labour s enclaves policy important 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 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 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 per cent but for the area around the trans samaria highway the corresponding figure is almost 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 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 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 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 per cent mortgage for his house on top of a grant of shekels 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 in the mid s to 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 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 a day which can last 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 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 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
