| Two Israeli organizations, Peace Now and the human rights
group B'Tselem, have carefully monitored the growth in
housing units and population and what might be termed
the legal and administrative development of Israeli settlements
in the Palestinian territories that Israel occupied in
1967. B'Tselem cites data from Israel's Central Bureau
of Statistics showing that, from the end of 1993 to the
end of 2000 (approximately the interval between Oslo and
the beginning of the Palestinian uprising), the population
of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, excluding East
Jerusalem, increased from 110,900 to 191,600, or some
73 percent. During the same period, the Israeli population
in formally annexed East Jerusalem rose from 146,800 to
173,000.19 Figures available for Gaza show an increase from 4,800
to 6,120 from 1993 to the end of 1999. 20
The Oslo accords did not explicitly prohibit Israeli
settlement construction, but they did provide that "Neither
side shall initiate or take any step that will change
the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending
the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."21
Whether or not this provision should be construed to apply
to settlement construction, it is evident from a subsequent
Israeli pledge to the U.S. that Israel, the Palestinians,
and the U.S. all recognized the importance of the settlement
issue for the Oslo process.22
Soon after the Oslo accords, the government of Itzhak
Rabin promised the U.S. that Israel would not establish
new settlements and would not expand existing ones, except
to meet the needs occasioned by the "natural growth" of
the settler population. Palestinian negotiators seem
to have accepted this pledge as a sufficient guarantee
on the settlement question. While all subsequent Israeli
governments have reaffirmed this commitment, Israel has
interpreted "natural growth" to be a much broader concept
than "natural increase," i.e. the population increase
due only to an excess of births over deaths. In practice,
"natural growth" has meant as rapid an expansion of settlements
as available resources permit. An essentially unlimited
interpretation of "natural growth" plus an exception Israel
declared for an extensive "greater Jerusalem area" in
the center of the West Bank have made possible, despite
the pledge, the near doubling of the settlement population
during the seven years of the Oslo period.23
The settlements (map, Fig.
2,) harm the Palestinian population in a number of
ways. Most obviously, they prevent Palestinian development
in (and even access to) substantial tracts of land.
The settlements control 20% of the Gaza Strip.24
In the West Bank, while the built-up settlement area occupies
only 1.7% of the land, the settlements are actually in
possession of 41.9% of the West Bank.25
This includes the lands within the municipal boundaries
of the larger settlements and the lands within the much
wider "regional council" boundaries that group the smaller
settlements into county-like administrative units. In
some cases, the extended municipal or regional settlement
boundaries abut built-up Palestinian areas, preventing
the urban development required to meet the needs of a
growing Palestinian population. The Israeli army controls
additional areas of the West Bank, bringing the total
under Israeli control to 59%.26
(See box)
Under a 1996 Israeli military government order, Palestinians
are barred from entering the extended settlement areas
without a special permit.27
(Enforcement of the order has usually been gradual; Palestinians
have sometimes been notified months or years after the
fact that an area has been included within a settlement
border and that, consequently, they can no longer enter
it.)
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Not
only have Palestinians lost the right to develop their
land or to move freely in a substantial portion of
the occupied territories, Palestinians have lost legal
jurisdiction over the areas controlled by the settlements.
The legal structure that Israel has elaborated to
govern the settlements has, by military order, replaced
Palestinian law in these areas. The jurisdiction
of Israel's civil and criminal courts, Israeli planning
law, and the laws regulating local and regional government,
for example, have all been extended to the settlement
areas by Israeli military government orders. Typically,
the orders simply |
"Military
legislation, in the form of the collection of military
orders published by the Commander of IDF Forces
in the West Bank, provides an extremely effective
tool for realizing Israel's policy of imposing its
own law on the settlements and the settlers, while
separating them from Palestinian residents and their
communities."
B'Tselem,
land
grab, chapter 4 |
incorporate the text of the relevant Israeli law, thus creating
by authority of the military government a legal regime identical
to Israel's. This accomplishes, in effect, a de facto
annexation of the settlement areas, without the international
political problems that de
jure annexation would bring.28
Because the settlements are interspersed among Palestinians
cities, towns, and villages, Palestinian territorial
continuity is impossible. This precludes the possibility
of a Palestinian state in any normal sense. In some cases,
the location of settlements along key access roads has
led to strict permanent restrictions on Palestinian movement.29
The settlements also consume many times the Palestinian
per capita usage of the severely limited water resources
of the West Bank and Gaza, worsening an already serious
problem for Palestinians.30
The Israeli political thinking and development planning
underlying the settlements as they exist today is more
than twenty years old. It was first given comprehensive
articulation in the settlement plan prepared by the World
Zionist Organization for the government of Prime Minister
Menachem Begin in 1978. This plan, with frequent amendments
(including one version dubbed the "Sharon Plan" for Ariel
Sharon, who as Minister of Agriculture played a key role
in settlement policy in the 1977-1981 Begin government)
has guided Israeli settlement policy ever since. The
1980 version of the plan makes the case that
The civilian presence of Jewish communities is vital
for the security of the state. . . .There must not be
the slightest doubt regarding our intention to hold
the areas of Judea and Samaria [i.e. the West Bank]
forever. . . .The best and most effective way to remove
any shred of doubt regarding our intention to hold Judea
and Samaria forever is a rapid settlement drive in these
areas . . . 31
Given the scale of the settlements, their impact on the
Palestinians, and both Israeli statements and Palestinian
perceptions of their purpose, it is clear that any improvement
in Israeli-Palestinian relations will require a change
in Israeli settlement activity. As former Sen. George
Mitchell's May 2001 report on the conflict concluded,
"A cessation of Palestinian-Israeli violence will be particularly
hard to sustain unless the Government of Israel freezes
all settlement construction activity."32
An unequivocal Israeli settlement freeze would eliminate
one of the major causes of the failure of Oslo and pave
the way for a resumption of meaningful peace negotiations.
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