Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

In mid-1994, on the eve of negotiations for the transfer of certain powers to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the "early empowerment" talks, it was reported that Israel would present the Authority with a choice: The PA could either accept the Israeli offer quickly and then proceed to negotiations for its elections and Israel's redeployment in the West Bank, or it could enter into protracted negotiations...

The isolated Israeli settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip has become a critical factor in shaping both Israeli and Palestinian attitudes about the viability of the Oslo agreement. As long as Netzarim exists, the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace will remain hostage to Israel's continuing desire to control the occupied territories.

What is Israel's vision of the "final status" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip? An interesting insight into Israeli thinking was offered by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres at a UNESCO conference in Grenada in December 1993. Peres, generally considered to be the Palestinians' greatest champion among Israel's leadership, offered the following scenario...

Yehoshafat Harkabi was a former chief of Israel's Military Intelligence and the intellectual god-father of Israel's rejection of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In recent years, he emerged as the Israeli establishment's most tireless advocate of rapprochement with the PLO. Excerpts from an essay that appeared in Ha'aretz, September 1, 1994, shortly after Harkabi's death in August, highlight the need for Israelis to reassess the future of settlements.

The newspaper Ha'aretz reported on November 14 that "the numbers of settlers [in the Jerusalem region] will grow larger in the near future. The Ministry of Housing has put out for bid contracts for the construction of...

The Rabin government has not slowed the continuing growth in Israel's settler population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) reports that the settler population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip increased by 10.4 percent during 1993. This figure is lower than the rate of growth registered in 1992 (12 percent) and 1991 (15 percent).

The November 1994 issue of the Settlement Report reported the imposition of a $216.8 million "settlement penalty" reduction in the U.S. fiscal year 1995 appropriation of $2 billion in loan guarantees for Israel. Legislation passed by Congress in 1992 authorized the president to reduce U.S. loan guarantees to Israel by an amount equal to its settlement expenditures. The following figures provide an authoritative breakdown of the penalty amounts.