This section covers items—reprinted articles, statistics, and maps—pertaining to Israeli
settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section
or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied
Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter
published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for
permission to draw on its material.
‘‘The Next President and the Illusion of Deluxe Occupation’’ . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Closing the Door on a Two-State Solution‘‘Bibi’s Tried-and-True Settlement Weapon,’’ by Lara Friedman . . . . . . . . . . 145The Rise of Settler Terrorism, by Daniel Byman and
Can a Two-State Solution Be Salvaged?‘‘The Israeli Settlers Who Make Unlikely Peace Activists,’’ by Khaled Diab . . . 151It’s All Reversible, by Yariv Oppenheimer (excerpts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153‘‘Top 10 Reasons Why the Migron Evacuation is a Victory for Peace,’’
As the end of the first term of theadministration of President BarackObama approaches, expectations of a suc-cessful American effort to end Israel’soccupation of the West Bank, East Jer-usalem, and the Gaza Strip that greetedthe president in January 2009 have evap-orated. This is the dismal legacy that thenext American administration willconfront.
The president’s selection soon afterhis election in 2008 of former senatorGeorge Mitchell as special envoy and thearticulate and forceful focus on the needfor a ‘‘freeze’’ in Israeli settlement activityin the West Bank and East Jerusalemwere widely viewed as clear indicationsof Obama’s commitment to lead the
parties to an agreement that reflected thevital national security interests of theparties, as well as the United States—thecreation of two states, Israel and Pales-tine, at peace with each other and securewithin recognized borders.
Secretary of State Hillary RodhamClinton set the aggressive tone for thisinitiative in May 2009, when she said,‘‘[President Obama] wants to see a stopto settlements—not some settlements,not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ excep-tions. That is our position. That is whatwe have communicated very clearly.’’
Notwithstanding American objections,settlements today are flourishing. SeniorIsraeli columnist Nahum Barnea com-mented recently that,
‘‘[Israel’s] goal was to prevent theestablishment of an Arab state betweenthe Jordan River and the MediterraneanSea. Today, with 300,000 settlers living inJudea and Samaria, with a powerful lobby
and compensation arrangements fromGush Katif [Gaza] that would amount tohundreds of billions of shekels if theywere to be applied to the West Bank, youcould say that the mission has beenaccomplished.’’
This breakdown in Washington’s dip-lomatic effort is unprecedented. JeffreyFeltman, a former assistant secretary ofstate for Near Eastern affairs, and cur-rently UN undersecretary for politicalaffairs, acknowledged the diplomaticretreat of the international community atan August 22 briefing before the SecurityCouncil, noting that ‘‘in the short-termthe international community may not bein a position to succeed in helping theparties bridge their political differences.’’
U.S. interest in and leadership of theeffort to end the conflict has atrophied toa point not seen since the abortiveRogers Plan in 1970, which created a pol-icy vacuum that would lead to the Octo-ber 1973 war. Today, policymakers andthe public alike have surrendered in theface of dysfunctional domestic politicsand the passions that drive the conflict.They are bored with its grinding hope-lessness, distracted by the more hopefuland dramatic narratives of the ArabSpring, strangely complacent about thestrategic costs to be paid by all for failureto end the occupation and settlement,and all but resigned to the victory of thesettlers.
If Barnea’s observation is tinged withregret, National Union chairman and MKYa’akov Katz is representative of settlerswho smell victory. ‘‘Despite the freeze,settlement in Judea and Samariaincreased this past year,’’ he notedrecently. ‘‘With the current rate ofgrowth, we will be about 400,000 Jewsbefore the next election campaign, andwithin four years, we will be about halfa million Jews in Judea and Samaria. Ifyou include East Jerusalem, we willnumber more than a million Jews, atwhich point the revolution will havebeen completed.’’
Deluxe OccupationMany Israelis applaud this failure to
end the occupation as much as Palesti-nians condemn it. Dov Weisglas, PrimeMinister Ariel Sharon’s top negotiator,wrote recently in candid praise of theOslo accords, which have regulated the
occupation for almost twenty years: ‘‘APalestinian once told me that ‘Oslo’ was‘a brilliant Israeli arrangement.’ ‘How?’ Iasked. ‘It is the only prison in the worldwhere the prisoners are responsible fortheir own support, without any partici-pation from the management’.’’ ‘‘Israel,’’continued Weisglas, ‘‘enjoys all the privi-leges of sovereignty over the Palestinianterritories, without the sovereign’s obli-gations; that is what ‘Oslo’ means today.’’
This Israeli objective is not new. Nor,as Weisglas’ remarks suggest, is confi-dence in the advantages that it offersIsrael.
The building blocks of a permanentIsraeli presence in the West Bank andother territories occupied by Israel inJune 1967 were put in place by a coali-tion of the Israeli security and politicalestablishments well before the settlementmovement went into overdrive. Settle-ment is motivated by religion and ideol-ogy. But the settlement drive is alsoa consequence of the still popular viewthat Israel’s security is enhanced by terri-torial expansion and the deployment ofits forces and citizens beyond the June1967 borders. This notion is at the heartof the settlement enterprise and the con-tinuing support for occupation offered byIsrael’s key institutions.
However, this Israeli strategy is notimmutable. It did not survive a costly warwith Egypt and an intifada in Gaza thaterupted in December 1987 and neverreally ceased until Israel withdrew inSeptember 2005.
In both cases, Israeli leaders con-cluded that national security wouldimprove by withdrawing military forcesand settlers from Sinai and Gaza—in thecase of Egypt, by the signing of a peacetreaty, and in Gaza, by adopting a strat-egy of deterrence.
This history holds out some slenderhope that Israel, notwithstanding the realdifferences between these areas and theWest Bank, is still capable of decidingthat its future will be more secure if itjettisons rejectionism, negotiates a mutu-ally acceptable border with the Palesti-nians and makes peace.
The U.S. in an Era of TransitionPresident Obama has defined the con-
temporary scene in the Middle East as an‘‘era of transition.’’ The current malaise
144 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
among policymakers and the diplomatic‘‘freeze’’ that defines the U.S. view of theconflict on the eve of the Novemberelection is not simply a product ofdomestic American politics. It alsoreflects a crippled strategic vision. Occu-pation and settlement undermine Israel’scharacter and security. The status quodefeats Palestinians’ internationally rec-ognized right to freedom and self-determination. It engenders a pervasivesense of Palestinian insecurity, particu-larly in the rural parts of the West Bankcontested by settlers and the vigilanteelements of the ‘‘hilltop youth,’’ even asthe absence of violent Palestinian oppo-sition to the status quo currently breedscomplacency among Israelis.
