The West Bank - Illegal Settlements

'We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. Yes, we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.'

The infamous words of Ariel Sharon, a former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking in 1973. Five years after Israel had invaded and occupied the Palestinian territory known as the West Bank, he outlined the key role that 'settlements' would play in the military strategy of occupation, control and, ultimately, the expansion of Israel.

Another 36 years down the line, with Israel free to ignore UN resolution 242 to withdraw from its illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, there are now close to half a million Israeli occupiers, better known as 'settlers', living in the Palestinian West Bank.

This in itself breaches UN resolution 446, which states: ' The policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories [Syria's Golan Heights] occupied since 1967 have no legal validity, and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.'

The occupiers are housed in 200 settlements, which are strategically built on hilltops and surrounded by high walls, on land taken from the Palestinians.

Palestinian villages have been demolished and their inhabitants left homeless, olive groves uprooted by bulldozers and farmland expropriated to construct the settlements, which are then illegally annexed to Israel by the building of major 'by-pass' roads.

These roads take more land from the native Palestinian population and provide high speed links, connecting the settlements to each other and back to Israel.

In a system that reminded Archbishop Desmond Tutu, when he visited the West Bank, of apartheid South Africa, Palestinians are not allowed to use these roads or to cross them, despite the fact that many of the roads separate Palestinian villagers from their farms, schools, or water supply.

This policy has devasted the economic life of the West Bank, with an estimated 46% of Palestinians in the West Bank now living below the poverty line. (In sealed-off Gaza, the figure is 80%)

For every 100km of by-pass road, Israel confiscates around 2,500 acres of Palestinian land, destroying whatever homes or farms happen to be in the way.

Huge earth mounds are built around the roads to prevent Palestinians, reduced to second-class citizens and crammed into ever-shrinking enclaves, from gaining access to them.

Changing the 'physical character and demographic composition' of territories occupied by Israel since 1967 flouts UN resolution 465.

Additionally, 'Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population...in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention'. (Resolution 465)

And while the occupiers, as citizens of Israel, enjoy full civil rights, these same rights are denied to the Palestinians living under military occupation in their own land.

Ironically, settlement building doubled between 1993 and 1995, the period of the Oslo Accords - the US-brokered peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians - even as Israel was signing treaties to freeze settlement building and conduct a staged withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.

'Settlers' are encouraged to populate the West Bank through tax breaks given by the Israeli government, while glossy advertising campaigns in America promise 'fresh mountain air', 'stunning views' and 'wide open spaces' to those who decide to buy a settlement property and emigrate.

Each settler is allocated 1,450 cubic metres of water a year - vital when you have a swimming pool to fill. Palestinians are allocated 83 cubic metres a year, and are forced to pay double for it. The water tanks which sit on the roof of Palestinian houses are a regular target for pot shots by Israeli soldiers.

Settlers are armed and are not prosecuted for shooting Palestinians, making Palestinians a legitimate target as they go to school, to their farms and about their daily business. Road blocks are set up, cars burned , windows smashed and crops destroyed as the settlers violently try to ethnically cleanse the West Bank.

In the meantime, education has virtually ground to a halt, basic healthcare services are dangerously inadequate and the building of the illegal Separation Wall, in addition to just over 1,000 permanent and 'flying' checkpoints has made it almost impossible for Palestinians to move freely within the West Bank.

Since September 2000, 69 Palestinian women have been forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints resulting in the deaths of 35 newborn babies.

The Wall and the settlements have reduced Palestinian territory within the West Bank to nothing more than a series of bantustans (named after the territory that was set aside for the black inhabitants of South Africa during apartheid).

These enclaves are delibarately separated from each other - leaving no contiguous area that could feasibly form a Palestinian state - by the Wall and the settlements, which are arguably too entrenched now, with fixed populations, to remove.

Ariel Sharon's 1973 vision for the West Bank is, 36 years on, a reality.

Sources: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Innovative Minds
Palestine Monitor: Exposing Life under Occupation
Interpal

Recommended reading: Palestinian Walks - Notes on a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh (pub. Profile Books)