{"id":1540,"date":"2010-09-26T14:23:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T11:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icahd.fi\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2010-09-26T14:23:16","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T11:23:16","slug":"we-were-looking-for-a-nice-peaceful-place-near-jerusalem-25-9-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.icahd.fi\/en\/we-were-looking-for-a-nice-peaceful-place-near-jerusalem-25-9-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"’We were looking for a nice, peaceful place near Jerusalem’ (The Guardian 25.9.2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kommentti :: <\/strong>”If the construction of settlements in the West Bank is meant to be on hold, why are Israeli buyers being offered new properties on Palestinian land at knock-down prices?”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"West<\/div>\n
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New housing under construction in Almon: ’Residents do not fit the headline-grabbing stereotypes of fanatical settlers. There is a\u00a0marked paucity of Israeli flags.’ Photograph: Warrick Page<\/div>\n
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The housing project currently under construction\u00a0in Almon offers enticingly priced, spacious family homes with a garden and a view.\u00a0The surrounding neighbourhood, also known as Anatot, sits on a ridge overlooking the\u00a0Judean hills, near Jerusalem, a blaze of cultivated greenery in the parched landscape. Residents have a relaxed air, and newcomers who\u00a0have recently relocated from Jerusalem wish\u00a0they’d made the move years ago. If I were a\u00a0prospective house-buyer, I’d be charmed. But I\u00a0would not be looking here \u2013 because Almon is in\u00a0the occupied West Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is a Jewish settlement with a population of around 1,000, established in the early 80s. Like all\u00a0Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, Almon is illegal according to international law. But its residents do not fit the headline-grabbing stereotypes of fanatical settlers, motivated by a\u00a0national-religious drive to claim land. There is a\u00a0marked paucity of Israeli flags and\u00a0no settler-slogan banners bedeck the streets. If the West Bank became part of an autonomous Palestinian state, residents of Almon would be unlikely to put up a fight, as the ideological settler movement has sworn to do. Instead, they would pack up and move back to Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The settlement movement began almost immediately after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, seized as the spoils of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Settlers were initially ideological but, by the 80s, the rightwing government that came to power realised that greater numbers of, perhaps less politically-motivated, Israelis would have to be enticed on to Palestinian land. Israel has always argued that settlements are a strategic and military asset. Former prime minister Ariel Sharon \u2013 one of the settler movement’s biggest supporters \u2013 summed up Israel’s approach in 1998 when he said of the occupied territories: ”Everyone there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand more territory. Everything that’s grabbed will be in our hands. Everything we don’t grab will be in their hands.”<\/p>\n

Yet in 2007, when the Israeli organisation Peace\u00a0Now<\/a> polled settlers about their motivations for living where they do, 77% cited ”quality of life”, suggesting that economic factors\u00a0and proximity to Israeli cities were primary considerations. That percentage can be\u00a0split into two camps: there is the rapidly expanding, low-income, ultra-Orthodox community, which, priced out of Jerusalem, has migrated to nearby settlements such as Modin Illit<\/a> and Beitar Illit<\/a>; then there are secular or mixed community settlements, such as Almon. These are often located close to the Green Line<\/a>, the internationally recognised border between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. And they exist primarily because the state wants them to.<\/p>\n

In Jerusalem \u2013 just as in the rest of Israel \u2013 decades of state planning has priced people out of\u00a0the city and into settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Meanwhile, ideologically-motivated budgeting has resulted in\u00a0enticements and benefits for Israelis who live on occupied Palestinian land.<\/p>\n

Settlements, and the resources, infrastructure and military might\u00a0required to keep them going, are a major impediment to negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Under international pressure, for the past 10 months, Israel\u00a0has operated a partial freeze on settlement construction. However, the incentives still offered to\u00a0Israelis to live on Palestinian land are so considerable that, leaving politics aside, it would\u00a0be silly not to take advantage of them.<\/p>\n

To find out how easy it would be to buy a settlement home on Palestinian land in the midst\u00a0of this supposed freeze, I pose as an Israeli buyer, looking for a reasonably priced property for myself, my fictitious husband and the family we’re planning. Walking into a Jerusalem estate agency with an imaginary spend of \u00a3200,000, a\u00a0realistic sum for an average Jerusalem couple, it\u00a0comes as no surprise when the agent says, ”With that sort of budget, you need to get beyond\u00a0the city.”<\/p>\n