As Israel’s settlement population con-tinues to grow at a pace twice as fast asthe growth of Israel’s population asa whole, so too does the threat to Pales-tinian lands that are critical to the com-munity’s national and even existentialsurvival. This is particularly the case inArea C, comprising 60 percent of theWest Bank, where the PalestinianAuthority has no recognized pre-sence . . . and where, in the spirit of therecommendations of the Levy Report (seeSettlement Report, August 2012), Israel’sMinistry of Interior is quietly expandingits authority. Conceding the success ofthe settlers and effectively closing thedoor to a two-state solution will not endthis dangerous conflict, nor insulate thenext American president from its corro-sive effects on America’s nationalsecurity.
CLOSING THE DOOR ONA TWO-STATE SOLUTION
‘‘BIBI’S TRIED-AND-TRUE SETTLEMENT
WEAPON’’
The piece by Lara Friedman waspublished in The Daily Beast on6 November 2012. Friedman is theDirector of Policy and Governmentrelations for Americans for Peace Now.The text is available online atwww.thedailybeast.com.
Today’s announcement that the Israeligovernment is moving full steam aheadwith the construction of nearly 1300 newsettlement units should surprise nobody.
The announcement paves the way forconstruction in Pisgat Zeev andRamot (settlement neighborhoods of EastJerusalem), as well as in the hugeand extremely controversial settlement ofAriel—a settlement located smack-dab inthe middle of the northern West Bank, ina location that makes its inclusion as partof Israel under any realistic borders sce-nario pretty much impossible.
Today’s announcement is no surprisefor two reasons. First, because startingabout 2 weeks ago it became clear thatPrime Minister Netanyahu was openingthe settlement floodgates, particularly inEast Jerusalem. In addition to today’sannouncement, we’ve seen approvals ofplans in Gilo, Har Homa, East Talpiot,and the Mount of Olives—and moreapprovals are clearly on the way. Today’sannouncement is just part of that flood.
The other reason this is no surprise isthat Netanyahu has plenty of reasons,foreign and domestic, for doing this now.In terms of domestic politics, earlyelections are only a short time away, andNetanyahu and his right-wing allies areeager to burnish their credentials withthe settlers and their supporters—just intime for Likud party primaries (scheduledfor November 25). Moreover, today’sannouncement serves as a stinging riposteto President Abbas’s interview this pastFriday—a pro-peace overture that, fromNetanyahu’s point of view, was extraor-dinarily unwelcome. On the internationalfront, Netanyahu is no doubt counting onthe fact that during an election season—especially one in which pro-Israel cre-dentials have been such a hotly-contestedissue—the Obama administration isn’tgoing to waste an ounce of political cap-ital condemning his actions on settle-ments, no matter how outrageous theymight be. In addition, it is worthremembering that Netanyahu has a longand storied history of politically-timedsettlement announcements during Presi-dent Obama’s time in office. Theseinclude (but are not limited to):
� the September 27, 2011 approval ofconstruction in Gilo, at a time whenthe Obama Administration was work-ing feverishly to re-start negotiations;
� the May 19, 2011 announcement ofaction to approve 1,500 new settle-ment units in East Jerusalem,
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 145
coinciding with Netanyahu’s trip toWashington to meet with PresidentObama (and on the eve of PresidentObama’s major Middle East speech);
� the April 3, 2011 announcement ofthe approval of new settlement con-struction in East Jerusalem and theWest Bank, coinciding with IsraeliPresident Shimon Peres’ visit toWashington to meet with PresidentObama;
� the announcement on November2010 of the opening of the settlementfloodgates in East Jerusalem, coincid-ing with Netanyahu’s meeting withVice President Biden in New Orleans;
� the infamous March 2010 announce-ment of plans for massive construc-tion in the East Jerusalem settlementof Ramat Shlomo, coinciding withVice President Biden’s visit toJerusalem;
� the March 2010 announcement of theissuance of permits to begin settle-ment construction at the ShepherdsHotel in East Jerusalem, coincidingwith Netanyahu’s meeting with Presi-dent Obama;
� the November 2009 announcement ofplans for massive new construction inGilo, coinciding with Special EnvoyMitchell’s meeting with Netanyahu’senvoy, Yitzhak Molcho, in London;
� the March 2009 announcement ofplans to demolish 80 Palestinianhomes in East Jerusalem, coincidingwith Secretary of StateClinton’s March 2009 visit toJerusalem.
Clearly, Netanyahu’s latest settlementannouncement is par for the course.Settlements and related issues—doesanyone remember the HasmoneanTunnel crisis?—have long been Netanya-hu’s tried-and-true weapons when hewants to score political points with histarget constituencies and thumb his noseat everybody else. All of that being said,nobody should dare dismiss what is hap-pening today as just more of the sameboring settlement news that they can justignore. The current scope, pace, andintensity of settlement activity in East Jer-usalem is unparalleled since the earliestdays of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusa-lem. As Jerusalem expert Daniel Seide-mann has warned, if these settlement
trends continue, the two-state solution inJerusalem as it is currently understood—wherein a relatively clean line can bedrawn between Israeli Jerusalem andPalestinian Jerusalem, and land swapscan ensure that large numbers of Israelisare not forced to move—will be gone bythe end of 2013, if not sooner. And let noone misunderstand: there is not a two-state solution without two capitals in Jer-usalem. Today, Netanyahu continues togive lip service to his desire for negotia-tions and Israeli-Palestinian peace. Hisactions on settlements—over the pastweeks, months, and years—reveal a muchdifferent agenda and send a clear mes-sage that it is the Palestinians, not Israel,who are missing a partner for peace.
THE RISE OF SETTLER TERRORISM (EXCERPTS)
The piece excerpted below was pub-lished in Foreign Affairs on 14 August2012. Daniel Byman is a professor in theSecurity Studies Program at the EdmundA. Walsh School of Foreign Service atGeorgetown University and Director ofResearch at the Saban Center at theBrookings Institution. Natan Sachs isa fellow at the Saban Center. The fulltext is available online atwww.foreignaffairs.com.
Late this past June, a group of Israelisettlers in the West Bank defaced andburned a mosque in the small West Bankvillage of Jabaa. Graffiti sprayed by thevandals warned of a ‘‘war’’ over the plan-ned evacuation, ordered by the IsraeliSupreme Court, of a handful of housesillegally built on private Palestinian landnear the Israeli settlement of Beit El. Thetorching of the mosque was the fourthsuch attack in 18 months and part ofa wider trend of routine violence com-mitted by radical settlers against innocentPalestinians, Israeli security personnel,and mainstream settler leaders—allaimed at intimidating perceived enemiesof the settlement project.
