BACKGROUND
Settlements The Focus
Of Mideast Peace Talks
Washington and Israel appear headed for
a showdown over the issue of new Jewish
towns on land claimed by Palestinians.
HELEN DAVIS
Foreign Correspondent
W
ashington and
Jerusalem are on
course for a major
showdown over Jewish set-
tlements in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip following
this month's Middle East
peace conference in Madrid.
Hanan Ashrawi, the soph-
isticated and articulate voice
of the Palestinian cause at
the conference, made it clear
at her final Madrid press
conference that top priority
would be given to halting
further settlement activity.
According to U.S. sources,
her confident demand was
based on a private assurance
by Secretary of State James
Baker that Israeli set-
tlement activity would be
frozen within three months,
the waiting period ordered
by President George Bush
before the U.S. decides
whether to approve a $10
billion loan guarantee to
help Israel absorb its Soviet
immigrants.
The sources also reported
that Mr. Baker has promised
to implement United
Nations Security Council
resolution 681, which was
adopted last December and
is aimed at enforcing the
terms of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, which would
extend international protec-
tion to West Bank and Gaza
Strip Palestinians.
UN Secretary-General
Javier Perez de Cuellar is
reportedly waiting for Wash-
ington's go-ahead before
summoning a meeting of the
signatories to the conven-
tion, which forbids an occu-
pying power from moving its
own civilians to occupied
territories, from deporting
members of the indigenous
population and from holding
political prisoners.
Since 1967, Israel has ac-
quired about 60 percent of
the occupied territories for
military purposes and Jew-
ish settlement, and it has
planted nearly 250,000 set-
tlers in the territories.
While Israeli officials
decided to put their con-
ciliatory foot forward in
Madrid, consciously reduc-
ing the level of public rhet-
oric against territorial com-
promise and emphasizing
the need for negotiations,
there is no change in their
underlying goal. They
regard the territories not
only as essential strategic
depth, but also as part of the
biblically promised Land of
Israel, which cannot be
relinquished.
When Israeli officials speak
of granting "self-
government" to the Palesti-
nians for a three-year period
before starting negotiations
to determine the final status
of the territories after five
years, they are talking a
very different language from
both the Palestinians and
Washington.
Israel's concept of self-
government involves free
elections in the occupied ter-
ritories with the aim of es-
tablishing a civilian au-
thority that has a wide mea-
sure of control over the daily
lives of the 1.8 million Pales-
tinian inhabitants.
But it is no more and no
less than the autonomy
Secretary of State
James Baker has
reportedly assured
the Palestinians
that Israeli
settlement activity
will be frozen
within three
months.
agreement which formed
part of the Camp David Ac-
cords of 1978 and was round-
ly rejected by the Palestin-
ians at the time.
Israel's interpretation
perceives autonomy being
extended to the people, not
the land. It regards its
military government as the
source of final authority over
the Palestinian self-
governing regime. It does
not envisage the creation of
an independent Palestinian
state.
Moreover, it does not con-
template ceding ultimate
authority over the occupied
territories. As far as Israel is
concerned, Palestinian self-
government under Israeli
control is both the interim
and, with some cosmetic
modifications, the final sta-
tus of the Palestinians and
their "homeland."
When the parties meet for
their next direct talks in the
context of the US-Soviet co-
sponsored peace process the
Israeli negotiators will
unveil a 25-point plan for a
self-governing Palestinian
regime.
The plan, according to
sources, would cede to the
Palestinians the power to
raise taxes, frame their own
budget for the territories
and create their own civil
service. They would also be
allowed to administer their
own police, law courts and
jails, and would have control
over commerce, agriculture,
transport, communications,
housing, refugee rehabilita-
tion, education, health and
welfare.
Israel's negotiating posi-
tion is expected to include
limited troop withdrawals
from the major centers of Pa-
lestinian population and
their redeployment in pre-
assigned security locations.
Israel, however, will insist
on exercising unfettered
control of the airspace over
the territories, while its
ground forces will be
deployed on the eastern
slopes of the West Bank and
it will maintain early-
warning and intelligence
systems on West Bank
mountain tops.
Political, military and
geographic reality dictate
that the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip will remain
under the authority of
Israel's security forces for as
long as Israel chooses to
maintain its iron grip.
Yet while the troops en-
sure Israel's continued
physical control of the ter-
ritories, it is the network of
Jewish settlements that
most diminishes the possi-
bility of handing over the
territories to a future Pales-
tinian government.
Israel will not agree to
remove existing settlements
and it is unlikely to agree to
permanently freeze the es-
tablishment of new set-
tlements or the expansion of
Caravans house families while new homes are built.
those already in place,
although a temporary cessa-
tion may be achieved under
enormous financial pressure
from Washington.
At present, there are about
100,000 Jewish settlers in
the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, about 15,000 in the
Golan Heights, and a further
130,000 in the annexed sec-
tions of east Jerusalem.
What worries the Bush
administration and Pales-
tinian leaders are reports
that Israel is planning to
double the size of the settler
population within a year ac-
cording to a deliberately
contrived strategy —the
"Stars Program" — that
would effectively remove the
territories from the negotia-
ting table.
Settlement activity is no
longer simply a haphazard
drive to "create facts on the
ground" and remove yet an-
other piece of real estate
from the negotiating table.
Today, it has been refined
to a systematic program
designed to encircle and
isolate Arab villages, to
obliterate the Green Line —
Israel's pre-1967 borders —
and to destroy the
geographic definition of the
occupied territories.
Ma'aleh Adumim, perched
on a hilltop in the Judean
Desert between Jerusalem
and Jericho, has a popula-
tion of 15,000 and will short-
ly become the first Jewish
settlement in the West Bank
to be designated a fully
fledged city. Ariel, a thriv-
ing West Bank settlement
near Tel Aviv, is now attrac-
ting a flood of new immi-
grants from the Soviet
Union and, with new homes
being snapped up as fast
they are built, settler
leaders are planning for a
population of 20,000 within
a year.
But it is Modi'in, situated
between Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv and projecting a
population that will number
250,000, that provides the
model of the modern set-
tlement philosophy, a hint of
things to come.
Like a string of other set-
tlements under construction
or on the drawing boards,
Modi'in was deliberately
built just a few yards inside
Israel and, as intended, it is
now creeping easterly to
straddle the Green Line.
The man in charge of
Israel's settlement program
is Ariel Sharon, the con-
troversial housing minister,
who first shot to interna-
tional attention during the
1973 Yom Kippur War when
he led an expeditionary force
across the Suez Canal, en-
circled a major part of the
Egyptian Army and and cut
its supply lines.
Mr. Sharon, who believes
the peace process is a recipe
for war, is now employing
the same tactics to encircle
the West Bank and destroy
the Green Line by simply
building settlements on it.
Efraim Sneh, a former
military governor of the
West Bank who now heads
an Israeli institute that
promotes democratic ideals
and is affiliated with the
Labor Party, believes the
unstated strategy of Mr.
Sharon's settlement program
contains both geographic and
political objectives.
The geographic goal is to
cut the West Bank into four
mini-cantons, depriving it of
any viability as a credible
political entity. The political
objective is to settle more
Israelis in the occupied ter-
ritories, strengthening fur-
ther the lobby of those
demanding continued Israeli
control.
"A government that pro-
vides housing on such
excellent terms is also buy-
ing their votes," said Dr.
Sneh, a retired brigadier in
the Israeli Army.
Senior Israeli officials ex-
press impatience when ask-
ed about the Stars Program:
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
35