US and Israel on the verge of major rift over settlements
Palestine, Politics, 4/16/1999

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expects to receive this week a strongly-worded letter from US President Bill Clinton expressing his dissatisfaction with the continued construction of Jewish settlements.

Israeli sources noted that differences over settlements have deepened with the US administration after US spy satellites recently revealed that since the Wye accords Israel has established 12 caravan encampments in the West Bank. Though those encampments are located within short distances from existing settlements, they were considered by US officials as new settlements that contravene Netanyahu's promises.

Netanyahu however denied he ever promised to stop settlement activities in the West Bank. In a special statement issued Thursday morning, the prime minister's office said that Netanyahu is only committed "first and foremost to the interests of the state of Israel." The communique said that Netanyahu on a number of occasions had clearly told US administration officials that his policy was to enable the development and expansion of existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

US State Department spokesman James Rubin had said on Wednesday that Netanyahu promised neither to expand settlements beyond their present boundaries nor to build new settlements. Rubin said that Netanyahu made this promise to all relevant ranks within the US administration on many occasions and added that despite what US officials were told by Netanyahu, Israel has accelerated construction of new settlements and the expansion of existing ones.

The Clinton letter is seen as the peak of a series of statements made by various US administration officials against Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. Analysis of the spy photos taken by US satellites have shown that actually 18 new settlement sites had been established, six of them just before the signing of the Wye Accords in October last year. At Wye, the American officials complained to Netanyahu about the six settlements and the Israeli prime minister led his US critics to understand that the establishment of the six settlements was a one-time episode. What angered the Americans most, Israeli sources said, was when they found out after Wye that the six settlements were not a one-time episode and that actually the whole settlement campaign had been intensified.

Israel claimed its settlement policy never was a breach of any of the signed agreements because none of those accords ever spoke precisely of Jewish settlement activities. But US officials argue that any of Israel's unilateral steps that aim to create facts on the ground and prejudice the outcome of the final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians are an open violation of the singed agreements.

US sources said that Israel's settlement policy aims to quickly expand the amount of West Bank land under Israeli control before the two sides start their final status talks and before any modification starts to define the boundaries of the various regions (B and C under Oslo Accords) that are to be handed over to the Palestine National Authority.

The Clinton letter was elicited by a report about an agreement between Netanyahu and the settler leaders in which the settlers would support Netanyahu in the upcoming general elections in May while he would turn a blind eye to the settlement of an additional 30 sites in the West Bank. Netanyahu reportedly asked the settlers to have the settlement activity concluded by two weeks time before the elections, so as not to impede his reelection.

PNA officials had repeatedly complained to the US about the Israeli settlement policy but only after the US spy satellites provided unquestionable evidence that the US Administration decided to act on the matter. A senior Palestinian source in Ramallah said that it has become clear that the US needs some time to understand the just demands and the rightful complaints of the PNA, but once US officials do so, they become closer to the viewpoint of the PNA rather than to that of Israel. "This has happened with the question of security measures the PNA takes within its territories and now with the issue of Jewish settlements."

Meanwhile, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics revealed that construction works in the West Bank rose by 105 percent in 1998 noting that construction of 3,900 housing units was initiated in 1998 up from 1,900 in 1997 and 1,680 in 1996. Peace Now movement, however, noted that the increase stands in absolute contrast with the 20 percent decrease in new building starts within Israel itself which stood at 39,020 housing units in 1998, 49,030 in 1997 and 54,260 in 1996.

In their meeting two weeks ago, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright censured Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon for the continued settlement policy in the West Bank, saying that Israel's unilateral moves in this field have hindered peace efforts in the region. US sources said that Albright was clear in her message to Sharon that the US expected Israel to abide by the Wye Accords and to implement the agreements without any further unilateral steps that would prejudice the outcome the final status talks between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel.

US sources said that Albright was angry in particular because of the intensive Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank since the signing of the Wye Agreement between the PNA and Israel last October. Israeli Peace Now movement's branch for monitoring Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank said that Jewish settlers have built new houses in at least 15 Jewish settlements since the signing of the Wye Accords last October. The movement said that each of the new houses that were built in those settlements was established at least half a kilometer away from the mother settlement in order to increase the area of the settlement itself beyond its original boundaries. The movement said that the Israeli government has so far rejected all demands from peace groups and opposition parties to remove those new buildings.

The whole activity, said Peace Now, was a flagrant breach of the agreement that was reached between the US and Israel in summer of 1997. In that year, it added, Netanyahu pledged not to continue any settlement activity in the West Bank and to limit works in those settlements within their boundaries. In other words, Netanyahu promised the US that Jewish settlers would not be allowed to take over hilltops across their settlements and that any extra activity they planned was to be done within their settlements themselves. At the time, Netanyahu asked the US not to publish details of his commitments because of coalition considerations. Today, it seems that the US administration has finally decided to go out in the open not only to condemn Israel for the settlement activity but also to emphasize that it is unhappy with the way Netanyahu has governed since 1996.

