Summary
The settler movement Said names as the vanguard of the growing Israeli settler population in the West Bank after Camp David, and whose franker zealots he quotes on why Palestinian settlement claims could not be conceded.
Details
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By the end of 1978 Israel had seventy-seven settlements on the West Bank alone and had confiscated approximately 27 percent of the land; including Arab Jerusalem, the settler number is reliably given by Said as 90,000, with plans for several hundred thousand more, and Gush Emunim was the vanguard of that growing population — a collection of fanatics whose zeal and violence, Said says, makes the Islamic hordes seem positively gentle (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.228 / printed p.207).
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Said reports the franker Gush Emunim zealots saying on occasion that to allow that Jews had no right to settle in Nablus or Hebron could mean that Palestinians would start to ask about settling in Jaffa or Haifa — his instance of why no territory or political space could be cleared for the Palestinians (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.244 / printed p.223).
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In Makdisi, Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), the religious-nationalist settlers’ movement, spearheaded the second phase of settlement from the mid-1970s — the mountain ridge, in and around the Palestinian cities — which accelerated after Menachem Begin’s Likud came to power in 1977 and was guided by the Drobles Plan of 1978 (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.171).
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Its activists forced the Labor government’s hand on timing: the Elon Moreh convoy of 5 June 1974 set out for the hills overlooking Nablus carrying tents, tools and a library of religious books, but also kitchen equipment, a seesaw and a playground slide; defense minister Shimon Peres said he “identified with goals of the group’s members” but could not officially bless their plan (PDF p.183-184).
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For Gush Emunim the very idea of Arab residence in Palestine is a form of theft; as Nur Masalha points out, the expulsion of the Palestinians follows logically. Its spiritual leader Rabbi Yisrael Ariel (1980): the commandment to settle aims at “the expulsion of the non-Jew from Eretz-Yisrael and that it be settled with Jews” (PDF p.185).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Arik Sharon, Menachem Begin, Camp David Accords, Israel, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Drobles Plan