Israel's Great Land Rush

By William E. Smith

Defying the U.S., Begin speeds up settlement of the West Bank

And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

So said the Lord to Abraham, as recorded in Genesis 17: 8, and the descendants of Abraham remembered. In 1948 the Jews of Palestine seized control of part of the ancient land of their forefathers and established the state of Israel. In 1967, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel occupied those portions of the ancient regions of Judea and Samaria that lie in the West Bank of the Jordan River, territory that had been ruled by Jordan. Though the future status of the occupied area remained unresolved, the Israelis proceeded in the next 15 years to build 103 relatively modest Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Now, in direct defiance of the U.S., Israel has embarked on an extraordinary crash program to colonize the contested West Bank as quickly as possible.

By the middle of this year, 6,000 new housing units will be completed, and 35,000 Israelis are expected to move to the West Bank, more than doubling the territory's current Jewish population and bringing the total to more than 60,000. Israeli officials predict the number will reach 100,000 by 1987, if not sooner, and by the year 2010, they say, the West Bank will contain 1.4 million Jews and 1.6 million Arabs. Says Ze'ev Ben-Yosef, spokesman for the World Zionist Organization's settlement division: "People are moving in every week, by the hundreds."

Behind those remarkable forecasts are harsh political realities that may affect Israel, its Arab neighbors and its U.S. ally for generations to come. The accelerated building program runs directly counter to the Reagan Administration's efforts to launch talks aiming toward a broad Middle East peace settlement. Last September, President Reagan offered a peace plan under which the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would become associated with Jordan. He called on Israel to halt its expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, hoping that such a step would bring Jordan to the bargaining table. Prime Minister Menachem Begin angrily rejected the Reagan plan, saying that the West Bank, which he refers to by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria, belongs to the Jewish people forever.

Last week Reagan told Israeli President Yitzhak Navon that Israel's West Bank settlements are "not helpful" to the peace process. In private, U.S. diplomats are more direct. Says a senior Administration official: "The President has a choice. He can tell the Israelis that they must stop the settlements or it will cost them dearly. Or he can watch his peace initiative get buried by Israeli bulldozers."

The West Bank is clearly at the center of Israeli strategic thinking. Some of Israel's critics are convinced that the Begin government's primary motive in attacking Lebanon last summer was to crush Palestinian hopes for establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, in what these critics believe is an effort to gain time, the Begin government is showing reluctance to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, a withdrawal the U.S. had once thought would be completed by Christmas. After their fourth meeting in less than a fortnight, Lebanese and Israeli representatives said last week that they had made little progress in their peace talks. They could not even agree on an agenda. The main stumbling block: an Israeli demand that Lebanon "normalize" its economic and diplomatic relations with Israel before Israeli troops are pulled out, a condition the government of President Amin Gemayel cannot accept without angering fellow Arab states whose support he needs. Meanwhile, Lebanon remains in turmoil, its government barely strong enough to carry out the formalities of power. Fierce fighting between Lebanese Muslim factions in the northern city of Tripoli took at least 100 lives last week.

The Israelis make no secret of their plans for the West Bank. To achieve the immediate goal of 100,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Israeli planners say they will spend $610 million over the next year or two. Says Michael Dekel, Deputy Minister of Agriculture in charge of settlements: "If we reach the 100,000 mark, even if the opposition comes to power, it will no longer be able to transfer parts of the land of Israel to Arab rule and thus endanger our existence as a state and nation." In other words, no autonomy for the West Bank as envisioned by Anwar Sadat and Jimmy Carter at Camp David, and no relationship with Jordan as advocated by President Reagan. Instead, the West Bank would face an ambiguous future as a sort of Israeli colony.

A modest settlement policy began under the Labor government after the 1967 war. The first outposts were small, often containing no more than 40 families. These Jewish settlers, many of them religious zealots, were motivated by a desire either to live in the land of their biblical ancestors or to reinforce Israeli security. Often armed, they served as a kind of early-warning system for the Israeli military.

But fewer and fewer Israelis showed a desire to exist in uneasy isolation on rocky hilltops, so Israeli settlement agencies decided a little over a year ago to attract "Levittowners," middle-class Israelis who could be lured by promises of cheap housing. The new developments each contain a minimum of 400 families. Says Deputy Minister Dekel: "What will prevent the removal of Jewish settlements, or their transfer to Jordanian rule, is not the number of settlements but the number of residents." Dekel recalls that when Israel withdrew from the Sinai last year, it had to uproot and generously compensate 6,400 Israelis living in the Yamit district. Already, he notes, there are 25,000 Jews in the West Bank. "This is much better; it would be hard to evacuate them. But that is not enough: we must reach 100,000." Thus the Begin government is doing its utmost to make it impossible for any future government of Israel to withdraw from the West Bank without creating economic chaos and political turmoil.

Some of the buyers are speculators but the majority are middle-class Israelis who cannot afford housing in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Because the Israeli government is backing the program all the way, providing low-cost land to developers and low-interest mortgages and loans to buyers, the cost of the new houses and apartments is extremely low. Buyers at the West Bank development of Nofim are paying $90,000 for villas that could cost $250,000 in Israeli cities, but many of the houses and apartments being built are even cheaper than that. Mazal and Moshe Levi, who had been living with relatives, discovered that they could buy a three-bedroom apartment in a settlement near Jerusalem for a down payment of only $8,000.

