BETAR ILLIT, West Bank, 11 September 2005 — Gravel-laden trucks rumbled up dirt roads, and laborers plastered walls of high-rise apartments in this fast-growing Jewish settlement, one of several across the West Bank where Israel is flouting its obligation under a US-backed peace plan to freeze expansion. Since the plan’s launch two years ago, some 4,200 houses have gone up in settlements — enough to increase the settler population, now 240,000, by 10 percent.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be asked about his vision for the West Bank — including Palestinian fears that he is unilaterally drawing a border there while blocking attempts to renew talks — when he meets next week with world leaders in New York during the United Nation’s 60th anniversary celebrations.
Israel’s message is that it has paid a high price by withdrawing from Gaza, and that peace talks cannot resume so long as militants remain armed, Sharon’s aides say. Until then, Israel doesn’t consider itself bound by the plan. The Palestinians fear the Gaza pullout is the first stage of a plan by Sharon to tighten Israel’s hold over the eastern sector of Jerusalem and large tracts of the West Bank.
“What Sharon is doing is negotiating with himself,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. The Palestinians point to the wall Israel is building to separate it from the West Bank, saying its route is dictated by politics, not security, as Israel claims. The wall is to encircle Jerusalem and meanders into the West Bank to enclose major settlement blocs.
Sharon says he wants to hold on to large blocs in any peace deal, but is not specific. Nor does he explain what would happen to the dozens of smaller Israeli communities on the “Palestinian” side of the barrier, where about one-fourth of the settlers live.
