Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

The on again-off again nature of formal talks between Israel and Syria raises legitimate questions about the successful outcome of efforts to arrange a peace between the long bitter enemies. What is not in dispute, however, is the degree to which Israel has reassessed long-held views of its territorial and settlement requirements on the Golan Heights--a transformation in elite military and strategic concepts, if not in public attitudes. Such views have enabled Israeli prime ministers since Yitzhak Rabin to conclude that Israel's strategic interests in the twenty-first century will be better served by a contractual peace with Syria and without Golan settlements.

As Israeli redeployments increase the percentage of territory in the West Bank under some measure of Palestinian control to 41 percent, the prospect of some settlements finding themselves all but surrounded by a sea of Palestinian-controlled territory can no longer be avoided. This will particularly be the case after the implementation of the third stage of the second redeployment, scheduled according to the timetable established in the September 1999 Sharm al-Sheikh agreement to have taken place on January 20.

The heart of the dispute between Israel and Syria today is territorial. The map in this report details the complex territorial divisions resulting from almost a century of competition--first by colonial powers, followed by Israel and Syria--over disposition of the Golan plateau east of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee.

The following article by Baruch Kra appeared in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz on February 6, 2000.

Settlements have continued to expand during the first year of Ehud Barak's government, symbolized by the October decision to recognize the creation of more than a score of new settlements, the first decision in years to establish new settlements.