INDEPTH: MIDDLE EAST
FAQ on Israeli settlements
CBC News Online | February 26, 2004
Where are the settlements?
The Jewish settlements are in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, two areas of limited Palestinian self-government under the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements of 1993.
How many of them are there? How many people live in the settlements?
Like everything else about the settlements in the occupied territories, their number is in dispute. Officially, there are 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, housing some 7,500 Jews. Nearly one-quarter of the land in the territory is taken up by Jewish settlements. There are about 400,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem living in 136 settlements.
But some Palestinian and left leaning Israeli groups say the number of Jewish settlements is actually higher. The Israeli group Peace Now says Israel has built several new settlements since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took power. Israel calls them expansions of existing settlements. And Palestinians say there are more than 300 Jewish settlements, as they include East Jerusalem neighbours Israel claimed as part of its territory in 1967.
Some of the West Bank settlements are actually small cities: one of the larger settlements is Ariel, with a population of 17,000.
What are Israel's plans for the settlements?
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon signed an evacuation order in December 2003 as part of the U.S.-backed road map to peace in the Middle East. Under the order, Israel is required to dismantle more than 100 West Bank outposts. One such outpost, Mitzpeh Yitzhar, consisting mainly of tents and housing 10 settlers, was bulldozed in June 2003.
Sharon's plan is to remove all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four from the West Bank, beginning in mid-August 2005.
Sharon told his Likud party in February 2004 he also wanted to evacuate 17 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and some on the West Bank.
At the same time, though, Sharon has authorized the construction of security barriers separating Palestinian areas and Jewish settlements. The barriers have been built on the Palestinian side of the "Green Line," the boundary between Israel and the occupied territories established in 1967, prompting some critics to call the barriers an Israeli land grab.
Are the settlements legal?
The issue of the settlements' legality is one of the most contentious in the region. In 1979, the UN Security Council passed a resolution declaring the Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories illegal. Since then, it has passed several other resolutions condemning the settlements as "a serious obstruction to peace" and asking UN members not to assist in Israel's settlement program.
However, some legal scholars say that Israel, as a country acting in self-defence, has the right to occupy territory when necessary to protect itself. Eugene Rostow, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs in the administration of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, wrote in 1991 that Israel has a right to have settlements in the West Bank under 1967's UN Security Council Resolution 242, despite the fact that the resolution emphasizes "the inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war."
How does the rest of the world see the settlements?
Canada's position is clearly spelled out on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: "Canada does not recognize permanent Israeli control over the territories occupied in 1967 (the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) and opposes all unilateral actions intended to predetermine the outcome of negotiations, including the establishment of settlements in the territories and unilateral moves to annex East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Canada considers such actions to be contrary to international law and unproductive for the peace process."
The European Union, on its website, "continues to call on Israel to withdraw its military forces and stop extra-judicial killings, to lift the closures and all restrictions imposed on the Palestinian people, and to freeze settlement activities."
The U.S. position has changed over the years, but the Bush administration now says that Israeli settlement activity must stop and the settlers withdrawn to the Israeli side of the Green Line.
The following is adapted from a radio report by CBC Middle East correspondent Margaret Evans.
An Israeli human rights group says there are now about 57,000 Palestinians isolated in enclaves surrounded by the security barrier. The United Nations says that if the series of walls, fences, barbed wire and ditches is completed along its planned route, about a third of West Bank Palestinians will be affected. About 274,000 will be trapped in enclaves and about 400,000 blocked from their fields, jobs, schools and hospitals.
But some Palestinians are already living with what they call a new Berlin Wall. In a sewing factory tucked away in a warehouse in the town of Barta'a Sharqiya, rows of women bend over their work, their electric sewing machines humming as needles fly across long stretches of fabric, landing in great billowing piles on the floor.
It's an important source of income, but for many of the women it's also a dismal existence, the sheets they sew for a living giving them what little colour they have in their lives. Sabaah Abuanis, a 36-year-old single mother, is from a village not far from Barta'a, but she hasn't been able to go there for a month. "You never know if they're going to let you in or out," she says. "I live right here in the factory. They've made a special room for us," she says. "A small one."
Barta'a is a part of the West Bank, but Israel's security barrier has effectively cut it off, turning it into an enclave between Israel and the rest of the West Bank, where many of the sewing industry's workers live. Those workers are not being given entry permits to Barta'a, leaving women like Sabaah in a bind. If they leave Barta'a they run the risk of not being allowed back in again. So, many are simply staying, camped out in the warehouses.
"I am extremely depressed," says Sabaah. "I'm worried, and unable to see my son. This is extremely difficult. We've gone back a hundred years." Sabaah's son lives about a 40-minute drive away, but she only sees him about once every three or four weeks. That's how often she's willing to risk leaving Barta'a to visit home, sometimes using a fake ID provided by the factory owners to get back in.
It's easy to pick Sabaah's son Hanni out of the crowd. He looks just like her. Sabaah is supporting not only Hanni, but also her parents who take care of him, her brothers who can't find work, and their families, 22 people in all. The family says they're grateful to Sabaah, but there is also an element of shame in the household and the fact that she's the sole breadwinner.
"The situation has forced Sabaah to leave her home and to go to work," says her father, Hadj. "There is no work for anybody else and for me, as a father, I find it difficult to think that my daughter is away from me for 15 or 20 days at a time, but that's the only way," he says.
It's a familiar story in this area, called the seam zone. Many young Palestinian women apprenticed as seamstresses to take up jobs in the 1990s, when many Arab Israelis moved their sewing factories across the Green Line so they could employ West Bank workers. But now those employers say the local industry is under threat.
"We have five factories, and two factories are closed. It's a bad situation," says Hikmat Hatib, the owner of the factory where Sabaah works. He says if he loses any more workers because of the barrier he'll think about moving. "I may be closed and will leave to Jordan or another place. Situation is very bad, and I not see that the situation will be better," he says.
Nor do the seamstresses depending on the seam zone for their livelihood and that of their families, but they say they have no option. So they work eight-hour days, six days a week, and then spend the night on mattresses on the floor in the basement.
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