Special Interview Mayor of Shiloh Believes West Bank is No Longer an Issue for International Negotia

Era Rapaport, the mayor of the Jewish village of Shiloh in Samaria, believes the future of the West Bank is no longer an issue for international negotiations.

Jewish control is already a “fait accompli,” the 38-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y.-born sociologist said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here this week. Rapaport maintained that it is “kind of irrelevant” to focus on the West Bank when the discussion should center on peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

He predicted that by April, 1984, there will be 100,000 Jews living in Samaria alone. Trying to uproot 100,000 Jewish settlers is not the same as forcing a few thousand to leave the Sinai as was done in compliance with Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, Rapaport stressed. He noted it would create “100,000 refugees.”

Rapaport is optimistic not only because the Shomron area where his village is located now has more than 40 Jewish villages with 27,000-30,000 people, but because the Jewish settlers are rapidly buying up Arab owned land. He said some one million dunams were purchased in the last year, with Arabs being more willing to sell since Israel defeated the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon.” This is land in private Jewish hands, not government-owned,” he stressed.

At the same time, Israelis from such places as Tel Aviv and Petach Tikvah are buying homes on the West Bank at a rate never seen before, Rapaport said. He said this is because they are able to get houses for what they would have to pay for apartments in Israel’s major cities and at better terms for loans.

It is “no longer fanatical rightwing Gush Emunim types,” said Rapaport, a Gush Emunim member, but “typical Israelis.” He added that “every buyer of a house feels that this is a guarantee of peace.” Rapaport also believes that the settlements add to Israel’s security. “My being there strengthens Israel’s security,” he said.

Rapaport first came to Israel after graduating from Yeshiva University in 1966 to study at the Yeshivat Merkaz Harav Kook in Jerusalem. He returned to Yeshiva University’s Graduate School of Social Work after the Six-Day War to earn a Master’s Degree. After working as director of teenage activities and preventive juvenile delinquency at the East New York YMHA, he made aliya in 1971.

He continued to work with teenagers in an area just outside Jerusalem for four years. In 1974, after he was married, he and his wife, Orit a Sabra and fellow social worker, were the first settlers at the first Jewish settlement in Samaria, north of Jerusalem, Ofra. They stayed for two years and then went to Safed.

But two years later in 1978, they joined the eight families that have already set up the “illegal” settlement of Shiloh, on the site of biblical Shiloh, 25 miles north of Jerusalem and half way between Nablus and Ramallah.

The government of Premier Menachem Begin permitted the settlement under the guise that it was an archaeological site. Rapaport said that this was done because Begin promised then President Carter to permit settlements only on military bases.

The Begin government officially sanctioned Shiloh in 1979 and Rapaport has been its full time mayor every since. He and his wife have three children with a fourth expected after Passover. The village has 420 people, including 70 families with 230 children, 50 students from outside studying at a yeshiva at the settlement, and 15 single men and women. He said that half of those on the settlement work in Shiloh and half work in Jerusalem.

EXPLAINS SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

Rapaport denies that the Jewish settlers have been moving into heavily populated Arab areas. He said except for Kiryat Arba and Hebron, and one or two other places, most of the Jewish settlements in Judaea and Samaria have been located in areas where there are only small rural villages. He said the land being used by the Jewish settlers has not been farmed or worked for other purposes since Jews were forced out of Israel 2,000 years ago.

He also maintained that the settlers seek to cooperate with the Arab settlers and believe they can live in peace with them. But he said that those Arabs who don’t want to live peacefully should go to Jordan.

Rapaport also maintained that the problem with demonstrations on the West Bank has been blown out of proportion by the media. He said that while rock-throwing incidents are serious since people are hurt, they are usually done by children 13-16 years old and even younger. He denied the settlers have been acting as vigilantes. He said when they are attacked by rock-throwing youngsters, they shoot into the air in an attempt to frighten them, but do not aim directly at the perpetrators.

ISSUE IS EAST BANK, NOT WEST BANK

Rapaport said he would like to see King Hussein of Jordan join the peace talks but he said the negotiations should not be about the West Bank but about the East Bank (Jordan). He said Hussein stole the East Bank which was once part of Palestine from the Palestinians. He said the West Bank Arabs do not want to live under Hussein, who mistreated them when he ruled them before 1967, and that they fear the PLO. They are farmers and factory workers with little interest in politics, Rapaport said.

This is the message that Rapaport has been bringing to Jews in the U.S. on his current visit in which he is representing the World Zionist Organization’s “Project 1,000” which is an effort to have American Jewish families visit with Israeli families. He also has been speaking about Judaea and Samaria.

But he said that as “a by-product” of this visit, he has discovered there are “many, many Jewish families” who are considering aliya and in particular want to move to the West Bank. He said he feels that more representatives from the settlements should come to the U.S. to encourage them.