This violence has not always plaguedthe settler community. Although manypaint all Israeli settlers as extremists,conflating them with the often-justifiedcriticism of Israeli government policy inthe West Bank, the vast majority of themoppose attacks against Palestinian civi-lians or the Israeli state. In the past,
146 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
Israeli authorities and the settler leader-ship often worked together to preventsuch assaults and keep radicalism at bay.Yet in recent years, the settler movementhas experienced a profound breakdownin discipline, with extremists nowbeyond the reach of either Israeli lawenforcement or the discipline of settlerleaders.
Nothing justifies violence by extre-mists of any variety. But to be stopped, itmust be understood. The rise in settlerradicalism stems from several key factors:the growth of the settler population overthe past generation, the diversification ofreligious and ideological strands amongit, and the sense of betrayal felt by set-tlers following Israel’s withdrawal fromthe Gaza Strip in 2005. Israel, throughthe Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and othersecurity agencies, must now assert con-trol over groups that no longer respectthe state or the traditional settler leader-ship. Yet just as radical settlers pose anincreasing threat, mainstream Israelisociety has become more apathetic thanever about the fate of the Palestinians.Negotiations between Israel and thePalestinians remain deadlocked, andeven their meaningful resumption, letalone success, seems unlikely in the nearfuture. The Israeli government thus feelslittle political or diplomatic pressure toconfront the extremists. . . .[though] . . . recently, Israeli leaders havebegun to recognize the problem. Follow-ing extremist vandalism against the IDFand mainstream settler leaders over thepast year, some Israeli generals and gov-ernment ministers began to label radicalsettlers as terrorists. . . .
The Wild West BankRadical Jewish activists have staged
politically-motivated attacks againstPalestinians and pro-peace Israelisbefore. In the early 1980s, for example,one group, known as the Jewish Under-ground, carried out a series of bombingsagainst Arab mayors and shot three Arabstudents in the West Bank. And in 1995,an Israeli law student, Yigal Amir, assassi-nated Israeli Prime Minister YitzhakRabin, dealing a devastating blow to thepeace process. Israeli authorities haveinvestigated and prosecuted thoseinvolved in these operations, and theyhave disrupted other attacks before they
could occur. Yet they have failed to stemless dramatic violence, such as arson andassault. According to UN investigations,in 2011, extremist settlers launchedalmost 300 attacks on Palestinian prop-erty, causing over 100 Palestinian casual-ties and destroying or damaging about10,000 trees of Palestinian farmers. TheUN has also reported that violent inci-dents against Palestinians have prolifer-ated, rising from 200 attacks in 2009 toover 400 in 2011. The spike in assaultson Palestinians by settlers has comedespite the fact that over the sameperiod, Palestinian terrorism felldramatically. . . .
The Israeli government does not sup-port or condone settler violence, but ithas failed to adequately combat it. Sol-diers have been known to look on asviolence occurs, and they sometimes donot aggressively seek the perpetratorsafter the fact. According to Yesh Din, anIsraeli human rights organization, of 781incidents of settler abuse monitoredsince 2005, Israeli authorities closed thecases on over 90 percent of them withoutindictment. And the Israeli newspaperHaaretz has reported that the IDF is cur-rently probing 15 cases, all of which tookplace between September 2000 andDecember 2011, of Israeli soldiers wit-nessing clashes between settlers andPalestinians and failing to intervene.
Israel’s halfhearted response to settlerviolence is partly a result of the funda-mental anomalies of military rule. UnlikeEast Jerusalem or the Golan Heights,other territories that Israel conquered inthe 1967 war, the West Bank was neverannexed by Israel, and Israel applies civillaw there only to Israeli citizens.Although the Israeli police have authorityover criminal matters among settlers, themilitary governs most aspects of publiclife, from security to constructionpermits. . . . [and unsurprisingly,] . . . theIDF also faces little pressure from theIsraeli public to protect the Palestiniansunder its rule. Although Israelis careddeeply about the peace process duringthe Oslo years, suicide bombings, thecollapse of the negotiations in 2000, andthe carnage of the second intifada thatfollowed left them reeling, indignant, andwary of Palestinian intentions. . . . Withviolence down and peace distant, Israelishave become indifferent to the situation
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 147
in the West Bank and weary of the Pales-tinian issue in general, preferring to con-tain and, if possible, ignore the problem.With the peace camp all but dead anda conservative government in power,right-wing politicians exert a great deal ofinfluence on Israeli policy, particularlyregarding the settlements. In recentyears, the extreme right wing has madeinroads even into Prime Minister Benja-min Netanyahu’s own party, the Likud,making any opposition to settlementactivity a risk for more mainstream Likudpoliticians.
When it comes to confronting extrem-ist settlers, then, the Israeli governmentis politically handicapped. Radical settlersunderstand why Israel has responded sotepidly to their actions and have soughtto exploit this reluctance. And their vio-lence has often successfully altered ordeterred government actions that theyopposed.
Settlement Over StateThe rise in violence among extremist
settlers stems from deep changes in thesettler population, particularly its dra-matic growth and shifting ideologicalcomposition. Israeli civilians began mov-ing into the West Bank and Gaza shortlyafter the 1967 war, when Israel con-quered both territories. . . . The Israeligovernment also sought to create severalsmall settlements for security reasons: toestablish ‘‘facts on the ground’’ thatmight allow Israel to keep several strate-gic points in the West Bank as part ofa peace accord and might even, someargued, help Israel defend itself againstan Arab invasion. In the early 1980s, thesettler community was still a relativelysmall, coherent, and disciplined societyof about 24,000. Some settlers were sec-ular, but others subscribed to the ideol-ogy of Gush Emunim (Bloc of theFaithful), a religious-political movementthat sought to fulfill what it viewed asa divine obligation to settle the completeEretz Yisrael (Land of Israel), the terri-tory Jews regard as having been prom-ised to them by God, which includes theWest Bank.
Although Gush Emunim stronglyopposed any government policy that cur-tailed the settlement project, it respectedthe primacy of the state. For example, inthe early 1980s, when the Israeli
government evacuated all settlements inthe Sinai as part of the peace treaty withEgypt, Gush Emunim protested but didnot call on its members to take up arms(although several of its members went onto form the Jewish Underground any-way). For religious-nationalist settlers,the state remained an instrument ofprovidence, carrying out God’s missionby upholding Jewish sovereignty andprotecting Jewish religious life in theLand of Israel. . . . The IDF and settlerleaders maintained close contact andcoordination, with the military relying onthe settler leadership to police its own. . . .
