Israelis are now engaged in one of the most difficult, and potentially revolutionary, debates in the country’s 46-year history. The Oslo accords, the February massacre of Palestinians in Hebron, and the recent Cairo agreement on the implementation of Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and Jericho have forced an extraordinary national debate on the role and value of Israeli settlements.
The massacre by an Israeli settler of nearly 40 Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Hebron in the early morning hours of February 25 has called into question Israel’s ability to fulfill its obligation to protect the 2 million Palestinians of the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
The rampage by a settler at Hebron’s Ibrahami Mosque on February 25 has forced the settlement issue into the center of Israeli life and has prompted calls for its inclusion in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The growing violence in the occupied territories has served notice that the respite from a confrontation over settlements which both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) thought they had won in the Declaration of Principles was an illusion.
The agreement on Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip signed on September 13 contains four specific references to Israeli settlements and makes it clear that Israel has persuaded the Palestinians to defer consideration of this issue to the permanent status negotiations, which are to begin no later than three years after the start of the interim period.
The latest State Department annual report on Israeli settlement in the occupied territories attempts to present the settlement policies of the Rabin government in their most advantageous light, stressing efforts to curb settlements.
U.S. opposition to settlements eased when Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian testified in support of their “natural growth.” This policy change comes at a time when Israel is trying to insulate its settlements from the effects of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel’s plans for the Jerusalem region, including a significant portion of the occupied West Bank, are moving ahead swiftly. A steering committee composed of representatives of the Jerusalem municipality and the ministries of housing and interior has appointed a commission of Israeli planners, economists, architects, and lawyers to prepare a master plan for the Jerusalem region by the end of 1993.
One of the problems that bedeviled U.S. relations with Israel when Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister was Israel’s official dissembling about the true rate of settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yitzhak Rabin assumed the leadership of his party and country largely on his promise to reorder the national priorities established by Likud governments and pursued since 1977.