Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, apparently despondent about building more settlements beyond the Green Line, has launched an old/new pioneering plan: to build 30 settlements across the country. Most of the new settlements are planned for the Galilee and Negev, including Mt. Gilboa, facing Jenin, and facing the Hebron Hills, between Jerusalem and Beer Sheva.
The Prime Minister believes that 500,000 Jews can be attracted to live in Galilee and another 500,000 in the Negev, and who are we to question his faith? The question must nevertheless still be asked: Why build new settlements? Shouldn’t existing communities suffering from a dearth of residents, be strengthened instead?
The new settlements would destroy natural spaces and vistas in order to solve two problems. One is the geographical dispersal of Israel's Arabs. The second is to populate areas along the pending border with the Palestinian state.
Israel's rich experience proves that the border problem must be solved up setting up obstacles on the ground reinforced by troops. The building of border settlements exacerbates the need for ground obstacles and troops, since the settlements have to be defended, in addition to the border defenses that in any case will be put in place.
As for the problem of the geographical dispersal of Israel's Arabs, building scattered Jewish settlements in order to disrupt Arab population continuity costs a lot of money. The problem of the geographical dispersal of Israel's Arabs might be solved much more cheaply by consolidating the Arab population by providing financial assistance to Arab communities in the Galilee to expand slightly or build upwards, thereby reducing friction with their Jewish neighbors.
What about the demographic balance? The scores of outposts founded in the Galilee could easily absorb the residents designated for the future settlements with the heartwarming names of Shibolet, Haruv, and Issachar.
It is also possible to cope with the spread of the Bedouin in the Negev with only a fraction of the money the Prime Minister wants to invest in Halutzit 1, 2, and 3. It would be enough to use a part of the money to found Bedouin towns suitable for a nomadic population that is switching to fixed settlement.
It's hard to imagine that the residents of Israel's center will move en masse to the new settlement areas where they would be given a half-dunam or dunam plot (an eighth to a quarter-acre), and maybe a goat to make high-quality cheese. Who knows? Maybe they will receive subsidies from the budget surplus anticipated in 2005, following a tax revenue-generating recovery in 2004. The fact is that the move of people to the Galilee outposts ebbed long ago and never resumed, despite recent attempts to revive it. What is the point in founding Hiran, Yatir and Ira near Beer Sheva, where Omer, Meitar, and Lahavim already exist, and which detract from the development of Beer Sheva more than they detract from the development of Beer Yaakov?
Perhaps new immigrants will settle the new communities? Unquestionably, waves of immigrants helped settle Israel's border areas in the past, but it is highly doubtful whether a new wave can be expected in the coming years. Immigration declined to 33,000 persons in 2002, and will contract further to 20,000-25,000 this year.
Founding 30 new settlements will cost a lot of money in infrastructure and development, and will hurt the chances for development of existing communities - some barely - in the designated areas. Ofakim's population rose from 13,000 to 23,000 in the 1990s, thanks mostly to new immigrants. Beer Sheva's population rose from 122,000 in 1990 to 178,000 in 2001 because of 54,000 new immigrants who settled in the city. 8,000 new immigrants settled in Dimona in this period, raising its population from 26,000 to 34,000.
Immigration was essential to increasing these towns' populations, and their growth halted with the ebbing of immigration. Yeruham's population declined from 8,900 in 2000 to 8,700 in 2000. According to the Statistical Abstract, Sderot's population rose to 19,200 in 2000 after absorbing 7,700 new immigrants in the 1990s, but remained unchanged in 2001, the latest available figure of statistical analysis.
The picture is similar in the Galilee. Migdal Ha'Emek's population rose from 17,200 in 1990 to 23,900 in 2000, after absorbing 6,900 immigrants, and remained almost unchanged in 2001, according to the Statistical Abstract. The situation is similar in Maalot-Tarshiha, where the number of Jews rose from 7,300 in 1990 to 15,800 in 2000, after absorbing 7,800 new immigrants. The town's Jewish population rose by only 300 in 2001. Other Galilee towns show the same pattern.
The situation is the same in rural communities in the Galilee and Negev, including the Adulam region north of Beer Sheva, and the Arava. Regardless of the justice of the final decision to divide kibbutz and moshav land, clearly Galilee and Negev communities can and should absorb a great many families using existing infrastructures, services, and personnel who currently lack sufficient work. Building new communal settlements, while ignoring the currently struggling ones, will only weaken the latter further.
Towns in the Galilee and Negev cannot achieve momentum in the absence of populations insufficient to maintain adequate educational, cultural, health, and commercial services. Their residents who can will vote with their feet and move to the center of the country, further concentrating, rather than dispersing, the population.
Sharon has done a great deal to build settlements beyond the Green Line that have caused greater harm than good. Even if the plan to build 30 settlements within the Green Line is a tacit admission of the logic of dividing the country, there is no point in translating this admission into building more settlements that will do the country further harm than good.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on August 3, 2003