Since then, the settler movement haschanged dramatically. In the past threedecades, the number of settlers in theWest Bank has grown more than tenfold,to some 300,000. Today, most live inlarge communities that function as sub-urbs of Jerusalem or greater Tel Aviv. Theinhabitants of these settlements repre-sent all walks of Israeli society, includingsecular and ultra-Orthodox Jews who donot share the nationalist zeal of GushEmunim. Many of these Israelis moved tothe West Bank primarily for economic,rather than political, reasons: the settle-ments are subsidized by the government,so living in them is much more afford-able than living in cities inside the GreenLine. Most policymakers in Israel and theUnited States do not consider these par-ticular settlements to be insurmountableobstacles to a peace agreement with thePalestinians. . . . Many of these settlerswould likely consider accepting compen-sation if they were told to leave theirhomes in the context of a peaceagreement.
Yet over the last several years, theevolution of the settler community hasalso led to the growth of a small but sig-nificant fringe of young extremists,known as the ‘‘hilltop youth,’’ who showlittle, if any, deference to the Israeli gov-ernment or even to the settlerleadership. . . . These young radicals, wholargely live in settlements deep in theWest Bank and do not affiliate with tradi-tional religious authorities, haveembraced [vigilante violence]. These set-tlers—likely no more than a couplethousand . . . —are the ones leading the‘‘price tag’’ attacks against Palestiniancivilians and Israeli soldiers. They havelost faith in the notion that the state . . . is
148 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
key to settling the Land of Israel. Instead,they see it as an obstacle to God’s will.
Although the Israeli military has tradi-tionally worked closely with the heads ofthe settlements to maintain security, thisnew generation of radicals scoffs at suchcooperation. . . . As a result, the settlerestablishment has little control over themost problematic members of its com-munity. Indeed, extremists have targetedsome of the most central figures of thesettler movement, including Ze’ev Hever,who heads the construction arm of thesettlement enterprise. Hever, oncea member of the Jewish Underground, isthe person perhaps most responsible forthe settlement expansion that hasoccurred in collaboration with the Israeligovernment. Yet this past June, extre-mists expressed their outrage at contin-ued cooperation between the settlerleadership and state authorities by slash-ing the tires of his car.
This new generation of extremistscame out of the trauma of Israel’s 2005withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, knownby the settlers as ‘‘the expulsion.’’ In late2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,once a champion of the settler move-ment, announced that he planned to dis-mantle the Israeli settlements in Gaza.Sharon’s transformation rocked the set-tlers. Feeling abandoned, many began toquestion the authority of the state.Whereas settler leaders could once por-tray previous actions against various out-posts or individuals as tacticalmaneuvers, they understood that Shar-on’s ‘‘disengagement,’’ as it becameknown in Israel, represented a funda-mental break with their religious mission.
Even so, settler elders and their alliesupheld the sanctity of the state and optedfor largely nonviolent opposition. Theyembarked on a public relations cam-paign, portraying themselves as anoppressed minority and borrowing thecolor orange from the 2004 Ukrainianrevolution to reinforce their image asa peaceful civil movement. Even as itbecame clear that the settlers’ challengeto the disengagement would not suc-ceed, most settler leaders called on Jewsin Gaza to avoid violence against Israelisoldiers and refrained from urging sol-diers, including settlers in military ser-vice, to disobey the evacuation orders.Opposition to the withdrawal, in other
words, remained within the bounds ofIsraeli political discourse and preservedthe settler movement’s deference to thestate.
As the disengagement approached,however, a segment of more radical set-tlers began speaking out against theirleaders’ acquiescence. Some rabbis evensuggested that divine intervention wouldprevent the withdrawal at the last min-ute. But in the summer of 2005, Israeldid pull all the settlers, some 8,600 peo-ple, out of Gaza and ended its militarypresence there. The Israeli military force-fully removed families from their homes,demolished villages, and transferredentire communities—homes, synagogues,cemeteries, and schools—to Israelproper. . . . Radical settlers saw theexpulsion as a manifest failure of the oldguard’s approach. Not only was the stateof Israel no longer a vehicle of redemp-tion; it had actively rolled back the mostimportant project of contemporary Jew-ish religious nationalism: settling theLand of Israel. The settlers felt doublybetrayed by the sense that the govern-ment failed to reintegrate them properlyinto Israel, devoting inadequate resour-ces to their relocation and, in their eyes,essentially neglecting them after thewithdrawal ended.
Faced with what the radical settlerssaw as a choice between the state and thesettlements, they picked the latter. Tostave off another disengagement of anykind, they resolved to retaliate againstany attempt by the Israeli government tocrack down on the movement—hencethe birth of the ‘‘price tag’’ attacks. In thisclimate, the traditional leadership of thesettler movement and the authority ofthe Israeli government are less relevantthan ever.
Radical SuccessSettler violence is undoubtedly work-
ing. It has made it more difficult for theIDF to govern the West Bank and frac-tured the settler movement, weakeningthe influence of the more moderate ele-ments that would accept the legitimacy ofthe Israeli state even if it committed toanother withdrawal. The ‘‘price tag’’ doc-trine has thus raised the cost of eventoken settlement removals. The violencehas conditioned Israeli politicians toworry that any pullout, whether as part of
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 149
a peace agreement or as a unilateralmeasure, will lead to conflict. That putsthe government in a bind. If it ignoresthe radicals, they will undermine itsauthority and any Palestinian goodwillthat might result from a withdrawal.Confronting them, however, risks publicspectacles of armed police dragging con-servatively dressed young girls out oftheir homes, a political disaster for anyIsraeli government.
The first post-Gaza pullout, the dis-mantlement of the outpost of Amona in2006, justified such fears among Israelipoliticians. During the demolition ofnine uninhabited homes built on landdetermined to belong to Palestinians,thousands of settlers confronted Israelisecurity personnel, occupying the homesand nearby areas and attacking the offi-cers with rocks, bottles, and cinderblocks. The riot left 200 people injured,including 80 security officers and twoIsraeli members of the Knesset . . . whohad come to support the settlers.
Although the mission technically suc-ceeded, the violence surrounding itstrengthened the perception that anywithdrawal, no matter how small, risksopening up deep fissures within Israelisociety. The incident left Israeli leaderswary of future evacuations and eager toretroactively legalize the remaining out-posts in the West Bank. In fact, this pastJune, after the Israeli Supreme Courtordered the government to dismantleseveral outposts built on private Palesti-nian land, the Knesset debated a bill thatwould have circumvented the court andlegalized several houses there, a movewith profound legal ramifications. Onlythe direct intervention of Netanyahu kil-led the bill. In response, demonstratorsin Jerusalem burned public property andextremists vandalized the mixed Arab-Jewish village of Neve Shalom, in Israel,with graffiti saying ‘‘Death to Arabs.’’
