Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
| ||||||||||||
Now On The Spot, Builders of Beit El Vow to Continue - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum Now On The Spot,
Builders of Beit El Vow to ContinueBy C. J. Chivers
New York Times
April 19, 2002Uriel Sheteren hunched over a tangle of steel bars atop the frame of the home he is building here, preparing to pour concrete for another floor. Behind him, slightly higher on the ridge, another new home was also under construction. The wind rustled the white-and-blue Israeli flag on Mr. Sheteren's van full of tools.
Mr. Sheteren, a father of two, is a Jewish settler, living above Palestinians on the high ridges of the West Bank. He had little use for a comment that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made minutes before his departure from Israel on Wednesday, in which the secretary urged a reconsideration of the settlers' presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. "For the people and leaders of Israel," Secretary Powell said, "the question is whether the time has come for a strong, vibrant state of Israel to look beyond the destructive impact of settlements and occupation, both of which must end."
If Secretary Powell's comment was meant to give pause for reflection by Jews building homes and roads and the like inside territory that Palestinians consider their own, Mr. Sheteren was not interested. "I am building a home for my family," he said. "I will keep building it until it is done." Israel and the Palestinians have agreed, in principle, that the status of Jewish settlements will be decided in negotiations for a permanent peace agreement, which would only occur after a cease-fire is called, the ill will has eased and various confidence-building measures have taken hold.
That's what exists on paper. But with Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen facing off in sieges in Ramallah and Bethlehem, the nudge Secretary Powell intended toward compromise and peaceful cohabitation has not had much effect. The view in this hilltop redoubt of roughly 4,500 settlers is defiant. People here said the settlement's expansion would continue, and the Jewish presence would grow. Baruch Zekbas, who was supervising children in a playground inside the settlement's barbed wire, summed up a common view. "What Colin Powell says, I do not care," he said. "This is not Colin Powell's country."
Jewish settlements, in which nearly 200,000 residents live, have served religious and military purposes since Israel first occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. The one here on a dry, windswept hilltop with a commanding view of Ramallah, the city where Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has been entrapped for three weeks, embodies both. It is here, according to the Book of Genesis, that Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching all the way to heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending, and the Lord saying: "The land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed."
Since Jewish settlers moved onto the hill in the 1970's, Beit El and nearby Arab neighborhoods have become places of striking contrasts. The settlement resembles a middle-class suburb of San Diego, with pale tan subdivisions of modern, comfortable homes with red ceramic roofs. Its streets are clean, its playgrounds new, its public buildings modern and carefully maintained. Just down the hill, in the Arab zone, neighborhoods are grim, with dirt roads, homes in poor repair and a government that has largely been dismantled in Israel's recent military campaign.
Separating the two people are the settlement's wire fences, bunkers and armed security patrols. The fortifications were necessary even before the widespread bloodshed of the past 18 months, settlers said. Now and then over the years, Palestinian militants have ambushed settlers coming and going, or killed soldiers guarding the terrain. Menachem Klein, 30, a reserve sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces who is raising three children in a subdivision here, said that Palestinian claims to Beit El were baseless in light of the biblical text. "This place we took from nobody," Mr. Klein said. "This was our land. Here was Jacob's ladder. How can we take from somebody something that was already ours?"
Beit El's biblical topography — elevation high enough that Jacob could dream of climbing toward heaven — also suggests a pragmatic use. Nearby is the hill Baal Hatzor, the highest point in the West Bank, and the site of an Israeli Air Force early warning station. Alongside the settlement is a large Israeli military base, which includes both an active garrison and pre-positioned weapons and equipment for reservists to gather in case of regional war. In the simplest sense, the string of settlements on high ridges in the Palestinian territories, of which Beit El is one, are where Israel's military expects it might have to repel any conventional assault from the east, part of a potential front should relations with neighboring Muslim states spin out of control, as they did in 1948, 1967 and 1973.
The policy of Israel's current government, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has been to refrain from building new settlements while allowing current settlements to grow naturally, although critics have said that the concept of "natural growth" has been interpreted liberally. Beit El's settlers gave voice to a much sterner view, planning construction as they see fit. Holding his 2-year-old daughter, Mr. Klein pointed at the house behind him. "This is a new building," he said. Then he pointed at another, and another, until he had traced his hand over his whole block.
"This is a new building, and that is a new building, and that one, my home, it is a new building also," he said. "All of this neighborhood is new buildings." He chuckled. Back in the playground, Mr. Zekbas had the same view. "We believe in a full Israel," he said. "We can build wherever we want."
Peace Process Index
Land Disputes Index
Right of Return Index
Main Index on Israel and Palestine
Issues and Debates Specific Countries Index
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
