Israel to build new settlement in West Bank
For the first time in 10 years, Israel said Tuesday it will build a new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The announcement, by the defense ministry and settler groups, seems to run counter to the prevailing effort by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has offered a series of gestures to the Palestinians after a meeting with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, several days ago.
The Palestinians want build an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and consider any Israeli building there an act of thievery. Israel says it accepts the idea of a Palestinian state but that its exact contours have to be negotiated.
Even before the meeting, Mr. Abbas was being criticized by his political rivals in Hamas, which preaches Israel’s destruction, for carrying out what it calls an Israeli and American agenda with little to show for it.
One Israeli official hinted that the new settlement may be part of a deal with West Bank Jewish settlers to get their tacit acceptance of the removal of illegal settlement outposts there.
Another Israeli official, however, insisted that the settlement was not “new,” exactly, but a revival of a settlement that was approved in 1981 and had become a pre-army school by the mid-1990’s.
The Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, the dovish head of the Labor Party, gave his approval to a promise made by his predecessor — Shaul Mofaz, then of Likud and now of Kadima and the current Transport Minister — that houses would be built on the site of an army base in the northern Jordan Valley to resettle some of the Israelis who were forced to leave settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005, according to a Defense Ministry official.
Pressed by Washington to help build up Mr. Abbas, Mr. Olmert last week promised to give him $100 million in Palestinian funds withheld by Israel, about 20 percent of the amount being held, but only for humanitarian purposes. Abbas aides, however, say the money will be used to strengthen his Fatah movement and pay salaries to Fatah loyalists. Mr. Olmert also promised to dismantle 27 of the 400 or so checkpoints in the West Bank, despite criticism by the Israeli commander of the region.
The new settlement will be called Maskiot, and approval was given for the construction of some 30 houses. The Israeli official insisted that all construction would be privately funded.
They will be used by the 20 families of the hawkish Gaza settlement Shirat Hayam, which resisted evacuation and wanted to move as a group. To get them to leave Gaza peacefully, the army promised to keep them together.
The decision, the official said, “sort of went through and now it’s done and would be very hard to undo.”
Israel essentially decided to stop the building of new settlements in 1992 when Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister. But it has allowed existing settlements to grow despite its public promise to freeze settlement activity under the negotiated peace plan known as the road map.
Emily Amrusy, a spokeswoman for the settlers council known as Yesha, said that the families would move into trailers on the site while construction began on more permanent housing.
A spokeswoman for the American consulate in Jerusalem, which deals with the West Bank, said a new settlement would be troubling. “We’re looking into it, and if turns out to be a new settlement, we would be very concerned, given Israel’s obligations under the road map,” said Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, the spokeswoman.
The road map calls for a freeze in settlement building along with a Palestinian push to dismantle terrorist groups. Israel says the dismantling should come first and no such action has taken place. But it has separately promised the Bush administration that it would only build within existing settlement structures to account for natural growth, “thickening” settlements but not expanding them physically.
Israel also promised that it would dismantle more than 20 illegal outposts set up since March 2001, but it has only dismantled one, and that under Israeli court order. Peace Now, a leftwing Israeli lobby that opposes the settlements and follows them closely, says that there have been more than 50 outposts established illegally since March 2001, and that there are more than 100 illegal outposts in the West Bank altogether, many of them, like the semi-settlement of Migron, built on private Palestinian land.
Much of the world considers all Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law; the United States, which used to call them illegal, now calls them “obstacles to peace” that prejudge final status negotiations. The outposts are illegal under Israeli law because the government has not authorized them.
An aide to Mr. Abbas said today’s announcement ran counter to the understandings Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas reached during their meeting on Saturday night.
“We condemn this act and this decision especially as it comes after the Israeli side committed itself to stop all unilateral actions,” negotiator Saeb Erekat told Agence France-Presse. “This is certain to destroy the atmosphere created after the meeting with Olmert, where they committed to many issues, especially to stop unilateral actions.”
The Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and consider any Israeli building there an act of thievery. Israel says it accepts the idea of a Palestinian state but that its exact contours have to be negotiated.
Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, criticized the decision as contrary to the government’s stated aims and programs and noted that it has not been approved by parliament. “This is a veritable scandal, all the more so that this decision was taken by Amir Peretz,” himself a former activist with Peace Now, Mr. Oppenheimer said. What may begin with 30 houses could easily become more due to “thickening,” Peace Now said.
Despite the announcement, the number of new housing units constructed in the occupied West Bank was lower in 2006 than in any of the last six years, the housing ministry said. Some 543 new housing units were built in existing settlements, most of them around Jerusalem, compared to 3,023 in 2000. In September, the government invited bids for construction of 864 new housing units in settlements, a move criticized at the time by the Palestinians and Peace Now.
But there are also reports that some settlers have moved temporarily into the ruins of the Homesh settlement in the West Bank, one of four West Bank settlements destroyed along with the Gaza settlements in 2005.
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