Maddening. "Israel has said that settlements aren’t an impediment to a
two-state solution because many of them could be exchanged for Israeli
territory in a future deal." In what future is this real?
If you don't have access here's the whole thing:
By RORY JONES and ORR HIRSCHAUGE
Aug. 8, 2016 7:47 p.m. ET
KFAR TAPUACH, West Bank—The first time Michal Ronen traveled to her
rental apartment in this Jewish settlement in the occupied Palestinian
territories, a firebomb struck her bus.
“I was so hysterical,” she said. “I thought that happens every time.”
Now Ms. Ronen and her husband are looking to buy a home in Kfar Tapuach.
The eagerness of Israelis to own a home on disputed land is an
increasingly important political and financial barrier to a
comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace based on two neighboring states,
critics of settlement expansion say.
Israel has said that
settlements aren’t an impediment to a two-state solution because many of
them could be exchanged for Israeli territory in a future deal.
Prices are rising faster in many Jewish settlements than in major cities
such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv because of strong demand from Israeli
home buyers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is
increasing the incentives for settlers, despite objections from the U.S.
and other world powers to expanding the settlements.
Israel
would almost certainly have to compensate settlers for moving from any
land included in a future Palestinian state, according to researchers at
the Tel Aviv-based Macro Center for Political Economics. That would
amount to billions of dollars, depending on the number of settlers who
had to relocate, the center estimated.
About 370,000 Jewish
settlers live in the West Bank, and an additional 200,000 live in East
Jerusalem on land Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, according
to Peace Now, a nongovernmental organization that monitors settlement
construction. Israel recognizes 130 settlements in the West Bank, and
considers roughly 100 other outposts of Jewish settlers in the West Bank
illegal.
he settler population is growing faster than the
Israeli population as a whole. The Jewish population in the West Bank
grew 25% in the five years through the end of 2014, compared with 10% in
Israel, according to data from the country’s Central Bureau of
Statistics.
But housing construction hasn’t kept pace. Mr.
Netanyahu has limited new construction in the larger West Bank
settlements to a certain degree, under pressure from the Obama
administration and the international community.
As a result,
housing prices in some of the larger settlements have risen at a faster
rate than in Israeli cities, according to data from the Israel Tax
Authority collected and analyzed by Mesilaty Haim Real Estate Appraisal
Co. Ltd., an Israel-based real-estate firm.
The market in the
settlements also has been affected by a housing shortage in Israel, as
contractors have built far fewer units than required to meet population
growth in recent years, according to real-estate agents and an Israeli
official.
In Kfar Tapuach, where Ms. Ronen lives, the price of
land has more than tripled in the past five years, according to data
from Israel-based property website Madlan.
A July report from the
Quartet for the Middle East peace process, which comprises the U.N.,
the U.S., Russia and the European Union, criticized the settlements as
one of the chief obstacles to peace between Israel and Palestinians.
Mr. Netanyahu responded to the report, which came amid an increase in
Palestinian violence against Israeli settlers, by approving construction
of hundreds of new houses in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians want to
establish a future capital, and the nearby West Bank settlement of
Ma’ale Adumim.
The West Bank appeals to Israelis because the
houses are often larger, it is close to major cities, the schools are
sometimes better and everyday life can be more affordable, according to
real-estate agents. Some settlers are also ideologically driven to
settle what they consider to be ancestral Jewish land.
Settlements get financial support from the government for education,
services and the like, above and beyond what goes to other local
governments. That additional funding has increased 31% since Mr.
Netanyahu’s current administration came to power last year, to 18,000
shekels ($4,600) a year for each household, according to the Macro
Center for Political Economics.
In Efrat, a settlement 10 miles
south of Jerusalem, hundreds of people are on a waiting list to buy a
home in the community, said Mayor Oded Revivi, who also serves as chief
international liaison for the Yesha Council, a group that represents
settlements. “Today, the majority of the population moved because of
financial reasons,” he said.
Residents of Kfar Tapuach, a
settlement of roughly 200 families near the Palestinian city of Nablus,
said house prices have benefited from the growth of a university in the
nearby settlement of Ariel.
Ms. Ronen said she and her husband,
Yuval, moved to the settlement because Mr. Ronen studies engineering at
the university. They live there with their three children. “We now
really want to buy a house,” she said, adding that they say it has to be
now because prices are “going up crazy.”
Write to Rory Jones at rory.jones@wsj.com and Orr Hirschauge at Orr.Hirschauge@wsj.com
