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.