Besides undermining the rule of lawand intimidating Israeli politicians, radi-cal settlers have increasingly come todefine the way that Palestinians seeIsraelis as a whole. After Israel took con-trol of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967,the two communities interacted regu-larly. Israelis shopped in the West Bank,and hundreds of thousands of Palesti-nians worked in Israel. But the secondintifada stopped Israelis from casually
entering Palestinian areas, and inresponse to Palestinian terrorism, Israelenacted policies that made it harder forPalestinians to work inside the country,culminating in the construction of thesecurity barrier. Today, essentially theonly Israelis that Palestinians interactwith are soldiers and settlers, whom theysee as representative of all Israelis. Thismeans that relations among settlers,Israeli soldiers, and Palestinian civiliansare now more important than ever. . . .
Counter TerrorWith the peace process in a stalemate,
Israel’s control of the West Bank is notlikely to end soon . . . . Just as Palestinianofficials must fight Palestinian terrorism,Israel must fight settler terrorism. Crack-ing down on radical settler violencewould not give the Palestinians the polit-ical recognition they crave, nor would itlead to peace. But it would help legiti-mize moderate Palestinian leaders andmake life better for ordinary Palestinians,both of which would keep alive the pos-sibility of a negotiated peace. Stoppingextremist violence in the West Bank maybecome even more important should thepeace talks resume in earnest. If theIsraeli government plans to withdrawfrom additional territory, settler terrorismmay increase, exacting a considerablepolitical price from the government andpotentially derailing peace.
Over the last several months, Israeliofficials have begun to take the problemof settler terrorism more seriously, atleast rhetorically. Last year, the Israeligeneral in charge of the West Bank, Nit-san Alon, described the violence by radi-cal settlers as ‘‘terrorism’’ and urged theIDF to ‘‘do much more to stop it.’’ Eventhe chair of the Yesha Council, the forumthat traditionally speaks for the settlercommunity, recently denounced the‘‘terrible and shameful phenomenon ofmasked Jews with slings and a stone intheir hands’’ and forcefully reprimandedmainstream settlers for their silence onthe matter. And following settler vandal-ism of an IDF base in the West Bank lastyear, the Israeli ministers of defense,legal affairs, and internal security dis-cussed officially designating the ‘‘hilltopyouth’’ as a terrorist organization. Thegovernment should do this, thereby facil-itating a coordinated intelligence and law
150 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES
enforcement campaign against the vio-lence. Israeli courts should no longertreat radicals as patriots who have strayedin their defense of Israel and shouldinstead give them stiff sentences to keepthem behind bars and to deter othersfrom following their example. Mean-while, mainstream rabbis shoulddenounce their radical brethren anddemonstrate how their views contradictcenturies of religious tradition. Whenextremist rabbis incite violence, theymust face prosecution.
In executing this crackdown, the gov-ernment should also attempt to workwith the traditional settler leadership.The timing may be right: having seen theviolence committed against leaders suchas Hever, settler officials realize that theradicals have seized the momentum andfear that ‘‘price tag’’ violence will tar theentire settlement project, setting backdecades of efforts to win over moreIsraelis to their cause. Traditional leaderscan ostracize the most extreme elementsamong the settler community and preachmore forcefully against violence. Andwith the help of settler leaders, the gov-ernment can gain vital intelligence on theradicals.
To avoid creating a new burst ofextremism, Israel must also prepare tohandle any future settlement withdrawalsmore smoothly. It should begin byencouraging settlers in remote areas torelocate to Israel proper regardless of thepeace process or any forced withdrawal.Several Israeli figures, including Ami Aya-lon, a former head of Israel’s domesticintelligence service, have proposeda wide-ranging program meant to enticethousands of settlers to relocate to Israelof their own volition, but the proposalhas thus far faced resistance from thesettler establishment and the govern-ment. And when actually evacuating set-tlements, as Israel will have to do as partof any peace agreement, it should devoteenough resources to properly compen-sate the settlers.
The United States also has a role toplay. Washington has long hoped thatissues related to settler violence wouldvanish after the implementation ofa peace deal. In the absence of meaning-ful negotiations, however, it must pre-vent both parties from deepeningtensions. By highlighting the problem of
settler extremism, the United States canpush Israel into responding to it moreeffectively. In addition, much like Israel,it should consider designating individualsinvolved in acts of violence against Pales-tinians as terrorists. Such a designationwould allow U.S. authorities to preventAmericans from sending them fundingand would be a way to support thoseIsraelis seeking to combat the rise ofextremism. . . .
CAN A TWO-STATE SOLUTION BESALVAGED?
‘‘THE ISRAELI SETTLERS WHO MAKE UNLIKELY
PEACE ACTIVISTS’’
This article was published in TheGuardian on 12 October 2012. It wasauthored by Khaled Diab, a Belgian-Egyptian journalist and writer who cur-rently lives in Jerusalem. The text isavailable online atwww.guardian.co.uk.
In his recent speech to the UN Gen-eral Assembly, Palestinian Authority pres-ident Mahmoud Abbas warned thatIsrael’s ongoing settlement constructionin East Jerusalem and the occupied WestBank would make the creation of a viablePalestinian state alongside Israel‘‘extremely difficult if not completelyimpossible.’’
It is not only Palestinians who seeIsraeli settlements as one of the mainobstacles to peace—the internationalcommunity does too, as do many Israelipeace activists.
Despite that, there is a small butgrowing group of religious settlerswho believe that far from being animpediment to peace, [the settlers] canactually help build it. This movement isled by the charismatic Rabbi MenachemFroman.
Rabbi Froman cuts an unlikely figureas a peace activist. He is an ideologicalsettler, yet believes in the two-state solu-tion along the pre-1967 green line. Hewas one of the founders of the messianic,religious settler movement, Gush Emu-nim (‘‘Bloc of the Faithful’’), and sup-ports continued Jewish settlement in theWest Bank, yet believes in and promotescoexistence between Palestinians andIsraelis, Jews and Arabs.
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 151
Adding to his maverick credentials,Froman was friends with the late YasserArafat and met regularly with the lateSheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leaderof Hamas. He is also close to Abbas,meets regularly with Binyamin Neta-nyahu, and negotiated, along with Pales-tinian journalist Khalid Amayreh,a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, whichwould have ended the blockade onGaza—which the Islamist group agreedto but Israel simply ignored.
This renegade rabbi so intrigued methat I visited him, along with anAmerican-Israeli filmmaker making a doc-umentary about this enigmatic figure, inhis modest home in Tekoa, an Israeli set-tlement near Bethlehem.
