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Housing Crunch Time On The West Bank
Modiin Illit, population 40,000, is a key battleground in fight between the Obama administration and Israel on settlement expansion. Joshua Mitnick by Joshua Mitnick At first, Israel’s high court ordered a construction freeze in the newest part of the settlement because of claims of illegal building from Palestinians. Then the builder went bankrupt. Now, saddled with mortgage payments, rent on an apartment here and expenses for three children, the 25-year-old teacher worries that the new demands of the Obama administration that Israel cease all West Bank settlement activity means he’ll never find a home of his own here. Bemoaning the lack of new housing, Harkesef said it’s as if the 
Here in the largest and fastest-growing settlement in the West Bank — where the sound of pounding jackhammers is ever present — the clash between President Barack Obama’s new zero-tolerance settlement policy and the Israeli government’s demand to allow natural expansion is brought into sharp relief. With a population of 40,000, residents and officials say that Modiin Illit is bursting at the seams from a shortage of new homes. In the last four years, as the number of apartments fails to keep pace with the population growth and residents fear the end of new land reserves, the average price of a two-bedroom apartment has doubled to $180,000. Construction contractors say they are building new units on apartment building roofs and converting unfinished basements to meet demand. If Israel bowed to U.S. pressure for a comprehensive settlement freeze, it’s a safe assumption that apartment values here would surge even more. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is so far resisting the pressure and instead initiated talks with U.S. officials to find a compromise. Israeli officials insist that there have been a series of quiet understandings with the U.S. stretching back years that building in existing settlements would be tolerated to allow for natural growth. “There was common ground in the past on these issues, and there’s an interest in finding understandings that are both reasonable and logical,” said an Israeli official who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to talk on the subject. But the Obama administration seems as if it is adopting the logic of Israeli peace groups who argue that, relying on the slogan of natural growth, the settlements have nearly tripled their population since the Rabin government declared a freeze on new settlements in 1992. Today the Jewish population of the West Bank (not including east Jerusalem, which the international community doesn’t consider part of Israel) is nearly 300,000. Settler leaders insist that, at minimum, Israel must insist on the right to build to accommodate annual population growth of about 5.5 percent a year in the settlements. Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, however, show that since 2000, slightly more than one-third of the growth in settler population came from new arrivals from inside of Israel or new immigrants from abroad. And despite complaints among residents of Modiin Illit and other areas that the government isn’t granting enough building permits, data published in March by the Bureau on housing starts in the West Bank showed a 42 percent increase in 2008 compared to 2007. That runs counter to the commitment made by the previous Olmert government at the Annapolis peace conference to implement the U.S.-sponsored “road map” peace plan, which calls for a comprehensive settlement freeze from Israel. Israel argues that it is not bound by the road map requirements as long as the Palestinians don’t fulfill their commitments to rein in terrorism. “Israel is constructing in a way that limits the ability of Palestinians to use their own land,” said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert at the human rights watchdog group Yesh Din. “I grew up in Jerusalem and I cannot afford to live there even if I wanted. Who in the country has a guarantee they’ll be able to live five minutes from their home? Only the settlers are asking for this.” Back in Modiin Illit, Deputy Mayor Yaakov Vallenstien points out that the settlement has good relations with neighboring Arab villages and even employs 700 Palestinian construction workers a day. But in 2006, the Supreme Court issued an injunction on construction in the city’s newest neighborhood, Matityahu Mizrach, in response to a petition that claimed the land was stolen from Palestinians. As a result, building has ground to a halt in the area slated for a major expansion of the city, and a succession of small hilltops that have been flattened and cleared for building remain bald. The fervently Orthodox residents in Modiin Illit say they came to the West Bank not to reclaim the Land of Israel like the mainstream settler ideologues, but because Modiin Illit is where the government decided to establish a community for families burdened by rising prices in Jerusalem. “The rabbis forbid Jews from provoking other nations,” said Tami Gil, a journalist for a haredi news Web site and a Modiin Illit resident. What’s more, they argue, the settlement’s location within view of Ben Gurion Airport, west of the separation barrier, and just a few miles from the Green Line means that Israel plans to keep this land under any peace agreement. The city is so apolitical that most of the residents don’t know whether they’re in the West Bank or Israel proper, claimed Gil. Gil says her recently married son was forced to rent in a different fervently Orthodox settlement, Beitar Illit, after failing to find a house to buy in Modiin Illit. “He wants to live next to his mother. We’re looking for a [housing] solution, not to be settlers.” Instead of trading up to larger, more expensive houses, many families in Modiin Illit obtain municipal permits to close in balconies to serve as new rooms — a practice that raises the question of just how comprehensive the U.S. plans to make the building freeze. Will the Obama administration outlaw the construction of public areas like synagogues and community centers in already built-up settlements? And what about east Jerusalem in neighborhoods annexed by Israel like French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev? “With our own hands we are destroying our chances for peace,” said Hagit Ofran of Peace Now. “Every brick is undermining the moderate Palestinians who are still trying to persuade their people that the way out is talking to Israel.” Pinchas Wallerstein, a former head of Yesha, the settler council, who lives in the town of Ofra — located deep in the West Bank, north of Ramallah — said he considers allowing for natural growth a minimum condition that Israel can accept. He argued that Obama is reorienting American policy to favor the Arabs. “He has decided to stop the relationship between Israel and America,” Wallerstein said of Obama. “He doesn’t count Israel as an American ally in the Middle East. Israel is a problem for him.” In an interview with Israel Radio, Labor Minister Yitzhak Herzog insisted that relations between the U.S. and Israel would remain strong despite the new wind blowing from Washington. “It’s permissible for friends to express criticism,” Herzog said. In talks with the U.S., Israel needs to make clear distinctions between “settlement blocs,” on which there is a public consensus that Israel should keep — like Modiin Illit — and settlements that are isolated, in the heart of the Palestinian population, Herzog said. Some of these settlements are illegal and sitting on Palestinian territory, and should be evacuated, Herzog suggested. “We have international commitments and we should honor them.” In Modiin Illit they’re hoping Obama makes the same distinction. Says Deputy Mayor Vallenstien: “I want to make it clear that we should make a distinction [between] the places that don’t annoy the neighboring Arabs and where the settlers are. I think even the Arab public understands this.”
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