New settlement plans near Jerusalem on eve of peace talks in US
Palestine, Politics, 9/29/1997

Israel plans to take over areas of Arab land in the village of Abu Dis, on the southeastern plains of Jerusalem, and use them for agricultural purposes, Israeli sources admitted Monday. The sources said Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan has ordered his staff to present a report on ways to build agricultural greenhouses in the Abu Dis area. The request for the report follows the minister¹s suggestion four months ago to Ateret Cohanim, a well known settlement organization that has taken over Arab property in East Jerusalem, to erect greenhouses on properties in Abu Dis, allegedly owned by Jews.

Eitan issued the instructions at the end of a meeting in his office last Thursday with representatives of Jewish-American financier Irving Moskowitz, who is deeply involved in a series of moves by Jewish settlers to take over Arab property in Jerusalem. The latest issue in question is the takeover of Arab houses of Ras Al Amoud, a few kilometers away from Abu Dis.

According to Israeli sources, the plan to take over Arab lands in Abu Dis has apparently moved into its implementation phase and is no longer just a suggestion. A few months ago, Eitan, an extreme right wing politician, had claimed he wanted those areas to to become under Jewish control in order to prevent Palestinians or the Palestine National Authority from taking over those areas. Besides, he noted that the move would become more practical if he is convinced that the plan is profitable as well. Moskowitz claimed he had bought those areas from Jews who allegedly bought those lands in the 30s.

West Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, has seemingly played a behind-the-scenes role in preparation for the takeover. Two years ago, he budgeted approximately US $90 million for the planned construction of a Jewish neighborhood on these properties. Since then, the plan has remained in a preliminary stage and hasn¹t reached the planning committees. The Jerusalem municipality recently ordered the planners of the eastern ring road to shift the site of the highway near Abu Dis and to include a spur leading to the Jewish-owned properties in the area.

Abu Dis was divided after its capture in the June 1967 war and Israel annexed ten percent of its area to the Jerusalem municipality. Ninety percent of the remaining area is defined as Area B, in which the PNA has civilian but not security control. In recent years Abu Dis has become an administrative center for the Palestinian Authority. In the widely-reported Beilin-Abu Mazen proposal for resolving the conflict over Jerusalem, the East Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis was to become the administrative center (or capital) of the Palestinian entity (or state) and to be called ³Al-Quds,² the Arab name for Jerusalem. Minister Eitan¹s greenhouses and the Moskowitz plans for the adjacent Ras Al Amoud neighborhood are among several settler-based plans to disrupt any future settlement on Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, plans are being finalized for building a new settlement in the Hebron area, to be named Ir Ganim (Hebrew for city of gardens.) The original plan speaks of at least 10,000 settlers who are expected to live in the new settlement. During last week's celebrations by the settlements compound near Hebron, known as Gush Etzion, of their 30th anniversary, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of plans to add another 300 housing units to the settlement of Efrat, causing a big uproar among the Palestinians.

When Netanyahu spoke, only a few people knew about the plans for the city of Ir Ganim, Israeli sources said, adding that fewer were aware that the first phase of this plan is scheduled to move toward consideration in the next few days by the Israeli High Planning Council for the West Bank.

As in Ras Al Amoud and Abu Dis, Israel claims that parcels of land in the area have been purchased by Jews since the 1930s, even during the period the area was under Jordanian rule until 1967.

It is on this land that the planned town of Ir Ganim will be built. Construction, said Shilo Gal, the president of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, should begin during the next year, once the plan is approved by the Israeli Higher Planning Council for the West Bank. Gal said that Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai has put his seal of approval on the first phase of construction, reauthorizing the approval of former prime minister Shimon Peres.

The left wing opposition responded with expressions of fury over the plans of settlers to build a new city in the West Bank. The Peace Bloc (Gush Shalom) movement vowed they will not stay silent until the plan to build the city is scrapped. The movement¹s leader, Adam Keller, said: ³We will help the residents of Palestinian villages inside Gush Etzion and near Efrat in their struggle against the planned city. We will also contest the Prime Minister¹s plans to expand Efrat by 300 residential units. If the Ras Al Amoud settlement was a small flame, and the Efrat expansion plans was a medium fire, the plans to build an entire city in Gush Etzion will be a giant blaze that will make everything explode.²

In a related development, the Gush Shalom organization launched Sunday a boycott on settlement products. Activists stood near supermarket entrances carrying signs with the messages: ³Please Don¹t Buy Settler Produce² and ³Every shekel (Israeli currency) going to a settler is a shekel for war.²

Mossi Raz, Peace Now director, said: ³the provocateurs don¹t rest for a minute... The settlers use every opportunity to undermine the public order and to make sure the new year will bring us only grief.² Meretz Party Chairman and Knesset Member Yossi Sarid said that if there is no freeze on settlements, there "will be a full-scale explosion. Most of the nation is sick of the petty plots and conniving of the settlers. They have to be told: enough is enough.²

Previous Stories:
  Netanyahu promises to expand settlements, snubs the US   (9/25/1997)
  Short skirts and falafel, a different kind of confrontation   (9/22/1997)
  Ras Al Amoud showdown: the other side of the conflict   (9/19/1997)

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