The Colonizers

On the eve of last week's anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Dayan pointedly paid a call on the town council of Hebron on the occupied West Bank. Turning to the mayor, Sheik Mohammed Ali Ja'abari, Dayan suggested that the council ought to begin making development plans for the next ten or 15 years. As the assembled Arab notables gasped, Dayan added with a tight smile: "I suggest that you free yourselves from any illusions you may have regarding the future."

Five years after the war, Israel's occupation of captured Arab territories has a decided look of permanence. The Israelis are building colonies--or, as their critics might say, an empire. On a three-day anniversary trip of his own, TIME Correspondent Martin Levin covered the 1,349 miles of border from the Mediterranean cliffs of Rosh Hanikra on the Lebanese side to the citrus-scented Gaza Strip. His report:

The first thing one senses is that the Israeli race to dig in is over. Only once, beside the Suez Canal, did I see earth movers working in a cluster, bolstering causeways that already looked forbiddingly high. Elsewhere, telephone and electric lines are in place, water pipes are underground. Fences and electronic gear do sentry duty; few military vehicles or troops are noticeable. But they are there. "We've got everything we need," said an officer in a forward post. "One shell and I'll be ready to make war in three minutes, maybe less."

Israel is prepared to return portions of occupied land on which it has not established protective settlements against future attacks. On that basis, about all that is negotiable is the Suez Canal. Elsewhere settlers have moved fast, and they are thinking far ahead. At coralline Sharm el Sheikh, now renamed Ophira, they are building hotels and planning still others to accommodate tourists. Hard-topped roads make access far easier than it was in 1967. At a new kibbutz on the Golan Heights, British-born Frank Donnel points to the freshly planted grass and trees. "Another ten years and you won't recognize the place," he says.

Bus Tours. Similarly, at a Mediterranean settlement called Dikla, established near the old Egyptian city of El Arish in the Sinai, red-haired Community Leader Motke Ben-Ya'acov proudly shows an Israeli identity card that gives his address as "Dikla, Northern Sinai." "There's no chance we'll ever leave," says Ben-Ya'acov. "The government will never give back El Arish." Nor is Israel likely to relinquish the oil town of Abu Rodeis to the south on the Gulf of Suez, where Israelis are pumping 18,000 tons daily of what was formerly Egyptian oil. The new school in Abu Rodeis last week proudly graduated its first six students. Eight tour buses a day visit the town, although there is little to sightsee besides a bank and a supermarket. "The tourists are all Israelis," one driver said. "They just come down to see what they own."

In places the border is still deadly violent. Near Ein Zivan on the Golan Heights, a 31-year-old reservist was killed shortly after my visit. Rockets fired from Syria hit a car in which he had thumbed a ride. Strangely, no one else was even injured. Near "Fatahland," where the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria converge and Palestinian guerrillas are still active, highway signs include notices that TRAVELING AT NIGHT is FORBIDDEN. In the farming village of Metulla, which has lost two men killed and five wounded in fedayeen attacks from Lebanon, Mayor Assaf Frankel wistfully said: "I hope it doesn't start all over again." His eyes show that he does not have much hope.

Israel's Riviera. Yet elsewhere the border is more peaceful than it has been for years, although the quiet could be deceptive. Ein Bokek, on the Dead Sea, is about to become "Israel's Riviera"; hundreds of visitors arrive every day, and three new hotels are being built to accommodate them. At the Jordan Valley kibbutz of Kfar Ruppin, which was hit by 1,000 artillery shells during the war of attrition that followed the Six-Day War, Ya'acov Noy, a 35-year kibbutz veteran, observes: "The Arab shepherds now come down to bathe in the Jordan, and our children play there. We talk across the river like we used to do many years ago."

Farther downstream, the war's anniversary was also the beginning of this year's "summer visit plan." During the next few months, at least 150,000 Arabs will cross over the Allenby Bridge for visits of up to 90 days to the occupied West Bank. To thwart the fedayeen, Israeli guards open even tinned food and examine toothbrushes for explosives. Two-man teams expertly strip trucks down to engine and frame in their search for contraband. Occasionally a suspected guerrilla is turned back.

Non-Israelis who live along the new border have become resentfully resigned to their endless occupation. Residents of Majdal Shams, a Druze town under snow-capped Mount Hermon in the north, are outspoken about their feelings. "Syria is our mother," says Sheik Mahmoud Safadi with patriarchal scorn. "Israel is our stepmother." One complaint appears to be that the Israelis are trying to collect taxes. "We never paid the Syrians, and we won't pay the Israelis," a Druze shopkeeper said indignantly. Yet Arabs are quietly making their own accommodations; they have little choice. In the Gaza Strip, where production of citrus fruit has doubled since 1967, Arab growers have begun to take five-year loans from Israeli banks to finance the additional packinghouses they need.

* "The biblical name for the region from which King Solomon's ships brought quantities of fine gold.

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