Settlers, negotiators, gear up for freeze expiry (News Feature)

By Ofira Koopmans and Laura Villena Diaz Sep 25, 2010, 5:01 GMT

Shilo, northern West Bank/Tel Aviv - Israeli settlers have no doubt or hesitation what will happen after Sunday, when the 10-month partial freeze of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank is due to end.

The international community, led by President Barack Obama, are pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the moratorium, lest President Mahmoud Abbas carry out his threat to walk out of the new direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks - begun just three weeks ago - if settlement construction resumes.

But the settlers make it crystal clear what they think of the international pressure.

'There is no Israeli law saying that living in the land of Israel is illegal, and this is the land of Israel,' says settler activist Israel Meidad, going on 65, from Shilo, a settlement of some 8,000 inhabitants on the northern West Bank about halfway on the road between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Nablus.

If the freeze is renewed, the settlers will continue building without authorization, and may decide to break off all relations with the government, he warns.

A sign in Hebrew announces new construction plans in the settlement, waiting for the go ahead as soon as the freeze ends. 'Twelve units of five rooms each, with panoramic porch and Shabbat elevator,' it says.

Netanyahu imposed the moratorium in November 2009. Although far from a full stop to Israeli construction in the occupied territory, it went further than any previous Israeli government had.

East Jerusalem was not included in the freeze, but everywhere else in the West Bank, no new construction starts were allowed - with the exception of public buildings such as schools, kindergartens and synagogues. Construction of apartments where the foundation had already been laid was also allowed to continue.

According to the Israeli Peace Now group, which monitored the freeze, some 2,000 housing units are currently under construction at West Bank settlements - as part of those exceptions.

It also recorded at least 492 violations of the freeze order - by units built which were not part of the exceptions.

The freeze may not have been perfect, Peace Now spokeswoman Hagit Ofran said, but she nonetheless acknowledged it was the furthest-reaching step ever imposed by Israel, and passionately urged the government to extend it.

If it were not extended, she explained, it would effectively have been meaningless because all that would have happened would have been 'a few-months delay of several projects.'

'But if the moratorium is extended, then we will eventually see a (full) stop of construction, because no new construction starts will begin,' she told the German Press-Agency dpa.

If the freeze is not extended, more than 2,000 housing units for which all the paper work has been done can be built right away, warns Peace Now, in addition to another 11,000 approved in the somewhat longer term.

Israeli settlers are adamant their construction should go ahead and will go ahead.

Obama's recommendation to 'extend' the moratorium 'was not wise,' warns Dani Dayan, the chairman of the Yesha Council, which represents the 300,000 settlers living in the West Bank.

'It was a big mistake. If Netanyahu does so, his government won't last more than some months,' warns Dayan, who travelled with the Israeli government delegation to Washington in an attempt of feverish last-minute efforts to reach a compromise between the Israelis and Palestinians that would allow the nascent direct negotiations to continue.

Netanyahu ordered his chief negotiator to extend his stay in Washington in order to reach a compromise on the settlement issue, ahead of the moratorium's expiry on Sunday.

But, warns Dayan, 'if they don't give us permission (to resume building,) we'll exert political pressure on the parliament.'

Despite speculation that he would likely bow to US pressure and agree to continue the negotiations as part of a compromise on the settlement issue, Abbas, in public, was equally adamant in his views of the ongoing construction during the past 17 years of the peace process.

'Enough is enough,' he told Palestinian Americans at the Egyptian embassy in New York.