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Barring Talks, Settlements Are The Barometer for Peace

Angelique van Engelen - 4/20/2005

Israeli settler policies are often seen not only as highly controversial but also as highly surprising. Last Monday's news that a bid had been put out for the construction of 50 houses on the West Bank was both as surprising and controversial as Sharon's plan to remove 8,000 settlers from Gaza earlier this year and the announcement a few days after he'd won Knesset approval of plans to expand in the West Bank town of Maalah Adumim.

The absence of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations makes judging the chances of any form of future peace in the Middle East largely up to Sharon's plans with the settlers. The settler issue, which is naturally heavy, is therefore more controversial than ever, even aside from the fact that it is only just going underway.

Barring the absence of other official issues dominating the Palestinian Israeli scene, there's little else besides more vocal than ever uproar from both camps over any settlement decisions by Israeli policymakers. Now more than ever, people on the ground are wary of what will happen in the near future and trust in their political leaders is very low. So is international support for both nations' leaders. Reuters referred to the news that Israel is putting up more houses on the West Bank as the country putting itself on a 'collision course with Washington'. Washington, meanwhile, won't even invite Mahmoud Abbas 'so long as he hasn't got much to report'.

One does wonder what the reason is for Mr Sharon's plan this time to expand on the West Bank. The Israelis tend to baffle the international community almost on purpose it seems, by chosing particularly bad times to announce settlement plans. The plans to build 50 houses follow only days after President Bush reiterated that it would not be wise if Israel continued on the path of increased settlement expansions. No, Sharon throws his head in the wind, and happily invites bids for new homes at a current settlement of in Elkana in the Northern part of the West Bank. This town is situated six kilometers (four miles) on the Palestinian side of the border that resulted from the 1948 war and that lasted until the 1967 war known as the Green Line.

Most setllement announcements have been strongly objected to by the usual parties, but two other occasions of Israeli policymakers' revealing new settlement plans have been more than insensitive; the 1978 peace treaty with Egypt was followed by massive settlement activity and the same thing happened after the 1993 Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO. Then, a new wave of settlement building in the West Bank, took place, particularly along the "belt" around Jerusalem. Many explain these moves as incisive of clear aims, in spite of signed commitments not to undertake any unilateral activity to preempt final status negotiations.

"The construction is clearly part of (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's plan to reinforce control of the settlement blocs in the West Bank despite the commitments made by Israel. This kind of expansion bolsters extremists on both sides," added Etkes, a spokesman for the Israeli anti expansion movement Peace Now.

And it's only weeks since Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz approved plans to build 3,500 new homes at the settlement of Maaleh Adumim on the outskirts of east Jerusalem, also a contested issue, which was made public just after the Gaza plans were approved.

In an interview, Yoshe Alpher, an Israeli Security specialist who's worked for the Mossad and now works with the Peace Now organisation that is vehemently against new settlements, said that a successful withdrawal from Gaza is the preferred scenario of many of the supporters of disengagement on the left, center and moderate right.

Many others assert that a successful pull-out from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank must be followed by a return to the peace process, but they too would presumably not oppose insistence by Sharon of a second round of disengagement.

"Sharon himself has not indicated any specific inclination to carry out a second stage disengagement. But Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who appears to have filled the function of Sharon's "front man" in the past year, presenting Sharon's disengagement ideas to the public prior to the prime minister embracing them publicly, has talked of the need to remove unilaterally some 50,000 settlers from the West Bank, meaning all the settlers who are not in green line settlement blocs, the greater Jerusalem area and the Jordan Valley. Sharon adviser Dov Weissglas also implied somewhat ambiguously in his notorious Haaretz interview last month that about 50,000 more settlers would be removed, though he seemed to be saying that this would only happen within the framework of a negotiated agreement," said Alpher.

It is estimated that this would be the entire population of Israelis on the heartland of the West Bank. This would create the so sought after contiguity of Palestinian territory. throughout the northern West Bank (Samaria) and the southern West Bank (Judea). "This would still not be sufficient to satisfy the minimal territorial needs of a viable Palestinian state-which would require broad access to the Arab world via the Jordan Valley, a capital in East Jerusalem and a viable land link between north and south, in addition to a safe passage link to Gaza. But it would render Palestinian life far less constrained and oppressive, and would set the scene for renewed final status negotiations," said Alpher.

