Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

The Clinton administration is faced with an ongoing crisis in relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). This crisis has less to do with any particular incident than with the growing Palestinian recognition that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an unreliable partner in the process established by his immediate predecessors...

"The battle for Jerusalem has begun," declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu days before construction began on the new settlement community of Har Homa in the southeast corner of annexed East Jerusalem. "We are now in the thick of it, and I do not intend to lose."

Nine thousand Israelis moved to settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 1996, according to Israel's Ministry of the Interior. In a report published by Peace Now, the growth of the settlements was augmented by 4,661 births, producing an extraordinary rate of natural population increase of more than 3 percent.

The following statements on settlement-related issues were made by President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Nicholas Burns, the Department of State spokesman.

The following excerpts are from a March 7, 1997, interview in Ha'aretz with Yossi Beilin, a minister in the Labor governments of 1992-96 and the principal Israeli architect of the Oslo process.