West Bank buildup (LA Times)

[Wordie]

West Bank buildup
By Gershom Gorenberg, GERSHOM GORENBERG is the author of "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977," forthcoming from Times Books.

THE WEST BANK settlements of Ariel and Karnei Shomron are about to expand. In mid-December, Israel's Housing Ministry invited bids from contractors on lots for 137 new homes. The decision was made "with the knowledge of the prime minister," according to a source who spoke off the record because that's how sources tell the important parts of stories. No matter that the "road map," the 2003 document that remains the U.S. plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace, explicitly states that Israel must freeze all settlement activity.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon can feel fairly confident that the Bush administration won't make a fuss. The U.S. didn't do anything about another recent decision, by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, to plan 200 more homes in the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Nor has Washington pushed Sharon to take down "outposts" — tiny West Bank settlements — established since he became prime minister, though the road map requires him to do so.

The road map enshrines the principle that settlements make it more difficult to reach a negotiated peace, that they make Israeli withdrawal from occupied land far more costly — politically and economically — and entangle Israel in ruling a large Arab population, to its own detriment. That position has been a pillar of U.S. policy since 1967, when Israel conquered the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai. And since then, the U.S. has been quite consistently, quite remarkably, ineffectual in doing anything to stop settlement. Meanwhile, although Israel has returned the Sinai and more recently pulled out of Gaza, the settler population in the West Bank has risen to a quarter of a million.

Back in September 1967, when the U.S. heard of Israeli approval for the first West Bank settlement, a State Department spokesman criticized the move as "inconsistent" with negotiating the territory's future. In diplo-speak, that was meant as a biting rebuke. Israel claimed the spot would be a military outpost, inherently temporary. By the next spring, with that cover story crumbling, the State Department ordered the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to remind Israeli officials of "our continuing opposition to any … settlements" and of the U.S. view that they violated international law. Yet as if to mark it "not urgent," the message — preserved in the U.S. National Archives — was sent by mail, not cable. By the time it arrived, settlers had moved into the West Bank city of Hebron.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gorenberg3jan03,0,4643079.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

At the end of this excellent article, Gershenberg urges the Bush administration to seize the opportunity to make clear that the settlement activity must stop.

[Englander]

1. A recent WaPo article by the same author -

'Where an Unsettling Past Points to an Uncertain Future

By Gershom Gorenberg

Sunday, December 4, 2005; Page B02

The place called Amonah is on a windswept ridge 3,000 feet above sea level, just east of the flourishing West Bank settlement of Ofrah. An aerial photo shows mobile homes strung unevenly along the crest. Nine single-family houses stand in an arc at the ridge's south end, arranged for a view of Jerusalem, a developer's dream. The photo also reveals the stripped gray earth of lots cleared for more homes.

The infrastructure at Amonah, according to an Israeli official report, was financed by the Israeli housing ministry. On the Web site of a movement that builds West Bank settlements and that in the past worked closely with the government, homes in Amonah are advertised at $121,400. The Web site -- unlike the official report -- does not mention that Amonah stands on what is apparently private Palestinian land. Nor does it inform prospective buyers that the Israeli Supreme Court recently gave Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz until Jan. 5 to present plans for demolishing the existing houses by the end of January.

The legal confrontation has put Amonah in the spotlight and brought new attention to more than 100 so-called "outposts" scattered across the West Bank -- small Israeli settlements, often consisting of a few mobile homes, built since the mid-1990s. The official report on the matter, issued in March by former senior government attorney Talya Sason, says that over half the outposts sit at least partially on private Palestinian land or ground of unclear title. All were built after the Oslo peace process and international pressure led the Israeli government to cease approving new settlements. Yet, as Sason documented, various ministries and the army tolerated, aided and abetted the outlaw settlers, in a long-running and diffuse rogue operation -- in violation of the government's stated policy.

Under the U.S.-backed 2003 "road map" for peace, Israel committed itself to "immediately" dismantling all outposts built since Ariel Sharon became prime minister in March 2001. The Bush administration has spent 2 1/2 years doing little -- at least publicly -- to push Israel to keep that commitment. In the meantime, according to Dror Etkes of the Peace Now Settlement Watch, houses have begun replacing mobile homes. Were it not for the Amonah case -- the result of a suit brought by Peace Now -- the outpost issue would have been put off at least until Israel's elections in the spring.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120202361.html

[Wordie]

2. They shouldn't demolish them; they should leave them for the Pals.

...and Gorenberg is an excellent writer.