ISRAEL SETTLING IN TO STAY

To the rest of the world, the ceasefire lines that marked the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war are only temporary frontiers. But as the political stalemate continues, the Israelis are quietly hardening the lines and forging their own solution out of the status quo. So far, they have formally annexed only Arab Jerusalem, but in accordance with a plan proposed by Deputy Premier Yigal Alton and secretly approved by the Cabinet four weeks ago (TIME, Feb. 7), they are settling the Golan Heights, cutting roads for new villages in the Sinai, and establishing a string of fortified settlements overlooking the Jordan River. One such settlement is at Kallia, on the northwest tip of the Dead Sea. TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin visited Kallia and last week sent this report:

UNTIL the Six-Day War, Kallia was a sprawling Jordanian army base, rich in history but little else. Near by sit the brown Judean cliffs in whose natural caves were found the treasures of the Dead Sea scrolls. At Ain (spring) Feshkha, a favorite spa of ancient Rome's 1 Oth Legion officers, waters still ripple out of the otherwise lifeless ground. When Israeli armor appeared on June 7, 1967, Kallia's Arab defenders had vanished across the Jordan River, leaving buildings, installations and many vehicles intact. For a time, Kallia was merely another dot on Israeli military maps of the occupied territories. Then, just a year ago, the soldier-farmers of Nahal, an acronym in Hebrew meaning "pioneering fighting youth," were dispatched to Kallia. Their mission: to protect Kallia and its portion of the frontier facing Jordan--and to make the desert bloom for Israel.

Shirt-Sleeve Mufti. Today irrigation pipes lace the fields around Kallia, as sprinklers shoot jets of fresh water high in the air. Massey-Ferguson cultivators dig furrows, and Kallia's first crop of yellow corn is sprouting. One acre has been set aside for a hydroponic plot. Nutrients and chemicals from a 60,000-gal-lon fiber-glass reservoir wash long rows of coal-black tuff, a cinderlike debris of volcanic lava brought from the Golan Heights. In the tuff are melon and tomato seeds that may, thanks to the hydroponic forced feeding, yield up to ten times a normal crop. All told, the Israeli government has invested nearly $500,000 in Kallia's uncertain political future.

Two roads lead to Kallia. One is closed by an improvised Hebrew sign warning of mines. The other is guarded by a shapely, smiling, blue-eyed blonde wearing fatigues and armed with a rifle and transistor radio. "We girls do the guard duty in the daytime. The boys are on at night," she explains. Nahal's settlers are largely boys and girls between the ages of 18 and 20, all volunteers. Technically, they are in the army and Kallia is formally an army camp, but the atmosphere is distinctly shirt-sleeve mufti. No one would ever think of saluting; everyone is known and called by his or her first name.

The Kallia workday is long for the na-halniks, as they call themselves. Eight hours are spent on farm work, followed by four to five hours of military training and guard duty. The settlement provides Israel with a close watch on traffic over the main highway from the

Jordan River to Jerusalem, and each morning the first order of the day is inspection. The dirt tracks that lead through Kallia's fields must be minutely examined for mines that fedayeen infiltrators from Jordan may have planted during the night. Until that task is completed, no one is allowed to venture out of the settlement to farm. The boys do the rough work in the fields, the girls work in the kitchen and care for Kallia's menage of 450 ducks, eight dogs and a mule.

Private Sources. The most important man at Kallia is not a soldier but a 27-year-old agronomist named Dani Afik. A specialist in arid-zone agriculture, Afik so far has put into cultivation 50 of Kallia's 4,000 acres of arable land. His first problem was finding water. Two bores have turned up unusable water, and he had to turn to the Wadi Kelt supply some five miles away. Trouble was, they were owned by an Arab family. "Whoever heard of private families owning water sources," says Afik more in amusement than anger. "At first the Arabs didn't want to sell us the water, but we negotiated." It was not a particularly good bargain for Kallia: the settlement pays the Arabs 80 per cubic meter, roughly four times the area's going rate. But part of the nahalniks' difficult job is to show the local Arabs that living with Israelis can be good for everyone.

The same colonial principle has been applied to the construction of a new road from Kallia to En Gedi, another settlement 25 miles to the south on the Dead Sea. "We could have built the road in half the time," says Dani, "but we wanted to give the Arabs work." Most of the road workers are from the Gaza refugee camps. The pay is good, they say, twice as much as they got under the Egyptians.

Smell It. "There is a future here," said Dani over lunch, served in the communal mess hall and consisting of salty consomme, spicy stewed beef with curry rice, bananas and orangeade. "We can develop this entire region both as a bountiful source of winter produce and as a winter resort. Our problem is what to do in summer. The temperatures go up to 120DEG." He sees his job purely as pioneering and, in the process, establishing ownership of the land, regardless of any criticism from the outside world that Israel is staking its claims prematurely. "If someone says we have taken land that does not belong to us, he is wrong," says Dani, although the Arabs might not agree. "No one ever worked this land. No one ever lived here. We are not throwing anyone out. It does not belong to anybody, except to God. The earth is lifeless. Smell it. It has no odor. We will put life back in it." As for Kallia's immediate future, Dani says: "We need three things. The road, water and peace. The one we're building. The second we'll find. And if we have those two, the third will come in due time."

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