Palestinians Condemn Netanyahu's Settlement Actions
Settlement Report | Vol. 6 No. 5 | September-October 1996- News
- Netanyahu Government Highlights Settlement Program
- Sharon Emerges as Key Player in Likud Settlement Policy
- To Our Readers
- Building Quietly on the Golan
- Palestinians Condemn Netanyahu's Settlement Actions
- Mubarak and Clinton Address Settlements
- Netanyahu Aims to Match Labor Settlement Record
- Back Panel Quote
Deteriorating relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority
(PA) have led to increasingly vocal Palestinian attacks on the
Netanyahu government's settlement policies.
PA Chairman Yassir Arafat described the changes in settlement policy announced by Israel on August 2 as "the most dangerous" threat the Palestinians are encountering:
"Nobody is going to confront settlement before we do. Settlement is a flagrant violation of the agreement. This is a conspiracy not only against us, but against peace. The most important thing is to confront this demon that swallows up everything including the peace process."
"One more settlement here or there will not improve the security of Israel." said Saeb Erekat, minister of local government, who leads the Palestinian delegation to the talks on final status. Erekat accused Israel of creating a "Little Bosnia" in the West Bank through its settlement policy: "Israel must understand that peace and settlement do not go together."
Palestinian Protests
The escalation in Palestinian rhetoric toward settlement has been accompanied by continuing isolated clashes in scattered villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip between Palestinians and Israelis over land seizures. On July 19, for example, 200 Palestinians protested the seizure and fencing off of 400 dunams of agricultural land by settlers from the settlements of Shilo and Shvut Rachel, north of Ramilah. The 10,000 residents of the village of Samua near Hebron were placed under extended curfew after they destroyed machinery being used to build a bypass road. Residents oppose the confiscation of their agricultural land for the road. They also fear that the road will endanger their access to thousands of dunams of agricultural lands located between the new road and the Green Line.
In an August letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Arafat warned that an "explosion between Palestinian landowners and settlers is approaching, as a result of the Israeli government's support for expanding settlements."
Popular protests throughout the West Bank have often accompanied the creation of the extensive system of roads connecting settlements. These roads were approved by the PA as part of the Oslo II agreement signed last year.
Palestinians have long maintained that settlement expansion is prohibited by Article 31 of the Oslo II agreement, which notes that the "integrity and status" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be maintained during the interim period scheduled to last until 1999. The agreement prohibits each party from "initiating or taking any step that will change the status" of the occupied territories during this period.
Israel rejects the applicability of these clauses to settlement. During the Labor era, Palestinian concerns about settlements were muted, and the PA's agreement to Israeli demands such as the bypass roads facilitated settlement expansion.
Arafat described Israel's August 12 decision to place mobile homes in West Bank settlements as "a new breach of what had been agreed upon and what had been signed."
"We see how these mobile homes become permanent," said Hanan Ashrawi, minister of higher education. "You cannot say you are part of a peace process based on land for peace and continue to confiscate land. Violations which lead to settlement expansion and land confiscation," she charged, "undermine the foundations of the Oslo process."
Ashrawi criticized the U.S. for not opposing Netanyahu's policy: "When Netanyahu speaks of the settlements and expanding them, no US official sought to emphasize that settlements are illegal and unlawful and run counter to the peace process."
In an additional reflection of the popular antipathy toward the settlements, Hamas issued a communique on August 15 calling for an uprising against settlements. Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahhar, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip and the key speaker at a rally called to oppose settlements, suggested a number of anti-settlement actions, including scattering nails on roads frequented by settlers, staging sit-ins to block roads to settlements, and installing loudspeakers to disrupt settler life.
At the first meeting of the joint steering committee overseeing the implementation of the Oslo accords, PA representative Jamil Tarifi declared, "Israel now speaks of 'no peace without security' so we are adding that there will be no peace with settlements."
Ashrawi condemned the August 28 approval to build more than 3,500 new settlement dwellings: "These are the real actions. We are not interested in statements of appeasement and promises in the air. . . . The real proof is in this decision to build thousands more housing units, to confiscate more land, to expand settlements and settlement activities."
Negotiations Stalemated
The unprecedented Palestinian attention to settlement policy decisions by the Netanyahu government during the summer owes less to the changes that these decisions signal in Israeli settlement policy than to the general deterioration in the atmosphere of Israeli-Palestinian affairs that followed in the immediate wake of Netanyahu's victory. Announcements regarding settlement expansion are now occurring in an overall atmosphere characterized by diplomatic stalemate and the new Israeli government's opposition to objectives at the heart of Palestinian strategy--the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
At a meeting of the Likud central committee on September 5, Netanyahu vowed, "There never will be a Palestinian state between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the [Jordan] River."