So, how does Rabbi Froman proposeto square the circle between his supportfor Jewish settlements and Palestinianstatehood? Religious Muslims and Jewsbelieve, he says, ‘‘that this land isholy . . . that this land belongs to God.This can be a very strong basis forpeace.’’
In his view, since it is the land itselfthat is holy and not the political structuregoverning it, settlers should be given thechoice to become part of a Palestinianstate or move to Israel. Froman alsobelieves that the presence of an Arabminority in Israel and a Jewish minorityin Palestine would have the additionalbenefit of promoting tolerance andunderstanding between the two neigh-bouring countries.
The Palestinian Authority has, ona number of occasions, floated thepossibility that Israeli settlers can begiven the option to live under Palestiniansovereignty. However, this option elicitsfears. Palestinians worry that the settlerswould remain Israeli citizens and holdon to their privileged status, as well aspossibly providing Israel with a pretext tocarry out military incursions, eveninvasions.
I asked Froman whether, in his vision,the settlers would become Palestiniancitizens and live according to Palestinianlaw, and whether the settlements wouldbecome mixed neighbourhoods for all.‘‘Yes, yes, yes,’’ he responded emphati-cally. ‘‘The keyword here is to be open,to be free.’’
Froman’s vision chimes with that ofsome pro-Palestinian Israeli leftists.
However, ideological settlers, who gen-erally see the land and Israel’s controlover it as vital, do not share Froman’svision. ‘‘I reject the two-state solution,’’David Wilder, the spokesperson for theradical settlers in Hebron, told me somemonths ago. ‘‘I want to live in Israel. Icame to live in Israel, under Jewish lead-ership. I didn’t come to live under therule of anybody else, certainly not anArab.’’
Economic settlers are also unlikely towant to become Palestinian citizens,though they could more easily be per-suaded to move under the right condi-tions. ‘‘The question is not thePalestinian attitude,’’ Froman freelyacknowledges. ‘‘The question is theIsraelis: if Israel and Israeli settlers areready to be part of the Palestinian state.’’
But he believes that, once they over-come their fear and distrust, people canbe persuaded. ‘‘It’s all a matter of confi-dence,’’ the rabbi insists.
Froman is also a strong believer in thepower of religion to resolve the conflict.This, you could say, was something ofa revelation to me, as I have long viewedreligion as a major stumbling block onthe path to peace—it is what I call the‘‘God veto.’’
But Froman believes that one majorfactor behind the failure of the peaceprocess is that it ignored or did not payenough attention to the religious dimen-sion. ‘‘[Sheikh] Ahmed Yassin used to sayto me: ’I and you, Hakham [Rabbi] Fro-man, can make peace in five minutes,because both of us are religious’.’’
The very idea that an Orthodox rabbiand an Islamist sheikh would engage indialogue, let alone believe that they canresolve a conflict that has defied everyoneelse for decades, is likely to confoundboth Palestinians and Israelis alike.
‘‘Religion is like nuclear energy: youcan use it to destroy or to kill. You canalso use it for peaceful purposes,’’ therabbi observes. ‘‘The Dome of the Rockor the Temple Mount can be a reason toquarrel or a reason to make peace.’’
Despite his fine words, I left themeeting skeptical that Froman’s visionwould, especially in the current climate,attract many takers. However, ourencounter did drive home some impor-tant lessons: the situation is never blackand white, peacemakers can be found in
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the most unlikely places, and that wemust understand the obstacles to peace ifwe ever hope to remove them.
IT’S ALL REVERSIBLE (EXCERPTS)
This article by Peace Now SecretaryGeneral Yariv Oppenheimer was origi-nally published by the Hebrew LanguageEdition of Yedi’ot Ahronot on 5 Septem-ber 2012 and was translated by IsraelNews Today. It was republished byAmericans for Peace Now. The full arti-cle can be found online atwww.peacenow.org.
In the past months, a surreal anddangerous ideological alliance has beenemerging between some of the settlerrepresentatives and prominent figures inthe left wing, based on despair and lackof faith in the vision of two states for twopeoples. The sense of helplessnessagainst the Elkin-Danon-Regev1 govern-ment, along with reports about theacceleration of construction in the terri-tories, have succeeded in causing manypeople to despair, to raise a white flagand to announce the victory of thesettlers. Instead of raising their head highand fighting for the only solution thatwill enable Israel to remain a Jewish anddemocratic state, many prefer to admitdefeat and failure, and eulogize thechance of separation from the Palesti-nians into two states.
One person who succeeded in identi-fying the trend and riding it is SettlersCouncil Chairman Danny Dayan, who inrecent months has searched for everypossible platform and means to declarevictory and state that the settlementshave become an irreversible fact, andthat the wheel can never be turnedback. . . .
There is no lack of left wingers whoare willing to jump on the bandwagon ofdespair being led by Dayan. It is under-standable that pessimism has succeededin taking over the minds of so manypeople. Indeed, the news from the terri-tories is disheartening, and construction
in the past year has significantly acceler-ated, in the isolated settlements too. Butit is a long way from this to a strategicchange in reality.
The number of settlers living in theisolated settlements, which Israel willhave to remove in a final status arrange-ment, has increased—but notdramatically. Most of the increase in thesettler population is in the Haredi settle-ments, Modiin Illit, and Beitar Illit, whichare located near the Green Line and thechance of leaving them within Israeli ter-ritory after an agreement is almostcertain.
In the isolated settlements most of theconstruction consists of privatehomes. . . . The number of settlers thatIsrael stands to evict as part of anarrangement continues to be about100,000, about 1.5 percent of Israel’spopulation. This is not a negligible num-ber, but it is not substantially differentfrom the number that was discussed inthe negotiations between Olmert andAbu Mazen or between Barak and Arafat.
The situation on the ground is chang-ing, the reality is becoming more com-plex, the price of an arrangement iscontinuing to rise, but it is too soon toeulogize it. The State of Israel, whichsucceeded in absorbing a million immi-grants within a decade; which succeededin removing within six hours the largestoutpost in the territories2; will succeed, ifit so wishes, in evicting one-and-a-halfpercent of its population in order tobring to an historic end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The questions of the cost of the evic-tion and the number of settlers that Israelwill be forced to remove are an impor-tant but not exclusive component of thequestion of the feasibility of anagreement. The Israeli public’s motiva-tion to end the conflict and reach anagreement is more important than anynumber of settlers that Israel will have toevict. As the sense of urgency to reach anarrangement increases in Israel, as theprice of failing to attain it and continuingthe occupation rises—the question ofremoving the settlements will be dimin-ished in the eyes of the public, and will
1. Likudist members of the Israeli Knesset,Ze’ev Elkin and Danny Danon and PM Neta-nyahu’s international spokesperson MarkRegev.