Most of the ground being set aside for the new settlements was public land, known as Sultan's property in the days of the Ottoman Empire. After 1967 the Israeli government simply declared itself the heir of the Turkish Sultan and proclaimed itself the owner of all such land. Inevitably, as the Israeli population grows, Israel will extend to the new settlements and the new settlers the full protection of Israeli law. As a result, the West Bank need never be formally annexed by Israel. Indeed, as Begin has put it, "you don't annex your own homeland."

A sense of urgency characterizes the whole operation. Dekel approached a small building contractor last year, telling him, "I have something to offer you, something that can make you a big builder." Later, in the West Bank town of Qalqilya, Dekel showed the contractor a barren hill a mile north of town. He explained that the government controlled 62 1/2 acres there, and would let the contractor have them for $14,000 per acre, about one-twentieth of what the land would cost in the nearby Israeli towns of Kefar Sava and Ra'ananna. He added, "If you will build 250 villas there, we will help you finance the project, and we will develop the area for you." The landscape is stunning, the air clean, and the site is close to every urban center in Israel. The state will build roads, schools and gardens and bring in electricity and water. The contractor hastily accepted.

A newspaper advertisement for one new settlement promises, "A new road will be built that will enable you to reach Tel Aviv without the need to cross any Arab towns and villages." Critics argue that this is central to the whole concept: the creation of Jewish communities that have nothing in common and little to share with the Arab society around them. The schools and shops will be Israeli, the language Hebrew, and culture and entertainment will be available in the Israeli cities only 15 or 20 minutes away by car.

The result of the whole program is that the West Bank is changing as quickly as a stage set. Scarcely a month ago, there was nothing but rocks, a few tractors and some foundations at a place called Tzavta, near Qalqilya. When TIME Correspondent David Halevy visited Tzavta again last week, he found a newly built 3 1/2 -mile road, ten cottages nearing completion and another 70 on the way. A makeshift factory was turning out building blocks and iron rods, and four large cranes were busy day and night moving prefabricated materials to the building sites. Here, as elsewhere in the West Bank, the labor force was local Palestinians, while the inspectors and chief technicians were Israelis.

The West Bank's Arab residents find the Israeli building boom bewildering. New subdivisions are appearing beside ancient Arab villages; biblical landscapes are being obscured by real estate billboards. Among West Bank political leaders, the Israeli settlement program has created an anxiety that stops just short of panic. Says Bethlehem's moderate mayor, Elias Freij: "We are fighting against time. The Israelis want to grab as much land as they can. They want to make it impossible for us to have autonomy, not to mention a state. We are at five minutes to midnight, and this is our last chance."

Both of Israel's main political parties, Navon told Reagan last week, believe that Israelis should be allowed to settle in the West Bank. Still, Labor has long favored territorial compromise over the West Bank and opposed annexation of the occupied territories, largely because it does not want to absorb 1.3 million Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into the Israeli population. Last month Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres suggested that Jewish settlements could remain on the West Bank even if they were under "non-Israeli sovereignty." Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and an expert on the West Bank, says that once the Jewish population of the territory reaches 100,000, "this group will be represented by five members of the Knesset [out of 120], and there will be no political party in Israel capable of putting in its platform a plan to evacuate 100,000 people from the West Bank."

The rapid construction has provoked unease among some members of the religious community that has supported Begin in the past. About 800 young religious Israelis recently formed "a new movement for peace" and said they were willing to consider plans involving territorial concessions "if Israel's security could be assured." Declares Deputy Foreign Minister Yehuda Ben-Meir, a member of the National Religious Party: "We are absolutely against annexation. To annex the land and absorb the people, and then turn them into second-class citizens, would be anti-Jewish."

The U.S. has few ways to thwart the Israelis. The form of pressure most frequently advocated is the "aid weapon," in this case perhaps involving a reduction in U.S. aid in direct proportion to the sums Israel spends on new settlements. But many members of Congress remain susceptible to pressure from Israel, regardless of the cost to U.S. interests and prestige. The 97th Congress went so far as to give Israel more aid in 1983 than the President had asked for. Although Reagan has been reluctant to use economic pressure, tempers are growing short. With even the Lebanese-Israeli troop-withdrawal talks bogged down, to say nothing of the Camp David peace process, U.S. strategists are believed to be considering a brusque message to Begin: the U.S. would not welcome a visit from him, scheduled for February, if there is still "no agenda and no progress" in the troop-withdrawal talks by then.

Assuming Begin makes the trip, Administration officials do not want to devote the Reagan-Begin meeting to the Lebanese withdrawal problems. Instead, they want to focus on the larger and more complicated matter of the West Bank. The U.S. is mindful of last month's visit by King Hussein of Jordan, who told Reagan that Arab participation in future negotiations over the West Bank would hinge on U.S. determination to follow through on the Reagan peace plan, and particularly on the President's call for an Israeli freeze on West Bank settlements. Whether Begin, who has had his way on past visits to Washington, can be persuaded to address the Administration's concerns is doubtful. If the U.S. wants to influence the future of the West Bank before it is too late, it will have to show greater resolve than it has demonstrated in its relations with Begin over the past five years, and quickly.

--By William E. Smith. Reported by Harry Kelly and Robert Slater/Jerusalem

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