Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

In the short time since the Rabin assassination, the government of Shimon Peres has begun to establish policies toward settlers and settlements that distinguish it from its predecessor...

Yitzhak Rabin was not assassinated because of inflammatory words shouted by his right-wing opponents, or by cruel effigies. Rabin was murdered for following a policy of reconciliation with the Palestinians, which threatens to redivide the "Land of Israel" by ceding a measure of Israeli control in the West Bank to Palestinians. His policy was seen as derailing what is for many Jews a divinely ordained program for the redemption of the Jewish people.

The site chosen for the official opening ceremony of "Jerusalem 3000" celebrations is on the outskirts of a hill south of the Old City wall, an archeological site identified with the ancient City of David. Now it is called Wadi al-Khilwe and is one of the rural Bedouin neighborhoods that surround Silwan, called in Hebrew, Kfar Ha'shiloah...

Binyamin Ben Eliezer, a former general in the IDF, has held the construction portfolio in Israel since July 1992. During that time he has eased the transition from a housing construction market forced into overdrive by massive immigration from the former Soviet Union; marketed large numbers of dwelling units left empty when immigration slowed; and continued construction at a pace enabling the continued growth and expansion of settlement communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel's settler population in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip (excluding annexed East Jerusalem) grew 4 percent to 133,000 during 1995, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS)--a growth rate higher than for any region in Israel.