To Israeli Leaders, Permanent Occupation Comes Before Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process that appeared to be limping along slowly for nearly a year and a half turns out to have been moving rapidly after all—but in the wrong direction. While Palestinian leaders thought they were negotiating an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli government was busy making that occupation irreversible.

When Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister in June 1992, and the Labor government replaced the hard-line Likud leadership, approximately 120,000 Jewish settlers lived on the West Bank and some 4,000 in Gaza. At the time, Israel held title to 925,000 acres, or about 68 percent of the West Bank. Under Rabin the number of settlers has grown by 17 percent to 140,000. Between the signing of the Declaration of Principles in September 1993 and mid-January of this year, Israel confiscated at least 27 square miles of Palestinian territory. According to the Land Research Center of the Arab Studies Society, the Labor government has been seizing land at an average rate of 1,500 acres a month, compared to the 900 acres a month taken while Likud was in power.

In fact, Israel is adding new Jewish housing in the West Bank so rapidly that the number of units under construction or planned grows almost weekly. In mid-December, for instance, the government confiscated 800 acres adjoining a settlement four miles inside the West Bank for 1,500 additional houses and ten hotels. At the same time, it announced the takeover of 5,000 acres for the expansion of settlements close to the Arab cities of Ramallah and Nablus. On Jan. 16 The New York Times reported that the government was planning 10,000 new apartments in and around East Jerusalem, which the United Nations considers part of the occupied territories despite Israel's illegal annexation in 1967. The next day the Wall Street Journal quoted an Israeli official as saying the government had decided to build 30,000 new homes on the West Bank instead of the 17,000 originally planned.

In the same week, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said another 450 acres on the West Bank would be taken for new highways that "will allow settlers to drive in relative safety around Arab towns." But as former Congressman Paul Findley wrote in the Jan./Feb. issue of the Washington Report, the main effect of the new roads will be to dismember Palestine and prevent it from becoming a cohesive nation. This process, Findley said, "simplifies enormously Israel's task of maintaining its subjugation of all two million Palestinians." A recent report by the Israeli organization Peace Now reaffirmed Findley's conclusion, saying that Israel planned to expand West Bank settlements with tens of thousands of new apartments and is taking over extensive tracts for nature preserves, quarries, and other uses. "The aim of the expansion," according to Peace Now, "is the creation of Jewish zones north and south of Jerusalem, leaving thousands of Palestinians in isolated enclaves."

Tightening Israel's Hold

Even The New York Times agrees that Israel is attempting to pre-empt peace negotiations by seizing as much land as possible before the future of the West Bank is discussed. On Jan. 3, Times correspondent Clyde Haberman pointed out that despite Rabin's promise to freeze settlement building, "In fact, he has permitted thousands of apartments to be built in the West Bank, conspicuously around Jerusalem, in an effort to tighten Israel's hold on those areas ahead of negotiations on the city's fate."

Rabin no longer bothers to deny that he is seeking to accomplish what Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur has called the achievement of "geographic fact," in order to predetermine the outcome of future negotiations. Although Rabin said, after he shook hands with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Washington, that "settlements were not established from any security point of view," he has since reversed himself and given in almost completely to right-wing pressure. In late December a group of transplanted Americans from the settlement of Efrat seized a hilltop belonging to Palestinian inhabitants of the nearby village of al-Khader in order to build 500 apartments. After a week of protests by Palestinians and Israeli peace activists the government offered the Efrat settlers an alternate site nearby. Although the new site was also owned by Palestinians, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu immediately called the decision a "surrender to Palestinian terrorism," and a Knesset member from the even more extremist Tsomet party bemoaned it as "the end of Zionism."

Two weeks later, when settlers seized yet another site, the government did nothing to stop them. On the contrary, after a group from the El Kana community bulldozed a 22-acre hill belonging to a Palestinian family and put up a fence around it, the army forcibly blocked Palestinians from approaching the area. Despite the army's cooperation with the El Kana settlers, and the fact that on Dec. 25 Rabin had appointed Tsomet member Alex Goldfarb to the key post of deputy housing minister, the diehards were not appeased. So on Jan. 11 Rabin in effect repudiated what he had said the year before and announced that "for security reasons" Israel would have to retain, in addition to all of Jerusalem, key areas of the West Bank such as the Jordan Valley and the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements. Shimon Peres pledged that "settlers will not be forced off the land," and a Rabin ally, Health Minister Ephraim Sneh, said that under any circumstances Israeli forces had to remain on the West Bank to protect the settlers.

