Washington Report, November 15, 1982, Page 3

West Bank: Settlements Galore

Nearly three months since President Reagan called on Israel to stop establishing Jewish settlements in occupied Arab territory, the Israeli drive to boost the Jewish population of the West Bank is still going on as strong as ever.

In fact, Israeli officials have made it clear that a flurry of recent announcements of new settlement openings are designed to highlight Israel's total rejection of President Reagan's peace plan—which called for a settlements freeze pending negotiations that would return the West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty.

Within four days of the announcement of the Reagan plan on September 1, Israel announced approval for ten more Jewish settlements, and allocated $18.5 million to build the first three. The approval was made on the same day that the government disclosed the text of a strong letter which Prime Minister Begin wrote to Mr. Reagan, protesting the President's Middle East proposals.

Then, throughout September and October, Israeli officials lost few opportunities to make the point that settlement expansion should be regarded as a rejection of the entire Reagan plan. For example, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, when inaugurating a new settlement, told settlers: "You are here as part of our response to the renewed attempt to impose on us plans that totally contradict our vital interests."

On November 3, an announcement of approval for five more settlements provoked a harsh condemnation from Washington, which was followed two days later by another Israeli announcement adding 15 more settlements to the growing list. All of these are part of a project to have 100,000 Jewish settlers installed on the West Bank by 1985—four times the number that are there today. A long term project of the World Zionist Organization calls for settling 1.4 million Jews in the West Bank by the year 2010.

Deputy Foreign Minister Yehuda Ben-Meir, responding to U.S. criticism, said: "We are continuing to settle Jews in Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank) on land which is not privately owned, which is not tilled and which in no way affects the rights of the Palestinians living there."

But a recent in-depth study by a team headed by Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, concluded that the Israeli government was finding ways, as Mr. Benvenisti himself has put it, "to enable it to seize practically any land needed for unlimited Jewish settlement in the West Bank." Once the land is officially the property of the Israeli government, it can be made available to settlers.

Israel has used a number of different ways to take dominion over West Bank land, and already owns more than 25 percent. It has seized absentee property, abandoned by Arabs who fled during he 1967 war, and has leased it to settlers. It has done the same with land that was the property of the Jordan government. Other land has been closed off for military purposes, such as for use as firing ranges, on a "temporary" basis and then requisitioned for good. Grazing land which has been used by Arab shepherds for many generations without written title—in conformity with the customs of bygone days—are being confiscated on the basis of a handy law carried over from the Ottoman Empire, which ceased to exist in 1918. At the same time, Arabs are prohibited from being issued title deeds to unsettled lands, and are not allowed to build anywhere outside the towns, nor within 100 to 150 yards on each side of new roads.

Jews from Israel are encouraged to venture onto the West Bank through such come-ons as subsidies for their housing and free utilities, while being allowed to live under different laws from those which govern their Arab neighbors. The cost of constructing and populating the settlements has been estimated reliably at about $100 million per year. In proportion to the resources of the country, as measured by GNP, this would be the equivalent of an expenditure of $12.5 billion annually by the U.S. government.