OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 July 2003 — The population is growing three times faster in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip than in Israel proper, said a report published yesterday by the Israeli National Bureau of Statistics. While settler population soared by 5.7 percent in 2002, Israeli demographic growth inside the Green Line was trailing at 1.9 percent over the same period, down from 2.2 percent in 2001 and 2.6 percent in 2000, the report said.
According to first semester 2003 figures, the total population of Israel reached 6.7 million, including a record 231,443 settlers. The settlement figures do not include the estimated 200,000 Jews living in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem. The increase in the number of settlers is accounted for mainly by the growth in urban West Bank communities near the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank, where many ultra-Orthodox families with high birth rates have settled in recent years.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops fired rubber bullets yesterday to break up a protest over Israel’s construction of a security fence in the West Bank as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began a visit to the United States. At least five people, including an American, were wounded in the clash as protesters including Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners surged toward the fence and tried to tear down a gate near the northern West Bank village of Anin, witnesses said.
The clash highlighted the anger stirred by the construction of the fence, an issue on which Israel and the United States disagree. It is likely to be raised in talks between Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush in the White House today. At Anin, troops used tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades as nearly 300 protesters gathered on both sides of the fence and tried to tear down a gate, witnesses said. The demonstrators included 30 Israelis, 50 foreigners and about 200 Palestinians, they said.
In another development, Syrian Prime Minister Mustapha Miro said in remarks published yesterday that regional countries such as Turkey, Iran and Syria should strengthen their ties in a bid to resist US efforts to reshape the Middle East.
Miro made the appeal on the eve of his visit to Ankara, which will take place amid US warnings to Turkey, a long-standing Muslim ally and NATO partner, to toe Washington’s line in relations with its southern neighbor Syria. “The whole world knows about America’s policy to establish a new order in the Middle East,” Miro told the mass-circulation Turkish daily Sabah from Damascus. “Therefore I think Turkey, Syria and Iran as well as other countries need to act more and more together because if we stay alone it becomes easier to do what has been done to Iraq,” he was quoted as saying.
The United States - as the current rulers of Iraq - are a neighbor “at least as bad as Saddam Hussein”, said the Syrian premier, whose country Washington accuses of harboring terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. “Our common wish is that the occupation ends as soon as possible and America leaves the region as soon as possible,” Miro was quoted as saying.
Turkey’s relations with both Syria and Iran have warmed in the wake of the US-led war in Iraq. The three neighbors share concerns that any move toward self-rule by the Kurds in northern Iraq could spark unrest among their own sizable Kurdish minorities.
But the United States has warned Turkey that its cooperation with Syria and Iran should be limited and coordinated with Washington. “I think anything that Turkey does with Syria or does with Iran should fit into an overall policy with us, of getting those countries to change their bad behavior,” US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview with Turkish television in May.
In remarks to another Turkish newspaper, however, Miro said the recent improvement in Turkish-Syrian ties was not against US interests. “The objective of Turkish-Syrian relations is not to challenge the United States... These are relations between neighbors,” he told Hurriyet.
Miro’s talks here will take place in the wake of Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s visit to Washington last week, in which the two NATO allies sought to improve their ties, at an all-time low following Ankara’s failure to back the war in Iraq and persisting tensions over Iraqi Kurdistan.
Tension eased in October 1998 when Ocalan left Damascus, his longtime safe haven, and Syria pledged to stop harboring the rebels, allowing a significant improvement in both political and economic relations.
