Washington Report, July 26, 1982, Page 3

West Bank: Almost Gone?

Ever since June 6, while most of the world's attention has been concentrated on the invasion of Lebanon—as well as, more recently, on the Iran-Iraq war—Israel has been accelerating its drive to dominate, and eventually absorb, the occupied West Bank.

The focus of its activity has been to get rid of the remainder of the Palestinian nationalist mayors and councilmen—virtually all of them voted in during free elections in 1976—who have not already been dismissed by Israel during the past two years.

Since the Lebanon fighting began, Israel has dismissed the mayor of the town of Dura; the council of the town of Nablus; and both the mayor and town council of Jenin. Of the West Bank's six major towns, there is only one (Bethlehem) which still has its elected municipal government.

During this period, Israel has also fired the internationally-known mayor of Gaza, Rashad Shawa, whose moderate views—he has called publicly for Israel and the PLO to recognize one another—were not moderate enough to save his job; and replaced the head official of the town of Rafah, another municipality in the Gaza Strip.

The authorities have also been cracking down hard, as ever, on displays of Palestinian nationalist sentiment. Demonstrations against the invasion of Lebanon have been put down with particular severity (in one demonstration, two Palestinians died). All three of the West Bank's leading universities—Bir Zeit, An-Najah, and the University of Bethlehem—were ordered shut after several days of student and faculty protests of the invasion.

Israel's economic vise on the West Bank continues to tighten. Three days after the Lebanon operation began, the army issued a decree imposing a prison sentence of up to five years on any West Banker who imports funds from other Arab countries without the written permission of the government. Measures to merge the West Bank's economy with Israel's are being pushed relentlessly forward: one Palestinian was killed during attempts by residents of Beit Kaher to prevent the linkage of the electrical system of their town with the Israeli grid.

Although most of this activity on the West Bank has not been getting much attention from the world's media, it has not escaped the notice of Washington. During his Senate confirmation hearings, new Secretary of State George Shultz said: "Personally, I hate to see people who have been elected mayors on the West Bank ... removed from office. Because you're just removing people who have a certain level of legitimacy."

Publicly-expressed recognition of this point at a high level, for the first time in the Reagan Administration, could be the beginning of a meaningful change in its outlook towards the future of the West Bank. However, in the light of Israel's stated intention to remain the sovereign power in the territory, its gradual acquisition since 1967 of one-third of the land, its assumption of control over all the water resources, and its putting into place of 85 Jewish settlements, with more to come (See "West Bank: Going, Going..." in The Washington Report of April 5, 1982), many observers believe it may be too late for any change in outlook to be meaningful. If the Administration comes to believe that eventual sovereignty over the West Bank—and Gaza—by the Palestinians is important to the attainment of a stable peace in the Middle East, it will have to move very forcefully to persuade Israel, through the use of economic and military-assistance leverage, to change its ways and it will have to do this very, very quickly.