“We don’t want the setters in the Rafah salient to live out of suitcases for the next three years,” says Meir Ben Meir, the Israeli Water Commissioner and chairman of the Interministerial Committee on Settlement Deployment. “I met with them last month and they understand very well the need to maintain a normal life for the present and immediate ‘future,” he said.
Three years hence, if all goes well and the peace treaty with Egypt is eventually signed, the 15 Jewish settlements in the Rafah salient, and one town-in-the-making (Yamit) will be handed over to the Egyptians and the settlers will move back behind Israel’s new old border again.
With the treaty still to be clinched, and the prospect of dismantling the settlements naturally distasteful, the government has not rushed to launch the process of winding-down. As Ben Meir implied, the fear is that once the preparations for removal become apparent, the settlers will begin to drift away of their own accord, unwilling to await the various new settlement proposals that are being drafted for them.
DISMANTLING EXPRESSED IN VARIOUS WAYS
The imminent dismantling of the settlements, however, is subtly expressed in countless ways. Montes destined for the region are now generally restricted to short-term loans. Plans for expansion and development have assumed a minor key. Directives stipulate that all new structures be collapsible to ensure that resettlement will be carried out with relative ease.
And recently, a high, ranking Defense Ministry official cast a shadow on then immediate existence of one Rafah settlement, when credit previously given for its Laundromat, its main source of income, was abruptly halted. The settlement handles tons of army laundry each week.
Such a precarious position has expectedly taken its tall of the morale of the 5000-strong local population. Their complaints focus on a near total lock of contact with the government since the Camp David accords were signed, and on the fact that they must rely on the mass media to keep abreast of their future.
Settlement authorities are well aware of the Rafah population’s discontent and a document published recently by the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Department cautioned that resettlement must be implemented quickly, because the “target population is angry disappointed and full of bitterness.”
AVOIDING THE RESETTLEMENT ISSUE
These sentiments have apparently been aggravated by the government’s continued avoidance of the resettlement issue and the future of the 1200 families in the Rafah salient. While certain plans have mysteriously mode their way into print, they meet with vociferous reactions on the part of the different settlement authorities when they do.
A prime example occurred recently when a plan devised by Agriculture Minister; Ariel Sharon to establish a regional center on the Gaza Strip was leaked to the press. The plan caused raucous debate in the Knesset. While reports in the media –and reactions in the government — have consistently referred to the center as the seed of a new city to replace Yamit, Bon Meir firmly denied that plans for a city are in the making.
” The center will only include those central services that the settlements in the Gaza Strip can’t supply themselves there are no plans for a city, he said, dismissing the extensive criticism leveled at the Ministry’s head. “Arik Sharon did not make one new decision concerning the regional center. It is not a new plan and it has no direct link to Sharon. All those who are at tacking the plan, or at least mast of them, played a part in its original formulation.”
REACTIONS TO RELOCATION PLANE
Ben Meir observed that services provided by the center could conceivably be linked to those provided at a second proposed location for settlement; tentatively called Pithat Shalom, on the Israeli side of the pre-1967 Gaza border. The 20 settlements planned for a 50,000 dunam are part of a 1970 “southern project” drafted by the Settlement Department of the WZO and submitted in an updated version to the government last month.
The plan’s initial target population is 5000 persons with 60 family units per settlement and double that number at a later stage. Fifteen of the settlements are intended for groups currently living in the Rafah salient and five are for groups of immigrants from abroad Implementation of the plan is expected to cost some $240 million.
Although the government has not yet established, contact with potential settlement groups about the proposed site and many of the Rafah settlers themselves have publicly denounced the plan the government remains confident that the Rafah settlers will prove responsive. If not, it says, alternate groups will readily move to the region.
“Without settlers to settle our borders, we won’t have borders,” said Ben Meir. Matityahu Drobless, co-chairman of the WZO’s Settlement Department, agreed, noting that “there is no lack of potential settlers to settle the projected 1200 living units in the 20 settlement.”
Drobless explained that the economy of 11 of the Rafah settlements is based on greenhouses and it is hoped that this will be continued at Pithat Shalom where plans call for 70 percent of the vegetables and flowers grown there to be exported abroad;
“The task of the Settlement Department is to ensure that, in the event of withdrawal, we won’t lose even one day of production, ” said Drobless. “Thus, we plan to encourage the some crops in the new region which are presently being grown in Rafah; The settlers will move to the new site only when they can immediately resume production, probably in two to three years In the meantime they will continue producing where they are.”
The settlement authorities, however, have received as yet no assurances that the settlers will indeed comply with their plans. Ben Meir estimates that approximately IL 3 million per family would be offered as compensation to those 500 families in Rafah’s agricultural settlements if they decide to return to the country’s center and such a number excludes the 700 families residing in Yamit. “I doubt whether we have the ability to provide such a sum within a period of three years; “be observed.
ALTERNATIVE PLANS MOORED
Other Less comprehensive plans for the region have been mentioned, such as the Housing Ministry’s proposal to resettle Yamit residents in a new city near Nitzana, just Inside the “green line the future of this plan, however, is also uncertain.” The Yamit people don’t seem to be interested in such a city; claiming nothing we can offer them could possibly compensate them for what they have
Both the manner in which the various plans have been publicized, their abrupt disappearance after appearing in pint and the apparent failure to coordinate among the different settlement authorities, seem to point to the lock of an all encompassing policy on the future of Rafah settlers.
Decisiveness on the issue is needed not only for the some 5000 settlers of the region themselves but for all of Israel’s citizens, for whom the basic legitimacy of the settlement ethos presently is at stake.
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