Battle for 'settlement blocs'

by Caroline Glick
October 13, 2005 

When the Sharon government decided to expel all Jews from Gaza, 
their communities' physical isolation and the fact that they were 
fenced-in and thus geographically limited, eased the work of the 
evacuation forces both during the planning and implementation of 
their mass expulsion. 

Today for residents of Judea and Samaria as well as for those on 
the Left who seek their uprooting, the successful expulsion of 
Gazan Jews has raised a number of questions regarding the 
government's plans for erecting the security fence around 
communities in the areas. On the one hand, residents of 
settlements not included in the fence route contend with the fact 
that from the perspective of the political Left - including the 
Sharon-Peres government and the Supreme Court - Israel is less 
than likely to demand the inclusion of their communities within 
the borders of sovereign Israel in any future peace deal with the 
Palestinians. For those whose communities are included in the 
fence route, the question becomes what the route of the planned 
fence says about the government's intention to enable their 
growth and prosperity and to guarantee their security. 

When addressing non-leftist audiences, Prime Minister Ariel 
Sharon loudly extols his commitment to the preservation of 
what he refers to as "settlement blocs" in Judea and Samaria. 
Sharon ostentatiously points to the letter he received from 
US President George W. Bush in April 2004 where the subject 
of Israel's final borders is vaguely discussed. The letter is 
presented as a sort of trophy meant to prove Sharon's Zionist 
bona fides to the majority of Israelis who categorically reject 
the return to Israel's indefensible frontiers along the 1949 
armistice lines. Yet beyond his evocations of non-existent 
American guarantees and vague declarations of fealty to 
Israel's right to our ancestral lands in Judea and Samaria, 
Sharon has never specifically delineated what he means when 
he refers to settlement blocs. 

Given Sharon's silence on the subject, the best way to test his 
intentions is to visit the proposed route of the security fence in 
Gush Etzion - one of the settlement blocs that Sharon insists 
will always remain part of Israel. Work on the security fence 
around Gush Etzion, located just south of Jerusalem, is scheduled 
to begin immediately after the High Holy Days. 

Three disturbing conclusions arise from a survey of the proposed 
route. First, in spite of Sharon's protestations to the contrary, 
the route of the fence shows that he has no intention of preserving 
the entire settlement bloc. Many of the communities inside of the 
Gush Etzion Regional Council - like Karmei Tzur in the south and 
Nokdim and Tekoa in the east - are excluded from the fence route. 
Aside from that, the route gives priority to Arab property rights 
over both Jewish property rights and the security needs of the 
50,000 Israelis who live in the area. The following examples 
illustrate this disturbing truth. 

The community of Bat Ayin does not have a security fence. 
Distinct from the other communities in Gush Etzion, Bat Ayin 
was conceived and developed along the view that its best 
guarantee of security and prosperity is for its land to be settled 
sparsely along the wide expanse of the Judean hills rather than 
densely and in a limited geographical area. 

This view has enabled the community to grow and secure itself 
rather well. Yet, the route of the security fence will artificially 
wreck Bat Ayin's ability to protect itself. The planned route 
places the fence no more than a couple of dozen meters outside 
the houses of the community's residents on the incline separating 
their homes from the wadi below. The route excludes the hilltop 
immediately across the valley from Bat Ayin and so puts the 
homes of the residents within assault rifle range of terrorists. 
Fenced into their community, the residents will have no ability 
to deter attackers or to pursue those who shoot from outside 
the fence. 

Aside from that, the land that is set to be placed on "the Arab 
side" of the fence includes 400 dunams of privately owned Jewish 
land bought for Gush Etzion by the JNF in the early 1940s. 
As well, thousands of dunams of state land, cultivated by the 
JNF, is set to be transferred to "the Arab side." The effective 
mass seizure of these lands is justified by the government as a 
way of ensuring that the residents of the small Arab village of 
Jabah (which is controlled by Hamas), will be able to cultivate 
a few dozen dunams of olive groves. 

Today Gush Etzion is connected to sovereign Israel by Route 367 
which connects it to the center of the country, and by Highway 60 
which connects it to Jerusalem. Route 367 today runs south of 
Jabah. 

The plans for the security fence involve investing some NIS 100 
million in order to move Route 367 to Jabah's north. This is to be 
accomplished in order to connect Jabah to the Arab village 
Beit Tzurif (which is also controlled by Hamas), and to leave 
both villages out of the fence route. The new road will be located 
on a narrow mountain ridge beneath Jabah and all motorists 
traveling along the road will immediately be exposed targets 
for any terrorist wishing to shoot a Jew from the village. 

