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Settlements expand during elections Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/524066.htmlhttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/524066.html
Last update - 02:09 07/01/2005
Quietly carrying on building
In the Etzion Bloc, there are no violent confrontations with security forces. Construction is booming in certain settlements - while being quietly halted in others
By Aluf Benn
At the Netiv Avot outpost, near the Jewish settlement of Elazar in the Etzion Bloc, they are covering mobile homes with cement-block walls and gradually turning them into stone houses. In the neighboring outpost, Givat Hahish, someone has built an improvised two-story villa that rises above the mobile homes. The tenants are getting ready for the snow that will fall soon and cut off the muddy roads that were paved with funding from the Housing Ministry in the days when National Religious Party MK Effie Eitam was the minister. When the water on the roads freezes, even Jeeps with snow chains on their tires will find it difficult to drive here.
The head of the Etzion Bloc local council, Shaul Goldstein, is proud of his outposts. On Saturdays he walks with his neighbors from the Jewish settlement of Neveh Daniel to pray at the nearby outpost of Neveh Daniel North. They have developed a worship service there that is suited to youngsters in a mobile home that serves as a synagogue. There are no stone houses in Neveh Daniel North, only a few mobile homes and an Israel Defense Forces observation post opposite the nearby Arab village of Nahlin. One of the inhabitants serves as an officer in the police's special anti-terror unit; another young settler who has been at the outpost for five months is now trying to get accepted to the unit.
Goldstein knows that these outposts are on the evacuation list and claims: "This is our land of Israel and it is our right to be on it." The outposts, he adds, were set up to prevent a Palestinian takeover of lands: "If the state would show concern for the lands the way it should, I would have no need of outposts."
The government's claims that this is illegal construction seems to him like an excuse. He knows that this is a political matter.
In the Etzion Bloc there are no violent confrontations between Jewish settlers and the security forces, like in Yitzhar, nor are there conflicts with Arab neighbors over groves of trees and cultivated lands. Here the struggle over the land of Israel is being conducted quietly. The Etzion Bloc is known as one of the "consensus blocs" that will be annexed to the state of Israel in the permanent status agreement, even in Yossi Beilin's Geneva accord.
Jewish settlement in the Etzion Bloc dates back to the days of the British Mandate; it was destroyed in the War of Independence and renewed after 1967. But despite the political consensus, there are no "quality of life" settlers here like there are near Kfar Sava. The majority of the inhabitants is religious and settled on the ridge for ideological reasons.
Goldstein, a prominent figure in the second generation of the leadership of Yesha (the acronym for the territories of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, which also means "salvation" in Hebrew), grew up in a secular home in Be'er Sheva, in a neighborhood of employees of the atomic reactor. He served as an engineer in the Israel Air Force and became religiously observant in his twenties. He became involved in public political activity after working as a contractor, and built ritual baths and residential housing and factories. He built his house at the top of the ridge, right on the watershed line, with his own hands. Not long ago he joined the Likud after he was elected as an independent candidate. Goldstein is totally committed to the struggle against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the disengagement plan. It is important to him to show that the Jewish settlers in the territories are average Israelis who love the same songs and the same plays and the same landscapes as others. His language is studded with biblical quotations and the latest slang.
In recent months Goldstein has been conducting a lobbying campaign to influence the route of the separation fence in his area. The problem is knotty, because in the vicinity there are four Palestinian villages with 18,000 inhabitants and a great many Palestinian fields and vineyards. The Palestinian grapevines are planted between the Jewish settlements, in less crowded rows than those used in Israeli vineyards. But where the land is worked, even to a meager extent, it is impossible to declare it "state land" and settle Jews there. Goldstein has proposed annexing the villages to Israel and giving rights to their inhabitants. The idea has not been accepted and now he is fighting to distance the fence from the outermost houses in the Jewish settlements and to position it on the next ridge - without too much success. The authorities have decided to put Givat Itim, which was supposed to have greatly expanded the Jewish settlement of Efrat, on the other side of the fence. The land, some of which was under Jewish ownership before 1948, will be encircled by a patrol road; the army will leave for its patrols there through a gate in the fence.
This month Sharon will bring the route of the separation fence in Gush Etzion to the government for approval, but it is clear that the final decision will be made by the High Court of Justice. This will be the first time that Israel tries to put a large settlement bloc on its side of the fence, and it will put to the test the commitment of U.S. President George W. Bush to recognize the existence of "Israeli population centers" in the territories. Bush was talking about the permanent status agreement, but the practical test of his promise is in the facts that are being established now in the building of the fence and in the expansion of the Jewish settlements.
Not afraid of Rice
When he announced the plan to disengage from the Gaza Strip last year, Sharon declared that the government would "act to strengthen Israel's control in those parts of the land of Israel that will be an inalienable part of the state in any future agreement." In other words, Israel is leaving Gaza and taking a deeper hold in the settlement blocs in the West Bank. The problem is that at the same time Sharon also promised the Americans that there would be no building in Jewish settlements "beyond the existing construction line," and that the outposts that were established during the period of his tenure would be evacuated. Since then the government has been pursuing a double policy: One arm is getting ready to freeze the settlements and evacuate the outposts, while the other is approving plans for building and taking control of lands.
The implementation of the promises to the Americans is advancing slowly but surely. White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice recently told an Israeli personage: "We know that things are under control."