So much for the Declaration of Principles signed by both sides in September 1993. That agreement called specifically for Palestinian elections to be held in July 1994, for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Arab towns and cities, for a corridor between Gaza and Jericho through which Palestinians could travel freely, and for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Aside from releasing a few thousand prisoners, Israel has not abided by any of these provisions. In principle at least, the agreement also held out promise that no more Jewish settlements would be built in territory that would someday come under Palestinian rule. By making the post-agreement occupation even more oppressive than before, the Israeli government had already turned the DOP into a meaningless document. Now, by insisting on the continued presence of settlements and troops on the West Bank, Israel is publicly tearing that document into shreds.

The U.S. is the one outside power that could effectively pressure Israel to abide by the promises it made in front of President Clinton and millions of television viewers around the world. But instead, the administration and Congress are ignoring the betrayal of those promises and continue to give Israel their unstinting support. On Jan. 15, after West Bank settlers barred entry to two American diplomats who were checking on expansion projects, and arrested their Palestinian guides, a State Department spokeswoman said only that settlements pose "a problem" for the peace process.

The bright side of this otherwise grim picture is that Palestinians who have watched their leaders negotiate fruitlessly for over a year are now turning out in increasing numbers to protest the relentless takeover of their land by Israel. Confronted by heavily armed soldiers and settlers, the inhabitants of the West Bank are using classic forms of nonviolence, such as holding marches, planting olive trees as fast as the Israelis can uproot them, and linking arms before advancing bulldozers. After the seizure of land at al-Khader in December, hundreds of men, women and children from nearby villages were joined by Israeli supporters and two members of the Knesset in a vigil that continued for six days until they were driven off by 500 Israeli soldiers.

According to a local resident, the soldiers came "as if they were conquering Lebanon." Eight villagers were beaten so badly they were taken to the hospital, and 53 protesters were arrested. Saeb Erekat, an official of the Palestinian National Authority, was knocked to the ground. On Jan. 17, which PLO leaders declared "National Anti-Settlement Day," more than 1,500 Palestinians protested at three sites on the West Bank where new housing for settlers is being built. Again, soldiers responded with force, shooting at least two protesters with rubber bullets and beating several PLO officials.

A Crucial Question

A crucial question is how long Palestinians will continue to demonstrate peacefully in the face of Israeli violence. That armed Israelis are becoming increasingly trigger-happy was evident recently when an emigré from Russia serving as a security guard killed a young Palestinian who was unloading vegetables outside a school in Jerusalem and wounded his partner. The guard said he thought the victim was preparing a car bomb.

With more and more Jewish settlers moving into the West Bank, and more and more Palestinians forced off their land and barred from working in Israel, the situation is ripe for explosion. Meanwhile, hopes for a negotiated peace are fading. Arafat called the settlement construction at al-Khader "a flagrant violation" of the Israel-PLO peace accord. Palestinian Culture Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo used stronger language, saying, "The Israeli bulldozers have bulldozed the agreement itself." And several members of Arafat's cabinet threatened to end peace talks with Israel if settlement building continues. But the gravest warning of all came from an inhabitant of al-Khader, who shouted at a Palestinian official, "If this is the peace you promised us, then go to hell together with your peace." The villager's anguished cry suggests that a turning point has been reached: either the current leadership succeeds in halting new settlements or the Palestinian people will turn to more radical solutions.

Last May American Middle East specialists Khalil Jahshan, William Quandt and Jerome Segal published an article in The Washington Post urging the U.S. to help finance the voluntary relocation of all but the most militant settlers. The authors pointed out that the $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel had originally been intended to help pay for housing Soviet emigrés, but because immigration had turned out to be lower than expected, the money could be used instead to help tens of thousands of settlers return to Israel. A major return of settlers "would help limit violence in coming years and make final status negotiations easier to implement," the authors wrote. "If this is not done," they warned, "the settlements may prove a deal-breaker in the final status talks."

Today, nearly a year later, the breakdown of negotiations over the settlement issue seems more likely than ever. There is still time, however, for the U.S. to help prevent their collapse. If Clinton is determined to act in Israel's best interests rather than simply bolster Rabin's political fortunes, he will insist that the prime minister use U.S. aid to facilitate peace instead of continuing to undermine it by populating the West Bank with more Israelis. If dismantling the settlements means defying the zealots who prefer bloodshed to compromise, then so be it.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.