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August
9, 2003
Empire
of the Settlements
A Home of Our Own
By ROB ESHELMAN
The ten-agorot coin has a map on it. Take a close
look though and the map is not of Israel contained within its
1967 boarders. It is a map of a nation extending from the Nile
River in the east to the Euphrates River in the west. This is
"Eretz Yisrael" which includes all of Jordan and parts
of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Along the left curve of the coin the
word "Israel" appears in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
I'm told that sometimes when an Israeli
home or road is being constructed these coins are dropped in
the ground. Thus, the coin is both a reminder during every economic
exchange of a people's "homeland", and insurance that
future generations will know whose land we are standing on.
*
* *
Dror Etkes is the coordinator for the
Settlement Watch program of the left-Zionist organization Peace
Now. Founded by Israeli Defense Force soldiers in 1978, Peace
Now leads tours for journalists of settlement outposts in the
West Bank. According to Dror the goal of these tours, "is
to close the gap between what the government says and what is
actually happening."
On a bright, warm Saturday morning in
Jerusalem, I meet Dror and a hand-full of other international
journalists in a parking lot behind a 24-hour gas station to
tour two settlement outposts in the West Bank, north of Ramallah.
Route 60 is the major North-South highway
connecting the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin.
Along a section of Route 60, called the Ramallah by-pass road,
most settlement construction took place from the late 1970s to
the mid 1980s.
According to Peace Now, 230,000 Israelis
are currently living in the occupied territories in 145 settlements.
Some Palestinian organizations put the figure at closer to half
a million by including areas, such as around Jerusalem, annexed
by Israel following the 1967 war. 60% of these settlements have
been built since Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister in February
2001.
The huge number of Israeli settlers alarms
many Israeli organizations and is viewed as an incitement to
many Palestinians. The Yesha Council, an organization spearheading
the return of Jews to their historic homeland in "Eretz
Yisrael", however, views this number with emphatic pride,
proclaiming on its website that, "in the near twenty five
years since the establishment of the Yesha Council, the population
of Yesha (Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza) has grown
from less than 3,000 to nearly 225,000 and the number continues
to grow annually."
Just north of Jerusalem along Route 60,
our caravan of four vehicles passes the settlement of Migron.
The largest post-2001 outpost within the West Bank, Migron is
home to 35 families. Little more than a few boxy trailer homes,
it started in 1998 with a cell phone antenna. However, as Dror
is quick to point out, many outposts begin as seemingly benign
utility infrastructure projects. "If you have an antenna,
you need a guard to protect the antenna." Inevitably, settlers
follow and the Israeli conquest of the West Bank has a new base.
Israel has constructed a massive1200
kilometer road system connecting these settlements within the
West Bank. "Pre-Intifada, the occupation was more sophisticated,"
Dror tells me while driving the lead van in our caravan. "This
was the settlement and bypass road construction phase. Now it's
more militarized."
Settlement roads serve a duel purpose.
Built primarily during the 1990s, they allow settlers to commute
in and out of the West Bank without having to encounter Palestinian
villages or cities. They also encircle and isolate Palestinians
from land which they've worked for generations, creating Bantustans--cantons
similar to the South African government's establishment of limited
self-rule in some villages for blacks.
As we turn off of Route 60 about 35 kilometers
north of Jerusalem, Dror says that despite leading these tours
many times, you never quite know what to expect when trying to
gain entry into a Jewish settlement. The young private security
guard who greets us at the small guard post just off the highway
cuts to the chase pretty quickly, though. "Are there any
Arabs with you", he asks matter-of-factly. When we assure
him that there are in fact no Arabs with us, we gain entry to
Eli, home to 3000 Israeli settlers and the location of a settlement
outpost spotted just two days ago.
Dror found the new outpost, which lies
just south of Eli, flying over the West Bank in a small Cessna
aircraft. Periodically Dror and other staff from Peace Now fly
over areas of the occupied territories combing the hilltops for
the establishment of new settlement outposts.
