Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1997, Page 15, 17

Special Report

“Compromise” at Ras Al-Amoud Results in More Israeli “Facts on the Ground” in Heart of Arab East Jerusalem

By Stephen J. Sosebee

The takeover of two Arab homes in the Ras Al-Amoud neighborhood of East Jerusalem by 11 Israeli settlers on Sept. 14 was hardly surprising to most Middle East observers. Five days before the July 30 suicide bombing in West Jerusalem, the Jerusalem licensing committee approved a plan for building a 32-unit housing complex for Jewish settlers in the center of the 12,000-strong Palestinian neighborhood.

The long-delayed approval was given to Irving Moskowitz, a Miami hospital broker and California bingo-parlor operator, who uses the profits (which under U.S. law must be donated to charities) to support far-right Zionist groups and policies in Israel. Dr. Moskowitz reportedly purchased the land in 1990 and has sought to build a settlement there to facilitate eventual Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. This is the same Moskowitz who funded completion of a tunnel near the foundations of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque in September 1996, sparking bloody clashes in the occupied territories that left nearly 100 Palestinians and Israelis dead and more than a thousand Palestinian civilians injured.

The Israeli municipality agreed in late July to a plan submitted by far-right Moledet Party activist Benny Elon which called for the building of apartments in the Arab section of East Jerusalem between the village of Silwan and the Mount of Olives. The plan had been held up for years by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when he was also the acting interior minister, as well as former Interior Ministers Haim Ramon and Uzi Baram. In his last city council meeting in 1993, outgoing Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek announced that the plan was approved over his objections, which were contrary to his stated policy of not building Jewish housing in heavily populated Arab areas.

The controversial new plan that was approved at the end of July for Ras Al-Amoud initially caused somewhat of a political uproar in Israel. The Labor Party accused Netanyahu of pretending that he did not know of the municipality's approval of Moskowitz's plans to build in Ras Al-Amoud. "Netanyahu is playing a double game. He knew about the building permits and is denying it. He preferred to let the report be published so that he could pretend to be against it," said Dalia Itzik, a Labor MK. She claimed that the prime minister was again "raising the Jerusalem issue to the top of the international agenda, causing the Palestinians to react sharply against us and making the Palestinians look much better than we do—not to mention that his move endangers the unity of Jerusalem."

"We don't need a permit to build if we already have a house."

Jerusalem is, of course, anything but united. Even before the Likud took power in May 1996, Israeli behavior in Jerusalem frequently had brought the territories to the brink of explosion. Since then the confiscation of hundreds of Arab Jerusalem I.D.s, the demolition of "unlicensed" homes, continued construction of a new settlement at Jabal Abu Ghneim, the expulsion of Arab Bedouins for the expansion of the Ma'aleh Adumin settlement, and the closures, collective punishment imposed after the suicide bombings, have increased tension in the Holy City. "Ras Al-Amoud could be the spark that sets off a confrontation that will make last year's fighting look like a minor skirmish," says Nabil Akram, a store owner in nearby Abu Dis.

While Netanyahu was quick to claim ignorance of the settler takeover in Ras Al-Amoud, Israeli papers reported that National Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon had raised the plan as a "response" to the Sept. 5 bombing in Jerusalem. On Sept. 14, 11 Israeli settlers, with heavy police protection, took over two Arab homes in the area. Netanyahu claimed that he was not responsible for the settlers taking such a provocative step at this time. But he made it clear that he was not so concerned about the consequences that he was willing to forcibly remove the settlers. Especially without U.S. pressure.

Predictably, the Clinton administration was not willing to take the diplomatic steps necessary to make the Israelis behave themselves. Instead of reacting to the taking of homes and the proposed effort to create yet another Jewish settlement on Arab land captured in 1967, the U.S. sought to mediate a compromise that would get the "peace process" back on track.

This "compromise" involved replacing the 11 settlers with 10 Jewish seminary students, who are armed themselves and heavily protected by Israeli soldiers as well. "Our main concern that the nature of this neighborhood would not change over time appears to have been met and we have received assurances (from the Israeli government) that this will not be changed," said State Department spokesman James Rubin. He then went on to call for the PA to return to the negotiating table with the Israelis and to better fight "terrorism" in the region. However, no one was really fooled by the fiction that replacing 11 Jewish settlers who had seized Arab houses with 10 Jewish seminary students, who would "guard" them until an Israeli court rules on the legality of the seizure, was a "compromise."

A Hypocritical U.S. Position

The exercise illustrated that the official U.S. position on settlements has changed during the Clinton administration from one where there was respect in principle for international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention to its current hypocritical form, where unilateral Israeli moves are met with a minor protest from an already irrelevant Madeleine Albright. In response to the decision to expand the Jews-only Efrat settlement by 300 new housing units, Albright only called again for a "time out" in Israeli settlement actions. Since Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman had already assured her there would be no such time out, Albright lamely went on to say that there was "nothing wrong" with the move other than its timing, because the Israelis were only "expanding" an already existing settlement.

In fact there is no question in anyone's mind as to the purpose and objectives of the settlers at Ras Al-Amoud. Baruch Marzel, a leader of the outlawed Jewish nationalist Kach Party, said that the entry of Jews into the area meant "the neighborhood has begun. We don't need a permit to build if we already have a house." He then described the struggle in East Jerusalem as one of sovereignty that would ensure that any future diplomatic negotiations over the area would be undermined by the fait accompli of Jews already living in the Arab areas.

It has been 18 months since Netanyahu won his narrow victory in Israeli elections. Since then the effort to find common ground between Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land has been rolled back by policies of a Likud party that is more interested in illegally settling occupied land than in achieving a real and lasting peace. Clearly it is such Israeli actions that produce the volunteers willing to strap on bombs and give their lives for Palestine, as they realize there is nothing to be gained at the negotiating table.

If Albright is honestly concerned about the innocent victims of suicide bombings, she should direct her lectures not at the hapless Yasser Arafat, but at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and American citizen and Jewish nationalist provocateur Irving Moskowitz.