Fences point to Jewish, Palestinian divisions

QARIOUT, West Bank

The head of this Palestinian village can’t scan the horizon without being reminded of everything his people have lost. From the roof of the village council building, Abdelnasser Bedawi can see six of the nine Israeli settlements and outposts that have sprung up on the surrounding hills in the past three decades, fencing in the village and keeping it from two-thirds of its land.

From a grassy hilltop in one of those settlements, Shiloh, Batya Medad sees a different story in the settlers’ red-roofed houses: She calls it the return of the Jewish people to land God promised them in the Old Testament.

Mr. Bedawi and Mrs. Medad speak different languages and have never met, though their homes lie only about a mile apart. Between them lies the harsh conflict over Israel’s West Bank settlements.

The settlements have emerged as the chief roadblock in Middle East peace efforts.

The Palestinians consider them a threat to the state they hope for in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Their leaders have refused to resume talks until all settlement building stops.

After rebuffing U.S. and Palestinian calls for a freeze in building, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in late November a 10-month halt to new construction in West Bank settlements like Shiloh as a step toward restarting talks.

Settlers have protested the move, saying it restricts life in their communities, while Palestinians have rejected it because it doesn’t apply to East Jerusalem nor to about 3,000 homes already under construction elsewhere.

On Monday, Israel announced it is building nearly 700 new apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians hope to set up the capital of a future state, drawing protests from the U.S., Palestinians and the European Union.

Settlements, now numbering about 120 in the West Bank, have been argued over by lawyers and negotiators ever since they started going up after Israel captured the territories in the 1967 war. Today, about a half-million Israelis live in the West Bank and in the Arab sector of Jerusalem that Israel annexed - a move the world has never recognized.

Qariout, a rocky village of 2,600 people about 20 miles north of Jerusalem, illustrates why Palestinians are so desperate to halt the spread of settlements.

Beyond the political issue of their effect on borders for any future state, they constrict life in hundreds of West Bank villages by gobbling up farmland, restricting movement and exposing villagers to clashes with settlers, Palestinians say.

Shiloh was the first settlement in the Qariout area, founded in 1979. Since then, two other settlements have sprung up nearby, along with six smaller wildcat outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law but get electricity, water and protection from the government.

Together, they surround the village on three sides and deny it access to about two-thirds of its land, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights groups that tracks settlements.

Dror Etkes of Yesh Din said the Israeli government has officially allocated 28 percent of the village’s original 2,100 acres to nearby settlements.

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