Netanyahu is sticking to Rabin’s guidelines.
By Ted Belman
In attempting to evaluate the “partial freeze, we must be wary of spin. We must also be wary of “Greeks” bearing gifts. Netanyahu has released about 500 units for construction. Is this a big deal or no deal at all?
Haaretz did a study and concluded “‘New’ settlement permits aren’t really new”
- Haaretz checked and discovered that these permits, are no more than another layer of permits on top of those already given, but that had not gone through for various reasons. In some places work was already underway. Haaretz has also learned that all construction permits were given on condition that the buildings go up within two months, or the permit will be rescinded.
On the positive side Haaretz reports 2009 West Bank construction mirrors yearly trend
- The decision to approve the construction of hundreds of housing units before the settlement freeze goes into affect means that in the coming year the total number of apartments to be built in the settlements will be the same as the number built before limitations were placed on construction over the Green Line.
Central Bureau of Statistics data show that the completion of 2,500 housing units and an immediate start to 455 new units continues the growth trend of recent years.
According to Central Bureau of Statistics publications, from 2005 to the end of 2008, when no special limitations on construction in the settlements were imposed and the American demand to freeze construction was not yet on the agenda, 7,015 housing units were built in the West Bank settlements. Thus during those four years, the average rate of housing starts in the settlements was 1,771 a year.
The number of new housing units will not actually decline compared to previous years. The only difference is that now, that instead of construction permits being given gradually throughout the year, the government intends to issue hundreds of permits within a few days, before the official announcement of the “freeze” is made.
According to Central Bureau of Statistics data, the average household in the settlements consists of 4.46 people. Thus during the “freeze” - in which 2,500 units will be completed and hundreds of others built - the population will grow by about 14,000.
What is one to make of all this? On the one hand the release of these units will make up for the moratorium on issuing building permits since Netanyahu came into office. On the other hand all these units were either under construction or already approved. So to look at these units as continuing a trend, is very erroneous. Then what about next year? Is the freeze is only for six or nine months or in reality is it in reality a permanent freeze. We are not told.
But there is more.
While on his African trip, Leiberman announced Despite settlement freeze, Right won’t topple gov’t
- The foreign minister stressed that Israel has not, and will not, discuss any form of construction limitations in Jerusalem, adding that Israel should demand a reconfirmation of the understanding reached with the Bush administration regarding building in the West Bank.
Mind you, Leiberman didn’t say that the Israeli government won’t limit construction in Jerusalem, only that she won’t “discuss any form of construction limitation” in Jerusalem. Obviously not the same thing.
JPOST fills us in on some details ‘Settlement freeze will last 6 months’
- A moratorium on new construction in the settlements, expected in the wake of Monday’s announcement of 455 newly approved housing units in the West Bank, will last for six months, with an extension dependent on whether the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Arab countries step up to the plate and deliver what is expected of them, a senior political official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
So what is expected of them? Is it sufficient to make this partial freeze, excluding Jerusalem, a permanent one?
Meanwhile Herb Keinon points out PM well within Oslo II parameters
Evidently when Rabin presented the Oslo II Agreement to his cabinet in 1995, he made a speech setting out his guidelines.
- Rabin, in his speech to the Knesset, said he envisioned, alongside a State of Israel that would include most of the area of the land of Israel as it was under the British mandate, “a Palestinian entity that will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
“We would like this to be an entity that is less than a state, and that will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority,” Rabin said, preceding by 14 years Netanyahu’s call for a demilitarized state that has all the trapping of statehood except those that could threaten Israel’s security - in other words, a state-minus.
“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines that existed before the Six Day War,” Rabin said. “We will not return to the June 4, 1967, lines.
“And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution,” he said:
“A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’aleh Adumim and Givat Ze’ev - as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.
B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.
C. Changes that will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Betar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the ‘Green Line,’ prior to the Six Day War.
D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.”
Keinon points out that Netanyahu has stayed well within the guidelines “laid out by Rabin, a man who - unlike Netanyahu - was adored by the US, EU and the Israeli Left.
I have nothing more to add.
Ted Belman
Jerusalem
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