At the Defense Ministry they have completed the demarcation of the "Blue Line," which will establish the boundaries of Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The demarcation team, headed by Brigadier General (res.) Baruch Spiegel, adviser to the defense minister, has already mapped out 65 settlements - half of the total in the West Bank. The old, manually drawn maps have been redrawn and computerized. Progress is being made according to an alphabetical order. Since its work methods have been determined, the team is advancing at a rate of 20 settlements per month. In the spring, the government echelon will be presented with an orderly file, denoting the permissible areas for construction in each settlement, the illegal construction and the building that has been done outside settled areas. The mapping team was surprised by the deviations it has discovered - like a house divided such that half of it was inside the demarcation plan and half outside.
On February 1, attorney Talia Sasson, who was appointed to examine the problem of the outposts, will present her interim report to the prime minister's adviser, Dov Weisglass. Among other things, she will recommend strengthening the coordination among government ministries so that they will not be able to fund illegal building. Housing Minister Tzipi Livni has already toughened the procedures for approving projects and locating mobile homes. The list of the 20 illegal outposts is still waiting for evacuation orders, but preparations are going ahead and in the near future an "evacuation director" will be appointed to deal with the property of the evacuees.
American pressure is deterring the establishments of new outposts or construction deep in the territories. Dror Etkes, the settlement-tracker from Peace Now, says that during the past year, only one significant outpost was set up, and others are developing at a snail's pace. Etkes and his gray truck are familiar visitors at the outposts. "Are you from Peace Now? We don't agree with you, but at least you're objective," an armed settler at an outpost near Eli says to him, by way of flattery.
The impression that has been created by the procrastination in clearing the outposts - as if they had been established secretly and need to be discovered by satellites and planes - is very much exaggerated. The settlers are not hiding. The Nofei Nehemia outpost near Ariel, two rows of mobile homes with a strange scarecrow in the guard's booth, is mentioned on the Samaria local council's Internet site as a community that was established in 2002 - during the "forbidden" era.
Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz are quietly releasing building permits in the large settlements or those close to the Green Line (pre-Six-Day War border). There is also building being done according to older permits. The claims by the settler leaders that everything is dried out and frozen are helping the government vis-a-vis the American pressure. The official level is advancing the declaration of state lands in the A-1 plan to link Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim, which is perceived on the left as a deathblow to the final status agreement because it will cut the northern West Bank off from the southern part and prevent the Palestinian state from having essential territorial contiguity. MK Ephraim Sneh (Labor) wrote this week to the chairman of his party, MK Shimon Peres, that it is incumbent upon him to fight in the government against this plan. But the Americans are keeping mum: The understandings with them are about actual construction, not planning procedures.
Between line and fence
"The policy is that everything is frozen, but in the large blocs the implementation of the freeze rules is different," explains a senior official source. "In a small community it is easy to demarcate the construction line, but in large blocs it is difficult. There are residential neighborhoods, there are industrial zones, and you need common sense." According to this source, in the meantime Israel and the U.S. are refraining from demarcating the settlement blocs. "The freeze is not a punishment, but rather a process aimed at preserving reserves of land for the Palestinian state," he says. "If the U.S. recognizes your claim that the blocs will remain yours forever, why should it make a fuss when you build on your own property?"
The Americans had a scare a few months ago when a tender was issued for the construction of 640 housing units in the ultra-Orthodox city of Upper Betar. At Sharon's bureau they were told that these are multi-story buildings that take up little land. But in the Jewish settlement of Eli, in the heart of the northern West Bank, the building of a neighborhood of several dozen apartments was prevented: "There are serious doubts there as to whether the place will be in our hands. At Alfei Menashe there are no such doubts," says the official source. Another construction project was quietly stopped in Kiryat Arba.
According to Peace Now, the main building effort in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank is now focused on the area between the Green Line and the separation fence, and it is aimed at turning the fence into Israel's permanent border. There are many signs of this on the ground. The huge gate that has been set up in the fence near Alfei Menashe, on the road that goes up to Karnei Shomron and Kedumim, looks like a border crossing point and not like a temporary barrier, even though the smiling female soldiers there make do with hearing the drivers speak Hebrew and don't ask for identification.
Development is booming at Alfei Menashe, which has been left on the Israeli side of the fence. Council head Hisdai Eliezer says he has not been given approval for new plans, "but the truth is that I don't need more. Alfei Menashe is organized with respect to construction, the pace is accelerated and the sales are good. The place is beautiful, and it is not perceived as an ideological settlement."
At Givat Tal, which is between the veteran settlement and the fence, they are now completing the water tower for a new neighborhood where about 1,000 apartments will be built, doubling the number of inhabitants. Another neighborhood, located near the community of Nirit that is inside the Green Line, is causing public and legal controversy. At Tsofim, between Qalqilyah and Tul Karm, they are preparing land for a new neighborhood north of the settlement, at the site of an old quarry. In recent days the place has attracted demonstrations by the left against "land theft," but it does not look like the project is going to be stopped.
Bimkom, the Planners for Planning Rights nonprofit association of architects, which acts to promote human rights in planning procedures, is helping petitioners to the High Court of Justice against the route of the separation fence. Its people have gathered information about extensive building plans in Jewish settlements between the Green Line and the fence, like Salit and Reihan, which have been through various stages of approval. Alon Cohen-Lifschitz of Bimkom says that these plans were prepared before the construction of the fence, and they prove that its route has been suited to expansion needs in the Jewish settlements, divorced from security considerations.
Security, however, is a relative concept. It can be viewed in the narrow perspective of stopping terrorists and preventing terror attacks. And it is also possible to argue, as the prime minister believes, that there is an important security need for expanding the state's narrow "waist" between Kfar Sava and Netanya, and for physical control over the groundwater reservoir. This too is a part of the struggle for the land of Israel, and Sharon is focusing on this with the backing of promises from Bush.
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