West Bank Settlement-building Activity Quadrupled This Year, Monitoring Group Says

Plans to construct 2,168 new housing units have moved forward since September 2015, according to Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project. That includes anything from initial submission to final authorization.

By Judy Maltz, HAARETZ  Oct 06, 2016

Construction workers are busy applying the finishing touches to a row of brand new, single-family homes adjacent to Ariel University, each with its own little garden plot. Hoping to lure prospective buyers, a large advertisement on the road notes their proximity to a soon-to-be-built shopping mall.

After years of stagnation, this Jewish settlement situated deep inside the West Bank is enjoying a revival of sorts — evidenced by the new construction in this neighborhood, Givat Ha’universita, and other locations around town.

Despite declarations to the contrary by government officials, the settlement enterprise is expanding. Recent figures published by the Central Bureau of Statistics show a sharp increase in actual building starts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, data compiled by an Israeli peace organization provides evidence of a surge in construction planning activity that encompasses both new housing and the retroactive legalization of existing homes.

For proponents of a two-state solution, particularly troubling is the fact that much of this new building activity is taking place in locations like Ariel, far away from Israel’s internationally recognized border or any other likely future border. As such, it appears aimed at blocking any future evacuation of the settlements.

“We are seeing dramatic growth in the past year in two particular settlements — Ariel and Efrat — which are especially problematic because, on the one hand, they are considered part of the so-called ‘consensus’ in Israel. But, on the other, they are situated in places where it would be harder to pull out from in the event of a peace agreement,” said Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch project at Peace Now.

Ariel is 20 kilometers (12 miles) from any presumed future border. Efrat, meanwhile, extends over Route 60 — the only major north-south highway in the southern West Bank — thereby encroaching on the development of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Ariel, with close to 20,000 residents, and Efrat, with upwards of 8,000, are among the most heavily populated Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Yigal Dilmoni, spokesman for the Yesha Council of settlements (the official lobbying organization for the movement), confirmed that significant construction is underway in Ariel and Efrat, but noted that it’s the outcome of building permits issued two years ago. At that time, the government temporarily lifted its official ban on settlement construction, hoping to blunt right-wing protests over its decision to release a large group of Palestinian prisoners.

“Today, however, no new plans for construction that are submitted to the Civil Administration are moved forward,” said Dilmoni. “Nobody even bothers looking at them, let alone approve them.”

Not so, according to Settlement Watch, which maintains a comprehensive database on construction activity in the settlements. (Neither the Yesha Council nor Regavim, another pro-settler group, publish data on the subject.)

Settlement Watch figures are based on a number of sources, including the Central Bureau of Statistics (for building starts), local planning and building committee decisions and protocols available on the Interior Ministry website, and aerial photographs taken once a year.

According to figures prepared by Settlement Watch at the request of Haaretz, since the start of the last Jewish year (September 2015), the number of advancing plans for new housing units in the settlements almost quadrupled in comparison to the previous year, 5775.

Plans to construct 2,168 new housing units were moved forward in some way or another over the Jewish year. That includes anything from initial submission to final authorization. In the previous year, the corresponding number was 553.

In addition, 1,170 housing units built without permits in previous years received retroactive approval, compared with just 444 in the previous year. (The figures for both new housing and retroactive legalization this year are still not as high as they were two years ago, when the official ban was temporarily lifted.)

The list of plans that moved forward includes the construction of 577 new homes in Ma’aleh Adumim (part of the settlement bloc near Jerusalem considered likely to be annexed to Israel as part of a future agreement); 234 in Elkana; 164 in Rotem; 114 in Otniel; 70 in Nokdim; 60 in Alon Shvut; 54 in Bracha; 32 in Efrat; and 24 in Kiryat Arba. It also includes the retroactive legalization of 187 homes in Itamar, 179 in Ofarim, 105 in Alei Zahav, 93 in Shvut Rachel and 22 in Givon Hahadasha.

Not included in the list is a plan to expand the Jewish settlement of Hebron for the first time in over a decade. That plan, announced in August, has still not entered the bureaucratic pipeline.

