Netanyahu Aims to Match Labor Settlement Record

The policies announced by the Netanyahu government should increase the Israeli population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 50,000 settlers to 200,000 during the next four years. This increase is little different than the expansion recorded under the previous Labor government.

Pinchas Wallerstein, chairman of the Council for Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and the West Bank (YESHA), confirmed the expectation of an increase of these dimensions. Wallerstein estimates that 10,000 new dwelling units will be constructed during the coming four years at a rate of 2,500 annually. The anticipated increase was supported by reports noting the planned construction of 60,000 apartments by Israel during 1997 and 1998. The proportional share of settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has historically hovered at between 8 and 10 percent.

Wallerstein noted that there is no practical need to establish new settlements, but that the ideological imperative to undertake such a policy cannot be disregarded.

"It is necessary to thicken and to strengthen that which already exists," he explained.

Wallerstein also anticipates that the growth of settlements will continue in much the same way as it has during the last four years--in communities close to the metropolitan areas of Israel--places like Adam near Jerusalem, and Na'ale and Ofarim near the Green Line.

Some disappointment in the settler community has been registered in view of the fact that the new government's declarations and decisions do not portend a significant departure from past construction activity. Population growth, however, is only one of many settler objectives. The settler community, according to Shlomo Katan, head of the local council of the settlement of Alfe Menache, close to the Green Line, "believes that the most important undertaking is to renew the connection [between settlers] and the center of the country. Only if they understand that most of the settlers are actually urban and secular just like them will there be a possibility of renewing the connection and facilitating settlement expansionism."

Judging by the increase in housing prices in settlements from Gaza to the Golan, which in some cases have risen by 50 percent since Netanyahu's victory, settlements, in the words of one newspaper headline, "are once again on the map."