ArabDigest.org Israeli settlements: the position on the ground

Israeli settlements: the position on the ground

Summary: emboldened by the indulgent attitude of the Trump Administration, the Israeli settler movement continues to pursue its West Bank agenda.
We are again grateful to Greg Shapland for the posting below. He is a writer on politics, security and resources in the MENA region. He was Head of Research Analysts in the FCO from 2010-13 and is now an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
The Israeli settler movement has been a great success. Since the day (in June 1980) when President Jimmy Carter first described the settlements as “illegal”, the number of settlers in the West Bank has increased 50-fold.
According to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, there are now 132 settlements in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) which the Government of Israel regards as legal. There are also 121 settlement outposts that were established without official permission and which are illegal in the eyes of Israeli law. That these outposts are illegal under Israeli law does not normally lead to their removal by the authorities. (Since 1991, this has only happened in two cases.) More usually, they are sooner or later recognised as legal, often through incorporation into an existing settlement nearby.
Peace Now, using data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, says that, at the beginning of this year, there were almost 428,000 settlers in the West Bank (again excluding East Jerusalem) . In 2018, the settler population grew at 3.5%, compared to 1.9% for Israel. West Bank Population Stats, a pro-settler organisation, calculates that, on the basis of the 21% growth over the last five years, there will be just over a million settlers in the region by 2041. (The calculation is contained in the organisation’s 2019 report, which is available on free subscription from here.)
Baruch Gordon, the Director of the organisation, told AP in February that the surge in settler numbers was the result of a more favourable environment created by the Trump Administration. Few people, whether pro- or anti-settler, would disagree.
In addition to the West Bank settlers, there are around 215,000 Jews living in “neighbourhoods” (settlements) in East Jerusalem. (All the East Jerusalem settlements are implicitly recognised as legal by Israel, the Israeli government having annexed that part of the city and expanded its boundaries in 1967.) Here too, settler numbers are surging.
Settlements in the West Bank come in various sizes. The largest are substantial towns: Modiin Illit (northwest of Jerusalem), has 73,000 residents, Beitar Illit (south of Jerusalem) has 59,000, while Maale Adumim, on the eastern fringe of Jerusalem, has over 41,000. Most residents of Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit are ultra-Orthodox Jews, although the fact that they have chosen to live in settlements may be due more to the fact that housing is cheaper than in Israel proper (the ultra-Orthodox generally have larger families than do less religious Israelis) than to any specifically religious motivation.
The settlement of Ariel has over 20,000 people. It is important less for its size than for its position: it lies in the central West Bank, 12 miles east of the Green Line – deep into the territory of what might, one day, become a Palestinian state.
At the smaller end of the scale in terms of population (though not of political significance) are hilltop settlements such as Itamar (1,224 residents) and Yitzhar (1,668), both in the northern West Bank. The inhabitants of these settlements are fundamentalists (the younger generation of residents are the so-called “hilltop youth”) who have chosen to live where they do out of religious conviction and with a view to preventing an Israeli withdrawal from Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank). Similarly radical – indeed aggressive – are the 800 or so settlers in Hebron, who have succeeded, under the protection of the IDF, in paralysing normal life in the centre of the largest city in the southern West Bank. The close proximity of the Palestinian population and the settlers, together with the provocative tactics of the latter and their supporters, results from time to time in the sort of violent confrontation that occurred 22 and 23 November.
What does the future hold?
Settler leaders, buoyed up by Secretary of State Pompeo’s statement on 18 November that Israeli settlements were “not inconsistent with international law”, have called on the Israeli government to seize the day and do more to tighten Israel’s grip on the West Bank. Yisrael Gantz, the head of one of the regions into which the settlement movement divides the West Bank, said, “Now is the time for the Israeli government to declare it is applying Israeli law in Judea and Samaria.”  Oded Revivi, spokesman for the Yesha Council (the main settler movement), expressed a similar wish.
However, a new Israeli government (once one comes into being) is not likely to do that, at least in the foreseeable future: the diplomatic cost of such a provocative move (even if the US turned a blind eye, which it might) would outweigh the benefits. Israel is more likely to continue to expand existing settlements, legalise outposts here and there and (if put under severe pressure) remove one or two. It might annex some bits of Area C (the part of the West Bank outside Palestinian towns and villages) in a piecemeal fashion – especially those bits without resident Palestinians. The area known as E1 has long been a target (though the international community has so far managed to dissuade Israel from annexing it): it would connect Maale Adumim with Jerusalem and (for Palestinians) divide the northern West Bank from the south. If the Israeli objective is to eliminate any prospect of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state, it does not need to do much more than it is already doing. The extent of settlement in the West Bank, combined with a network of roads that Palestinians are not allowed to use and a barrier that disrupts the lives of many Palestinians , has made it hard to envisage the creation of such a state.
There could, of course, be a radical change of direction by whoever becomes the next Israeli prime minister. But this seems highly improbable. Israelis still remember the uproar and (for some) trauma which accompanied the evacuation of about 8,500 settlers from Gaza in 2005. Moreover, since then, the repeated outbreaks of fighting with militant groups in Gaza has convinced most Israelis that the abandonment of settlements leads not to peace and quiet but to continued violence. This has become a strongly entrenched narrative that the settler movement would not hesitate to deploy if they felt there was any threat to their presence in the West Bank (or part of it) from a government bent on pursuing peace. Moreover, the movement is now well represented in the Israeli political system and capable of making a great deal of trouble for any government that was so inclined. So, while Pompeo’s statement on settlements was a major boost to the morale of the settlers and the Israeli politicians who support them, it could always be reversed by a new US administration of a less blatantly pro-Israeli stamp. It would prove much harder to change the substantial facts on the ground which the settler movement has created.
As for the Palestinians, there seems to be very little that they can do to counter the Trump Administration’s indulgence of the settlement movement or – more importantly – the growth of settlements. Statements by the Palestinian leadership and days of rage (one was held 26 November) will have minimal impact. Moreover, if the Palestinians ever hoped that they could persuade the international community (now minus the US) to go much beyond declarative diplomacy in reaction to this continuing breach of international law, they should by now be disabused of those hopes. The decision by the European Court of Justice on 12 November that all foodstuffs originating in settlements must be so labelled may have some symbolic value but will not cause Israel to change its policies. Nor will BDS, which (tainted as it is, rightly or wrongly, by accusations of anti-Semitism) will not be able to do for the Palestinians what the anti-apartheid movement did for black South Africans.
All this has serious potential consequences for everyone concerned – including, in the long-term, for Israel. It is, however, beyond the scope of this post to explore those consequences.