Peace Now: Jewish Settlers Ready to Quit Gaza, West Bank
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The
main obstacle to removing illegal settlements is Sharon's
government, says Peace Now
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, July 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Most Jewish
settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories would quit illegal
Israeli settlements if the government ordered them out and offered
financial compensation, the anti-settlement group Peace Now said in a
study released Wednesday, July 24, 2002.
The survey found that 68% of settlers "recognize the authority of
the democratic institutions of the country to decide on a withdrawal
from the settlements and will conform to such a decision," Agency
France Press (AFP) reported.
The survey, unprecedented in its scope and depth, was supervised by an
academic committee of professors from Tel Aviv University and
conducted by the Hopp Research company on 3,200 households, in every
settlement numbering 150 inhabitants and in most of the smaller ones.
The Israeli group, which supports an Israeli withdrawal to the borders
of 1967 when Israel seized lands from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and
Egypt, said that 6% would use illegal means to oppose the decision of
their ouster, while 26% will obey such a decision following a struggle
by legal means.
The survey was carried out in three "waves" on different
dates between April and July 2002. According to Peace Now, the survey
was based on a representative sample of about 3,200 households in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip and a control group composed of some 800
control households located over the Green Line. A total of 4,000 phone
surveys were done.
The survey, which was carried out over a period of three months,
reveals that a 59% majority of Israeli settlers would choose financial
compensation as their preferred option in case of withdrawal, while
10% would favor being relocated in Israel proper.
Only 9%would insist on remaining in their settlement, while 23% said
they would choose to be relocated in another settlement in the
Palestinian territories, the Peace Now survey said.
There are an estimated 200,000 settlers spread out over up to 200
illegal settlements, although accurate figures are not available.
Another 200,000 Jews live in occupied then annexed east Jerusalem.
Jewish settlements, one of the root causes of the Palestinian Intifada
against Israeli occupation in 2000, are considered illegal by the
international community.
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settler population presents a grave danger to Palestinians
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The U.N. Security Council has called on Israel to withdraw from the
occupied territories it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in
exchange for peace.
However, Peace Now stressed that the level of willingness to leave
among the people surveyed suggests that settlements are not immovable
and that the main obstacle to peace is hardline Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's government.
"The settlers, with the exception of a very small extremist
minority, will not be an obstacle to a peace agreement," Peace
Now said, adding that views expressed by the Council of Settlers were
not representative.
Peace Now said that in the areas where it found the highest level of
readiness to leave such as the southern Gaza Strip, the Jordan Valley
and the northwestern West Bank, many only stayed for financial
reasons, as they could find no buyers for their houses.
Professor Dan Jacobson of Tel Aviv University, who helped carry out
the poll, said that while the number of houses being built in existing
settlements was on the increase, the settler population was actually
dropping.
Peace
Now cited the example of the Adora settlement near the West Bank city
of Al-Khalil (Hebron), where 80 percent of the population have left
since the beginning of the Intifada and where an eight-room villa can
be rented for just over 50 dollars a month.
The group urged the government to use the huge amounts of money poured
into the settlements "for the purpose of fair compensation to the
settlers in order to ensure their smooth transfer inside the state of
Israel."
"Those people are caught in the settlements. Many of them want to
leave, but there is no way for them to leave because nobody will buy
their homes," said Professor Itzhak Schnell of Tel Aviv
University.
"The
minute there is a mechanism in place, it is clear the floodgates will
open," Peace Now spokesman Didi Remez said.
History
of Settlements
Illegal
Israeli Jewish-only settlements have expanded across the West Bank,
Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. By the end of 1967, there were just three
settlements; by mid-1999 this had risen to 195, of which there were 18
in Gaza Strip and 177 in the West Bank (including Jerusalem).
The
settler population is increasing at a faster rate than the Israeli
population as a whole. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of
statistics, it grew by 7.6% in 1998 in the West Bank and 12% in the
Gaza Strip, compared to 2.3% in the Israeli population overall.
In
1999, the Israeli government confiscated 40,178 dunams of Palestinian
land (1 dunam equals 1000 square meters). Of this, 19,691 was to be
used for settlement expansion. Since 1967, 73% of the land in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip has been confiscated by the Israeli government.
The fact that Israel doesn't intend to return this land at the
conclusion of any deal is demonstrated by the fact that Israel's
structural plan for 2020 allows for 310,000 settlers in the West Bank.
The
same pattern is replicated in Jerusalem. Since 1967, 15 settlements
have been erected within East Jerusalem, occupying 24 square
kilometers (34%) of East Jerusalem. The settler population in East
Jerusalem alone is 180,000 (compared to 210,000 Palestinians living in
the eastern part of the city).
The
settler population is by and large an armed paramilitary group that
presents a grave danger to the Palestinian population.
Palestinians
are prohibited by Israel from building in approximately 60% of the
West Bank, 40% of the Gaza Strip and 87% of Jerusalem. Since 1967,
more than 6000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip, and 2500 in East Jerusalem.
There
has been an increase in the demolition of Palestinian homes since the
beginning of the Oslo Accords: between then and April 1999, 946 homes
were demolished. More than 60% of Palestinians in Jerusalem now live
in a housing density of three or more persons per room – three times
more crowded than Jewish houses in Jerusalem.
House
demolition is one plank in an Israeli government strategy to
ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of Palestinian residents. Another
technique is the confiscation of Palestinian ID cards, which forces
Palestinian residents to live outside the city. Between 1996 and 1999,
more than 2200 Jerusalemite ID cards were confiscated.
Israel
also refuses to implement Palestinian refugees' right of return. In
1948, with the colonization of the historic land of Palestine, around
750,000 Palestinians were evicted from their land. Four hundred and
eighteen Palestinian villages were depopulated and destroyed.
Following
the establishment of Israel, laws were passed denying Palestinians the
right to return home and expropriating their homes and land. These
laws are still in force.
The
Absentees' Property Law of 1950 created a Custodian for Absentee
Property, in which the legal and equitable title of “absentee”
property was entirely divested. An absentee could reclaim their
property only if they could prove that they had left their place of
residence “for fear that the enemies of Israel might cause him
harm”. The law thus excludes the majority of Palestinians who had
fled in fear of attack from Israeli forces. An estimated 3.25 million
dunams of land was expropriated under this legislation.
The
constant denial by Israel of the right of return, and even
responsibility for what remains the world's longest and largest
refugee crisis, is critical to understanding Palestinians' anger at
the so-called peace process.
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