Aiding Israel's land theft
Israel is in trouble, and the US taxpayer will soon be asked to bail it out. The absorption of Soviet immigrants is not going well. According to reports in the Israeli press, 40% of those with Soviet visas have postponed their plans to move to Israel and one-third of those who have immigrated to Israel in the last year are already trying to leave.
As many Soviet women in Israel find work as "escort girls" and prostitutes and their husbands and fathers beg for leftover food at outdoor markets, the Israeli government has announced that it will need $40 billion to settle the immigrants and that it will soon ask the US for an additional $10 billion in loan guarantees.
Since Israel promised Washington that a first instalment of $400 million in loan guarantees would not be used for housing in the territories, it has embarked on what its press calls an "unprecedented construction frenzy" in the West Bank and Gaza.
At least four new settlements have been inaugurated since Baker began his visits to the region. Israel's other 140 settlements in the territories are being rapidly expanded.
New settlers are being lured with offers of $63,000 mortgages, of which $48,000 is interest free. If they stay within the "green line", they are only able to obtain $35,000 mortgages, with $8900 interest free, and have to pay up to $15,000 in infrastructure services. The government shoulders all the heavy infrastructural costs in the territories.
At the beginning of May, Prime Minister Shamir told Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont that raising the settlement issue was "unhealthy" and "will not be useful". Almost simultaneously, the Israeli Ministry of Housing officially announced plans to build 24,000 new units in the West Bank and Gaza and to ring Jerusalem with a new satellite belt which would house 1 million people. 120,000 of the 350,000 Jews in Jerusalem already live on annexed territory.
Housing Minister Ariel Sharon may have been rebuffed by the State Department when he visited the US in early May, but he reaped his reward in New York City. A record sale of $25 million of "Israel Bonds" were bought in a single evening following an address by the so-called "king of Israel". Such largess might have reassured Israel that the US would continue to subsidize its activities, no matter how at odds they are with stated US policy and with UN Security Council resolutions
condemning settlements in the territories.
In the months since Baker's March 11 announcement that US aid would not be tied to Israel's commitment to peace, Israel has confiscated more Palestinian land than it did in the previous two years, according to the Israeli Alternative Information Center. Over 20,000 acres were taken between the secretary's first and second visits. 13,000 acres were expropriated near the West Bank village of Deir Dibwan on the single day of April l, according to the Jerusalem Post (May 10). Israel now claims at least 65% of the West Bank and 40% of the Gaza Strip.
[From Breaking the Siege, newsletter of the (US) Middle East Justice Network.]