The Promised Land grab.

• Author: Horan, Deborah
• Position: Israel's West Bank

Palestinians routinely threaten to end peace talks over them; President Bush waxed livid about them; and Prime Minister Shamir defied the world by building a record number of them. Few issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict cause as much gnashing of teeth as Jewish settlements on the West Bank. And rightly so, because the housing now dotting the hills of what Israelis call Judea and Samaria promises to be among the thorniest brambles in any peaceful Middle East solution. But in the United States, the debate over who will build, how much, and where has so far overlooked a vital point: The actual economic and political straggle over the land begins not with the hammering, but when the Israeli government puts land under its control by declaring it "state land."

By conservative estimates, well over 2 million square kilometers (or dunams) of land in the West Bank were declared Israel's state land in the first 20 years of occupation. (There are 5.8 million dunams in the West Bank.) Today, as much as 55 to 60 percent of the West Bank is state land. Because land that has been taken by Israel cannot be used, lived on, or farmed by Palestinians, these declarations make the land Israel's; settlements merely drive the point home.

Prime Minister Rabin may have scored political points by announcing the end of "political" settlements (only those necessary for security are to be built), but by all accounts the accumulation of state land has continued unabated under the Labor Government. Declarations initiated under Shamir are proceeding in the Israeli military court and new ones are being issued. In fact, six weeks after the Rabin government was elected, 1,000 dunams of land were confiscated from Aboud, an Arab village, for the expansion of an Israeli settlement called Erraim. Civil Administration spokeswoman Alyce Shazar summed it up: "There hasn't been any order to stop declarations of state land since Rabin took office."

The Israeli government actually goes through a painstaking process to ensure that land it takes is not already privately owned. Using maps and aerial photography, the Israeli Supervisor of Government Property in the West Bank combs the area looking for acres that appear uncultivated and without buildings. Then a notice is placed in Arabic newspapers informing villagers what land has been taken by state declaration. Alternatively, an Israeli government official is dispatched to point out the land in question to the mukhtars (elders) of the...