Instead of confronting the settlers who live on the West Bank or encouraging their return to Israel, their Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, made a deal with them.  He persuaded representatives of the settlers to cooperate with the dismantling of 12 hilltop encampments while bestowing "legitimacy" on 30 of the others built in recent months.  The understanding of his plan is that most of the settlements, along with their infrastructure and military protection, will be kept by Israel and only a few isolated settlements would be evacuated.

At the first meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams on November 8, Yasser Abed Rabbo, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, demanded an end to the construction and expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  Saying that such activity predetermined the outcome of the talks, he called continued settlement building "the main obstacle to progress in our negotiations."

The Clinton Administration was critical of settlement building by the previous Israel government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet, despite the fact that the Barak government has authorized new construction at a pace exceeding that of Netanyahu, little is heard but encouraging words from the President nowadays.  Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, was critical in an editorial on September 27.  "It is quite clear that this kind of building momentum in the settlements contradicts international commitments that the Government of Israel assumed." The United States, sole sponsor of the peace process, has an obligation to help Mr. Barak live up to those international commitments.

"LAND FOR PEACE":  The "land for peace" formula is at the beginning of the document signed on  the White House lawn in Fall 1993. The aim of the negotiations, which began in secret in Olso, is a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Adopted in the aftermath of the June 1967 war, U.N.S.C. Res. 242 calls for Israel's withdrawal from territory it conquered during the six days of combat.  In exchange is Arab acceptance of Israel's right to live within secure and recognized borders free from threats or acts of force. Peace with the Arabs in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Arab land -- that is the formula. The questions of "how much peace" and "how much land" remain to be answered.

Almost everyone acknowledges that not all the land occupied by Israel will be turned over to the  Palestinians.  In the course of the give and take of negotiations, expectations were that the Palestinians would agree to border adjustments between Israel and Palestine that would add to Israel some of the large Jewish settlements beyond the Green Line of the 1967 border.  In a trade off for annexing some settlements,  Israel was expected in the course of final-status  negotiations to make compromises favorable to the Palestinians.

Instead, Mr. Barak's negotiations are with the settlers' Yesha Council. It appears that in a trade-off for cooperation with his government, Mr. Barak has promised the settlers 40% of the land of the West Bank. This is not the "Land for Peace" deal that the international community envisioned or that the Palestinians will likely accept.
 

ALL ARE ILLEGAL:  In calling for the evacuation of 12 "illegal" settlements,  Mr. Barak confers legitimacy on the 30 remaining trailer and tent hilltop encampments founded over the past year and on the other 160 or so settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The legal status of the settlements is not determined, as Mr. Barak implied, solely by approval of the Israeli government. Whether in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, all settlements are illegal under terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territory. From 1967 to Reagan's Administration 1981, it was official U.S. policy that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were illegal under international law.  "Obstacles to peace" has been the term used by  recent
presidents.  While all U.S. Administrations have asked Israel to stop, halt or freeze building, only Secretary of State James Baker applied actual pressure. In 1992, he conditioned housing loan guarantees to Israel on it stopping settlement activity.

The November 1998 Wye Agreement, in article 5, states that no side may take any action which changes the status of the West Bank prior to the final status negotiations. On March 12, 1999 U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross said that continued Israeli expansion of settlements was "destructive to the pursuit of peace." However, there has been no U.S. action to challenge Israel's policy.

JERUSALEM SETTLEMENTS:  "Jewish neighborhoods" is what Israel calls the huge complexes where about 190,000 Jews live on  West Bank land annexed to the city and on conquered land in Arab East Jerusalem.  It is in Jerusalem that settlement building is most visible and provocative for Palestinians and the international community.  It was Israel's effort in 1997 to build a settlement on a lovely green hill between  Bethlehem and Jerusalem that brought a halt to negotiations and a U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution calling on Israel to abandon the project.

Despite international protest, the building of Har Homa settlement is now going on.  This will complete the Israeli plan to isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank by building a ring of Jewish settlements.  Closer to the Old City, lies Ras al-Amud where full-scale construction by settlers is currently in progress. Two years ago the Netanyahu government decided to not authorize this construction because of protests from the U.S., Israeli peace groups and Palestinians. Now it seems that what was forbidden to Netanyahu is permitted to Barak. According to a November 9 article in Haaretz, Jerusalem-based Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini admits that if the construction ensued under the Netanyahu government, they would have protested vehemently. "Yet under the current Barak government they can do little to oppose this settlement activity since progress is being made in the peace process."