In addition, since last Rosh Hashanah, the government issued tenders for 42 new housing units in Kiryat Arba and 761 in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (Ramat Shlomo, Gilo, Pisgat Zeev, Har Homa and Neveh Yaakov). It also declared its intention to begin the process of legalizing six illegal outposts in the West Bank: Mitzpeh Danny, Neveh Erez, Adei Ad, Kida and Tapuah West. Horesh Yaron, another illegal outpost, has already passed the first stage of legalization.

“In my view, the legalization of an outpost is actually the official establishment of a new settlement,” said Ofran.

Still, she added, these figures don’t tell the entire story. “Tenders are only required in 13 settlements, so lots of construction activity is happening in other places without any tenders being issued,” she said.

And while the number of plans moving forward in a given year may provide a sense of how much the settlements can grow, it barely indicates the full potential, added Ofran.

“There are still many, many plans from previous years in the pipeline that have yet to be acted on,” she said. “Taken together, all these plans could keep the settlement project rolling for another 10 years without any additional plans being approved.”

The latest CBS figures, published three weeks ago, show that building starts in Israel as a whole were down 7 percent in the first half of this calendar year, compared with the same period last year. In the Jewish West Bank settlements, however, they were up close to 17 percent. Construction on 1,200 new housing units in the settlements was started in January-June — representing 5 percent of the country’s total building starts. These figures don’t include the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Although the CBS figures don’t provide a breakdown by location, Dror Etkes — director of Kerem Navot, a nongovernmental organization that monitors Israeli land policy in the West Bank — says that two major ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) settlements situated right near the pre-1967 borders of Israel (aka the Green Line) account for a large chunk of the new construction: Betar Ilit and Modi’in Ilit.

“The reason there is lots of construction there is that, among the ultra-Orthodox, the birthrates are much higher,” explained Etkes.

Figures released by the CBS ahead of Rosh Hashanah show that the Jewish population in the West Bank grew by 4.1 percent last year, compared with a much slower rate of 2 percent among the general population. Some 386,000 Jews are living in the West Bank, with another 203,000 in East Jerusalem.

Another trend in settlement expansion evident since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2009 is a shift in geographic priorities, said Etkes.

“In the years Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert were in power, most of the investments were in settlements on the western side of the [West Bank] separation barrier,” he said. “Under Netanyahu, there’s been a renewed focus on what are known as the ideological settlements on the eastern side of the barrier.

“The actual number of new housing units in these places is not huge, but in terms of percentage growth it’s quite significant,” he added.

Etkes said the recent surge in construction activity on the eastern side of the separation barrier is especially evident in settlements like Talmon, Kedumim, Eli, Shiloh, Avnei Hefetz and Itamar — none of which are expected to be incorporated into Israel as part of a future peace agreement.

This trend is confirmed by Bimkom, an organization of Israeli human rights activists in the fields of planning and architecture. “What we’re seeing lately is lots of building activity going on far away from the Green Line and away from the big settlement blocs,” said Alon Cohen, who monitors developments in the West Bank for the organization.

According to figures compiled by Settlement Watch, the percentage of new housing starts on the eastern side of the separation barrier was roughly 20 percent of total settlement construction before Netanyahu returned to power. Since then, said Ofran, “it’s gone up to 35 percent — and that’s pretty dramatic.”

Although all the available data indicate clearly that the settlements are growing, she said, the scope of this expansion is difficult to assess because so much of the building over the Green Line — today, as in the past — is unauthorized.

That would be the case of Shahar Hazirah, which advertises itself on its Facebook page as “a young neighborhood in the Shiloh bloc.” This new neighborhood of 17 single-family homes, in the final stages of construction, is an extension of Shvut Rachel, an illegal outpost retroactively legalized earlier this year. But Settlement Watch records show that construction of the new neighborhood was never approved.

Ofran blames the proliferation of illegal construction on the government’s policy of retroactive legalization. “The message it is sending the settlers is that they don’t need to worry about breaking the law, because eventually everything they build will be legalized rather than demolished,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories told Haaretz that all decisions regarding settlement-building plans “are published for the general public throughout the year with full transparency” on government websites. She was referring to the data also used by Settlement Watch in its reports.

“These topics are approved according to criteria of professional planning institutions in accordance with government approval,” she added.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment for this article, saying, “We will respond when we have something to say.”