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PM Ehud Olmert gestures as he speaks during a ceremony marking his official entrance, Sunday. (AP)
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| By Associated Press May 8, 2006 |
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| Israeli Yossi Gal, 51, attaches an Israeli flag to the roof of his house in the Jordan Valley settlement of Tomer, Thursday. (AP) |
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Ehud Olmert moved into the prime minister's office on Sunday, vowing to redefine Israel's borders while cracking down on settlement activity.
During his five-month caretaker government, Olmert had refused to take over the office he inherited from Ariel Sharon after his devastating Jan. 4 stroke. He also refrained from sitting in the prime minister's brown leather seat during Cabinet meetings.
On Sunday, he officially moved into the prime minister's residence, declaring that reconfiguring Israel's borders would be his government's key mission.
"In the next few years, we will change Israel's character to ensure it will be a state with a solid Jewish majority living in defensible borders that can provide security to the residents of Israel and separate us from those who must live alongside us and not among us," he said.
Olmert has gone further than any other Israeli leader in spelling out his plans for Israel's future borders with the Palestinians, saying he intends to uproot Jewish settlers from heavily populated Palestinian areas, while fortifying major settlement blocs. He's said he'll try to reach a negotiated agreement, but would act unilaterally if the Palestinians' militant Hamas rulers don't renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state.
Earlier, at his new Cabinet's first meeting, Olmert said Israel would not allow unauthorized outposts in Judea and Samaria to remain, his office said.
"In every case where the law is violated, we will respond without compromise, and we won't reconcile ourselves to illegal facts on the ground," his office quoted him as telling his government, which was sworn in on Thursday.
On Sunday, Israeli forces expelled 41 settlers from a disputed home in the Judean city of Hebron.
Three settler families moved into an abandoned home near the settler enclave of Avraham Avinu about a month ago, presenting documents allegedly showing they had rented the property from its Palestinian owner. Israeli authorities later determined the documents were forged, Avi Harush, one of the police commanders of the evacuation, said.
A government-commissioned report issued last year said settlers have set up 105 unauthorized outposts in the past decade, in a bid to break up Palestinian areas.
Israel promised the U.S. to dismantle about two dozen outposts set up since Ariel Sharon was first elected prime minister in March 2001, but little action has been taken.
In February, while head of a caretaker government, Olmert ordered the evacuation of unauthorized buildings in the outpost of Amona, an operation that turned violent and left 200 settlers and police injured.
Separately, Israel's new defense minister, Amir Peretz, told the Cabinet that he has instructed security forces to ease travel restrictions for Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, issue more permits for Palestinians to work in Israel, and to allow greater freedom of movement for Palestinian merchants.
Travel restrictions are often placed to prevent terrorist attacks in Israel.
Israel intent on keeping Jordan Valley, but not necessarily its settlements
Ilan Peretz is taking a gamble. Forced out of his home last summer when Israel left the Gaza Strip, he has moved to the Jordan Valley, along the eastern edge of Judea and Samaria. He's sure that because of the valley's strategic value, Israel will never leave there.
But even when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speaks of keeping the valley as Israel establishes its final borders, he refrains from mentioning Jewish settlements there. The Gaza experience has taught many Israelis that settlements don't necessarily add to security.
Olmert, the winner of Israel's March 28 elections, has announced plans to withdraw from much of Judea and Samaria within the next four years, whether or not negotiations come about between Israel and the Palestinians.
With Hamas militants in charge of the Palestinian Authority after winning January elections - and Israel refusing to negotiate with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unless Hamas formally recognizes Israel - it appears increasingly likely that Israel will draw its borders on its own, keeping major Jewish settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley as a security zone in the east.
That would leave the center of Judea and Samaria in Palestinian hands, but require an Israeli corridor linking the two sides it wants to keep. And that, say Palestinians, destroys any hope for the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.
For Israel the Jordan River, which forms the border with Jordan, has great strategic importance. Since Israel captured the land nearly four decades ago, all its governments have invested in the Jordan Valley area with a view to keeping it for good.
Today 7,000 Jews live in its 21 settlements, among about 50,000 Palestinians.
Peretz, who is planning a cherry tomato farm in the hot, desolate area, hopes Israel will annex the valley as a security buffer.
"We know that Israel will evacuate other areas of the West Bank [Judea and Samaria], and that's why we didn't choose to go there," Peretz said. "Here they will never evacuate."
When Israel started putting Jews in the valley in 1968, it saw them as a buffer against Jordanian and Iraqi attack from the east. Peace with Jordan removed one threat, but the war in Iraq has made it an unstable entity with the potential to infiltrate al-Qaida and other extremists into Israel.
The Hamas victory in Palestinian elections in January "has created an entirely new strategic reality for Israel which vastly increases the importance of the Jordan Valley for Israel's security in the near term," Dore Gold, a foreign affairs adviser to the Israeli government, wrote in a recent research paper.
While most Israelis now favor pulling out of the West Bank, support for keeping the Jordan Valley is high.
"This border will not belong to anyone else except Israel," said Cabinet Minister Meir Sheetrit, a key figure in Olmert's centrist Kadima Party. "We don't want a Palestinian army to control this region."
Palestinians say Israeli annexation would be a disaster, since the Jordan Valley, 45 miles by 11 miles (72 kilometers by 18 kilometers) according to the current Israeli definition, is almost 15 percent of Judea and Samaria.
"This is a very important area for the Palestinians," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who lives in the area. "This is the food basket for Palestinians and contains the eastern aquifer. This is also the Palestinians' passage to the east through Jordan."
Israel has given no indication what will become of the Palestinian farmers in the valley, or whether the corridor will become an impenetrable wedge dividing Judea and Samaria.
But whether the settlements will stay is a different question. The 21 Gaza settlements were frequent targets of attacks and required huge defense allocations in budgets and manpower. Defending settlements also carries huge costs.
Sheetrit offers no guarantees to settlers like Ilan Peretz, saying: "Sometimes the settlements defend and sometimes they don't."
AP contributed to this report.
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