Settlement Symposium Focuses on “Obstacles to Peace”

By Greg Noakes

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine and Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies co-hosted a June 2 symposium on "Settlements and Peace: The Problem of Jewish Colonization in Palestine." A multinational panel of experts and analysts moderated by Harvard University's Bishara Bahbah discussed the history of Zionist colonization, the extent of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, changes in American policy toward Israeli settlement activity and the impact of dispossession on Palestinian society. Far from being simply what the Clinton administration terms "a complicating factor," the panelists argued that Jewish settlements are the key to the future of Middle East peace as well as a determinant factor in the daily life of Palestinian society.

Walter Lehn, a Canadian linguist and Middle East scholar who taught at universities in both North America and the Arab world before his retirement, discussed attempts by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to purchase land in pre-1948 Palestine and their impact on the geographic and demographic profile of the area. The JNF, founded in 1901, was charged with buying as much Palestinian land as possible and bringing it under Jewish control. Although legally a separate entity, the JNF was under the control of the World Zionist Organization.

The fund operated under strict rules which prohibited the sale of JNF-acquired land and barred the lease, sub-lease or settlement of such land by non-Jews, according to Lehn. These regulations were designed not only to consolidate Jewish landholdings, but also to promote the early Zionist vision of "self-labor," which held that Jews should work the land and "make the desert bloom."

A History of Dispossession

Lehn, author of the landmark 1988 study The Jewish National Fund (available through the AET Book Club), said that until 1930 the JNF concentrated its acquisition efforts on large absentee landowners, most of whom lived in Lebanon or Syria and were willing to sell for a good price. These acquisitions accounted for fully half of the JNF's land purchases at the time of Israeli independence in 1948.

Between 1930 and 1938, the JNF also turned to large Palestinian landholders. Although the concomitant rise in Palestinian nationalism put public pressure on such families to reject the JNF's overtures, these purchases made up another quarter of the JNF's total pre-1948 purchases.

Having exhausted these sources by 1938, the JNF then adopted a policy of buying any available land regardless of value or location, at times using means of "dubious legality," according to Lehn. At the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the JNF possessed 936,000 dunums of property, over half of the Jewish-owned land in the mandate territory. Yet despite these efforts, Jewish-owned land totalled only 3.5 percent of the land of Palestine. While some Israelis argue that the meager results of the JNF's efforts were due to a lack of funds, Lehn said a more important factor was the unwillingness of resident Palestinians to sell their land to the Zionists.

Although it is not a high-profile organization, the JNF continues to exist, Lehn pointed out, and still collects rents on its property and receives large donations from diaspora Jews via organizations like the U.S. tax-deductible United Jewish Appeal and through bequests of land or money. In fact, the JNF still holds title to properties in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan which it bought before 1948 with an eye toward an enlarged Jewish state. Lehn said the JNF continues with its mission of "guaranteeing the Jewishness of the land in perpetuity," a task deemed too important to be entrusted to the government of Israel itself.

Ibrahim Matar, deputy director of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) in Jerusalem since 1986, discussed the extent of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, in addition to the rationale behind settlement development. According to Matar, the settlements have been used to break up the continuity of Palestinian territory, thus precluding the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Palestinian population centers in Jerusalem and the West Bank are surrounded with settlements in an attempt to isolate them. In the event, according to Matar, it was the settlers themselves who were surrounded during the intifada and left vulnerable to attacks.

Matar also discussed the pretexts used by various Israeli governments when establishing Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Between 1967 and 1980, most settlements were established for "security reasons," though it is actually the settlers who have required protection over the years. Nevertheless, the rationale is still used today by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who declares that the so-called "security settlements," especially in the Jordan Valley, must remain intact. Matar noted that following the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan the need for a line of armed settlements along the border seems to have disappeared, though Rabin's argument has not.

"The New Sultans"

After 1980, Israel began to seize land for settlements on the basis that the properties had reverted to the state, i.e., the Israeli government, in accordance with an 1853 law which provided for the return to the Ottoman state of land parcels which were less than 50 percent under cultivation or which were not cultivated for three consecutive years. Referring to this use of Ottoman law, Matar noted, "The Israelis have become the new sultans of the West Bank!" Despite Israeli claims, Matar said a review of deeds shows that some 95 percent of the land seized by Israel in the territories was Palestinian-owned, with the remaining five percent being public land.