I’ve already checked the housing market online and seen that the price for a home in West Jerusalem \u2013 four bedrooms across around 100 square metres \u2013 can start at around \u00a3400,000. Jerusalem’s housing problem is blamed variously on its lack of high-rise housing (in part because many observant Jews do not use lifts on Saturdays); on environmentalists, who have prevented the city’s expansion to the west (the only direction within Israel’s borders); and on the ”ghost town” effect in well-heeled parts of the city, where foreign Jewish buyers have snapped up second homes, pushing up the prices. The housing market is under such stress that, last year, Jerusalem’s mayor wrote to absentee home-owners, asking them to rent out or sell up.<\/p>\n

The agent suggests Pisgat Ze’ev<\/a> or Neve Yaakov<\/a>, both in East Jerusalem. Though these areas are defined as settlements by the international community, Israel views them as neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and has prioritised rapid Jewish development here, at the expense of affordable housing in West Jerusalem. However, at \u00a3250,000 for around 120 square metres, these houses might still be too pricey.<\/p>\n

I certainly can’t afford a decent-sized property in the plusher Ramot<\/a> or Gilo<\/a> \u2013 also settlements, or\u00a0”neighbourhoods”, within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries. So the estate agent suggests Givat Ze’ev<\/a>, a secular settlement a 10-minute drive north-east of Jerusalem. The agent doesn’t currently have homes to view there, but properties in this settlement \u2013 and many others \u2013 are advertised online under the category ”Jerusalem and surrounding area”. A\u00a0quick call to each settlement’s secretariat would provide me with agents’ phone numbers, and sometimes the numbers of private sellers, too.<\/p>\n

Givat Ze’ev is a pretty settlement of 10,000 residents living in semi-detached homes on leafy,\u00a0winding streets. It is spacious and organised, with shops, schools and health services. Everything about its planning is designed to make you feel as\u00a0though you’re in a\u00a0satellite of Jerusalem \u2013 there\u00a0are no demarcation lines, no checkpoints back into the city, and the Palestinian villages, if\u00a0visible, are behind a wall. Like so many settlements that hug the Green Line, Givat Ze’ev is on the Israeli side of the separation barrier that cuts into the West Bank for\u00a0around 80% of its path. The barrier route runs,\u00a0in some places, up to 12 miles deep into the\u00a0West Bank, but settlements on the Israeli side\u00a0of it are, broadly speaking, ”consensus settlements” \u2013 ones that Israelis assume will be conceded to the Jewish state in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

At Givat Ze’ev there are plenty of large, affordable houses for sale, but the only new properties are on a recently-finished ultra-Orthodox project. I ask residents about new secular housing, but their response is, ”Don’t you read the news?” They’re referring to the current 10-month freeze, but in August, Peace Now found that building on at least 600 settlement housing units had begun during that period, in more than 60 different settlements. Of those, it says, at least 492 were in direct violation of the freeze.<\/p>\n

My search for affordable, secular housing leads me, eventually, to Almon. It’s a short drive east of\u00a0Jerusalem, and I’ve had to cross an Israeli checkpoint, but it’s specifically for settler use \u2013 a\u00a0nod, the ”right” appearance and Israeli number plates get me waved through. Outside, a\u00a0billboard\u00a0advertises the number of the contractor, who confirms that 70 units are under construction at the site. The four-bedroom houses vary in size from 130 to 140 square metres, with gardens of up to 70 square metres, and they are shifting fast. The settlement is not officially exempt from the construction freeze, but Palestinian constructors are currently working on\u00a0the site and homes could be ready within a\u00a0year. The starting price is \u00a3175,150.<\/p>\n

It is staggeringly cheaper than an equivalent property on the Israeli side of the Green Line, because it is on Palestinian land, confiscated by\u00a0Israel. There are no market forces to dictate land\u00a0value here, as there would be in Tel Aviv or\u00a0West Jerusalem. Instead, the Israeli housing ministry regulates prices, keeping them low to\u00a0attract settlement. Campaigners say the contractor will also have received considerable state subsidies for connecting new settlement buildings to water and electricity mains \u2013 another\u00a0saving that’s passed on to me, the buyer.<\/p>\n

Calculating my hypothetical mortgage allowance gives me yet more incentive to live across the Green Line. All Israelis qualify for a state allowance, an add-on to the mortgage lent by the bank, but with more favourable repayment terms. Points are added to your basic state allowance if you have children, have served in the army, or if you are a new Jewish migrant. Then there is a\u00a0top-up if you live in areas defined as ”national priority zones”, which include some under-populated parts of Israel and all settlements.<\/p>\n

For a new property in Almon, I’d get almost \u00a311,600 as a special allowance. But the allowances rise sharply for Israeli couples who pick homes in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Betar Illit, near Jerusalem, or in Ariel<\/a>, around 25km east\u00a0of the Green Line, or in Kiryat Arba<\/a>, a hardline settlement near Hebron<\/a>. For\u00a0each of those, I’d get a total allowance of around \u00a340,200. When I ask, the housing ministry says\u00a0that state subsidies vary according to the ”security threat assessments” pertinent to each area, adding that properties on the Israeli border with Lebanon qualify for similar amounts.<\/p>\n

