Looking for a Peaceful Settlement?

by Pressureworks, published 9 May, 2006

In Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories right now, towns/settlements are being built on Palestinian land that are both illegal, and contribute to poverty of the Palestinian population.
But what exactly are these settlements, and why are they so key?
Why does the continued building of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land make it practically impossible for Palestinians to have a workable, independent state?
Why are settlements and their infrastructure leading to rising poverty levels among the Palestinian population?

Kfar Etzion
Thirty nine years ago a small group of Israelis decided to build their homes on the site of Kfar Etzion, on the biblical Path of the Patriarchs.
What does the 'land of Israel' really mean?
Kfar Etzion and the settlements that followed it were all built on Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War – namely the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

'Ever since I was a kid I had a deep relationship to this country, to the land,’ says Hershel Ginsburg, an Orthodox Jew in his fifties who lives in the cluster of settlements called Gush Etzion between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. ‘As an observant Jew, I’ve seen it as an obligation to live in the land of Israel if it’s possible.’

But the ‘land of Israel’ Ginsburg is speaking of is the Israel of the Bible – not modern-day Israel, whose borders were set by UN partitions and armistice lines in 1947 and 1967.

Illegal
There are now over 130 Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory with a population of more than 400,000, built for ideological or economic reasons.

All are illegal under international law. 

Article 49 of the Geneva Convention which relates to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states: ‘The occupying power [in this case Israel] shall not deport or transfer parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies.’

Uprooted
In order to build these settlements and outposts, Israel has taken thousands of acres of land from Palestinians (often the most fertile agricultural land with the best water sources), forbidding Palestinians to enter and use these lands and using the settlements to justify violations of human rights such as the right to housing, the right to work, and freedom of movement.
Settlements are nearly always built on the most valuable land.
If you are a Palestinian trying to get to work or visit a doctor, you often have to wait behind Israeli checkpoints around these settlements, or can’t travel at all because of the barrier Israel has built within the West Bank to protect these settlements.

Facts on the ground
The largest and most contentious of all the settlements is Ma’ale Adumim: with a population of over 30,000 it controls an area the size of Israel’s main city Tel Aviv .

Walking through Ma’ale Adumim feels like any other new commuter town with its well-watered gardens, fountains and floral roundabouts.

Its swimming pools are in glaring contrast to the situation for Palestinians living a few miles down the road, struggling with six times as less water.
Strategically placed so as to cut the West Bank in half.
'Ma’ale Adumim was built and subsidised by the government,’ says Israeli architect and town planner Thomas Leitersdorf. ‘The government was interested in supporting young couples, so it offered them a higher quality of housing next to Jerusalem, for significantly less money.’

Ma’ale Adumim is so large and strategically placed that it cuts the West Bank in half, blocking the north/south route between the Palestinian towns of Bethlehem and Ramallah. An additional zone called ‘E1’ was also attached to Ma’ale Adumim in order to fully encircle Palestinian East Jerusalem with Israeli settlements.

Why do this?
Well both Israel and the Palestinians want Jerusalem to be their future capital.
Since the Oslo Accords in 1993 Israel has tried to alter the demographic balance throughout the city in favour of its Jewish population.

The Israeli Interior Ministry has also enforced certain laws to cancel the permanent resident status of 3,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites, thus reducing the number of Arab residents in the city. At the same time, Palestinians from the West Bank have been barred from entering Jerusalem without a permit.
Both want Jerusalem as their future capital.
These policies have been a success in that Israelis now hold the majority in the occupied Eastern part of the city. Jerusalem, once the hub of the Palestinian economy has effectively been cut off from the rest of the West Bank, profoundly damaging both markets and freedom of movement.

Israel’s policy of establishing settlements in Palestinian areas is slowly but surely changing the map of the region and calling into question the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

The shrinking areas available to the Palestinians is fuelling a huge rise in poverty levels – the UN predicts 74 per cent of the population living on less than £1.10 a day by 2008.

Why is all this allowed to go on?
Well it’s not allowed, but not much is being done about it.

The first stage of the ‘road-map’ a peace plan proposed by the US, the UN, the EU and Russia says Palestinians must stop violence and Israelis must stop settlement growth. The EU has even cut aid to the Palestinian Authority because of the continued attacks against Israel.

But no pressure is being put on Israel to comply with its side of the bargain.
Everyone should have their basic rights.
On the contrary, President Bush said in 2004 that ‘in light of new realities on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centres’ (settlements), it would be ‘unrealistic’ for Israel to withdraw to armistice lines.

Land is both the problem and the solution in this conflict. Christian Aid asserts Israel’s right to exist in safety and with security for all its citizens. We also think Palestinians should have that right. But if we’re not careful, there won’t be any land left for a Palestinian state.