From: Center for Policy Research <cpr>
Subject: Labour's enclaves policy.IMPORTANT


Labour's enclaves policy in the occupied territories

by Israel Shahak
publ. in Middle East International, London, 30.4.93

It is not difficult to discover Israel's policy towards the 
Palestinians at any given time. It can be easily inferred 
from the facts on the ground and from the information 
provided by the Hebrew press. There is one condition, 
though. The torrents of claptrap about "the peace 
process" must be totally ignored, as must Israel's official 
pronouncements, whole sole purpose is to distort reality. 
By concentrating only on the facts, it was early apparent 
that Labour's policies were no different from those of 
Shamir but for their greater reliance on deceit and their 
more effective implementation.

Likud's policies were accurately described by Ariel 
Sharon in an article, accompanied by a map, in Yediot 
Aharonot last August. The Sharon plan envisaged a 
division of the West Bank into seven, and the Gaza Strip 
into four, "autonomous" Palestinian enclaves, all of them 
under Israeli supervision. The total area of these 
enclaves amounted to about 15 per cent of the 
territories. The rest was to be controlled by the Israeli 
settlements and the highways built around the enclaves. 
The entire area around Jerusalem, from the outskirts of 
Ramallah to the boundaries of Bethlehem, has already 
been turned into a "Greater Jerusalem" where the Arab-
inhabited localities amount to small enclaves surrounded 
by areas occupied by Israeli settlements or reserved for 
them.

Judging from Labour's settlement policy, it may be 
assumed that it may content itself with a lesser number 
of Arab enclaves of a rather larger size than Sharon had 
planned. But the principle of surrounding the enclaves by 
settlements strategically dispersed along the highways 
remains unchanged. Labour plans only four enclaves in 
the West Bank: two in "Samaria" and two in "Judea" (i.e. 
north and south of Jerusalem respectively), and no more 
than two in the Gaza Strip. In regard to "Greater 
Jerusalem", Labour's policies hardly deviate from 
Sharon's.

A saner version of Likud policy

As some Israeli correspondents at once realised, Labour 
policies were but a saner version of Sharon's 
extravaganza. Last July, Gideon Eshet wrote in Yediot 
Aharonot that, while "barely a few months ago" Labour 
supported the demand to freeze all construction beyond 
the Green Line, "no specific decision to freeze 
construction in the territories has been taken". And Uzi 
Benziman wrote in Ha'aretz that "as far as can be judged 
on the basis of the internal political discussions in 
Jerusalem, Rabin intends to stick to Likud's ways".

The two biggest enclaves envisaged by Labour are 
located in "Samaria". Therefore the belt of settlements 
around the "Trans-Samaria Highway", designed to 
separate those enclaves from each other, is of paramount 
importance. According to the latest data, the percentage 
of Israeli settlers in the entire West Bank population 
(apart from East Jerusalem) is a mere 5.5 per cent. But 
for the area around the "Trans-Samaria Highway", the 
corresponding figure is almost 20 per cent, and it is 
increasing steadily. The situation in the settlements of 
the "Efrat Block" south of Jerusalem, designed to sever 
the enclave around Bethlehem from the one around 
Hebron, is pretty much the same. The "Efrat Block" is now 
being connected with West Jerusalem by a highway.

The project is costly in the extreme, because the highway 
is designed to bypass Bethlehem by a sequence of long 
tunnels. The final decision to build this highway was 
suspended until Rabin's return from his US visit in 
March. The subsequent decision to renew its construction 
can be seen as US approval for the enclaves plan as a 
whole.

Process of impoverishment

The enclaves plan implies deliberate and steady 
impoverishment of the Palestinians. This is well known 
in Israel but ignored abroad by all who should be 
concerned, including the PLO. In regard to the Gaza Strip, 
the whole process was best described by Ze'ev Shiff in 
Ha'aretz in March. He mentions having seen "a pamphlet 
issued six years ago by the Civil Administration 
forecasting the conditions in the Gaza Strip under Israeli 
rule in 2000". His analysis deserves to be quoted 
extensively:

"We continue to steal the Strip's water, even though its 
quality deteriorates from year to year. We continue to 
steal the Strip's tiny land resources, in order to found 
there more and more settlements, as if we deliberately 
want to make the inhabitants despair, and in their 
despair think in termws of having nothing to lose. It is 
by our own doing that the Strip's workers must now 
spend travelling to their workplaces almost as much time 
as they spend working. From the military point of view, 
we have kept control of no more than half the Strip's 
area at an increasingly exorbitant price in manpower and 
resources. About a year before Moshe Arens left the 
defence ministry, I heard him saying that we should 
withdraw from the Strip come what may. His argument 
was that Israel sinks into the Strip ever deeper and 
deeper. He told me he had proposed this to Yitzhak 
Shamir but he rejected it." Yitzhak Rabin rejects it too.

