First Settlement in 10 Years Fuels Mideast Tension

STEVEN ERLANGER
NYT, 27 December

JERUSALEM, Dec. 26 — Israel announced plans on Tuesday to construct a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank for the first time in 10 years, prompting Palestinian anger and American concern.

The announcement, by the Defense Ministry and settler groups, seemed to run counter to the prevailing effort by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had offered a series of gestures to the Palestinians several days ago, after meeting with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Even before that meeting, Mr. Abbas was being criticized by his political rivals, Hamas, who preach Israel’s destruction, for carrying out what they called an Israeli and American agenda with little to show for it.

One Israeli official hinted that the new settlement might be part of a deal with Jewish settlers to get their tacit acceptance of the removal of illegal settlement outposts from the West Bank.

Another Israeli official, however, insisted that the settlement was not “new,” exactly, but a revival of a settlement approved in 1981, which had become a military training site by the mid-1990s.

The defense minister, Amir Peretz, the dovish leader of the Labor Party, gave his approval to a promise made by his predecessor — Shaul Mofaz, the current transport minister — that houses would be built on the site of an army base in the northern Jordan Valley to resettle some Israelis forced to leave settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005, according to a Defense Ministry official.

Pressed by Washington to help build up Mr. Abbas, Mr. Olmert promised last week to give him $100 million in Palestinian funds withheld by Israel, about 20 percent of the amount being held, but only for humanitarian purposes.

Abbas aides, however, said the money would be used to strengthen his Fatah movement and pay salaries to Fatah loyalists. Mr. Olmert also promised to dismantle 27 of the 400 or so checkpoints in the West Bank, despite criticism by Israel’s West Bank commander.

Additionally complicating matters, Islamic Jihad on Tuesday fired seven more Qassam rockets into Israel from Gaza, including one that seriously wounded two teenagers in the border town of Sderot.

The planned new settlement will be called Maskiot, and approval was given for the construction of some 30 houses. The Israeli official insisted that all construction would be privately financed.

The housing will be used by the 20 families of the hawkish Gaza settlement Shirat Hayam, which resisted evacuation. To get them to leave Gaza peacefully, the army promised to keep them together.

The decision, the official said, “sort of went through and now it’s done and would be very hard to undo.”

Israel essentially decided to stop the building of settlements in 1992 when Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister, although it has allowed existing settlements to grow, even as it has publicly promised to freeze settlement activity under the so-called road map for peace.

Emily Amrusy, a spokeswoman for the settlers’ council known as Yesha, said that the families would move into trailers on the site while construction began on more permanent housing.

A spokeswoman for the American consulate in Jerusalem, which deals with the West Bank, said a new settlement would be troubling. “We’re looking into it, and if turns out to be a new settlement, we would be very concerned, given Israel’s obligations under the road map,” said Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, the spokeswoman.

The road map calls for a freeze in settlement building in the first phase and a Palestinian push to dismantle terrorist groups. Israel says that the dismantling should come first and that no such action has taken place.

But it has separately promised the Bush administration that it would build only within existing settlement structures to account for natural growth, “thickening” the settlements but not expanding them physically.

Israel also promised that it would dismantle more than 20 illegal outposts set up since March 2001, but it has dismantled only one, under an Israeli court order. Peace Now, a leftwing Israeli lobby that opposes the settlements and follows them closely, says that there have been more than 50 outposts established illegally since March 2001, and that there are more than 100 illegal outposts in the West Bank altogether, many of them, like the semi-settlement of Migron, built on private Palestinian land.

Much of the world considers all Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law; the United States, which used to call them illegal, now calls them “obstacles to peace” that prejudge final-status negotiations. The outposts are illegal under Israeli law because the government has not authorized them.

An aide to Mr. Abbas said the announcement ran counter to understandings Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas reached at their meeting Saturday night. “We condemn this act and this decision, especially as it comes after the Israeli side committed itself to stop all unilateral actions,” the aide, Saeb Erekat, told Agence France-Presse. “This is certain to destroy the atmosphere created after the meeting with Olmert, where they committed to many issues, especially to stop unilateral actions.”

The Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and consider any Israeli building there to be an act of thievery. Israel says that it accepts the idea of a Palestinian state but that the exact contours have to be negotiated.

Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, criticized the decision on new construction as contrary to the government’s stated aims and programs and noted that it had not been approved by Parliament. “This is a veritable scandal, all the more so that this decision was taken by Amir Peretz,” himself a former advocate with Peace Now, Mr. Oppenheimer said. What may begin with 30 houses could easily become more because of “thickening,” Peace Now said.

There have also been reports that some settlers have moved temporarily into the ruins of the Homesh settlement in the West Bank, one of four West Bank settlements destroyed along with the Gaza settlements in 2005.

Of the seven Qassam rockets fired into Israel on Tuesday by Islamic Jihad from Gaza, one hit Ashkelon and two reached Sderot, seriously wounding the two teenagers, one critically; both were being treated at a hospital.

The injuries will put more pressure on Mr. Olmert to respond militarily. Since a supposed cease-fire was agreed to on Nov. 26 between the Palestinians and Israel, more than 55 Qassams have been fired from Gaza, about half of which have landed in Israel. The truce did not include the West Bank, but Islamic Jihad says its rocket firing is a response to Israeli military actions there.

On Tuesday, Israel arrested an Islamic Jihad commander, Mahmoud Saadi, 26, in the northern West Bank town of Jenin. Israel also announced the arrest in Ramallah on Nov. 2 of a senior commander of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Muhammad Sayidi, 36, who had been wanted for several years on charges of killing an Israeli in 2000.

Separately, Israeli officials said that Mr. Olmert would travel to Egypt, probably on Jan. 4, to meet the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and Palestinian officials said that Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas were expected to meet soon in Jordan for further discussions on how to end their political impasse and the violence between their factions.