Settlers Demand More Tangible Support From Netanyahu

"The roots of the people of Israel are in the land of Beit El, Shilo, Betar, and Hebron. And not only will these roots not be torn out, they will be made deeper.

"Our first answer," continued Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a December 12 grave-side eulogy in the West Bank settlement of Beit El for a father and daughter killed by Palestinian gunfire, "is that we are here to stay. We will not be driven out, uprooted, or chased out of our land. We will be strong and our answer is to remain here and to continue in our land."

On November 26, Netanyahu made his first visit to West Bank settlements since his election. He visited the settlements of Ariel and Eli, where, gazing out at the West Bank vista, he declared, "People haven't lived here for thousands of years. Look at these barren hills. Have we deprived anyone of anything? Barren land. You know what, if we hadn't come here it would have stayed barren for another 2,000 years."

Netanyahu is second to none in his rhetorical commitment to settlement throughout the Land of Israel. More so than any prime minister since Menachem Begin, he has made a reaffirmation of his commitment to settlement a core element of his public persona--to the consternation of the Palestinians and to the chagrin of the international community.

This rhetorical commitment has been matched by considerable material support for settlement expansion. Yet for members of the settlement community and their political allies, Netanyahu is expected to do far more than merely continue the rate of growth and development that they enjoyed during the Rabin-Peres years. Netanyahu's refusal to meet their expectations for expedited approval for construction plans during his first months in power is, therefore, a source of deep disappointment for them, and perhaps for Netanyahu himself.

During his visit to Ariel, Netanyahu explained that the previous government declared a policy of "drying out" settlements, but in practice enabled the increase of the settler population by 50 percent. "We don't say that we will dry out [the settlements]," he explained. "We do what we believe in." Faced with such an explanation, settlers demanding a more expansive settlement policy could be forgiven for not seeing the point of Netanyahu's logic.

U.S. criticism of Netanyahu's visit to Ariel prompted some settlers to respond, "If Netanyahu is going to be criticized on settlement it might as well be for what he does rather than for what he says."

Yesha Submits Demands

The unsettled tone of Netanyahu's relations with settlers was on display at a November 7 meeting. Settler representatives had earlier submitted a long list of proposed settlement construction, amounting to thousands of new units in existing settlements.

At the meeting Netanyahu promised to attend personally to expediting settlement construction, particularly a plan for the addition of 3,500 units in settlements around Jerusalem, a plan that will complete the territorial link between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. He committed himself to include settlements on the list of preferred development areas and to streamline the administrative procedures for approving construction in already existing settlements.

These commitments prompted settlement leaders to postpone for the second time in a month planned protests against the government's "freeze" on new construction.

"We raised a list of issues known to the prime minister," explained Benny Kashriel, mayor of Ma'ale Adumim. "Some of the problems result from bureaucracy and administrative bottlenecks and others from issues of principle. We are prepared to wait two or three weeks, when I assume we will know exactly if we are being given the run-around or if they intend to help us."

Later that same day, settlers left a meeting with Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai disappointed in his refusal to approve the scores of building plans for settlements that he inherited from the previous government. Mordechai's subsequent approval of a $37 million, 1,200 unit, public/private development in the Emanuel settlement on November 18 failed to impress his settler critics. They view him, a recently retired general who catapulted to the top ranks of the Likud, as insufficiently committed to the Likud's core settlement beliefs.

According to a report in Ma'ariv, "many participants claimed that "the man is not one of us, he has no business being in our camp." For some time, Yesha leaders have been full of complaints against Mordechai, but against the background of the IDF redeployment in Hebron, relations between them are coming to a head.

Yesha leaders, however, know that their real problem is not with Mordechai but with his boss--Benjamin Netanyahu. "He talks nicely, but on the ground, he is a disaster both in the short and long term," explained Aaron Tsur, head of the Katif Bloc (Gaza) settlement council. "There is no connection between ideology as he represents it before us and between what takes place on the ground. Both in the security and the settlement areas--here there is a complete freeze."

Settler Disaffection

Differences over Israel's requirements in the negotiations on the redeployment in Hebron have been added to continuing frustration over the government's intention not to commit to significant new settlement construction until after implementation of the redeployment from Hebron. Yet settlers, and the right in general, cannot easily mobilize to protest the policies of a Netanyahu government which they were instrumental in electing and which most still consider sympathetically.

"After all," explained Nisin Slomiansky, an important settler strategist who coordinated public protests against the Labor governments, "he is our prime minister. We want this government to continue. For us, there is no other government, but we believe in a policy [of settlement], not in a man."

The disaffection between Netanyahu and settler representatives has become so marked that Netanyahu is receiving little credit when he does implement their agenda. For example, Yesha leaders declared themselves unimpressed by the government's decision to extend development status to all settlements--one of their demands only a month earlier. A statement issued by Yesha claimed that most of the settler communities will not derive any benefit from the reinstatement of this development area status.

Part of the settlers' publicly critical attitudes can be attributed simply to the language of politics in Israel. The fact that settlers routinely threaten to open a public campaign against the government's presumed shortcomings regarding settlement expansion, while in fact refraining from precipitating the kind of conflict that characterized relations with the previous government, is instructive. Yet the disappointment and concern expressed by settlement leaders at the failure to improve upon Labor's settlement policies is real, but so far ineffective in moving the Likud government beyond a continuation of the policies of the previous government.