2. In reference to Migron outpost. See follow-ing article for more details.
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 153
become irrelevant in comparison withthe other interests.
If the period of relative calm in whichwe live is not translated into action, thepath to changing people’s attitudes mayonly arrive after another violent andpainful round with the Palestinians—onethat is inevitable, whether we like it ornot. Capitulation and surrender to thesettlers does not just mean giving up onthe removal of settlements, it meansgiving up on the idea of Israel beinga Jewish and democratic state that lives inpeace with its neighbors.
‘‘TOP 10 REASONS WHY THE MIGRON
EVACUATION IS A VICTORY FOR PEACE’’(EXCERPTS)
This piece was published by Amer-icans for Peace Now (APN) on 5 Septem-ber 2012. It was co-authored by APN’sLara Friedman and Peace Now’s HagitOfran. Migron is the largest and oldestunauthorized settlement outpost builton private Palestinian land in the occu-pied West Bank. In August 2011, theIsraeli Supreme Court ordered that theoutpost be dismantled by 31 March 2012(see Settlement Monitor in JPS 164),although some settlers have movedahead of the deadline. The full text ofthis article can be found online atwww.peacenow.org.
The recent evacuation of the illegaloutpost known as Migron, followingnumerous decisions of the IsraeliSupreme Court, is a clear victory fordemocracy and rule of law in Israel, not-withstanding the fact that it marks nei-ther the end of settlement activity nor thebeginning of the implementation of thetwo-state solution. After years of legalbattles, Peace Now succeeded inhaving the Court compel the Israeli gov-ernment to respect and enforce its ownlaws, despite strong political pressure notto.
Some argue that the Migron victory isnonetheless pyrrhic, given the currentIsraeli government’s de facto policy ofcompensating the settlers for any evictionwith even more settlementconstruction. The reality is both morecomplicated and more promising. Thereare many lessons to be learned from theMigron case, including some negative
implications alongside the positiveones. We believe that the bottom line isthat due to Peace Now’s indefatigableefforts to stop the settlements, theground today is shifting in significantways against the settlers. The followingTop 10 List does not purport to providea full analysis of the Migron case, butoffers some food for thought regardingthe achievements and the successes ofthe story of Migron, and its implicationsfor the future.
1. Migron demonstrates that theforces of peace and security forIsrael can stand up to thesettlers—and win.The evacuation of Migron is the first
major battle that the settlers have lostsince 2005. It is the first time in almosta decade that the settlers failed to createimmutable facts on the ground and, indoing so, hijack Israeli policy and set theIsraeli public agenda. The settlers hadplanned to turn Migron into a major set-tlement with permanent homes andhundreds of families. They dreamed of itbecoming a settlement like Ofra orShilo—one that is in an area that underno possible peace agreement could fallunder Israeli sovereignty. . . . Migron alsobrought into Israeli public discourse thefact that the rights of individual Palesti-nians as guaranteed by Israel—Palesti-nians with faces and names—are beingsystematically abused by settlers. . . .
2. The Migron evacuationestablishes that settlers aren’tabove the lawMigron was an open-and-shut case of
land theft under Israeli law. Peace Now’ssuccessful struggle against Migron provedthat, ultimately, settlers aren’t above thislaw. . . .
3. The Migron evacuationdemonstrates the power of legalaction against the settlements.Migron is a victory for peace, for
Israel, and for Peace Now’s strategy oftaking cases against the settlers intoIsraeli courts. The limitations of legalaction were known in advance. Theoccupation won’t be ended by the Court,and neither will the Court rule on what itconsiders the ‘‘political’’ question of thefate of all the settlements. Nonetheless,
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the Migron evacuation demonstrates thatdetermined legal action can yield impor-tant accomplishments in the struggleagainst the settlements. Indeed it is notonly a legal success but also a politicalone: the case brought an unprecedentedlevel of public attention to the issue ofsettler arrogance and lawlessness. . . .
4. The Migron case confirmsthat acting against settlementsis only a question of politicalwill.The Migron evacuation, which was
carried out without difficulty by Israelisecurity authorities, underscores the factthat removing settlements is exclusivelya question of political will. In the best-case scenario, a decision to do so wouldbe rooted in the political vision of a gov-ernment that understands what is neces-sary for peace and security. In anotheroptimistic scenario, such a decisionwould be rooted in the determination ofa government to respect and preserve thenorms of a civilized, democratic state anduphold the rule of law. In the currentscenario, the decision was rooted ina government that was forced by its owncourts to obey the rule of law. On thenegative side, this reality underscores thecurrent government’s lack of politicalvision and lack of commitment to therule of law. On the positive side, itunderscores the strength and indepen-dence of Israel’s own legal system andthe fact that, when deprived of any otheroption, even the most right-wing govern-ment in Israel’s history will obey itsrulings.
5. Migron proves that removingsettlements won’t bring downthe government or causea civil war.The evacuation of Migron demon-
strates emphatically that it is indeed pos-sible to remove even very ‘‘mainstream’’settlers who enjoy massive political back-ing in the Knesset and inside thegovernment. The evacuation of Migrondemonstrates unequivocally that anyIsraeli government can evacuate a settle-ment, including the most far right-winggovernment in Israel’s history. It proves,too, that predictions that a governmentwill fall or a civil war will break out oversettlement evacuations are over-wrought,
and that threats of bringing down a gov-ernment over such a decision are hollow(just as were the threats that adoptinga settlement moratorium would bringdown the government). In doing so,Migron also proves that other settlementscan be removed.
6. Migron demonstrates thatevacuating settlements need notinvolve violence.The Migron evacuation involved no
violent confrontations between settlersand soldiers. This, despite the impressioncreated by settler leaders that violence isinevitable if the government threatenstheir interests, and despite the ongoing‘‘price tag’’ campaign of terrorist violenceand intimidation—a campaign that isexplicitly aimed at convincing Israelis andthe IDF that taking on the settlers willincur too high a cost to bear. The factthat the evacuation of Migron was peace-ful demonstrates that settler violence isby no means inevitable and uncontrolla-ble; rather, settler violence is a weaponthat settler leaders deliberately choosehow and when to unleash, and for whichthey must be held accountable.
