Raanan Weitz, former head of the World Zionist Organization’s settlement department, has disputed the contention by an expert on West Bank demographics that the extent of Jewish settlement in the territory has already reached the point of no return, rendering the idea of territorial compromise in return for peace with the Arab world academic.
That view has been expressed by Meron Benvenisti, a former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, who has closely monitored the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, especially during the two Likud-led administrations — 1977-1984 –when settlement was actively encouraged and heavily subsidized by the government.
According to Benvenisti, demographic trends indicate that Jews will be a majority in the West Bank by the year 2000. But Weitz, speaking at the executive meeting of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East over the weekend, maintained that Jews in the West Bank would not exceed 2-3 percent of the population at the turn of the century. There is no reason, he said, why territorial compromise is impossible.
Weitz also disclosed that immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War, then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan sought to encourage West Bank Arabs to emigrate to Latin America by offering each family a premium of $3,000, later raised to $5,000. Several dozen families took up the offer but later returned to Israel and the project was dropped, Weitz said.
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