Meanwhile, the anti disengagement camp in Israel is shouting that the removal -if it takes place at all- from Gaza is going to be the last forced migration of Israelis. Many Israelis feel betrayed by Mr Sharon, who won re-election in January 2003 over Amram Mitzna, a Labor opponent who advocated an Oslo-style unilateral retreat from Gaza. Mr. Sharon unambiguously condemned a withdrawal during his reelection campaign, saying "A unilateral withdrawal is not a recipe for peace. It is a recipe for war." After winning the election, his talks in February 2003 about forming a coalition government with Mr. Mitzna failed because Mr. Sharon gave the Israelis living in Gaza greater importance than cooperating with Mr Mitzna. By December 2003, however, Mr. Sharon himself endorsed Mr. Mitzna's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, says Daniel Pipes in his weblog.

At the moment the risk of an ultra-orthodox uprising in the Israeli army is said to be critical, but no real figures exist as to even estimate the number of extremists in the army. Besides, the extremists on the Palestinian side are also said to have increased their activity.

Although Sharon endorsed the roadmap at its launch in June 2003, his argument that the Palestinians' failure to meet its commitments and crack down on militant groups effectively negates Israel's need to honour its obligations. He's largely gone it alone since, and it remains to be seen whether he's going to go back to the negotiating table any time soon. The problems that are going to have to be tackled include the even thornier issue of Jerusalem.

People say it is difficult to estimate whether a new round of withdrawals from the West Bank is going to be any less or more difficult to sell to the Israeli population. The Palestinians will have a difficult time accepting any smaller settlements like the one in .. which they strongly see as having been built by direct approval from highest level politicians.

"Despite the fact that the world considers all settlements illegal and illegitimate, there is no doubt that the subject of settlements will be the source of much complication in final status negotiations. Among the different ideas for solving this thorny issue there is one that surfaces from time to time: can settlers be accepted as Palestinian citizens in a future state of Palestine? The question seems intriguing on the surface, and some may immediately respond in the positive. My answer is an unequivocal no", argues Hassan Asfour, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council on Bitter Lemons.com. "My objection is not to individuals or a people; we would not reject any Jew who rejects Israel's aggressive nature and becomes a Palestinian citizen. The objection is to consolidating facts that were established by force and aggression. Accepting any settler to stay in his present abode would be tantamount to a whitewash of this immoral and shameful enterprise."

That does not mean that the settlers are likely to just call it quits and leave. Hardly ever has an Israeli politician been under more stress than Sharon is these days. He said recently that for years he's been seeking to protect the Jews, but that now he himself needs protecting from Jews. The Israeli army at the moment is even making efforts to break links between overly religious yeshivas and young conscripts who might be prone to incite extremism. No one knows precisely how many high level ultra orthodox extremists are walking around in the army, but fears have been voiced that religious soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces might obey any halachic rulings of anti-disengagement rabbis rather than the commands of their officers.

"The difficulty in assessing the effects of a mass refusal by religious soldiers to obey commands to dismantle settlements is in part quantitative. We don't know how many soldiers and officers in the IDF come from the national religious movement, some of whose rabbis have called upon them to refuse orders. Nor do we have any tools to estimate the percentage of these soldiers who will obey rabbinical/halachic commands rather than those of their superiors in the IDF. For obvious reasons, the IDF is statistically "blind" with regard to the religiosity of its troops," says Alpher.

It is estimated that the orthodox religious conscripts number about 3,000 in the standing army, and thousands in the reserves. In addition, at least 1,500 currently serving soldiers entered the army directly from a special post-high school national religious preparatory year. The total constitutes less than five percent of the standing army, but is a larger percentage of the combat troops that will be sent to dismantle settlements, Alpher says. Further, some 30 percent of the combat officer corps is estimated to be religious.