With attention on Gaza, Jewish settlers expand in the West Bank

For more than two decades, Israeli Dror Etkes has crisscrossed the West Bank, bouncing along dusty, rutted roads as part of his personal mission to keep close tabs on the expanding Jewish settlements he fiercely opposes.

The war in Gaza has diverted attention from the West Bank, and the Israeli government and Jewish settlers are making the most of this opportunity to increase their numbers and the land they control, said Etkes.

"The settlers realize that these are the right times to expand and to take as much as possible, to swallow as much as possible, to grab as much as possible," said Etkes, who established the monitoring group Kerem Navot.

This is not the first time we've gone around the West Bank together. Back in 2007, Etkes took me on a tour of new outposts established by hard-core settlers. Today there are nearly 150 Jewish settlements authorized by the Israeli government and more than 100 outposts that have no government sanction, according to monitoring groups.

The outposts typically start on hilltops. Settlers will park a couple mobile homes to stake a claim, though they don’t have Israeli government permission. In some cases, Palestinians say the settlers are doing this on private land owned by Palestinians.

Sometimes the settlers bring sheep and cattle to make it tougher for the government evict them. Over time, the government often grants approval to the illegal outpost, turning it into a formal, authorized Jewish settlement.

The largest Jewish settlements, like Ariel, are now small cities. Ariel has more than 20,000 residents and is building new homes in hopes of doubling the population within a decade. The settlement already has its own university and a large industrial zone.

As he makes his regular rounds, Etkes sees the outposts and settlements growing every time. And the settlers are getting a big boost from the current Israeli government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, the most right-wing in Israel's history, has appropriated about nine square miles of West Bank territory this year as "state land," which means it can be used for settlements. According to Peace Now, an Israeli group that opposes settlements, this is the largest land seizure for this purpose in more than 30 years.

Expansion that's never stopped

When he began this work, Etkes believed settlement growth could be halted — or even reversed — as envisioned in peace plans that call for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem. That seemed possible at the time. In 2005, Israel uprooted all 9,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza. Some were dragged from their homes kicking and screaming.

"It sounds pathetic today," Etkes said. "But back then, I was convinced that the settlers and settlements were on borrowed time, that the majority of the West Bank settlements would ultimately be dismantled."

Now, Etkes sees no near-term prospect of evacuating settlements.

"I was very naive about my expectations," he added. "Now I think that the solution, if there will be any solution, will take many, many years and unfortunately the process will be horrible."

Not surprisingly, Etkes is not welcome in the settlements. He’s been harassed, threatened, even detained by settlers. His car tires have been slashed. He drives a rental car, and changes it frequently so he's not recognized.

I have to make a separate trip, without Etkes, to visit two radical settlement outposts. One of them is Havat Gilad, in the northern West Bank, where Yehuda Shimon is a lawyer and community leader.

"If you believe in God, you have to go to the place he gives you," Shimon said. "This place, that's it. There is no other place for us."

Israeli security forces tore down buildings and clashed with settlers here in 2011. But the settlers kept coming back. Now 80 families live here, and it’s been authorized by the government, though the full process of becoming a settlement involves several stages that can take many years.

The bearded Shimon, 50, lives in two mobile homes combined into one with his wife and their 10 children. Palestinian villages are nearby. I asked what rights he thinks they should have.

"If you want to live here with the Jewish nation — then live," he said. "But don't try to kill them all the time. If you want to live with them, just live. This is the peace. This is the real peace."

Palestinian militants in the West Bank frequently target settlers. And when a settler is killed, it often prompts other settlers to establish a new outpost.

Settlers also attack Palestinian civilians. The U.N. has documentedmore than 1,000 such attacks since the Gaza war began. This includes assaults and killings, as well as torching homes, cars and crops.

Growing clout among settlers

"We used to consider settlers as a lobby group putting pressure on the government," said Issam Aruri, head of theJerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center. "But now they are the government. They are ministers and they are doing whatever they want.”

A leading figure is Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who is also in charge of settler affairs in the Israeli government. He's a West Bank settler himself and ran a settler advocacy group before becoming part of the government.

Today, around 750,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This means just over 10% of Israel's Jewish population resides in territory captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — land which is not internationally recognized as part of Israel.

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice recently ruled the West Bank settlements violate international law and must be evacuated.

But settlers like Serah Lisson, in the West Bank settlement of Evyater, says settlements will keep growing. In fact, she wants Israel to rebuild in Gaza. That's where she lived until the government forced her to leave nearly two decades ago, largely on the grounds that it was too difficult to protect Jewish residents in a place where they outnumbered by Palestinians by a ratio of more than 100-to-1.

"The Jewish people are going to go back to Gaza. The question is when? I hope very soon," she said.

Meanwhile, on a deserted West Bank hilltop, a warm wind is blowing. The late afternoon sun turns the barren hills multiple shades of gold. The austere landscape is stunning.

But that’s not what Dror Etkes sees anymore.

"I lost the ability to see the beauty here," he said. "You see the road. But I know who paved the road and who is using the road. I know who is denied from entering this area. This is an area which is completely controlled by settlers today.”

And come tomorrow, the settlers are likely to control even more land.