Enormous state support for the Qatif Block settlers can 
also be cited as proof that the enclaves plan is being 
implemented. The Qatif Block settlements, founded by 
the first Rabin government of 1974-77, are intended to 
divide the Gaza Strip into two separate enclaves. Efraim 
Davidi of Davar had data showing how vital for Israeli 
this enterprise is. "The Qatif Block is now producing 40 
per cent of Israeli tomatoes destined for export, and a 
substantial proportion of cut flowers." He also deals with 
the subsidies the settlers receive, considerably 
augmented by the present government. Owing to them, 
housing units are cheap. The present government does 
not spare efforts to recruit new settlers to the block. 
"Any prospective settler will get a 95 per cent mortgage 
for his house on top of a grant of 18,000 shekels 
($6,500)."

Such data shows that Israel's plans apply whether the 
Palestinians of the Gaza Strip are allowed or forbidden to 
work in Israel. The economic motivations were explained 
by Danny Rubinstein in Ha'aretz in March:

"From the economic viewpoint Gaza could already be 
sealed off hermetically and all the Strip's workers could 
be barred from entering Israel...Even though accurate 
data is hard to come by, it is indisputable that during the 
last two years the numbes of Gazan workers arriving 
daily to work in Israel has markedly decreased, from 
80,000 in the mid'80s to 40,000 today. But the decrease 
is not only due to restrictions imposed on entering Israel 
from Gaza. It is also due to the drastic curtailment of 
demand for Gazan labour in Israel. With unemployment 
in Israel soaring and the construction of apartments 
blocks virtually halted, the workers from Gaza are no 
longer really needed..."

Gaza's total dependence

The entire economy of the Gaza Strip is totally dependent 
on Israel. In recent years in the Gaza Strip there has 
been an increase in sub-contracted work for Israeli 
factories, mostly footware and textiles. Thousands of 
small workshops, employing an average of four workers, 
get their raw materials or unfinished products, together 
with detailed working instructions, from Israeli factories. 
Rubinstein attributes this development to the fact that 
"the average wage in the Gaza Strip is merely 40 per cent 
of that in the West Bank, which in turn stands at half the 
average wage in Israel; and besides the Gazan employer 
does not pay any social security for his employees." If 
the average wage in the Gaza Strip is just a fifth of that 
in Israel, the profits of Israeli factories and even of 
Palestinian sub-contractors must be vast.

They are higher still when "a Gazan sub-contractor 
provides labour to be performed at home, with the 
family's help. The livelihood of tens of thousands of 
Gazans depends on such sub-contracted work." Many of 
them are women and children, paid about ten shekels 
($3.50) a day which can last 12 hours or more. There can 
be no doubt that profits from exploiting cheap Gazan 
labour are one of the reasons for the stubborn opposition 
of Rabin and other Israeli ministers to withdrawal from 
the Strip.

Economic conditions in the Gaza Strip differ little from 
what was created straight after Israel's conquest [in 
1967]. In this respect, one should not be deluded by the 
talk, nowadays fashionable, about Israeli gestures 
intended to "encourage economic development in the 
territories", As Israeli journalists point out, all permits 
for opening new businesses depend on a prior approval 
by the Shin Bet. "Behind all the professed goodwill there 
is no desire to solve problems, just the attitude of a good 
colonialist, willing to do something for the benefit of the 
natives, but on condition that they behave nicely, do not 
become rebellious, and never do anything against the 
interests of the metropolis, its economic interests 
included," wrote Michal Sela in Davar in February. The 
development of sub-contracted work in the Gaza Strip 
accords perfectly with Sela's diagnosis.

Sela also shows how exactly the economic controls work. 
"In all branches of the economy, lobbies have been set in 
motion for purposes of freeing Israeli production from 
the threat of any Palestinian competition. The method is 
simplicity itself. As soon as any Israeli producer succeeds 
in persuading the government, or even the trade and 
industry minister alone, a military order is issued 
prohibiting the export of a given produce to Israel. If this 
does not suffice, a Palestinian factory may be denied a 
licence to operate or bureaucratic obstacles may paralyse 
its production." Among the most active of such lobbies is 
the agricultural one. It has succeeded in limiting exports 
of Gazan vegetables (except for those grown by settlers) 
not only to Israel but also to Europe, where they 
otherwise might compete with Israeli exports.

Perpetuaring apartheid

Labour's goal is to perpetuate this apartheid regime in 
the territories. The same goal is shared by the US, which 
otherwise could not support the Labour government so 
firmly. In my view one of the reasons the US feels 
happier about supporting Labour than Likud is its 
greater efficiency in pursuing the settlement drive. This 
point was brought home by Ofer Shelah in Ma'ariv, who 
deplored the settlers' failure which he attributed to 
Likud's inefficiency. he showed that the peak yearly 
settlement growth "occured during the term of office of 
the National Unity government (i.e. 1984-90) in which 
Rabin served throughout as the defence minister". 
Likud's reputation for settling the territories better than 
Labour is false, attributable to the many tiny settlements 
without strategic value founded under Shamir for 
symbolic reasons.

To sum up: Labour's policy, unconditionally supported by 
the US differs from that of Likud primarily in the 
efficiency with which it is implemented. According to 
that policy the territories are to be divided into two 
parts. The major part is to be ruled by Israel directly, 
and the minor part indirectly. In my view, this racist 
scheme is doomed to ultimately fail, but at a horrifying 
price in human suffering. The sooner its true nature is 
recognised, the less suffering it may cause.