Israeli settlements expert Dror Etkes<\/a> describes how, at times, mortgages given in the West Bank have ”included loans which, after a period of time, turned into grants”. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem<\/a> reports that, between 1997\u00a0and 2002, the state put 419m shekels (around \u00a372m) into state-subsidised ”association mortgages” for 1,800 apartments, most of them in the West Bank. The state comptroller, investigating these payments, found they were not included in the housing ministry’s budget. Responding to queries over this funding, the ministry said it was not intended for ”the entire public” and that announcing it would have caused ”unnecessary confusion”.<\/p>\n

The veteran Israeli journalist and author Danny\u00a0Rubinstein<\/a> remembers a time in the late 80s when contractors offered free cars to those who bought settlement homes. Meir Margalit, a\u00a0Jerusalem council member for the leftwing Meretz<\/a> party, claims that at around the same time, Israelis invested in settlement property, left\u00a0uninhabited, in the knowledge that at some point the state would offer compensation to evacuate it. He says the practice was ”an open secret among settlers”.<\/p>\n

Today, on top of my mortgage incentive, I’d\u00a0get\u00a0free nursery care for my children from the\u00a0age of three, instead of five, as I would in Israel. Settlement schools are better funded, health services are allocated more state funds. I’d\u00a0no longer get a\u00a07% discount on income tax \u2013 that incentive was scrapped in 2003; I’d pay lower\u00a0local taxes, but my local council would be\u00a0twice as flush as those inside Israel, because of\u00a0a\u00a0central government funding bias. In 2006, the\u00a0Adva Centre, an Israeli policy analysis organisation, found settlers pay 60% of the national average in local tax.<\/p>\n

There are currently more than 200 settlements,\u00a0including West Bank outposts and neighbourhoods in annexed East Jerusalem, and\u00a0half a million Israelis live on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. B’Tselem says it is impossible to calculate the\u00a0total state spend in settlement benefits, because ”government ministries obscure documentation of the moneys\u00a0in their budgets that are directed to the\u00a0settlements”. But\u00a0Peace Now estimates that\u00a0settlements cost Israel $556m\u00a0(around \u00a3355m) a year \u2013 and it is clear that this cost is keenly felt by\u00a0those living within Israel, since the\u00a0state seems to prioritise settlements at their\u00a0expense.<\/p>\n

Responding to international pressure, in 2008 the Israeli government debated a plan to offer settlers cash to leave the West Bank, a move designed to target economic settlers rather than\u00a0ideological ones. The proposal \u2013 backed by then prime minister Ehud Olmert<\/a> \u2013 couldn’t get\u00a0through government. Yet there are currently thought to be lists of settlers who have expressed interest in leaving the West Bank, if compensated.<\/p>\n

For as long as Israel has occupied Palestinian lands, there has been a dominant force within government that has kept the settlements project going. Driven by a mix of national-religious conviction, expansionist politics and military tactics, the settlements project has wholly controlled state agenda. B’Tselem describes the project as one of Israel’s main national enterprises. State efforts to pull Israelis over the Green Line have been so forceful that, as Rubinstein puts it, ”You could say it was a bribe on a national scale.”<\/p>\n

Israel has always played up the pain of dismantling the settlements. Yet as Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar <\/a>writes in Lords Of The Land: The War For Israel’s Settlements In The Occupied Territories, the ”elixir of life” for these settlements is their infrastructure: the electricity, water pipes and military forces that guard them. Remove these, ”and this project collapses like a house of cards”. Today, Eldar describes Israel’s purported inability to do so as ”a myth perpetrated by the government to make us believe that it is impossible”.<\/p>\n

How hard would it really be to divert funds from the occupied West Bank back into Israel, thus encouraging settlers to move back \u2013 especially from somewhere like Almon, where residents have already said they will relocate if\u00a0political realities dictate that they should?<\/p>\n

One man who has lived there for 20 years says\u00a0of the settlement, ”It is not fanatic in a\u00a0religious sense and not fanatic politically, either.” Other residents agree. ”We came here because we were looking for a nice, peaceful place\u00a0near Jerusalem,” says one woman, who still\u00a0votes for the Israeli Labour party. ”We didn’t want to annoy anyone, and we are not ideological\u2026 The settler movement does not represent us.”<\/p>\n

The problem, as Rubinstein points out, is that\u00a0what starts off as economics can eventually become ideological. ”When you move [to the settlements],” he says, ”you can’t say, ’Well, I\u00a0went there because I’m greedy.’ You change your political opinion.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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