Settlement Monitor

SETTLEMENT MONITOR EDITED BY GEOFFREY ARONSON This section covers items—reprinted articles, statistics, and maps—pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material. No Occupation, No Problem: Levy Commission Recommends Moving Toward De Facto Annexation ..................................153 Moral Imperative Meets Practical Need Refuting YESHA Chairman Dani Dayan’s Myths About Settlements, by Lara Friedman (excerpts) .................................156 The New Settlers, by Ofer Petersburg (excerpts) .....................158 Settlement Facts The Compensation Package for the Settlers: 851 Units to Undermine the Two States Solution, by Hagit Ofran ........................160 New Settlement Areas in Greater Jerusalem .........................161 Area C Update ..............................................162 Peace Now’s Plan to Save Billions by Reducing Some Benefits to Settlements, by Hagit Ofran (excerpts) .......................163 NO OCCUPATION, NO PROBLEM: The secret negotiations that lead to LEVY COMMISSION RECOMMENDS the Oslo Declaration in 1993 and the MOVING TOWARD DE FACto decision of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon to “disengage” from the Gaza Strip in 2005 ANNEXATION offer instructive examples of Israel’s ability to shape the international diplo- From Settlement Report, July–August matic agenda. PM Benjamin Netanyahu 2012. has been singularly successful in frus- The last two years of the administra- trating efforts by the international com- tion of U.S. Pres. Barack Obama have munity to conduct negotiations based been notable for the almost complete upon the armistice line separating Israel absence of serious diplomatic effort to from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. resolve the conflict between Israel and In June, the top-level Commission to the Palestinians. Israeli DM Ehud Barak Examine the Status of Building in Judea recently warned that “political inaction and Samaria, handpicked by Netanyahu is not an option, and if it becomes evi- in March 2012, rejected the interna- dent that it is impossible to reach an tional consensus and PM Netanyahu’s agreement, we need to think about an own statements supporting an end to interim arrangement, or even unilateral occupation and the creation of a Pales- action. Israel cannot allow itself to re- tinian state. The committee’s recommen- main in a state of deadlock.” dations illustrate the extent to which Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XLII, No. 1 (Autumn 2012), pp. 153–165, ISSN: 0377-919X; electronic ISSN: 1533-8614. © 2012 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: jps.2012.XLII.1.153. JPS4201_11_Settlement Monitor.indd 153 11/29/12 2:02 PM 154 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES the demands of Israel’s growing West and Samaria, and the establishment Bank settler population are supported of settlements cannot, in and of by critical sectors of Israel’s judicial, po- itself, be considered to be illegal.” litical, and administrative institutions. • Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth They represent the state’s effort to pro- Geneva Convention outlawing the mote the increasingly strident demands transfer of populations is not appli- of the settler community to legalize cable. “Settlement is a consequence and protect its assets, especially land, of ideological commitment to settle against action, whether by Palestinians the Land of Israel, not compulsion, or by the state itself. and also because of the unsettled The committee, headed by former nature of sovereignty in the area.” High Court Justice Edmund Levy, ad- The committee’s legal and ideological dressed a principal instrument of set- arguments are not new. But this is per- tlement expansion in the last fifteen haps the first time that an Israeli prime years—the creation of scores of “unau- minister has enabled such views to be thorized” new settlements, or outposts. stated so comprehensively and authori- The committee report advances the most tatively. The critical contribution made explicit legal and official ideological as- by the Levy committee, however, is the sertion in decades of Israel’s rights in operational recommendations that result the West Bank, repudiating the interna- from its claim that there is no Israeli tional consensus regarding the status of occupation. the occupied territories. It also suggests These conclusions, if implemented, wide-ranging administrative measures would all but erase the distinction be- that would expand the already signifi- tween land ownership and settlement cant role played by domestic Israeli in Israel and in West Bank settlements, planning and development bodies at the and transfer jurisdiction from the mili- expense of the Civil Administration— tary occupation administration to Is- the military-run occupation bureaucracy, rael’s domestic institutions as a way of which was originally established as the consolidating Israeli control and effec- preeminent authority in the occupied tive sovereignty in the West Bank. territories but is increasingly viewed by According to the committee, because settlers and their patrons as a hindrance international law does not proscribe to their settlement-related demands. settlement, “it is necessary to consider The committee advanced four princi- this question from the standpoint of do- pal conclusions: mestic law.” This assertion that Israel’s • Israel has an internationally sanc- settlement project is the province of do- tioned right to sovereignty in mestic Israeli jurisdiction is the most the West Bank. (Gaza and East noteworthy, critical, and challenging as- Jerusalem were excluded from the pect of the report. committee’s mandate.) This right The incremental expansion of con- was initially recognized by the inter- trol by Israel’s civilian institutions over national community in the 1917 everyday affairs regulating the lives and Balfour Declaration, which excluded conduct of Israel’s settlement commu- consideration of the political rights nities has been a central feature of oc- of the Arab population in Palestine. cupation since the late 1970s. In recent • The laws regulating belligerent occu- years, the focus of such efforts has been pation do not apply to Israel’s pres- on the broad issues of land use, prop- ence in the West Bank. There is, in erty rights, and settlement expansion. short, no “occupation.” The commit- Settlers today have grown to almost tee accepted the view put forward 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish popula- by settlers that the internationally tion, now reaching 350,000 in the West accepted norms governing occupa- Bank and more than 200,000 in East tion and responsibilities toward pop- Jerusalem, intensifying settler demands ulation under occupation “are not for expansion of civil control and its relevant to Israel’s presence in the prevailing Zionist norms over their af- territories of Judea and Samaria.” fairs. Associated with these demands • Based on international law, “Israelis is the state’s interest in addressing the have the legal right to settle in Judea pervasive inattention to law and proper JPS4201_11_Settlement Monitor.indd 154 11/29/12 2:02 PM SETTLEMENT MONITOR 155 procedure outlined most recently in the Sasson and the Sharon government, Sasson report on settlement outposts which adopted the report and its rec- [see Doc. C2 in JPS 135—Ed.]. “We are ommendations, concluded that notwith- no longer in the formative stages of the standing de facto government support, creation of our state when things were the outposts in question should none- done in an informal and arbitrary man- theless be dismantled in light of Israel’s ner,” the Levy committee noted. own laws and international commit- The committee recommends limiting ments. The Levy committee embraced what are considered to be obstructionist this fact as a principal rationale for im- practices by the IDF’s Civil Administra- plementation of its broader agenda— tion, whose administrative requirements legalizing and facilitating the expansion are deemed to conflict with the commit- of settlement all but regardless of land tee’s essential presumption of “the basic ownership, and placing it under even right of all Jews to settle on all of Judea more benevolent civilian oversight and and Samaria, and for a while at least, regulation. in territories under Israeli rule accord- The committee held that there is ing to agreements with the Palestinian no such thing as unauthorized, wild- Authority.” cat settlement efforts in the West Bank. The Civil Administration’s role in set- “From the information before us,” the tlement affairs is described as “onerous report states, “. there is no doubt that and superfluous”; expansion of settle- settlement was undertaken with knowl- ment is afflicted by “needless delay.” The edge by everyone—beginning with committee used the language of reform, government ministers and those who improvement, order, and conscientious lead them, and to the last operational administration to couch

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