End of building holds key to restoring peace

Mitchell report calls on Sharon to lift blockade on Gaza Strip while attacking Arafat over his failure to control Palestinian gunmen

By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

Saturday, 5 May 2001

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Israel should freeze all settlement construction in the occupied territories. It should lift its blockade of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And it should also stop using lethal rubber-coated steel bullets, which its soldiers fire at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators adding to a death toll of more than 500, much of which was "avoidable".

High on the list of problems identified by the US-led committee set up to investigate the explosion of violence in the Middle East was an issue that has been plaguing Israel's relations with the Palestinians for years, and steadily corroded faith in the Oslo peace talks: Jewish settlement building.

Palestinian officials say that Israel's confiscation of their land, the demolition of their homes and the growth of Israeli settler communities in the West Bank and Gaza was among the most combustible of the components that caused what they call the al-Aqsa intifada. Even now, with 500 dead most of them Arabs the Israeli government, now under the hardliner Ariel Sharon, is refusing to contemplate declaring a complete end to settlement expansion, for fear that it would be seen by Israelis who are clamouring for an even tougher crackdown on the Palestinians to be rewarding violence.

Mr Sharon, for years the champion of the hardline settler movement, is insisting on allowing what Israel calls the "natural growth of existing settlements" sweeping aside a plea from the Palestinians in the current Egyptian-Jordan ceasefire proposals for a total building ban. It has become one of the main sticking points in the already dying Egyptian-Jordanian ceasefire plan, in which the Palestinians press for an absolute freeze.

The Mitchell draft report, acquired exclusively by The Independent, takes a firm position by reinforcing a posture stuck for some years so far
entirely in vain by the international community, including Israel's main ally, America. It does not doubtless to the disappointment of the Palestinians suggest any way of enforcing a settlement freeze on Israel.

But it does say there should be a "freeze on all settlement activity", including the "natural growth" of existing settlements. Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have grown by more than 50 per cent during the seven-year Oslo negotiations, now in chaos, sending the population of Israelis living on occupied land up to about 200,000 (excluding Israeli-annexed Arab east Jerusalem). Every new home has eaten away at Palestinian faith in the talks, and the hope that they will one day under UN Security Council Resolution 242 get back their land on which to build a state. Israel has a duty to help rebuild confidence, said the five-member committee, who included the former president of Turkey Suleyman Demirel, the EU's security envoy Javier Solana, and Norway's Foreign Minister, Thorbjorn Jagland. Stopping Palestinian-Israeli violence will be "particularly hard to sustain unless [Israel] freezes all settlement construction activity". Settlements "must not be allowed to undermine the restoration of calm and the resumption of negotiations".

It also suggests that Israel "should give careful consideration to whether settlements that are focal points for substantial friction are valuable bargaining chips ... On each of our two visits to the region there were Israeli announcements regarding the expansion of settlements and it was almost always the first issue raised by Palestinians.

"Beyond the obvious confidence-building qualities of a settlement freeze, we note that many of the confrontations ... have occurred at points where Palestinians, settlers and security forces protecting settlers meet. Keeping both the peace and these friction points will be very difficult."

The recommendations

• Israel should freeze all settlement building, including "natural growth" of existing settlements

• Israel should lift closure of Palestinian areas, transfer all back-taxes and let Palestinian workers return

• Palestinians should arrest and jail guerrillas

• Palestinians should renew security co-operation with Israel and ensure its workers are fully vetted

• Israel should ensure that the army and Jewish settlers stop demolishing homes, roads and orchards

• Israeli army should adopt policies encouraging non-lethal use of force to unarmed demonstrators

• Palestinians should stop gunmen firing from civilian areas at civilians areas

• Both sides should set up a "cooling-off period"

• Both sides should discourage incitement

• Joint agreement to protect holy places