Giving up the settlements is cheaper than you think
Akiva Eldar
Haaretz, 7 May 2002
In the second half of 2000, at the height of the negotiations between the Barak government and the Palestinians over a final settlement, economics professor Haim Ben-Shahar prepared a document called "A home in Israel for every settler (working title)." In his introduction, Ben-Shahar calls the document "a feasibility study for returning the settlers to the State of Israel, as they will be determined in a permanent settlement." Ben-Shahar has long been a behind-the-scenes economic adviser to Labor Party leaders, and in the past was the party's candidate for finance minister. The intifada, which came instead of a permanent settlement, convinced Ben-Shahar that fall 2000 wasn't the right time to bother Barak with a plan to evacuate the settlements. Lately, as the campaign by the Council for Peace and Security for unilateral withdrawal gathers steam, Ben-Shahar updated his plan and agreed to let it be known in public.
"The settlements are not the only obstacle in the way of peace, but they are a very central obstacle," he wrote in December, 2000. He sticks to that wording today. "First of all, they prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity and reasonable borders, so they delay achieving an agreement. Secondly, keeping the settlements and dividing the territory with bypass roads invites unceasing terrorist provocations that would sabotage any achievement of an interim or permanent agreement ... There is growing acceptance in the public that preserving the settlements in their current locations does not fit with the achievement of a peace agreement."
The data
"According to the central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 1999 there were 145 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, with 179,000 settlers. Presumably that number has grown to 200,000. In the context of a permanent agreement, it is reasonable to assume that settlements in the greater Jerusalem area and other areas near the Green Line will be annexed to Israel. That annexation will apparently be in exchange for certain territory that Israel will agree to hand over to Palestinian sovereignty near the Gaza Strip. As a result, most of the settlers in those areas will remain inside Israel's corrected borders.
"A detailed look at the settlement map shows that at least 100 settlements, with 60,000 residents can not be included in the areas annexed to Israel in the context of a permanent settlement. For the purpose of this plan, it was assumed that the number of settlers who will not be annexed will reach 80,000. The purpose of the plan is to enable those citizens to leave their residences and move willingly to other settlements inside the State of Israel.
"It should be remembered that many of the settlers were encouraged to settle in those areas by various Israeli governments, so any fair solution for them is a moral obligation of the state. In exchange for giving up their current homes, and without any compensation, every family will be offered an identical home, in similar conditions, inside the State of Israel."
Estimated costs
The plan is based on an estimate that the cost of providing fair housing solutions to 80,000 settlers of the territories would cost $2.4 billion. The calculation is as follows: "We assume the average size of the families in these settlements is at least five people. That means some 16,000 housing units. From examinations we conducted, the average cost of construction of a building unit, including development, is about $150,000. Therefore, the total cost of building those units would be $2.4 billion. The land would be provided by the Israel Lands Administration.
"The financing for this effort would come from a number of sources, as part of a peace treaty package. Some of the money (perhaps half) would come in exchange for the housing units left behind by the settlers for the Palestinian state. The payment would come from donor countries and aid grants for construction of housing in the Palestinian state. Most of the remaining costs would be borne by loans and grants that Israel would get as part of the arrangements made for the redeployment resulting from the peace agreement. If there is any shortfall, it would come from the state budget, over two to three years. That is a negligible amount of money. The land provided by the state would not be a burden on the budget."
Housing plans
"There are some 40,000 new housing units built in Israel every year, and that is during a recession. Building 16,000 units over a two to three year period means a 15 percent increase. The industry is undoubtedly able to meet that goal. Indeed, it would be help to the construction industry, providing some help for getting out of the recession in the construction industry.
"To make it easier for the settlers, they could be allowed to choose among a number of alternatives. They could be offered settlement opportunities in green areas like the Harish district, between Hadera and Wadi Ara, east of Kiryat Gat, Lehavim, south of the Hebron plateau, and also in Modi'in, Beit Shemesh, and in other areas inside the West Bank that would be annexed to Israel in a peace agreement. Special inducements could be given for those choosing to move to development towns.
"It must be emphasized that the settlers could choose their area of residence and the nature of the housing - a single family unit on a plot of land in a village-like community, or any other choice - according to their personal preferences. It is important to give the settlers the fairest and most generous offer possible."
The update
As the Council for Peace and Security kicked off its campaign, Ben-Shahar went back to the report to reestimate the costs of evacuation based on the map prepared by the council. The new map includes about 40 settlements, with only some 25,000 settlers. Based again on the assumption that the average family is at least five people, that means about 5,000 housing units. Construction costs have not changed, remaining at about $150,000 per unit. Therefore, the overall cost of building alternative housing for the evacuated would be about $750 million. The ILA would provide the land.
This calculation is important because it has become conventional wisdom that the cost of evacuating the settlements would be many billions of dollars. The assumption that there won't be financial compensation is based on the warranties signed by the settlers that they know they won't get any Yamit-style compensation - though that is actually a political question. On the other hand, evacuating isolated settlements would mean significant savings in defense and infrastructure costs. Since the settlements at stake are all small, moving the businesses at them would not be a significant extra cost.
Ben-Shahar says that if the unilateral separation plan wins international support, there is a possibility that some of the money will come from funding in exchange for an orderly transfer of the housing units in the evacuated settlements to the Palestinians. The payment would come from donor countries and aid funds meant for housing construction for Palestine. The rest could come from the state budget over two or three years and, since the state would provide the land through the ILA, the plan won't be a burden to the government budget.
Darwish gives up the right of return
Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish was a guest lecturer at the Rabin Center for Israeli Democracy last Thursday. "The Palestinians say that what happened at the Camp David summit could not be considered negotiations," said the leader of the southern faction of the Islamic Movement. "They explain that Arafat was too weak at the time to reach an agreement. Now, after what you've done to him, he feels strong, so now's the time to make a deal with him."
It seems that Darwish prepared himself for a question about the right of return. He declared with no little pathos, "I, Sheikh Abdullah Nimr, without any army ID number, say to you that if you adopt the Saudi initiative in all its aspects, and reject only the right of return, I will be a soldier in the peace army. I will stand by your side even if you don't agree to a single refugee returning."
The Labor Party hasn't waited for Peace Soldier Darwish, whose brief text was a paraphrase of Yitzhak Rabin's famous speech to Congress, to make use of the Saudi initiative for the internal struggles of the coming weeks preceding the party convention.
Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, who has not yet decided if he'll challenge Benjamin Ben-Eliezer for the party leadership, has a peace plan based on the principle of withdrawal to the 1967 borders and normalization of relations with Israel's neighbors, which is essentially the Saudi plan - though Burg adds a few elements concerning the division of Jerusalem and territorial exchanges according to the Clinton framework.
Party chairman Ben-Eliezer, tacked the Saudi initiative onto one of the Knesset faction decisions, and the initiative also plays an important role in the peace plan offered Ben-Eliezer by MK Yossi Katz, Danny Yatom, Moshe Amirav and Yosef Ginat.
But along with the talk of withdrawal from the territories, the exact opposite is happening right under the defense minister's nose.
According to A., a student drafted with an emergency military order, his company was sent to guard some surveyors in a Palestinian olive grove on the edges of Alfei Menasheh. The security officer at the settlement proudly told the soldiers that after the area is marked off, "We go to the commanding general and tell him that the Palestinians can't be allowed to control the area. Then the area is expropriated and we occasionally let its owners in to take care of the trees."
B'Tselem activists who were in the Hebron area recently encountered a group of settlers harassing some Palestinians trying to farm their land. IDF soldiers called to the scene explained that security rules prohibit the Palestinians from entering territory near settlements.