As Daniel Winston from Bat Ayin puts it, "We'll be like fish in a 
barrel." As to Highway 60, across from the northern entrance 
to Efrat is a hilltop that controls the highway. The route of the 
security fence is set to transfer control over the top of this hill to 
the Palestinians. As a result, anyone entering Efrat from 
Highway 60 will be exposed to attack. 

Last month Gush Etzion's Regional Council sent a letter to the 
Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria laying out the 
residents' concerns regarding the proposed route of the fence. 
The response they received in a letter dated September 20 
from the Civil Administration's legal adviser was as revealing as 
it was alarming. 

"The goal of the security fence is to prevent penetration into 
these communities, and is not being designed to prevent shooting 
at the communities," the legal adviser noted. But the sad truth is 
that the current route does not simply prevent shooting attacks, 
it invites them. 

When residents of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion - the original community 
in Gush Etzion, which was built in the 1930s, destroyed by the 
Jordanian Legion in the War of Independence and then rebuilt in 
1967 - were given the details of the proposed route of the fence, 
they published a declaration on September 24 where they stated, 
"The proposed route of the separation fence around the 
communities of Gush Etzion is a terrible solution that harms 
both Jews and Arabs. As a result we are relinquishing it and 
ask to substitute it with alternative security methods that are 
being planned for communities in Judea and Samaria." 

Following Kfar Etzion's declaration, the heads of the regional 
and local councils of Gush Etzion, Beitar Illit and Efrat met 
this week and published their own statement. There they 
announced they are "demanding that the Minister of Defense 
not conduct any work on the route of the security fence until 
the debate between the area residents and the security 
establishment has been completed." 

In addition to the government's approved fence route, the 
ultra-leftist Council for Peace and Security, which is financed 
by the European Union and the New Israel Fund and headed 
by Major Gen. (res.) Danny Rothschild, has its own proposed 
route for the security fence around Gush Etzion. 

The council's route is relevant because on several occasions 
in the past, the council has petitioned the Supreme Court and 
demanded changes in the government's route. Its past petitions 
have been warmly received by the politicized court that has 
adopted its routes in spite the IDF's strenuous assertions that 
they endanger Israel's security. The court has defended its 
decisions by adopting the council's view that Palestinian property 
rights should be given priority over Israel's security and Jewish 
property rights. 

In the council's proposed route, the security fence would surround 
Efrat on the east and west effectively turning it into a ghetto. 
Indeed, the route would ghettoize all the Jewish communities 
in the region and connect them to one another by narrow corridors, 
transferring all the outlying areas to Arab control. In spite of the 
vast differences in geography and topography, the council's route 
would effectively transform Gush Etzion, on the southern border 
of Jerusalem, into a second Gush Katif - fenced-in communities 
with no ability to expand. 

Shaul Goldstein, the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, 
believes that the residents must try to cooperate with the IDF 
and the government in an effort to change the proposed route 
of the fence. In his view, if Gush Etzion follows the line set out 
by residents of Kfar Etzion and rejects the fence completely, 
the result will be to dry up industry, investment and tourism in 
the region. Goldstein also fears that in the absence of the fence, 
prospective new residents will opt not to move to the area and 
current residents will opt to move away out of fear that the area 
will be uprooted in the future. 

At the same time, Goldstein believes that if the government 
does not change the proposed route of the fence, Gush Etzion 
will have no choice other than to reject the fence in its entirety 
because of the security threats that emanate from the current 
route. In such a scenario, the residents of Gush Etzion will be 
forced to fight a political battle against the widespread assumption 
that all areas not located within the route of the fence will 
eventually be transferred - Judenrein - to Palestinian control. 

Whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, the dispute 
over Gush Etzion's fence will have long-term significance for 
the future of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria as well as 
in east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. As the battle unfolds 
three things will become clear. First, the Sharon-Peres 
government's attitude towards the fence route will clarify what 
the government's actual intentions are in terms of preserving and 
enabling the security and prosperity for Sharon's so-called 
"settlement blocs" in Judea and Samaria. 

Second, the IDF's stance regarding the fence route and its 
willingness, as the statutory body responsible for ensuring 
Israel's security, to stand up to the Supreme Court in defense 
of Israel's right to defensible borders (which necessarily must be 
beyond the indefensible 1949 armistice lines), will establish a 
precedent for the long-term dispute over all Israeli claims to 
sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. 

Finally, in the wake of the complete failure of the leadership of 
the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza to prevent 
the destruction of the communities in Gaza and northern Samaria 
this summer, the political strength of these leaders vis-a-vis the 
government and state on the one hand and the public on the 
other is again about to be tested. No matter how the battle pans 
out, its results will form the basis for all future battles regarding 
Israel's sovereign borders.