The View from the West Bank

...It did not seem relevant to them that the chalutzim were wrestling land from the rocks and did not have a Jewish government to spend millions of dollars to build tarmac roads, subsidize their employment and send the military to protect them from hostile Arab neighbors...

...This has shocked even many Rightists and Likud leaders, and prompted several nationalistic rabbis to warn the zealots against fighting between Jew and Jew...

...Our guide rejected the argument that the Arab birth rate would bring about an Arab majority in the country and in the Knesset, turning Israel into yet another Arab state...

...Evidently even A mana is not eager to have outsiders meet these people (some of whom Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir recently called "crazies")—an interesting indication of the ambivalence lately apparent in theattitude of GushEmunim's intellectual element...

...Our guide on the minibus was one of those intellectuals...

...Between stops he explained his movement's philosophy...

...This would make it clear to the Arabs that there is no hope for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine and that, therefore, violence is useless...

...Is time on the side of the moderates...

...Many Arabs would not wish to live as Israeli citizens and would emigrate, he assured us, while increased Jewish immigration and the high birth rate among the Orthodox would suffice to maintain a Jewish majority in the country...

...They are quick to point out that the correct translation—and true meaning in the Biblical sense—is "the whole Israel...

...In Ariel the hatred between the Jewish residents and the Palestinian workers is evident to a casual visitor...

...After annexation, he continued, all West Bank Arabs who declare allegiance to Israel should be permitted to become full-fledged citizens with equal rights, including the right to vote and to be elected to the Knesset...

...More than half travel daily across the "Green Line" to jobs in Natanya, Herzliya or even Tel Aviv...

...The organizers, for example, had gone to great lengths to evade our request to visit Kiryat Arba, the Jewish community built near Hebron, an Arab town still associated in Jewish memory with the great pogrom of 1929 that left scores of Orthodox Jews dead and forced the evacuation of the ancient Jewish quarter...

...The purpose of both is to render extremely difficult, nay impossible, the separation of the West Bank from pre-1967 Israel...

...From a distance, even to most Israelis, all West Bank settlements seem the same...

...It would also reassure the Jewish settlers and result in their reacting in a more restrained fashion to acts of Arab terrorism...

...In addition, it is argued, the vast sums devoted to infrastructure and to providing security could be better spent in the Galilee or in the Negev...

...We asked to make the trip, and the itinerary prepared for us was amended at our insistence to afford a more balanced picture...

...You could not doubt the idealism of the score of Orthodox mothers—all in their early 20s, all pregnant and some holding on to one or two babies—who had arrived six weeks earlier to live in drab prefabs simmering in the midday sun, "because we wanted to build something new, from scratch, like the chalutzim (pioneers) did 50 or 60 years ago...

...Alfei Menashe's relatively apolitical Mayor and city fathers, by contrast, reacted to two of the worst Arab terrorist attacks in the vicinity by holding a sitin strike in the home of the Council head of the Arab village across the highway...

...Alfei Menashe is exclusively a bedroom community that includes Israelis of every political persuasion...

...The most interesting aspect of the tour was the remarkable difference in the ideological positions and in the physical appearance of the various settlements...

...A few weeks ago, along with several colleagues, I spent a day on the West Bank under the aegis of A mana, the settlement arm of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), whose members are firm believers in a God-ordained "greater Israel...

...nevertheless, the residents of the former feel fairly safe with a single patrol Jeep, even though some of the Arab orchards lie right between two Jewish neighborhoods...

...The solution to the intifada, he said, was the formal annexation of the West Bank to Israel...

...VISITING THE SETTLEMENTS The View from the West Bank By Eliahu Salpeter Tel Aviv The Jewish settlements on the West Bank are both a symbol of and the essence of the daily debate here over past, present and future Israeli-Palestinian relations...

...The general impression one comes away with is not encouraging...

...The other half works locally in services or at building the second of two big industrial parks on the perimeter which, it is hoped, will be rented to Israeli and foreign entrepreneurs and will provide employment for a large part of Ariel's population...

...But again, this modern version of old-time pioneering required generous subsidies from the Social Welfare and Education Ministries, plus a building erected and made available at low rent by the Ministry of Housing...

...The political tone of Ariel is set by its somewhat abrasive Likud Mayor and large activist minority, which retaliates in kind to any Arab attack on Jews in the area...

...On the other end is AlfeiMenashe, made up of people with moderate nationalistic tendencies who want to enjoy country-club style suburban living at prices somewhat cheaper than in undisputed Israel...

...Whether visiting a small new settlement of a few caravans on a barren hill or an older prosperous township of semidetached cottages in the shade of green trees, you find few menfolk around during the day...

...Ariel and Alfei Menashe belong to the bedroom category...

...Some of the statistics he quoted did not quite stand up to later checking...

...For those calling themselves the National Camp, the right of every Jew to Uve in any part of Palestine is no more open to dispute than an American Jew's right to reside in New York, Houston or Oshkosh...

...Ariel is a bustling town of tens of thousands of mostly Likud-oriented Israelis...

...It is situated just a mile or two east of the Green Line and virtually everybody works on the "other side...

...But many Israelis, possibly the majority, see this view as creating an unnecessary source of irritation among local Arabs and some Western governments...

...But whereas the new neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem form a " safety ring" around the capital—and the role of the other bedroom communities is to erase, de facto, the pre-1967 border line—the more isolated hilltop settlements claim to have the " security mission" of providing an Israeli presence in Arab areas...

...A closer look, though, reveals considerable differences in their nature and in the political consequences of their presence...

...Basically, they fall into two categories: bedroom communities around Jerusalem as well as just across the old 1967 border, and smaller settlements dispersed on hilltops across the length and width of the West Bank...

...The polarization between the hawkish majority and the dovish minority has been increasing among the Jews as well as among the Arabs...

...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...You also could not fail to admire the civic-mindedness and ingenuity of the well-established Orthodox village where a group of teachers and social workers had set up a work-study school for urban dropouts, each of whom lives with one of the settler families...

...As the intifada continues, each additional victim adds to the flames of hostility...

...Moreover, the escalating violence on both sides has led not only to counterterrorist acts on the part of the hawkish Jewish extremists but to clashes between some settlers and Army patrols...

...Leaving aside the doubts expressed by military experts, the fallacy of the security argument is quite obvious...

...On one end of the scale is Kiryat Arba, whose nationalist and religious extremists form a sizeable part of the local population and who see it as their mission to create a big Jewish presence in nearby Hebron, despite (or rather, because of) its violent anti-Jewish tradition...

...There have not been significantly fewer incidents in Alfei Menashe than in Ariel...

...Although there were a few Arab towns with a history of troublemaking near practically every Jewish settlement long before the intifada began, there is a connection between the nature of a settlement and relations with its Arab neighbors...

...But it is true that during a whole month in Tel Aviv I did not see so many pregnant women as I saw in one day in the Jewish settlements on the West Bank...

...they are working in nearby towns...

...I am not saying all my friends feel this way, but many do," he insisted under questioning...

...Kiryat Arba, not incidentally, is now the home of the most fanatical Jewish settlers both from Gush Emunim and from the violent Kach group led by Rabbi Meir Kahane...

...It remains to be seen how long their admonitions will be heeded—without some parallel cooling off on the Arab side...

...In fact, instead of the settlements easing theburdenofthe Army, they oblige it to devote manpower to guarding them and patrolling their roads...