The Settlement Watch team of Peace Now, the largest extra-parliamentary movement in Israel, the country's oldest peace movement, and the only peace group with a mass base, has released a new report, The Death of the Settlement Freeze - 4 Months Since Annapolis (pdf), covering the period from August 2007 to February 2008. Excluding East Jerusalem, construction occurred in 101 West Bank settlements, primarily west of the security/separation barrier; not a single project was frozen.
[C]onstruction continued in all of the construction sites that already existed. Construction of at least 220 buildings continued in 37 settlements (in each building several housing units), 94% of that construction was in settlements west of the separation barrier.
[A]a larger number of new buildings began to be constructed over the
last few months in 53 different settlements. Construction began on approx. 275 new buildings (in each of them several housing units), only 81% of these in settlements west of the separation barrier. In addition, land has been prepared for the construction of at least another 7 buildings.
In some settlements, primarily east barrier, at least 184 new mobile homes, which Israelis call "caravans," have been installed, often without a construction permits or approved planning.
Data concerning settlement activity in the West Bank come from a comparison of aerial photographs for the current period with those for prior periods and on the field survey carried out by the Peace Now Settlement Watch team.
Construction also has continued in East Jerusalem, along with tenders for new construction. Construction in East Jerusalem makes it much harder to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a two states for two peoples solution because such a solution necessarily will include a compromise in Jerusalem based on a separation between Palestinian and Israeli neighborhoods.
Finally, construction has continued in outposts that, as part of the so-called Road Map, the Government of Israel promised to evacuate. During the Annapolis Summit, Prime Minister Olmert again promised to evacuate them.
Prime Minister Olmert's failure to freeze settlement construction, contrasts sharply with the decisive action by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he led the negotiations with the Palestinians.
[Rabin] froze the settlements and even stopped projects in the middle. This meant allocating money to compensate contractors who had already begun construction on the basis of previous approvals and agreements – but Israel’s interest to promote the Permanent Arrangement and the chances of a lasting peace took precedence over business commitments – the contractors were compensated and the buildings stood unfinished for many years. The Olmert-style freeze did not include projects which had already been started, a fact that easily led to the further erosion of the freeze.
Ha'aretz reports that Olmert denies "reports of dramatic construction projects in the [Palestinian] territories."
Olmert also said Israel would continue to build in East Jerusalem and in heavily Jewish areas of the West Bank that Israel wants to keep in a final peace agreement. "This is going on within the framework of negotiations, and the negotiations will continue to progress," he said.
Translated into plain English, Olmert contends that new construction doesn't count against the freeze when its done in the settlement blocs that are expected to be annexed to Israel as part of a peace settlement (with territorial compensation to Palestine from land now within sovereign Israel). Apart from anything else, however, this argument conveniently overlooks Israel's failure to evacuate outposts and settlements in areas of the West Bank that are expected to become part of the state of Palestine. Also, as the Peace Now report explains, Israel's behavior is
A slap in the fact to the political process – one of the worst mistakes ever made by the State of Israel since the beginning of the political process was to allow and encourage construction to continue in the settlements. The Israeli public, as well as its leadership, did not understand how harsh and lethal construction in the settlements was to any chance of a Permanent Arrangement. The Palestinian opposition, which opposed the Oslo process and talks with Israel, claimed all the time that instead of bringing about the withdrawal of Israel from the Territories, an end to the conflict and a Permanent Arrangement, the Oslo Accords doubled the number of settlers within a period of 10 years, and let to a worsening of conditions in the occupation of the Palestinians. The frustration felt by the Palestinians in view of continued construction in the settlements despite talks on the agreement is one of the main reasons for the eruption of violence in September 2000 after Israeli leaders announced the failure of the talks at Camp David.
Any construction in the settlements, including the settlement blocs and East Jerusalem, simply reinforce the opinion of Palestinian extremists who see this as "proof" that Israel does not truly want peace, that there is no use to talk with Israel, but instead, one has to fight Israel with force.
As long as there is no Israeli-Palestinian agreement within the framework of a Permanent Agreement regarding the border between the two sides, any construction in the occupied territories, even in the "settlement blocs" and East Jerusalem, will not be legitimate, will not be recognized by the world and will be a source of continued conflict.
Meanwhile, Yediot Ahronot reports that the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, "strongly rejected Peace Now's report as containing 'lies, false reports and half-truths.'" At the same time, both Ha'aretz and Yediot report the Yesha Council's promise (threat?) to defy any government effort to impose a freeze:
"Whoever thinks that an administrative step can smother the settlement enterprise and prevent it from flourishing is mistaken," said a Yesha council statement. "Either the government will approve construction in the settlements, or the natural development of the settlements will continue to grow, even without government permits."
To a considerable extent, Prime Minister Olmert finds himself caught between (evidently) weak pressure from the United States and his own recognition of Israel's need for a peace settlement, on the one hand, and coalition politics, on the other hand. To maintain a solid majority in the Knesset (parliament), the current governing coalition depends on the votes of Shas, an ultra-Orthodox, Sephardi party. Theoretically, a Knesset majority could be maintained by replacing Shas with Meretz-Yahad. Unfortunately, however, that party's newly-elected leader, Chaim Oron, has indicated his intention to keep Meretz out of the government.
American policy can play a vital role in influencing the Israeli government to act in ways more conducive to promoting peace with the Palestinians. It is common currency among all three leading candidates -- Obama, Clinton, and McCain, as well as most Americans, that, as Senator Obama recently put it, "Israel's security is sacrosanct, is non negotiable." But that should be only the start, not the beginning and end of our policy. As Obama also recognizes, and was audacious enough to say to a Jewish audience in Cleveland during the run up to the Ohio primary,
I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress. And frankly some of the commentary that I've seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn't talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we're going to have problems moving forward. And that I think is something we have to have an honest dialogue about.
In that spirit, I hope that supporters of Senator Obama, among whom I count myself, will encourage him to make a priority of working for a "two states for two peoples" peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, and that supporters of Senator Clinton will encourage her, in the spirit of President Bill Clinton's important efforts to achieve such a peace, to be as forthright as Obama has been.
Finally, I am not ignoring the problems caused by various Palestinian actions and failures to act. But so long as it is fair, not every diary needs to focus on both sides. Accordingly, unless anti-Israel Kossacks choose to use the comments to try to delegitimize Israel, I urge friends of Israel, among whom I count myself, not to attempt to balance a discussion of the Israeli government's defects with comments pointing out problems on the Palestinian side.