roads, which let settlers travel through the West Bank without going through Palestinian cities. “Industrial areas, gas stations, shopping centers--these can be built along the roads to create a Jewish presence along these routes,” said Wallerstein, the settler leader. At that point, he added, they may be able to build new settlements near the old ones.

“The goal is to create a continuity of settlement,” he added. “Take Maale Adumim. The goal would be to try to connect it with Jerusalem. After that, maybe it will be possible to progress, to move up a step and work in the deeper part of the territory.”

While some settler leaders say they hope to increase their number to 500,000 in the next four years, Wallerstein says that even doubling the population to 300,000 is ambitious, given Palestinian and international opposition.

He is optimistic that the settlers will prevail. Others feel equally invigorated but are less confident.

“No one forgets that a Likud government gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt,” said Eve Harow, a city councilwoman in the Efrat settlement. “We will see. This government may still leave Hebron, and there may be a Palestinian state. But when we hear Netanyahu talk, we know that, if we have to give up these things, it will be because we wanted peace so badly and not because we were wrong.”