Settlements And Master Plans

Settlements And Master Plans


By Richard Cohen
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A29

ARIEL, West Bank -- Ron Nachman is the mayor of this settlement, if it can be called that. It is actually a city, complete with housing, stores, banks, schools and a college -- the College of Judea and Samaria. About 18,000 people live here, and the place, like a Starbucks, is totally wired in a wireless fashion. Plunk down a computer anywhere, and you can get the Internet. The streets are clean, the air is crisp, and Russian émigrés sit in the parks taking the very un-Russian sun. There is nothing wrong with Ariel that a mere shift in location would not fix. It is in the middle of the West Bank.



Of course, Nachman sees nothing wrong with that. He is a blunt-spoken hard-liner who thinks his settlement is right where it should be and will remain a part of Israel no matter what some "peaceniks" -- and here he includes much of the Clinton administration -- would like. The town and other nearby settlements will be surrounded by a security fence and so will the highway leading out to it from Israel proper. "I call it a gated community," he says. "The whole state of Israel is one gated community."

He is not exaggerating. The so-called security fence -- here a fence, there a wall -- is slowly sealing off Israel and the settlements from parts of the West Bank and much of the Palestinian population. It is a mind-numbing enterprise, a reordering of the landscape -- roads and tunnels and fences and walls and barriers designed to separate Muslim from Jew. The fence appears and disappears, surfaces and dips, and although it does not yet extend as far as Ariel, it someday might. Even today, though, the road to it is only accessible from Jewish areas. It is easy enough to call the effect "apartheid," but to residents of Ariel and indeed much of Israel, it is tantamount to merely locking your door at night. What would you do?

When some talk of Israel simply yanking out its West Bank and Gaza settlements, they are not envisioning Ariel and others like it. They have in mind the scattered hilltop settlements, some of no more than a handful of families and others where the settlers have already had enough and are anxious to build a life somewhere safer. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is trying to pull out of Gaza, but he has been temporarily stymied by his own Likud Party. Still, it is impossible to imagine that Israelis will remain in Gaza. Earlier this week six soldiers were killed there and at least five more were yesterday. It's being compared to Lebanon, where an Israeli occupation produced a debacle. The place -- poor, densely populated and unloved by Israelis -- has already cost too much blood..........

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