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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Withdrawal on paper, annexation on the ground
By Khaled AmayrehIn what Palestinian negotiators describe as a move to predetermine the shape of the eventual final status settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the government of Ehud Barak has accelerated settlement expansion and land seizure in the West Bank.
The stepped-up pace is now even quicker than under the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, according to Palestinian officials, who say that "Barak is carrying out Netanyahu's policies in the West Bank." According to Israeli and Palestinian sources, most of these activities are taking place in East Jerusalem and along the former borders between Israel proper and the West Bank.
"This unprecedented onslaught of settlement expansion and land confiscation is eroding the peace process and killing off hope for a meaningful and just settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," said chief Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Ureikat in a radio interview with the Voice of Palestine on Monday.
Barak's government has awarded tenders for as many as 2,600 settlement units to be constructed in the Ma'al Adumim settlement and the many hilltop encampments settlers erected (with government encouragement and army protection) after the 23 October signing of the Wye River Memorandum. The number of planned units, said Israeli Peace Now spokesman Didi Remez, exceeds the number of housing units built in Jewish settlements in the West Bank during Netanyahu's entire term.
Israeli officials downplayed the issue, saying that Minister of Housing Yitzhak Levy, of the pro-settler National Religious Party, is responsible for the matter. But Levy defended the "boosting of existing settlements" under the government, saying most of the planned units would be located in settlements around Jerusalem which he said fell under "national consensus" -- meaning they would remain under Israeli control in a final status settlement. "We joined this government on the basis of its basic guidelines and the basic guidelines don't mention any freezing of construction," said Levy in a radio interview on 26 September. He said neither the Sharm Al-Sheikh nor Wye agreements stipulated a freeze of settlement activities.
Barak himself would appear to support this view. His statement that the peace process should progress "despite contentious issues with the Palestinians" can be read, as many Palestinian officials see it, as an allusion to settlements. Both recently signed agreements call on the two sides to refrain from "unilateral acts" that undermine the peace process, a vague clause which Israel says doesn't apply to settlements.
The choice of Levy, an opponent of the Oslo Accords who favours West Bank settlement expansion, to head the Housing Ministry which oversees settlement construction, is seen by the Palestinian side as a sign that Barak has no intention of reversing the settlement policies of his predecessor.
Palestinian Authority officials said they consider the fast-paced settlement expansion as an attempt by Barak to serve them with a fait accompli. Last week, the Israeli army seized over 3,000 hectares of mostly arable land in Hebron and Tulkarm, areas which are the main source of livelihood for hundreds of Palestinian families.
Hundreds of daunams around Salfit, north of Ramallah, were also confiscated recently, according to Palestinians, to enlarge a nearby Jewish settlement. Local villagers appealed to the Palestinian Authority to force the Israeli government to reverse the order. "If this peace process is dispossessing us of our land, we can do without it," one villager said. "The Israelis redeployed from seven per cent on paper but confiscated 10 per cent on the ground," said another.
The prevailing mood among villagers in Ithna, as in the rest of the Occupied Territories, was one of helplessness since in their view the PA leadership does not consider settlement expansion and land confiscation a sufficient enough reason to suspend the peace process.
In response to these developments, PA President Yasser Arafat said on 26 September, "We will inform the sponsors of the peace process and other friendly countries that these unilateral acts are destructive to the peace process." Some Palestinians questioned what they see as contradictions in the president's response. How can an independent state be created unless settlement expansion is contained within its future territory?
"We are doing all we can to stop this Israeli campaign," Palestinian Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Nabil Amr said at a symposium on the final status talks in Dura, near Hebron, on Monday. "We are under no illusion that our battle of peace with Israel will be easy."
In a 28 September statement, Arafat spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said "the continuation of settlement activities does not serve the peace process, flies in the face of the Sharm Al-Sheikh memorandum and erodes confidence between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government."
While disagreement over what constitutes a "unilateral act" that undermines the peace process hardly comes as a surprise, given the inimitable vagueness of such language, peace process analysts wonder how much room there is to negotiate. Barak's oft-repeated set of "Nos" -- concerning Jerusalem, settlements and the return of refugees -- are the very same issues which Arafat has said he cannot budge from.
