TEL AVIV, Feb 6 (IPS) - A secret government database revealed last week the real extent of settlement construction on the West Bank. In violation of the Road Map to peace agreed with the U.S., Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, it turned out, agreed to the construction of another settlement on the West Bank. Many now question how devoted Israeli leaders really are to the idea of achieving peace.
A comprehensive official database on settler activity, compiled systematically by order of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, shows that in 75 percent of the West Bank settlements, construction has been carried out without the permits that were issued, or contrary to them. Furthermore, the database reveals that in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of roads, schools, synagogues and even police stations was carried out on private land belonging to Palestinian residents.
The data-gathering project began four years ago. Brigadier-General Baruch Spiegel, aide to former Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz, was put in charge. The idea was to have credible and readily accessible information to counter legal action by Palestinian residents, human rights organisations and leftist movements who challenge the legality of settlement construction in the West Bank.
The Ministry of Defence has always refused to publicise the data, arguing that it would endanger Israel’s national security, or harm its foreign relations. The report was recently obtained and published on the Internet by the Israeli daily Haaretz.
The information on the database demonstrates that the state does not abide by its own rules. The website of the Foreign Ministry says: “Israel’s actions relating to the use and allocation of land under its administration are all taken with strict regard to the rules and norms of international law - Israel does not requisition private land for the establishment of settlements.”
And yet, in many of the settlements it was the Ministry of Construction and Housing that was responsible for the construction. A large part of the newly built infrastructure involves roads, schools and police stations. Besides, the large extent of building violations demonstrates the poor functioning of the Israeli Civil Administration which is in charge of supervision of construction in the territories.
Earlier last week, Israel’s largest peace movement Peace Now published a report with the title ‘Settlers do not need to wait for Bibi’, referring to the right-wing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, and the fact that settlers do not necessarily need a right-wing government to carry on with their mission of occupying the Biblical promised land. Among other things, Peace Now’s Settlement Watch discovered that the construction of settlements increased almost 60 percent in 2008.
Freezing of all settlement construction is the cornerstone of the road map to peace. The road map was founded on the findings of the Sharm-el-Sheikh fact-finding committee on the second Intifadah (Palestinian uprising) chaired by George Mitchell, currently U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
After the mission, Mitchell formulated the “settlement-terrorism equation” in 2001 that demanded an immediate stop to terror from the Palestinian side and halting of all settlement activity, including construction for natural growth from the Israeli side.
Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and former U.S. president George W. Bush adopted the Mitchell agenda, suppressing Palestinian terrorism by building a separation wall that left most of the settlements on the outside, and then by evacuating settlers from the Gaza Strip. Israel was allowed to keep on building within the settlements enclosed by the fence.
At the peace negotiations in 2007 in Annapolis (in Maryland in the U.S.), the centre-left Kadima-Labour government again pledged to freeze all construction in order to make a two-state solution to the conflict possible. In November 2008 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared he was cutting off funding for illegal outposts, thereby admitting that the state had until then financed the construction of these officially unrecognised, illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
“It is political weakness,” says Hagit Ofran, head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch. “Religious people, ideologists want to hold on to the West Bank and in order to achieve that, they build as much as possible. They threaten with violence if they will be evacuated, they swear to strike back against Israeli police and forces. That’s something the government prefers not to see happening, so they turn a blind eye.”
As far as government support by active aid is concerned, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has only recently approved the construction of a new settlement in the Binyamin region in return for settlers’ agreement to evacuate the illegal outpost of Migron. Binyamin is located to the northeast and northwest of Jerusalem. According to human rights lawyers Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zacharia, who already advocated the evacuation of Migron two years ago, Barak is expanding settlements and outposts under the guise of evacuation.
Currently there are approximately 290,000 Jews living in 120 official settlements and dozens of illegal outposts in the West Bank, most of them opposed to a two-state solution as they lay claim to the whole land. The alternative to a two-state solution is one state, which according to the demographic evolution would mean a secular and bi-national state with a Jewish minority, which is unacceptable to most Jewish Israelis.
In the meantime, the expansion of Jewish settlements is slowly occupying land Palestinians demand in any final agreement. “This lack of political courage is weakening our Palestinian peace activists,” says Hagit Ofran. “They don’t see the use of peace negotiations if Israel in the meantime keeps building and occupying their land. Some stop believing in peace or justice and become militants or terrorists. That’s the main problem.”
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is leading the polls for the coming elections of Feb. 10. He has opposed creation of new settlements, but said he would allow “natural growth”. Over the last decade, Israel has officially not built any new settlements, but termed all new settlement construction necessary to “natural growth”. Netanyahu has also promised the Yesha council, the umbrella organisation of Jewish municipal councils in the West Bank, not to be party to evacuation of any West Bank settlement. (END/2009)
Tags: George Mitchell, Israel, West Bank, West Bank settlements
No comments:
Post a Comment