Israel's coming battle with "facts on the ground"

The status of some 230,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank now looms as the single biggest issue standing in the way of some kind of accord, if not a formal peace, between the Israelis and Palestinians. Since 1967, Israel has had a national policy of encouraging Jewish settlements in the territories it occupied as a result of the SIx-day War. This was nominally for security reasons, but also to fulfill nationalist and religiously-motivated ideals--to firmly establish an Israeli and a Jewish presence in the land from the “Jordan to the sea”. Israeli settlements exist in four main areas, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Golan settlements are the subject of bilateral negotiations with Syria and are not an Israeli-Palestinian issue at all. There are also around 180,000 Jews in settlements surrounding Jerusalem--upscale suburbs really--but no one seriously contemplates their removal. In Gaza, that narrow strip of land on the southern border with Egypt, there are only 7,000-7,500 Jews in just a handful of settlements. There they hang on to a dangerous existence, surrounded by over a million mostly hostile Arabs, and have a tenuous future in view of Prime Minister Sharon’s initiative to remove them.

But the West Bank is really the heart of the matter. This is the land (named for the west bank of the Jordan river), which comprises the biblical “Judea and Samaria”, and today is home to around 150 Jewish settlements and up to a quarter million settlers--depending on who does the counting. It is in the West Bank where the seemingly intractable character of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is most stark.

To view a detailed map of the West Bank is to realize how the Jewish settlements and their accoutrements have become intertwined across what the Palestinians claim as their homeland. The heartland of what various peace plans envision as the Palestinian state is dotted with Jewish settlements, and bisected with Israeli-administered land, Israeli-only roadways, and military checkpoints. This is what the Jewish settlers, and 35 years of Israeli settlement policy, have wrought--undeniable, concrete “facts on the ground”.

Some of the settlements barely qualify as facts, consisting of only a couple of camping trailers or even just empty shipping containers on a hilltop. They may be inhabited or not, and are of course the easiest for Israeli authorities to contemplate removing. Others are smaller Jewish communities of just a few dozen families, living alongside a larger Palestinian village or community.

Many Jewish settlements, though, are more analogous to modern housing developments or planned communities. They appear more like a southern California suburb than a besieged camp. Some of these, such as the Ariel settlement just a short commute from Tel Aviv, are self-contained towns with well over 10,000 residents and boasting all the amenities. Most of the Jews in the West Bank, and some in Gaza, are “economic settlers” that made their homes there because of the higher standard of living. With government subsidies and favorable loans, there have been significant financial incentives for them.

Times have changed, however. The risks of being a Jewish settler in the occupied territories are greater than ever. And Sharon’s government has dramatically reversed course. Now incentives are reportedly being offered to settlers that will voluntarily vacate--particularly in the Gaza Strip--and some of the more ramshackle settlements are to be dismantled.

But removing larger, established settlements with hundreds or thousands of residents, or the hardline, well-armed and religiously-motivated settlers will be extremely difficult if not impossible for the Israeli government.

It’s one thing to resolutely face your traditional adversary across the negotiating table or a battlefield. It’s quite another to square off for a fight against your own people. But if Israeli leaders want to fashion a semblance of peace with the Palestinians, they may well find some of their own citizens to be their most implacable enemies.

T.T.

©2004, WestRim Digital Arts