A settler stakes claim for himself, for Israel

West Bank: A father and son tend sheep on their isolated farm, with four Israeli soldiers to guard their "settlement."

By Peter Hermann
Sun Foreign Staff
Originally published May 22, 2002


IN THE HEBRON HILLS, West Bank - Ever since he watched American Westerns on television three decades ago, Shlomo Mor knew he wanted a ranch. He dreamed of having a flock of sheep. Open vistas. Room to roam.

He has that now atop a hill he calls Mor Mountain. Until last week, he and a son were the only people on a 1,000-acre farm where they tend 105 sheep, 10 dogs and two goats.

Mor Mountain, among the newest Jewish settlements in the West Bank, illustrates how they come to be and how they evolve into permanent communities.

Last week, the Israeli army assigned four soldiers to guard the two residents. The World Zionist Organization, an umbrella organization for Zionist philanthropy and development, paid for the paving of a one-lane, two-mile access road, in effect the Mors' driveway.

For the rightist government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the farm is another foothold in the West Bank, territory at the heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It is land that many Israelis believe God promised to the Jews and that Palestinians no less firmly believe is a necessary part of a future Palestinian state.

Sharon has vowed never to dismantle a settlement; Palestinians vow that there can be no true peace until most of the settlements are gone.

For Mor and the Israeli government, the situation on the hilltop could not be better. Mor gets to gaze out over land leased for a nominal fee from the government, and Israeli authorities have found a way to populate - Palestinians would say steal - another sliver of the West Bank.

Mor knows the government is using him to further its political aim of controlling as much of the West Bank as possible though the creation and expansion of Jewish settlements.

"I know why I'm here," he said, sipping instant coffee in his trailer. "Israel wants to make sure this land remains in Israeli hands. I'm protecting their back. I came here on my own free will, so I can't complain."

He arrived on March 7, 1999, to live amid a landscape composed mostly of rocks and scrub. He planned to raise goats and sell their milk to Bedouin tribes and Palestinian villages. But the Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000 ended friendly contacts between settlers and villagers.

Mor replaced most of his goats with sheep and intended to sell them for meat. A year and a half later, he is beginning to breed them.

His work now consists of little more than feeding his flock, which takes only a couple of hours each day. He spends the rest of his time planting trees and keeping watch - for thieves or potential attackers.

Mor knows that the soldiers sent to stand at the four corners of his ranch are really there to expand the Israeli military's hold on the area and that his presence is a perfect excuse to justify their patrols.

Soldiers guard settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but Mor Mountain, given its tiny population, underscores the burden the settlements impose on the Israeli army and the vast resources devoted to protecting them from their Palestinian neighbors.

The soldiers guarding the Mors are reservists, forced to leave their jobs and family under emergency call-up orders originally put into effect to fight Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Some Israeli lawmakers call the deployment at Mor Mountain an insult to the army.

"The very fact that reserve soldiers are sent to guard isolated farms like that is scandalous," Anat Maor of the left-wing Meretz Party told parliament.

Dror Etkes of the group Peace Now says there are at least 30 outposts like Mor's farm, and others with empty trailers waiting for settlers to arrive.

"The idea is to settle as much of the land as possible to avoid the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state," Etkes said. "Once there are people there, it is much easier [for the government] to say they can stay. If you are going to argue that God promised people this land, then people have to live there."

Leaders of the settler movement say the Israeli government is not doing enough to aid their cause. Outposts such as Mor Mountain don't mean much, says Ezra Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Yesha settlers' council.

"If you got two guys living in five trailers this year, and you go back next year, maybe you got five guys living in 10 trailers," he said. "More often than not, unfortunately, you won't find anything."

If the government wants to populate isolated areas such as Mor Mountain, Rosenfeld says, it is obligated to protect them.

"It would be easier, I admit, if everyone lived in one town with a big wall," he said. "But that is not the reality. In order to populate the land, we need so-called crazies to go out to hills and inhabit them. The cost is inefficient use of soldiers."

Settlements have been a contentious issue since the first one, Kfar Etzion, was established south of Bethlehem almost immediately after Israel's capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But building began in earnest after the right-wing Likud Party came to power, in 1977.

