Settlements need not be enlarged, Israeli Peace Now members help
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 8/7/1998

A bitter exchange of accusations has ensued between the Israeli "Peace Now" movement and the right concerning prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu's intention to build a new neighborhood in the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, a site where two settlers were shot dead by Palestinians three days ago.

Peace Now director Mossi Raz confirmed that there are 110 empty housing units at Yitzhar alone, and in settlements all over the occupied West Bank, the number of those empty housing units goes up to 3,139.

Aaron Domb, the director general of the Settlers Council in the West Bank, meanwhile claimed that the numbers were fictitious. Domb said that 11 families were absorbed over the last year at Yitzhar, near Nablus on the West Bank. Peace Now presented data, which it gathered from its settlement watch team, whereby construction is taking place in Jewish settlements, which have many empty apartments that have never been occupied. According to this data, 62 percent of the apartments in Yitzhar itself are empty. Moreover, there are another 5,235 housing units under construction in the West Bank's Jewish settlements, the movement said.

Peace Now has also come under fire from mainstream Likud party members who called on movement members to appeal to the Palestinians to denounce the killing of the two settlers. "Instead of appealing to their friends, the Palestinians, and demand from them that they explicitly denounce the murder of these two youths, and that they put an end to the summer camps of incitement for the murder of Jews which the PLO runs in Gaza, members of Peace Now have chosen to ignore the Palestinian terror, and attack members of the Yitzhar settlement, who are mourning their dead," said a statement issued by the Likud Thursday evening.

Settlers denied a team of US consulate officials, who arrived in the settlement of Yitzhar to check the pace of construction there. The team wanted to check out the intention to build a new neighborhood there in what was described in Israel as "the appropriate Zionist response" to the shooting of the two settlers. Consulate representatives came to the entrance to the settlement on Thursday but the settlers wouldn't let their car, which bore diplomatic license plates, pass.

A spokesman for Peace Now later said the incident "showed that the settler government led by Netanyahu has completely abandoned the path of peace, and is trying with all its might to escalate the conflict with the Palestinians."

The Israeli settlement thrust was not the focus of activity in the West Bank only but also on the occupied Golan Heights where the national council for planning and construction decided lately to allow Golan settlements to expand by another 400 housing units per settlement. The average size of Golan settlements today is 100-150 housing units.

In a series of decisions taken a few days ago, the council decided to allow one of the agricultural settlements to become a community settlement, which can expand up to 600 housing units, after meeting the necessary criteria. Another decision was made to allow two of other settlements to expand, each one separately, to 600 housing units each.

The council's decisions were passed on to the Israel Lands Authority, headed by Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon, who himself is chairman of the ministerial committee on settlements. According to Haaretz Hebrew daily on Friday, the plan was to expand southern Golan settlements and that it was a matter of 2,500 housing units, which were not included in the population project initiated by the Golan Settlements Regional Council.

Israel has blamed the Palestinian government for condoning attacks on Jewish settlers siting the fact that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has failed to condemn the shooting of the two Jewish settlers in Yitzhar near Nablus. Israeli intelligence sources said that if President Arafat "does not condemn the attack in Yitzhar, this may lead to certain parts of the Palestinian street to explain this as a green light to make further attacks on settlers."

The sources believe that in top Palestinian echelons there is a "certain understanding" of attacks against Jewish settlers. They said the way the ambush was carried out signaled the beginning of a new period and new tactics of attacks.

Netanyahu had called on Arafat to condemn the attack but the Palestinian president's advisor on Israeli affairs, Ahmed Tibi, said Arafat "is opposed in principal and in strategy to violence and to loss of lives of people, regardless of who they are." He noted, however, that the Palestinians are fully aware of the fact that the presence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank "was meant to torpedo the Palestinian hope for statehood and independence." He added that the continued presence of Jewish settlers in the area "causes tension and clashes between the two sides and gives a chance to radical forces on both sides to carry out acts of violence that we do not agree with."

Palestinians living in Nablus and the surrounding villages have over the past months compiled reports and complaints of Jewish settlers' harassment. According to PLO Executive Committee member Taysir Kahled in Nablus, the main problem "is that of villagers of Karyout, which is encircled by the settlements of Eli and Rahalim."

He said that Jewish settlers have been preventing them from reaching their land and in many cases used violence to disrupt their daily lives.

Previous Stories:
  Settlers press for more police in Old City of Jerusalem   (7/25/1998)
  US Jewish organization exposes East Jerusalem settler funding   (7/22/1998)
  Serious confrontation between Palestine and Israel, further showdowns expected   (7/3/1998)

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