In contrast, while settlement expansion policies during the Labor era were the source of never ending Palestinian frustration, Palestinian leaders became reconciled to them as a necessary cost of the negotiating process. Similar policies are now viewed in a more critical light.
PA Chairman Yassir Arafat described the changes in settlement policy announced by Israel on August 2 as "the most dangerous" threat the Palestinians are encountering:
"Nobody is going to confront settlement before we do. Settlement is a flagrant violation of the agreement. This is a conspiracy not only against us, but against peace. The most important thing is to confront this demon that swallows up everything including the peace process."
"One more settlement here or there will not improve the security of Israel." said Saeb Erekat, minister of local government, who leads the Palestinian delegation to the talks on final status. Erekat accused Israel of creating a "Little Bosnia" in the West Bank through its settlement policy: "Israel must understand that peace and settlement do not go together."
Palestinian Protests
The escalation in Palestinian rhetoric toward settlement has been accompanied by continuing isolated clashes in scattered villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip between Palestinians and Israelis over land seizures. On July 19, for example, 200 Palestinians protested the seizure and fencing off of 400 dunams of agricultural land by settlers from the settlements of Shilo and Shvut Rachel, north of Ramilah. The 10,000 residents of the village of Samua near Hebron were placed under extended curfew after they destroyed machinery being used to build a bypass road. Residents oppose the confiscation of their agricultural land for the road. They also fear that the road will endanger their access to thousands of dunams of agricultural lands located between the new road and the Green Line.
In an August letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Arafat warned that an "explosion between Palestinian landowners and settlers is approaching, as a result of the Israeli government's support for expanding settlements."
Popular protests throughout the West Bank have often accompanied the creation of the extensive system of roads connecting settlements. These roads were approved by the PA as part of the Oslo II agreement signed last year.
Palestinians have long maintained that settlement expansion is prohibited by Article 31 of the Oslo II agreement, which notes that the "integrity and status" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be maintained during the interim period scheduled to last until 1999. The agreement prohibits each party from "initiating or taking any step that will change the status" of the occupied territories during this period.
Israel rejects the applicability of these clauses to settlement. During the Labor era, Palestinian concerns about settlements were muted, and the PA's agreement to Israeli demands such as the bypass roads facilitated settlement expansion.
Arafat described Israel's August 12 decision to place mobile homes in West Bank settlements as "a new breach of what had been agreed upon and what had been signed."
"We see how these mobile homes become permanent," said Hanan Ashrawi, minister of higher education. "You cannot say you are part of a peace process based on land for peace and continue to confiscate land. Violations which lead to settlement expansion and land confiscation," she charged, "undermine the foundations of the Oslo process."
Ashrawi criticized the U.S. for not opposing Netanyahu's policy: "When Netanyahu speaks of the settlements and expanding them, no US official sought to emphasize that settlements are illegal and unlawful and run counter to the peace process."
In an additional reflection of the popular antipathy toward the settlements, Hamas issued a communique on August 15 calling for an uprising against settlements. Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahhar, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip and the key speaker at a rally called to oppose settlements, suggested a number of anti-settlement actions, including scattering nails on roads frequented by settlers, staging sit-ins to block roads to settlements, and installing loudspeakers to disrupt settler life.
At the first meeting of the joint steering committee overseeing the implementation of the Oslo accords, PA representative Jamil Tarifi declared, "Israel now speaks of 'no peace without security' so we are adding that there will be no peace with settlements."
Ashrawi condemned the August 28 approval to build more than 3,500 new settlement dwellings: "These are the real actions. We are not interested in statements of appeasement and promises in the air. . . . The real proof is in this decision to build thousands more housing units, to confiscate more land, to expand settlements and settlement activities."
Negotiations Stalemated
The unprecedented Palestinian attention to settlement policy decisions by the Netanyahu government during the summer owes less to the changes that these decisions signal in Israeli settlement policy than to the general deterioration in the atmosphere of Israeli-Palestinian affairs that followed in the immediate wake of Netanyahu's victory. Announcements regarding settlement expansion are now occurring in an overall atmosphere characterized by diplomatic stalemate and the new Israeli government's opposition to objectives at the heart of Palestinian strategy--the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
At a meeting of the Likud central committee on September 5, Netanyahu vowed, "There never will be a Palestinian state between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the [Jordan] River."
In contrast, while settlement expansion policies during the Labor era were the source of never ending Palestinian frustration, Palestinian leaders became reconciled to them as a necessary cost of the negotiating process. Similar policies are now viewed in a more critical light.
