Thursday, May 23, 2002
Settlement removal
BEERSHEBA, Israel There is nothing that causes as much heated debate in Israel as the future of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. It is now clear to most Israelis that if there is ever going to be a final political agreement with the Palestinians, it will require that some, if not necessarily all, of the settlements be dislodged and evacuated. A permanent plan would have to create a Palestinian state that is compact and continuous - unlike the disconnected wedges and enclaves of Palestinian autonomy that were created by the Oslo accords and that have left the settlements in place. Although this reality is undeniable, the practicality of settlement removal has largely been avoided by all Israeli governments, including those of the left, even as that avoidance makes the eventual uprooting of the growing settler population more difficult.
For the first 10 years of the Israeli occupation after the 1967 Middle East war, settlement was limited to the eastern edges of the Jordan Valley by the Labor governments of Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. They did not allow settlements in the densely populated Palestinian upland areas, assuming that this area would eventually become an autonomous Palestinian region linked to Jordan.
It was only after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and, more important, the rise of Israel's first rightist Likud governments, led by Menachem Begin from 1977 to 1983, that settlement policy was extended to include the whole of the West Bank region.
Spurred on by the religious settler movement Gush Emunim, settlements began to sprout up throughout the mountainous interior as well as in close proximity to the boundary between Israel and the West Bank. Gush Emunim supporters believed that the land conquered in 1967 had been returned to its rightful owners as promised to their biblical ancestors by God. They were not interested in such practical problems as demography, security or the political rights of another people. And they set out to make it as difficult as possible for any government to relinquish the land in a future political agreement. From 1984 onward, Israel was governed by several national coalition governments consisting of the leftist Labor and rightist Likud parties. In each instance, the coalition agreements included a clause freezing all further settlement activity. And yet from 1984 to 2002 the settler population increased from a mere 30,000 to approximately 200,000 (not including another 200,000 living in East Jerusalem, which Israelis do not consider part of the West Bank).
The settlements, like communities inside Israel, are governed by municipal and regional councils that provide public services and control land-use planning and development. A recent study by the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem shows that while the built-up areas of the settlements take up only 1.7 percent of the land in the West Bank, the area encompassed within the municipal boundaries of the settlements takes up 6.8 percent of the land.
Regional councils, which provide services to smaller, scattered communities through a regional authority, govern an additional 35.1 percent. Together, these settlement councils effectively control 41.9 percent of the area in the West Bank. After decades of growth, these settlements have created a completely new landscape. They are no longer outposts on exposed hills, but are fully developed communities with schools, commercial centers, industrial zones and municipal services. The very solidity of these developments makes it almost impossible to remove all of the settler population. Instead, the debate is over how to draw the future border between Israel and a Palestinian state in such a way as to retain as large a number of settlers and settlements on as little territory as possible. This would probably require transfer of an equal amount of territory from within Israel itself - some have suggested the expansion of the Gaza Strip region - as compensation for the settlement territory that would be formally annexed to Israel. But even if such a territorial solution were acceptable to both sides, it still would leave 35 percent to 40 percent of the settlers in areas farther east, into the West Bank, to be evacuated. Israelis left and right fear a day when the government will have to send the army in to move these settlements if the settlers refuse to go. Even the best outcome would probably involve violent protests like those in the early 1980s when the Northern Sinai settlements were dismantled as part of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement; a worst case would involve armed confrontation between soldiers and settlers.Early in the development of the settlements, settlers argued that their towns contributed to Israel's security. That is not accepted by most Israelis now; the settlements are seen for what they are, namely a security burden. Unlike other matters that will need to be negotiated with the Palestinians, the settlement problem, created and expanded by successive Israeli governments, will have to be resolved by Israel itself.
For Israelis who have lived in the West Bank for more than 25 years, for those born there, there will be heartbreak, even if the government can give them housing elsewhere. That is one price they and Israeli society will have to pay for a stable peace.
The writer, chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics, contributed this comment to The New York Times.