The intensive pace of settlement activity has obviously caused major anger at the US administration and can be seen as the main purpose for US State Department spokesman James Rubin to announce in his daily briefing on Friday two weeks ago for the first time since Netanyahu came to power that the Israeli government has been building new settlements in the West Bank. Peace Now confirmed that most of the extra settlement activities have taken place in areas that were due to be handed over to the PNA in part of the second phase redeployment of the Israeli troops, a withdrawal that has yet to take place.

Palestinian sources, therefore, are very much worried at the latest developments and have leveled a number of complaints with the US on the matter. For the PNA, every settlement action by Jewish settlers drives away peace chances in the region and makes it more difficult for future generations to reach an agreement with Israel. Dr. Abdul Rahman Tamimi, head of the Palestinian Hydrologists Group, said that Jewish settlement and settlement plans aim to disrupt the geographic nature of the Palestinian territory and to destabilize the ethnic balance in the region. He said that Jewish settlements have two major objectives: A seen one and that is to take as much Palestinian land as possible. The second is unseen and that is the disruption of geographic nature of the Palestinian territories and the destabilization of the ethnic balance between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories.

Jewish settlers have plans to increase their population in the West Bank up to quarter of a million by the end of the year. Currently they are estimated at 160,000. However, they are worried that numbers are not enough to prevent a forthcoming Israeli army pullout from the West Bank, or from parts of it, and therefore, they aim to lacerate West Bank lands into bits of pieces under their control in a way that would make impossible any future form of Palestinian geographical contiguity.

Apart from taking over lands, settlers have also decided to build so-called industrial settlements where Israeli firms are given preferential incentives to open up industrial businesses in the West Bank. Those firms are mainly encouraged to do so because they would enjoy inexpensive means to get rid of their waste in the West Bank where it is usually dumped without having to be moved for long distances. Israel has on a number of occasions argued that industrial zones built in the Jewish settlements were meant to solve the unemployment crisis among the Palestinians but Palestinian officials warn against believing those Israeli allegations. They insist that the main objective of erecting those industrial zones was to serve the settlements and the settlers and the Palestinians never were on the list of settlement beneficiaries.

As far as Palestinians are concerned, Israel has made every effort to ruin the Palestinian environment. Engineer Violette Qumisyeh, director of the Water and Environment Unit at the Areej Applied Researches Center in Bethlehem said that the Israeli authorities over the past three decades have confiscated land, opened up new roads and dumped liquid and solid industrial waste of Israeli factories near Palestinian cities and villages. She noted that Jewish settlements, mainly built on hilltops in the West Bank, have automatically dumped their waste down in Palestinian valleys where sometimes cities and villagers are located.

In addition to industrial zones, the settlers have established so-called agricultural settlements that form new means of strategic takeover of Palestinian land under the disguise of setting up new fields for agriculture far beyond the existing boundaries of the Jewish settlements. Settlers have expanded their settlements to nearby hills and landscape and erected hothouses for their plants. Not only the settlers take over nearby hills and lands but they also open up new roads for alleged security use by their own patrols. In some of the cases, the takeover is done without the government approval but in most of them it is done without any government intervention. The settlers evidently enjoy the tacit support of the Israeli government, especially that of Benjamin Netanyahu. The army has also become involved in this effort by dispatching its forces to protect the settlers and the lands they newly take over.

A Palestinian city most affected by the new expansion of new settlements is Ramallah. According to Palestinian experts, including Dr. Tamimi, the city cannot expand horizontally within the coming ten years. "This situation will inevitably lead to serious social, environmental and population crises," he warned recently. Many Palestinian villages have become isolated inside a network of roads that exclusively serve Jewish settlers. Those villages, like Ein Yabroud near Ramallah, have no chances for expansion at all.

Dr. Tamimi said that infrastructure works in Jewish settlements in the West Bank are meant to serve the settlements at least for five decades to come and never were meant to meet the alleged needs of the present, as Israel claims. He said the networks of water and electricity supplies and telephone lines have all given the Palestinians a view of how the situation is going to be in the West Bank in the coming few years.

Previous Stories:
  Arafat concludes Arab and international tour, prepares for a decision on declaration   (4/14/1999)
  Intensifying settlements in Palestinian lands   (4/13/1999)
  Israeli high court holds hearing on revocation of residency from Jerusalem for Palestinians   (4/12/1999)
  Palestinians commemorate Land Day   (3/31/1999)

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