JERUSALEM, 16 February 2005 — Israel has plans to build a new settlement in the West Bank that could take in settlers uprooted from Gaza, officials said yesterday, drawing protest from Palestinians who fear losing land for a state they seek. Gvaot, planned as an extension to the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, appeared to fall within the cracks of a US-led “road map” peace plan whose final vision is hotly disputed as Israel and the Palestinians try to stabilize a tentative ceasefire.
The road map requires a halt to settlement-building on land Israel captured in 1967 and where Palestinians want statehood. But President George W. Bush said in 2004 that Israel could expect to keep some of the West Bank land under an accord.
Disclosing the Gvaot project, Housing Minister Isaac Herzog said Jewish settlers slated for evacuation from Gaza this year would be encouraged to relocate to sparsely populated areas of Israel, but could also go to the West Bank if they chose. “I cannot prevent an individual who wants to use his compensation to buy a house in Gush Etzion from doing so,” he told Reuters. “This would be totally within his rights.”
But he stressed the settlement plan had been on the books for a decade and no decision had been made to actually start building. “I will review the idea and of course bear in mind the political ramifications and necessity,” he said. He was alluding to wariness about possible US. opposition.
A US official suggested that if the plan were implemented, it would damage efforts to revive the road map spurred by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Jan. 9 election on a platform to stop fighting and start negotiating for statehood. “We are concerned about any building of new or additional settlements in the West Bank, because the road map calls for a cessation of settlement activity, and we will be looking into this,” he told Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon aims to remove 8,500 settlers from Gaza under his plan to “disengage” from conflict with Palestinians, while cementing Israel’s hold on swathes of the larger West Bank where 230,000 settlers live. Gush Etzion, about 20 km south of Jerusalem, has about 15,000 settlers alone and is among several sprawling enclaves Sharon regards as strategic assets not to be ceded.
Palestinian officials, engaged in security coordination talks with Israel since Abbas and Sharon declared a cease-fire at a Feb. 8 summit in Egypt, cried foul over the settlement plan. “Israel is throwing sand in our eyes by continuing with the settlement process (in the West Bank),” Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei told Reuters before a cabinet meeting.
Israel has been expanding larger West Bank settlements for years and Palestinians fear this could dash their hope for a viable state envisioned by the road map. Sharon has faced strong opposition from right-wing Israelis to abandoning territory they regard as a biblical birthright — including within his government — although polls show most of the Jewish state’s citizens favor a pullout from tiny Gaza.
Senior political sources said that Sharon hoped to win a key Cabinet vote on the Gaza plan this Sunday by also presenting for approval a resolution to extend Israel’s controversial West Bank wall to encompass Gush Etzion. Israel calls the network of fences and walls, a third of whose planned 730-km length has been built, a bulwark against suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of its citizens. Palestinians call it a disguised bid to annex land.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian minister said yesterday the Palestinian Authority and Israel have reached an agreement in principle on the transfer of security control in parts of the West Bank, including Jericho. “We have an agreement on the withdrawals, starting with Jericho, which will involve the entire urban areas and not just the towns,” negotiations minister Saeb Erekat told AFP.
“The checkpoints around the towns will be dismantled and the roadblocks will be lifted,” he added. Erekat said the deal had been reached during talks late Monday with Sharon’s chief adviser, Dov Weisglass.