7. Migron highlights how little theaverage Israeli cares aboutdefending settlements.Back in 2005, settlers tried to mobilize
the Israeli public to stop Ariel Sharon’sGaza disengagement. The Israeli publicwasn’t interested; the thousands thatprotested in the streets were only thesettlers themselves, without the supportof the Israeli mainstream. In 2006, set-tlers tried to rally the Israeli public toblock the evacuation of another illegaloutpost (Amona). The Israeli publicyawned. In 2009, settlers tried to ener-gize the non-settler Israeli population tooppose any settlement freeze. Israel’snon-settler population didn’t bite. Now,the settlers have done everything theycan to convince the public that Israel’sfate is tied to the fate of Migron. TheIsraeli public once again didn’t buy thehype. The Migron drama never capturedthe Israeli public’s imagination or sympa-thy—there were no mass rallies in soli-darity with the settlers or other signs thatthe mainstream Israeli public is investedin the fate of Migron or the settlers’agenda. This demonstrates how little the
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 155
average Israeli is invested in the defend-ing settlements and underscores howmuch room to maneuver any Israeli gov-ernment actually will have if and whenthere is a decision to negotiate seriouslyabout settlements in a peace agreement.
8. The Migron evacuationsymbolizes the end of the outpostera and the private-land-theft era.Migron was the flagship of the illegal
outpost enterprise—an enterprise begunin the 1990s and predicated on the beliefthat by creating facts on the ground set-tlers could circumvent official Israeli pol-icy and subvert Israeli law. Theevacuation of Migron—something mostbelieved would never happen—marksthe end of the outpost era. Althoughmost of the outposts that were estab-lished are not likely to be removed in thenear future, and some have even beenretroactively approved by the govern-ment, the legal and political strugglestopped the outposts machine. . . .Regrettably, Israeli law permits settle-ment construction on more than 50% ofthe West Bank— on land that has beendesignated State Land. On top of that, foryears settlers grabbed additional lands,lands recognized by the government ofIsrael as privately owned byPalestinians. Until the campaign againstthe outposts, they did so withimpunity. However, since 2005, when thelegal struggle against the outposts began,construction on land recognized by theIsraeli authorities as privately owned hasalmost completely stopped.
9. Migron means the era of officialgovernment duplicity onsettlements is over.Absent Peace Now’s efforts, the Neta-
nyahu government would, like previousgovernments, have the luxury of blithelyclaiming they aren’t building new settle-ments, while they tacitly and activelyallow settlers to do the dirty work ofundermining the two-state solution. Asa result of Peace Now’s work against out-posts, the Netanyahu government mustinstead operate under the bright light ofpublic scrutiny—scrutiny that forces it, ata minimum, to take responsibility for itsreckless, anti-peace, pro-settlementpolicies.
10. The Migron evacuation standsas a warning—and a precedent.The Migron case stands as a warning
to settlers and the government that theCourts will not permit the legal launder-ing of all criminal acts by settlers. Indoing so, it sets an important legal pre-cedent in the fight against illegal settlerconstruction, actual and potential—a pre-cedent the settlers and the governmentfought desperately to avoid. More casesare in the legal pipeline and more will belaunched, related to outposts, privateland, and other issues. Peace Now hasdemonstrated that it will not be intimi-dated by threats and it will not give up inthe face of Israeli government foot-dragging or game playing, but will con-tinue the struggle against settlements,including in the courts, until there ispeace.
SETTLEMENT DATA
‘‘SETTLEMENT BUDGETS ON THE RISE’’
From Settlement Report, September–October 2012.
During the Oslo era, successive Israeligovernments have invested almost $7billion to encourage and expand settle-ment in the West Bank and, until 2005, inthe Gaza Strip. After the signing of theOslo accords in 1993, the government ofYitzhak Rabin inaugurated huge infra-structure projects favoring settlement inthe West Bank, most notably the newsystem of bypass roads linking settle-ments to Israel. In 1993, governmentalinvestment in the territories peaked atmore than $627 million, $605 million ofwhich was earmarked for construction,housing, and development. From 1994 to1997, investment averaged $376 millionannually, while in 2003, it reached about$527 million. According to data compiledby Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics,from 1992 to 2011 the Israeli governmentinvested more than $6.77 billion (in 2011dollars) in the territories. (Official figuresreported by the various governmentagencies are not always internallyconsistent.)
The completion of large-scale infra-structure projects, a national slowdownin construction, and the effects of theintifada that erupted in 2002 combined
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to reduce government investment, insome years dramatically. From 2003onward, governmental investment in theterritories declined in real terms. In2009, for example, $202 million (805million shekels) was invested by govern-ment agencies, even as the settler popu-lation continued to grow at around 5percent annually.
Beginning in 2009, following theestablishment of the second Netanyahugovernment, governmental investment inthe territories increased. In 2010, thegovernment allocated about $212 millionfor the territories, and in 2011, a time ofincreasing budget austerity, governmen-tal investment skyrocketed by almost 38percent, to nearly $276 million. Evenwith this large increase, the 2011 figurewas still below the years of peak expen-diture in the 1990s.
From 2003 through 2011, Israeli gov-ernments invested more than $2.5 billionin the settlements. All expenditures,excluding defense and security costs, areincluded in this figure and cover servicesto which all citizens are entitled, includ-ing transfers from the central governmentin support of the settlements’ localauthorities, investment in infrastructureand public facilities, and tax benefits,grants, and subsidies, including mortgage
subsidies that represent losses in staterevenue. Together these allocations canbe said to illustrate the state’s extraordi-nary investment in the settlemententerprise.
The Calcalist reported on August 2that the share of overall governmentinvestment in settlements allocated forthe Ministry of Construction and Housinghas been reduced over the years. Thereductions, however, have been offset byincreases in other settlement-relatedspheres. Until 2008, the three govern-mental bodies that accounted for 70 to80 percent of governmental investmentin the territories were the InteriorMinistry (grants to local settlementauthorities), the Ministry of Constructionand Housing, and the National RoadsCompany of Israel. These threeagencies invested $426.5 million in2003 alone.
The investment budget of the Ministryof Construction and Housing reacheda low of some $14.5 million in 2011,accounting for a mere 8 percent of theministry’s national investments. Theinvestment of the National Roads Com-pany, in contrast, has averaged $58.5million annually, totaling 20 percent ofthe company’s total road maintenancebudget. Meanwhile, the education
SETTLEMENT MONITOR 157
budgets allocated to settlements haveconsistently grown, including by a whop-ping 272 percent between 2003 and2011, a graphic example of the govern-ment’s extraordinary support for thechanging composition of settler needs inan era of continuing growth.
‘‘SETTLEMENTS EAST OF THE BARRIER
INCREASING FASTER THAN SETTLEMENTS
WEST OF THE BARRIER’’
From Settlement Report, September–October 2012.
Fastest Growing West Bank Settlements, in Relation to Separation Barrier
