Settlers Set Up W. Bank Outposts as Insurance

As Israel delays implementing its new land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians, a small but determined group of Jewish settlers is racing to establish West Bank outposts that it hopes will affect the final outcome of the peace process.

Since the Wye Plantation accord was signed at the White House on Oct. 23, the settlers, with the blessing of their leaders and the quiet tolerance of the government, have hauled mobile homes up to at least five strategic hilltops in the occupied areas. They have planted seedlings, hung curtains, named their new communities and moved in.

Their aim is simple: to establish “facts on the ground” that will allow Israel to hang on to the hills after the Wye accord is carried out and after the achievement of a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

If the Wye accord goes through, Palestinians will get an additional 13% of the West Bank. The areas settled in recent days are not in territory due to be handed over to the Palestinians, but settlers hope that by moving in now, they will ensure that the land remains under Israeli control in any final agreement that follows.

“We are trying to . . . create new blocks of settlements to prevent our evacuation in the future or the Palestinians’ taking over,” said Uri Sapir, 24, a resident of Mitzpe Danny, a new outpost near this settlement southeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. “We want to be sure that this belongs to us.”

Another settler, Mordechai Stern, compared the current surge of activity to the final minute of a soccer game.

“We think it’s important to catch everything we can before the agreement takes effect,” Stern said.

Most of the new sites are very small; none of them appears to have more than 10 houses.

The group Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity, says the rush to establish new sites is without recent precedent, even though it involves relatively few of the West Bank’s more than 150,000 Jewish settlers.

“Now, we have at least five sites established in the last two weeks, and possibly more,” said Mossi Raz, the group’s director. “That compares to all that we had in the last two years.”

Palestinians have watched the new activity with anger and dismay.

“Settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank and in Jerusalem kill the peace process,” said Palestinian peace negotiator Ahmed Korei, who is also the speaker of the Palestinian parliament. “If it continues, there may be a violent reaction which we cannot control.”

Right-wing Israeli legislators are cheering the settlers on. “I’ve told them to tear down all their fences and take the land before the agreement goes into effect,” said parliament member Benny Elon of the far-right Moledet Party. “If we don’t do it, the Arabs will.”

In the Wye accord, Israel agreed to hand over the additional land to the Palestinians in return for a comprehensive Palestinian plan to rein in violent Islamic extremists, finish revising the Palestinian national charter, collect illegal weapons and stop incitement against Israel.

But four times in the last two weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed a Cabinet vote on the accord, the last time in the wake of Friday’s suicide bombing in a downtown Jerusalem market. He has demanded additional security measures from the Palestinians as well as clarification of various aspects of the accord.

Netanyahu aides said the Cabinet meeting could now be held Wednesday or Thursday, with a parliament vote to follow by early next week. But they said Israel will probably not begin its three-phase troop withdrawal by Monday, as stipulated in the accord.

Meanwhile, the government has reacted mildly to the hill seizures, appearing reluctant to alienate the settlers or their powerful political supporters by forcing an evacuation. Netanyahu’s policy has been to allow expansion at existing settlements through “natural growth,” although a variety of reports have suggested that construction in many communities has often outstripped the actual need.

“Obviously, a media-attracting confrontation with the settlers is precisely what the government doesn’t want at this point,” an Israeli official said. “Our position is that they are not doing anything illegal even though theoretically they shouldn’t be there.”

As Israel sees it, the settlers’ only problem is that they jumped the gun in trying to build in areas of the West Bank where they had yet to receive building permits.

But to the Palestinians--and to some extent, the Americans--new construction is a one-sided act aimed at changing the status quo on the West Bank before final-status talks.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Larry Schwartz said that during the Wye summit in Maryland, the two sides agreed to refrain from actions that could prejudice the outcome of a permanent agreement.

“Our policy has been and remains that unilateral actions by either side that break down confidence between the sides [are] not helpful,” Schwartz said.

At Mitzpe Danny, the new residents, including three families and a handful of college-age youths, said they began building at the site 24 hours after the Wye agreement was signed. They named it after a settler stabbed to death by a Palestinian three years ago.

Since the settlers arrived, the army has confiscated a tractor they were using to dig trenches for sewage and water lines, they said, but no one has suggested that they leave their barren hillside.

“It took the agreement to push us, but then we knew we had to hurry,” said Sapir, sipping coffee inside one of three run-down mobile homes donated by the settlement movement. Outside, a blue-and-white Israeli flag flapped in the breeze. “If you come back in a year, we will have houses here.”

“This is how the settlement movement has always established new communities,” added Nitzanit Ricklin, 31, as she held her 3-week-old son, Gideon. “We start with just a few houses, and we begin to settle the land. But they will never make us leave.”