WEST BANK SETTLEMENTS: Today, approximately 190,000 Jewish settlers live in 142-150 settlements in the West Bank. Withdrawals mandated in Israel's agreements with the Palestinians are carried out in this territory.  About 75% of the settlers are in three clusters or "blocs," with about 7,000 families in settlements outside the blocs.  Barak's tactical problem is finding the promised amount of territory to turn over to Palestinian control while protecting the interests of the settlers.  So the transferred land will be bit here and a bit there, with little regard for the fundamental need for Palestinian land to be contiguous and for Palestinian people and their economy to function.

Twelve new bypass roads are in various stages of planning and construction  -- roads to connect settlements to each other or Israel while bypassing and thus further separating Arab villages.  Some military bases are being dismantled. But  new Israeli military bases are being established throughout the West Bank, according to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot, "particularly next to isolated settlements."

Maale Adumim, is illustrative of Israel's strategy of "changing facts on the ground" before a Palestinian state takes shape. The majority of the 2,500 new houses authorized by the Barak government are for this settlement bloc. Located between Jerusalem and Jericho, it is home to approximately 25,000 Jewish Israelis.  In 1994 the Rabin government declared the expansion of  Maale Adumin on 3110 acres of Palestinian village land, but didn't implement the plan.  Called the E-1 Plan, it would construct new residential areas that would create geographical contiguity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim as part of the comprehensive "Greater Jerusalem" plan. The E-I Plan was reactivated in the last months of the Netanyahu administration and it is reported that Mr. Barak's proposed map include those lands as part of "Greater Jerusalem."

In 1997, Americans for Peace Now, affiliated with Israel's Peace Now group that documents settlement activity, reported that the E-1 Plan would cut the West Bank into separate northern and southern regions; would cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank and make impossible the option of a Palestinian capital at Abu Dis; and would use the last land reserves of the existing Arab villages on both sides of the Jerusalem municipal limits.
 

GAZA'S SETTLEMENTS: The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Many people think that Israel withdrew from all of Gaza in 1994 in the first step toward Palestinian self-rule. But Israel still controls an estimated 30% of Gaza where 4,500 settlers live near 1 million Palestinians. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports  that Israel is confiscating Palestinian land to expand the borders of many of the settlements located in the south Gaza Strip.   In October the arms provided support for settlers as they dug up trees to make way for a road.  PCHR reported, "This new settlement escalation dangerously threatens the environmental situation in Gaza, since the land involved was planted with trees two years ago as part of a conservation project."

WHAT MESSAGE? A spokeswoman for Peace Now, Galia Golan, reported on National Public Radio on November 10 that building was taking place on about half of the West Bank settlements.  She lamented that "the message to Palestinians and settlers is there will be no compromise and they (the setters) can stay and not have to give up any settlements."

The Clinton Administration's message to the settlers and the Israeli government should be the same as the President's message to the Palestinians. "For those negotiations to succeed, it is vital that the environment in which they occur be credible, serious, fair. The United States knows how destructive settlement activities, land confiscations, and house demolitions are to the pursuit of Palestinian-Israeli peace."

LETTER FROM PRESIDENT CLINTON TO CHAIRMAN ARAFAT
Dear Mr. Chairman (Arafat):

    Clearly, the Oslo process has not made the kind of progress we would have hoped to see.  I am asking that you continue to rely on the peace process as the way to fulfill the aspirations of your people. Indeed, negotiations are the only realistic way to fulfill those aspirations.  In this context, and in the spirit of my remarks in Gaza [where he visited in December 1998), we support the aspirations of the Palestinian people to determine their own future on their own land.  As I said in Gaza, I believe Palestinians should live free today, tomorrow and forever.

   The objective of the negotiating process is the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, including land for peace, and all other agreements under the Oslo process.
    For those negotiations to succeed, it is vital that the environment in which they occur be credible, serious, fair. The United States knows how destructive settlement activities, land confiscations, and house demolitions are to the pursuit of Palestinian-Israeli peace. In this regard, we will continue to exert maximum efforts to have both parties avoid unilateral steps or actions designed to change the status of the West Bank and Gaza or to prejudge or preempt issues reserved for permanent status negotiations.
(excerpts from April 26, 1999 letter)