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Israel’s settlements

By The World ⋅ October 6, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

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settlement150 President Obama seems have to backed off his call for a building freeze on Israeli settlements. Israel says “natural growth” within existing settlements must be permitted, while Palestinians want a freeze. The World’s Matthew Bell reports on an issue that has plagued the Middle East peace process for many years. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH-Boston. Israeli police today deployed thousands of officers on the streets of Jerusalem. Two days of Palestinian street protests have left the city on edge. Palestinians are upset because they believe that Israel is trying to turn Jerusalem into a predominantly Jewish city. In the West Bank, housing construction in Israeli settlements continues apace, and that’s despite President Obama calling Jewish settlements built on lands captured by Israel in 1967 illegitimate. The World’s Matthew Bell reports from the West Bank.

MATTHEW BELL: In the hills above the Palestinian City of Nablus, the 800 or so Israeli residents of Yizhar have a reputation. They’re known for being among the most hard lined of Jewish settlers. The area around Yizhar has been the sight of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, and even recently between settlers and Israeli soldiers. Yigal Avitay gave me tour of Yizhar. Avitay is a bearded and bespectacled 43 year-old father of eleven children. He moved here in the mid-80s to raise a family in part of the Holy Land where he says there are too few Jews. We drive past a row of small wooden homes along a ridge outside the main cluster of settlement houses. Avitay says this was once a no-man’s land. This is one of the illegal outposts that the Israeli government might tear down?

AVITAY: Yah, but it’s ridiculous because the government built the road and moved their electricity line, and moved the water line, and now because of American pressure or political reason they say, “Oh, it’s illegal. Let’s destroy it.”

BELL: Avitay says the people of Yizhar are determined to stand firm in the face of American pressure, but he’s not so sure his own Prime Minister is. Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly prepared to impose a freeze on settlement building, not an immediate all-encompassing freeze, as the Obama administration wanted but didn’t get. This proposed freeze would be gradual and temporary. But even that doesn’t sit well with Yigal Avitay. We arrive in front of a partly constructed cinder block foundation for yet another new home. Do you think people will … I mean, if Netanyahu says stop, make a freeze …

AVITAY: Yah.

BELL: Will they stop?

AVITAY: Never. We not work for Netanyahu.

BELL: Avitay invites me to his home and switching to Hebrew he says pressuring the settlers to stop building will only achieve the opposite result.

AVITAY: [In Hebrew]

BELL: He says whenever the government and the news media oppose the settlements, the pace of building only speeds up, and that’s just what’s happening now. Unfortunately, says Hagit Ofran, that’s true. She is a 34 year-old activist with the group Peace Now, which opposes the settlements. Ofran drives through the West Bank documenting new construction activities, and that’s keeping her very busy these days.

HAGIT OFRAN: One, two, three. I don’t know. A bunch.

BELL: New houses?

OFRAN: Foundations. You see, it’s just foundations right now. I want to … Before they kick us out of here, I’m going to take a picture and run back, okay?

BELL: Ofran suspects that contractors are rushing to start new building projects now. She says that’s because they want to get projects under way before any settlement freeze is put in place. When people question her motives, Ofran points out that she’s an Israeli Army veteran. She says she’s a Jew who feels connected to the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, otherwise known as the West Bank. But the settlements, she says, are an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state.

OFRAN: When Israel has continued to build, this is the opposite message for the Palestinians to say, “We’re not going to leave here. We’re building here.” Because if we were about to leave, why do we build and especially here which is out of what Israel likes to call settlement blocks.

BELL: Those settlement blocks are the large Jewish communities that mostly sit close to the 1967 green line that divided Israel from the West Bank. In past negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians the two sides have discussed including these areas in land swaps and annexing them to Israel. But if Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to pursue that goal, and assist in the creation of an independent Palestinian state, his governing coalition would probably collapse. Eliza Herbst is a spokeswoman for the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. She’s part of a key constituency that doesn’t fully trust the Prime Minister.

