Today’s West Bank is a land of shocking contrasts – of one set of
rules and rights for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers.
Palestinian lives are under the absolute control of the Israeli
army, which can either seal off communities with roadblocks or invade them at
will. The Palestinian economy is being slowly strangled by the separation
barrier. Few Palestinians are allowed any longer to seek work inside Israel, and
their freedom to move around the West Bank is severely curtailed by hundreds of
checkpoints and the need for almost unattainable travel permits.
If West Bank Palestinians are being hemmed into ghettoes, the
500,000 Jewish settlers living alongside them are in a much better position.
Their settlements are connected to Israel by motorways that make their work and
families inside Israel a simple, quick drive away. Israelis crisscross over the
Green Line, the effective border, unaware of where Israel ends and the West Bank
begins.
The growth of the settlements, all of which are illegal under
international law, was supposed to have been frozen under the terms of the 2003
Road Map, the US-sponsored plan to advance a Palestinian state. But a drive
through the West Bank around East Jerusalem reveals a skyline of cranes, rapidly
expanding these fortress colonies.
The impression of growth is backed up by the figures. About 2,600
homes are under construction in the settlements, according to the Israeli group
Peace Now. Half of them are being built on the far side of Israel’s separation
barrier, the part of the West Bank Israel is supposedly planning to surrender in
a peace agreement.
The work is not being carried out by rogue operators. Two-thirds
of the homes are being built by Israel’s housing ministry. And the outlook for
Palestinians is even worse: Peace Now reports that tenders for future
construction projects in the settlements have risen five-fold on a year ago.
In the United States, Zionist organisations are subsidising the
settlement expansion with a frenzy of financial support of their own. A recent
survey by the news agency Reuters found that at least 13 American organisations
have been claiming charitable status as they have pumped more than US$35 million
(Dh129m) into the settlement enterprise over the past five years.
On the third side of the triangle, the settlers themselves are
resorting to a familiar tactic: violence against Palestinians, particularly
those in more isolated areas that Israel hopes to annex. Palestinians are being
beaten, livestock and wells poisoned, harvests stolen or crops burnt, homes
stoned and cars set alight.
Cases of settler attacks are reported to have nearly doubled on
this time last year, itself a bad year. But arrests are negligible. The Israeli
police have admitted to the local media they turn a blind eye. A senior police
commander in the West Bank said recently: “Sometimes cops also avoid acting
against Jews.”
Why the acceleration in lawlessness? The answer is to be found in
the so-called peace process.
The most dramatic growth in the settlements occurred in the Oslo
years, when Israel doubled the settler population while it was ostensibly
engaged in negotiations designed to lead to Palestinian statehood.
Something similar has happened since George W Bush’s pledge to
Ariel Sharon in 2004 that Israeli “population centres” would remain in place in
any future agreement with the Palestinians. Israel has taken this as referring
to its “settlement blocs” and is therefore rushing to expand the colonies so
that they will be included under the definition of a bloc. The Annapolis
conference in November simply underlined to Israel that it must move as fast as
possible.
This is the context for the two-state plan unveiled last month by
Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister. Although there is zero chance
he will implement the scheme, it shows the general thrust in the Israeli
establishment’s thinking.
The most important point is that Israel is offering the
Palestinians in this deal nothing apart from the ghettoes it has already made of
their communities. Negotiations on the necessary capital of a Palestinian state,
Jerusalem, as well as transport links between the two “halves” of that state,
the West Bank and Gaza, will have to wait until the Fatah leadership takes back
control of Gaza from Hamas on terms acceptable to Israel. Not only is such an
Israeli dictate inherently anti-democratic, but that day may never arrive.
In the meantime, Israel wants the blessing of the Palestinian
leadership – or the Americans – to the annexation of seven per cent of the West
Bank, and with it the “settlement blocs”. That is not all. Postponement of an
agreement on East Jerusalem – for up to five years in Mr Olmert’s latest
proposal – will open the door to continuing Israeli settlement of the West Bank.
That is because, through boundary changes, Israel has turned
Jerusalem into a huge metropolis stretching deep into the West Bank, almost
reaching the border with Jordan. Continuing uncertainty about Jerusalem’s future
would give Israel legitimacy to expand settlements in an area it calls Jerusalem
but is in truth a substantial chunk of the West Bank. That land would doubtless
be annexed by Israel at a later date.
In addition, Israel is proposing that the Palestinians be allowed
no army, while Israel controls all border crossings, maintains soldiers in the
Jordan Valley (one-fifth of the West Bank) and keeps military bases and
“emergency response units” in other Palestinian areas.
Such a plan – for a non-sovereign, non-contiguous Palestinian
state – is entirely unacceptable to the Palestinians. But that barely matters.
As long as no agreement is reached, Israel can keep on building. And Israel
knows that every new settler home contributes to a future settlement bloc and a
little slice less of a Palestinian state.
Jonathan Cook lives in Nazareth, Israel. His book Disappearing
Palestine is published this month by Zed Books.
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