The Betrayal of Oslo

The Oslo agreements were a sham. Although the language did not promise a settlement freeze, the understanding on the Palestinian side was that Oslo would eventually lead to Israeli withdrawal from the territories. In fact, the accords turned into a state-run land grab of astounding proportions, leaving many Palestinians feeling that the Israelis had bargained in bad faith. In the eight years since the first Oslo agreement, according to the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, the population of the settlements has grown by 100 percent, to reach some 200,000 (not including East Jerusalem). Housing units have jumped by 50 percent. About forty new settlements were built between 1996 and the 1999 election, the vast majority of them rising after the fall of 1998. The settlers "have political power way beyond their numbers," groans Peace Now leader Janet Aviad. "About 5 percent of the population holds the rest of us hostage."

When Barak came to power there were great expectations among the Palestinians that the building of settlements would cease. Instead, during the Barak years the settlement movement manifested itself in the construction of huge subdivisions within existing settlements. Meanwhile, an expansive system of bypass roads worthy of the German autobahn was cut through the pristine ridges and hillsides of Judea and Samaria so that settlers wouldn't have to drive past Palestinian villages, towns or refugee camps. "During the Oslo years," says Didi Remez, who heads Settlement Watch for Peace Now, "we used to say, there was barely a Palestinian who didn't wake up in the morning and open his window, and not see a deepening of the occupation." Twenty-five new encampments have been established since the election of Sharon this past February. Taken together, the settlements reach out like long fingers that divide the Palestinian areas on the West Bank into three bantustans. In Gaza 6,500 settlers live among 1.2 million desperately poor, increasingly radicalized Palestinians. Some are living in conditions as horrible as any impoverished area in the world. With their clinics and other charitable work, the two main fundamentalist groups--Hamas and Islamic Jihad--are proving to be increasingly attractive alternatives to Arafat and the moribund, systematically corrupt Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, every settlement now has its own native militia, which has mortars, light and heavy-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles. According to current estimates by Israeli military intelligence officials, about 20,000 of these heavily armed settlers would use their weapons against the government if they were told to abandon their homes as a condition of a peace accord. Officials of Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, say any prime minister who signed such an accord would be in great physical danger from the kind of extremists who assassinated Prime Minister Rabin in 1995.

David Ramati would rather fight than leave. Ramati lives with his wife and six children in a tiny apartment in Kiryat Arba, one of the most radical settlements on the West Bank. When I visited him in October, he told me that the intifada has taken a toll on him and his fellow settlers. Since it began, seventy-three Israeli settlers have been killed by Palestinians in the territories. In the Kiryat Arba area, several women and children have been gunned down by Palestinian snipers. The night before I met Ramati, Israeli tanks, Apache helicopter gunships and troops had stormed the hills overlooking the Jewish enclaves of Hebron--a short, uphill walk from Kiryat Arba.

"Most of the people [settlers] in the West Bank are suffering from what we in America knew or learned was called posttraumatic stress syndrome," a common affliction suffered by Vietnam vets, says Ramati. "It happens when a population is under constant threat or constant pressure."

Ramati knows something about Vietnam. The Chicago native did two tours with the Marines there. Then he moved to Israel, converted to Judaism, joined an elite unit of the Israeli army and fought Arabs. Ramati denies knowing anything about the infamous Jewish vigilantes who operate out of Kiryat Arba and Hebron. But if Ramati hasn't joined them, he certainly knows who they are. In February 1994 Ramati spent part of the night with Dr. Baruch Goldstein before Goldstein rose early to slaughter twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, since the beginning of the first intifada in December 1987, 124 Palestinians, among them twenty-four minors, have been killed by settlers and other Israeli civilians. In Hebron and Kiryat Arba, children under the age of 12 have looted Arab shops and committed various acts of vandalism, says Shahar Ayalon, major general in the Israeli police and commander of the Judea and Samaria District. In one instance, Jewish children broke into a mosque in Hebron and desecrated many sacred books, says a top Israeli intelligence official. Israeli law protects children under 12 from prosecution. "Anybody who's rational here sees that if the settlement movement continues to do what it's doing now, there will be a huge cataclysm," says Peace Now's Aviad. That hasn't stopped Sharon, who in the wake of Gandhi's assassination directed that twelve new homes be built in the heart of Hebron.

Just a few days after the Jewish holiday of Succoth, Ramati took me on a tour of the Jewish enclaves of Hebron. The settlers are largely disciples of the late Meir Kahane or of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, one of the founders and messianic leaders of the settlement movement. The streets were nearly empty, and the metal shutters on the Arab stalls in the souk were shut tight. The previous night's fierce fighting had spooked the residents. One female Israeli soldier darted from a bullet-scarred checkpoint to another. Settlers were hunkered down inside their homes.

Ramati took me to several sites where Jewish settlers had recently been killed by Palestinian snipers. We stopped in front of one pockmarked wall. Several months ago, he said, a Palestinian sniper fatally shot a 9-month-old girl. "And then he shot the father through the legs, so that he could lie there on the ground and watch his daughter die. That was pretty cold," said Ramati, a powerfully built man with an overwhelming sense of gloom.

"And then during Succoth, a 50-year-old woman was shot through the chest. She survived. Her daughter was also shot in the legs. And that's what provoked, finally, the Israeli army to take over the area, after ten months of constant sniper fire on the Jewish community."

Once, Ramati dreamed of Jewish-Arab coexistence in the Holy Land. He believed that the Arabs of Judea and Samaria would welcome Jews and that the peoples of Hebron would transcend their differences and become real neighbors. In fact, lots of settlers used to pitch that tune to reporters. But no more. The hatred is palpable on both sides. "The Palestinians are deliberately targeting women and children," Ramati said angrily. "They never did that before."

We glumly continued our walking tour. "This side of the street is all Arabs and this side is all Jews," said Ramati, pointing to the small stone houses that lined the street. "The white stone is Arab, the yellow stone is Jewish. So you see we live, pretty much, up each other's ass."

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