Israeli settlement-building booms after end of freeze

By Ethan Bronner / NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

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JERUSALEM — In the three months since Israel ended its settlement-construction freeze in the West Bank, leading the Palestinians to withdraw from peace talks, a settlement-building boom has begun, especially in more remote communities that are least likely to be part of Israel after any two-state peace deal.

This means that if negotiations ever get back on track, there will be thousands more Israeli settlers who will have to relocate into Israel, posing new problems over how to accommodate them while creating a Palestinian state on the land where many of them are living now.

Besides West Bank settlement-building, construction for predominantly Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to make their future capital, has been rapidly growing after a break of half a year, with hundreds of units approved and thousands more planned.

On a tour of West Bank construction sites, Dror Etkes, an anti-settlement advocate who has spent nine years chronicling their growth, said he doubted whether there had been such a burst in settlement construction in at least a decade.

Hagit Ofran, a settlement opponent who monitors their growth for Peace Now, said: “We can say firmly that this is the most active period in many years.” She said there were 2,000 housing units being built now and a total of 13,000 in the pipeline that did not require additional permits. In each of the last three years, about 3,000 units have been built.

While government data on the building will not be published until the new year, settler leaders did not contradict these assessments. “The freeze is over, and we are filling in the gap of need that was postponed,” said David Ha’Ivri, spokesman for the Samaria Regional Council in the northern West Bank. “The Peace Now numbers are reliable. Their count seems to be correct.

The only difference is that they see it as negative, and we see it as positive.” Naftali Bennett, executive director of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ umbrella organization, said his group wanted government tenders for an additional 4,000 badly needed units, mostly in large settlements.

Palestinian leaders have said they will not return to peace talks with Israel as long as settlement construction occurs.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (folio).

Context added by this archive

Bennett is quoted here only indirectly - the paper paraphrases him asking for 4,000 more units. The sharpest settler language on the page belongs to Ha'Ivri.

The paper's nouns: 'settlement-building', 'settlement construction', 'Israeli settlers', 'settler leaders', 'the settlers' umbrella organization', 'predominantly Jewish housing in East Jerusalem', 'more remote communities'. 'Occupied' does not appear.

Bronner's lead does name the cost in Palestinian terms - a state built 'on the land where many of them are living now' - which is sharper framing than the wire copy in this batch.

Cite this clipping

"Israeli settlement-building booms after end of freeze," The Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 December 2010, p. A17. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2010-036. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2010-036