ELIZA HERBST: Bibi Netanyahu was elected by a two-thirds majority of right wing nationalist individuals. His constituency put him in the Prime Minister’s seat on the platform of development and the flourishing of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

BELL: This is Netanyahu’s second time around as Prime Minister. In the late 1990s, he shook hands with Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat, and agreed to pull Israeli troops out of parts of the West Bank. Supporters of the settlements said his moves amounted to surrender. They withdrew their political support and Netanyahu lost the next election. Eliza Herbst says the Prime Minister is now on notice.

HERBST: Bibi Netanyahu turned his back on his voters once. If he turns his back on his voters again, not only will he lose his government, but he’ll lose his political career.

BELL: As a reminder to the Israeli Prime Minister, hundreds of pro-settler activists from his own party are planning a rally for tomorrow to demand that Netanyahu say no to Washington’s call for a settlement freeze. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell, Jerusalem.

WERMAN: Matthew took some pictures of some of those West Bank settlers he interviewed for that report. To put a face to a voice, visit theworld.org.

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Discussion

4 comments for “Israel’s settlements”

Doron L

Dear The World,

Today’s report (Tue 6 Oct.) by Matthew Bell on West Bank settlers smacked less of the extreme anti-Israel bias that typifies The World’s reportage on Israel. Nevertheless, the issue ab initio is always presented in a manner that slants against Israel.

Marco Werman introduced the piece by talking of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in Jerusalem. He asserted that the Palestinians are concerned that Israel is trying to turn Jerusalem into a predominantly Jewish city.

This had little to do with the riots. They started when Palestinians threw rocks at Jewish worshipers on the Temple Mount a few days ago. They were instigated and exacerbated (according to Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post) by incitement by the Palestinian Authority. The latter did this to divert attention from controversies over its handling of the Goldstone report.

As for the settlers – I have never heard Bell mention that there were significant and ancient Jewish communities in the West Bank before Israel came into being. For example, in Hebron, until the 1929 massacre. And in East Jerusalem, which had a Jewish majority from at least 1860 until the 1920′s and 1930′s riots, in which Jews were driven out. Now East Jerusalem is called Arab East Jerusalem. There were also Jewish communities in other parts of the West Bank that were driven out or killed in the 1948 war.

How long will it take The World to ever cover 60 years of Arab rejectionism? Of continued Arab rejection of coexistence? This is typefied by the recent Fatah conference.

How long will it take to cover the Jewish refugees from Arab lands?
http://vivapalestina.us Ojos Criollos

Mathhew Bell reported that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are near the 1967 border. This is incorrect. West Bank maps indicating the settlements, which are in fact illegal under international law, and the separation walls, also illegal, on B’tselem’s website (http://www.btselem.org/english/Maps/Index.asp). To get an idea of how the settlements are the main obstacle to a Palestinian state and therefore peace in the Middle East, see “The West Bank Archipelago,” which shows how the West Bank has reduced Palestinian land to cantons separated by Jewish settlements and the separation walls. Since The World aired such an erroneous and biased story, it should broadcast a correction with voices of those who tell the facts about the settlements and the separation walls.
Allan Lazaroff

I heard the last part of this piece on Israeli settlements. Has PRI (or anyone else, for that matter) devoted as much (or any)attention to the other obstacle to peace mentioned by Pres. Obama, namely, the Arab “incitement” against Israel, the polite diplomatic term for the rabid antisemitism that permeates the Arab and Muslim media and education? How could there ever be peace, settlements or no settlements, if the Arab street has been taught to hate Jews?
Carl Wilcox

One of the biggest problems here is one of terminology. Nearly all news organizations, including PRI, continue to use the Israeli euphemisms “settlements” and “settlers.” According to international law, the Palestinian territories occupied during the 1967 war remain occupied territories. As such, the “settlements” are more like military outposts illegally established in occupied territory. It’s as ridiculous as calling the British rule of India a settlement movement. The people in the West Bank could be called either colonizers or occupiers – but they are not settlers. The use of the term “settler” is intended to promote a vision of people moving into a barren land. The earlier Zionists liked to pretend that Palestine was “a land without people for a people without a land.” That was never the case. Backed by the United States’ veto, Israeli has repeatedly violated UN Security resolutions including 242 and 338. If there is ever to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it must be based upon the rule of law and not on the “natural growth” of “settlements.”

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