With regard to East Jerusalem, Ibrahim Matar said the 150 acres which Israel attempted to seize last spring pales in comparison to the 6,500 acres in East Jerusalem already claimed under a 1943 British Mandate ordinance allowing the state to take land to be used for a "public purpose." Matar said that of the 287,000 Israeli settlers living in the occupied territories in 1994, fully 121,000 were situated in an expanded East Jerusalem. The land seizures and subsequent construction of Jewish settlements effectively have surrounded the city's Palestinian residents. "The only area open is the sky above us," Matar remarked sadly.

He closed by pointing to two steps Israel must take with regard to settlements if it hopes to keep the peace process alive. First, Tel Aviv should end "the quiet land war" of dispossession being waged against the Palestinians, and secondly, Israel should begin preparations to dismantle and evacuate settlements in the occupied territories. Should the Likud or some other right-wing party come to power, however, Matar warned that "they can expect another intifada."

Geoffrey Aronson of the Foundation for Middle East Peace traced the history of changing U.S. policy toward the settlements. Until 1980, American policy was based on four principles, not all of which were mutually compatible, Aronson noted. First, Washington declared that the Israeli settlements were illegal and violated international law. Second, settlement construction prejudiced the eventual outcome of future negotiations on the status of the occupied territories, according to the U.S.

At the same time, Washington agreed that once the settlements were built, they were not easily removed. Finally, American policymakers declared that the final disposition of existing settlements should be decided by the parties to the conflict, and was therefore a subject for negotiations.

Under Ronald Reagan, however, American statements ceased to refer to settlements as "illegal," calling them merely "obstacles to peace." Aronson said that despite his strained relations with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, George Bush also refrained from declaring the settlements illegal under international law.

Bush's secretary of state, James Baker III, agreed to delay discussion of Israeli settlements until final status negotiations in order to coax Shamir to the 1991 Madrid Conference, and even during the battle over U.S. loan guarantees did not demand a halt in settlement construction. Aronson noted that the loan guarantee arrangement worked out between Bush and incoming Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, designed to limit settlement activity, paradoxically sanctioned for the first time Israeli construction in the territories by allowing for the "natural growth" of existing settlements.

Bill Clinton has followed his predecessor's lead in allowing additional construction within existing settlements, while also permitting the establishment of new settlements so long as they are "privately funded." In addition, the Clinton administration has taken to calling the settlements a "complicating factor in the peace process," in the words of Ambassador Robert Pelletreau, further weakening Washington's historical criticism.

A Rationale to Remain

Aronson charged the administration with using the language of the Oslo accords, specifically the agreement to delay negotiations on the settlements' final status, to "soft-pedal" criticism of Rabin's building activities in the territories. "Rabin is presiding over a major expansion of settlement infrastructure and population in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and, if you can believe it, even Gaza," Aronson said. "Settlements and settlers offer the Israel Defense Force a rationale for remaining in the West Bank as something other than an occupying army," Aronson argued.

Muhammad Hallaj, a former Bir Zeit University professor and director of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine who currently serves on the board of the Independent Palestinian Commission for Citizen's Rights, closed the symposium by placing the impact of the settlements in a Palestinian context. He declared the settlements "are threatening to the Palestinian national future" and are a "central issue" in ongoing Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Hallaj, speaking with a restrained passion, described the effects of the settlements on Palestinians living in the territories. Settlement activity requires large-scale dispossession of scarce economic resources, particularly land and water. Decrying the Zionist myth of "a land without a people for a people without a land," Hallaj argued that settlements represent a major diversion of dwindling resources from the majority of the area's residents to a small, pampered minority.

He also pointed to the presence on Palestinian land of thousands of armed settlers scattered among the Arab populace. "Armed settlers are an armed militia," he stated, "a second army of occupation." The settlements themselves are "instruments of an apartheid system," according to Hallaj, complete with a dual system of laws which systematically strips non-Jews of their rights and privileges.

Hallaj also pointed out that settlements are made up not just of the housing units themselves, but also green belts, industrial zones, army camps and extensive road networks. These constructs break up the "geographic continuity and demographic coherence" of the West Bank, and do "violence to the rights and expectations of dispossessed Palestinians," he declared.

Finally, Hallaj said, the settlements cast an air of uncertainty over the future of the Palestinians. So long as land continues to be seized and settlements continue to be built, Palestinian life will be "uncertain, tense and impoverished," Hallaj argued, subject to immediate and irrevocable threat. Hallaj ended by underlining the gravity of the settlement issue for Palestinians. "It is a matter of self-preservation," he said simply.

Greg Noakes is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.