By 1980, the number of Jewish settlements had grown to 53, with 12,000 residents. In 1990, 78,000 settlers occupied 106 settlements. In 2000, nearly 200,000 lived in 123 settlements.

Sharon was one of the expansion program's main architects, first as agriculture minister from 1977 to 1981, giving him the power to expropriate land, then as minister of housing and construction from 1990 to 1992, with authority to build.

The interim peace accords reached in Oslo, Norway, in 1993 called upon Israel and the Palestinians to maintain the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza Strip until a final peace agreement. Israel pledged not to build new settlements or expand old ones, but said it retained the right to "natural growth" within settlements' existing borders.

By whatever name it chooses to call it, Palestinians say, Israel has steadily seized control of more of their land.

Grasping for control

Peace Now and other groups say that Sharon's government has created 34 West Bank settlements since he became prime minister 15 months ago.

A report released last week by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem noted that settlers inhabit only 1.7 percent of the West Bank but effectively control 42 percent of the land. Municipal boundaries are much larger than the actual living area, and regional councils have been awarded control of vast tracts, often without Palestinians being informed.

That is the story of Mor's hilltop farm. His trailer and sheep pen occupy only a small plot, but his lease covers the rugged area between two larger settlements, Tene and Shima, and stretches to the Palestinian town of Daharia, home to about 60,000 people under Palestinian Authority control.

His farm is along Highway 60, a winding road following an ancient trade route through the heart of the West Bank, a route Palestinians are now forbidden to use. The highway, and a parallel dry riverbed, are nicknamed "the way of the thieves." Mor says he is happy to act as a buffer between Daharia, the neighboring settlements and the Israeli city of Beersheba.

Visitors to Mor's Mountain drive to the well-guarded settlement of Tene, population 700, then head northeast on a roller-coaster road to a fence topped with barbed wire and floodlights. A pack of dogs, including Mor's Great Dane, greets every visitor. While he disdains outsiders, Mor is relaxed.

Mor, 55, spent three decades in the Israeli army as a soldier, tank commander and drill sergeant for drug addicts trying to adjust to army life. Afterward, he managed an agricultural consulting and educational firm. Now, instead of fatigues or coat and tie, he wears blue jeans and a disheveled T-shirt that hides a 9 mm pistol tucked in the back of his pants.

Inside the sparsely furnished trailer, an M-16 assault rifle leans against a wall near a cluttered kitchen table. A generator supplies electricity. Mor keeps binoculars on a pole in his yard so he can survey the hills and patrols at night with night-vision goggles and a dune buggy.

"I don't need soldiers to guard me," said Mor, after four of them shook his hand before a shift change. They are not real soldiers, he says, but air force personnel usually assigned to guard munitions dumps and barracks.

"If something happened, I would have to go out and shoot." said Mor, pointing to his rifle. He and his son Aviad, 23, rotate guard duty every night. Aviad sleeps on the couch, his clothes and shoes on, ready to jump at the first sound.

'A very high price'

Still, Mor says he has no regrets. He remembers the move from his comfortable three-story home in Beersheba.

"I had dreamed for 30 years to own a farm," he said, sitting on a leather couch. "I dreamt it ever since watching cowboy movies. I came here to be alone and for the clean air. I can see people where I want and when I want."

His change of lifestyle came at considerable cost. His wife tried to live on the farm but left after three months, taking his 7-year- old daughter and 11-year-old son. He has three other grown children, including Aviad, who dropped out of business school to come live with and help protect his father.

"This is my father's dream, not mine," said Aviad, who finished his regular army service 18 months ago and was embarking on his own career. "I was concerned about my father's safety. My goal is to partner with my father until we see some success. Then I'll do what I want to do."

Shlomo Mor is a practical man. He has no grand illusions of holding onto this land at all costs, and as a career military officer he understands that the politics that enabled him to realize his dream might in the end force him to give it up.

"I understand that to make peace, the Palestinians have to have a land to live on," Mor said. "It might be this land.

"That is a very high price for me," he said. "But if my government comes and says it is the only way to make peace, then I will leave."