Our caravan makes its ascent to the new
outpost on a barely traversable road cut into the side of a few
rolling hills. Driving along this rocky and deeply rutted path,
I get the feeling that the road may slide off the side of the
hill at any moment. Through the thick clouds of dust which billow
out from beneath our vehicles, I spot two private security trucks
shadowing us not far behind.
Finally making it to the top of the hill
we spot two structures. The first is nothing more than a neglected
shipping container. Mostly rusted, its large metal doors sit
open, exposing the container's dark internal void. The other
structure, a mobile-style home, looks as though if it had a spine
it would be broken. Twisted and dilapidated, the uninhabited
rectangle looks more like it has been abandoned rather than waiting
to be someone's home.
This outpost could be a "dummy".
For negotiating purposes, some settlers establish "dummy"
or uninhabited outposts, which they will allow to be dismantled
so that inhabited outposts, remain intact. This is a cleaver
negotiating strategy based on knowledge that the Israeli government
will make little effort to evict settlers in the West Bank.
On a hilltop overlooking our location
the passengers of the two security trucks peer at us through
binoculars.
Across the valley from Eli is Haroe,
a settlement established one-year ago. Since that time, there
hasn't been anyone living here, but soon that is clearly going
to change. A small group of workers is constructing the foundations
for what appears to be at least ten homes. A poll-digging machine
sits idle by the side of the road leading into the burgeoning
settlement. Newly installed power lines make the important connection
to the Israeli power grid. This is not a "dummy" and
is hardly the scene of Israeli efforts to comply with international
agreements requiring the dismantlement of post-2001 outposts.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention
states that an occupying power "shall not deport or transfer
parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Israel ratified the document in 1951. Also, the current roadmap,
authored by the United States, Russia, the European Union, and
the United Nations, requires that the government of Israel "immediately
dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001."
There has been no let up, however, in Israeli government support
for construction activity in the West Bank and Gaza as new settlements
continuing to appear.
Israel however is not merely turning
a blind eye to this construction. In fact, Dror characterizes
Israeli government support for settlement activity as "massive".
Support comes in the form of mortgage subsidies for home purchases
and private enterprise construction. Social workers and teachers
are given benefit packages more comprehensive than their peers
who live in Israel. The most substantial example of Israeli support
for settlement activity may be the 5% income tax reduction for
Israelis who settle in the West Bank. "The West Bank is
the only place where Israelis have a welfare state," says
Dror.
On our return trip to Jerusalem we bounce
along more rough roads--a settlement to our left, a small military
base to our right. I ask Dror what he makes of the highly publicized
dismantlement of a few outposts following the Aqaba meeting attended
by Ariel Sharon, Abu Mazen, George Bush, and King Abdullah of
Jordan. He views the dismantlement of these outposts as "a
mockery". He says, "It is meant to deceive the Israeli
public by making it appear something is happening when it's not."
Gideon Levy, in an editorial in the August
4th edition of Haaretz, commented that the "small measures"
taken recently by the Israeli government "were not aimed
at the Palestinians". They were taken, "to curry favor
with the president (Bush). The point was not to make conditions
easier for the Palestinians, but to facilitate the conditions
for Sharon's meeting with Bush."
*
* *
The fallacy of Israeli efforts to achieve
comprehensive peace with the Palestinian population and the ideological
support that exists within the highest levels of the Israeli
government for continued settlement activity became even more
apparent a few days after our tour. The Israeli Defense Forces
announced that additional settlement outposts were to be dismantled.
On August 4th, residents of Beit El East
began to dismantle their small outpost. The caravans however
were moved only a short distance away to join 20 other caravans
previously in place at an outpost on Mount Artis. The broker
of the deal to dismantle Beit El East according to Haaretz was,
"MK Uri Ariel (National Union Party), the former secretary
general of Yesha Council of Jewish settlements and head of the
Beit El local council."
Rob Eshelman is a freelance journalist based in Palestine.
He can be e-mailed at robeshelman@hotmail.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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