Middle East: The Good Life in Gaza

By JON D. HULL NEVE DEKALIM

Michel Bloch wanted to retire to a quiet Jewish community with cheap housing and excellent security. Five months ago, he found what he was looking for in an enclave amid 750,000 largely destitute and rebellious Palestinians in one of the most densely populated areas in the world: the Gaza Strip. "There is no place else like this," says Bloch, 57, as he tends the spacious sea-view garden of his $70,000 two-bedroom duplex. "It's a real paradise."

That illusion is shared by 3,000 other Jewish settlers in the posh enclosures who rely on barbed wire, army roadblocks and heavy government subsidies to make a point: they want the Gaza Strip to remain under Israeli control and insist that their Palestinian neighbors living under military occupation learn to love it -- or leave it.

Nearly 230,000 Jews are now ensconced in the occupied territories. If Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir gets his way, tens of thousands more will soon follow. As the U.S. struggles to nurse a postwar peace process into life, Shamir has countered by launching what is one of the largest Jewish settlement drives since Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Ostensibly, the building boom is needed to house a growing settler population. But it is really meant to strengthen the Jewish state's claim to the territories prior to any negotiations. If Shamir can stall long enough, he hopes to make Israel's presence in the territories irreversible before peace talks even begin. Says Dedi Zucker, a left-wing Knesset member: "The idea is simply to destroy any chance that Israel will have to give up land for peace."

Since the gulf war ended, three new settlements have been established in the West Bank, each coinciding with one of Secretary of State James Baker's visits to the region. Last week the Peace Now group charged that the government is secretly planning to build nearly 30,000 additional units in the West Bank and Gaza. Housing Minister Ariel Sharon insists that the figure is closer to 13,000 new units over the next two years -- which will still increase the / Jewish population in the territories about 50%. He has also pledged to double the number of settlers from 12,000 to 24,000 in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1981, and to expand Jewish neighborhoods in volatile East Jerusalem.

Last month Baker responded to Shamir's latest snub by calling settlements the biggest "obstacle to peace." President Bush followed up by warning that he might withhold $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Israel wants to help absorb Soviet Jews unless Jerusalem agrees to a settlement freeze. As usual, Shamir was unimpressed by the threats. Speaking at the West Bank settlement of Beit Arieh last week, he dismissed any connection to peace talks and vowed that the construction drive "cannot be stopped."

The Prime Minister's willingness to defy Washington is a well-calculated risk. Since 1968, the U.S. has criticized Israeli settlements while significantly increasing financial aid. Last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to cut $82.5 million -- the amount the State Department estimates Israel spent last year on settlements -- from the annual $3 billion aid package. Shamir expects that Congress will be increasingly reluctant to tangle with Israel as attention turns to the 1992 elections.

The Likud Party leader also has a fallback position. If the U.S. pushes him too hard, the far-right members of his ruling coalition will revolt. "My party is poised to topple the government if it comes to that," says Elyakim Ha'etzni, a member of the extremist Tehiya Party and a West Bank settler. If that happens, the peace process would languish while Israel prepared for new elections, which could well produce an even more hard-line government.

The housing surge has been fed by an influx of 258,000 Soviet Jews since 1990. Though only an estimated 4% of the immigrants have moved beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders, their presence has caused a housing shortage throughout the country, inducing thousands more Israelis to head for the territories. "People realize we have the upper hand over the intifadeh," says Dov Keinan, a settler spokesman in the West Bank, "and that there is very little chance of a territorial compromise."

Shamir's insistence that Soviet Jews are not being directed to the territories is partly disingenuous. While free to choose where they live, poorer Soviet Jews as well as native Israelis are being lured to the territories by special tax breaks and heavily subsidized mortgages. "We'd like to live somewhere else, but we can't afford to," says Boris Gamov, who emigrated from Moldavia seven months ago with his wife Ulga, and now rents a three-room caravan in a Gaza settlement for $40 a month. "We simply have no choice."

Israeli hawks contend that the settlements actually help the peace process by putting pressure on the Arabs while making Jews feel more secure. Palestinians see the continuing land confiscations and de facto annexation as proof that Israel does not intend to make any compromises. Whether Shamir can keep altering the status quo in Israel's favor without paying any price depends almost entirely on Washington. So far, Shamir appears unconvinced that Bush has to be taken seriously.