Despite Violence, Settlers Survive and Spread
"For many Zionists, the notion of resettlement is a fundamental tenet of the ideology," he said. "And therefore the question becomes not if to settle but where to settle." The settlers, he said, are Israel's "strongest, most successful interest group."

Without losing the support of the left-leaning Labor Party, Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, welcomed into his cabinet this month a religious ultranationalist, Effi Eitam-Fein, who favors seizing all Palestinian-controlled territory and holding it, while denying any Palestinians who live there the vote in Israel and envisioning a Palestinian state in Jordan..

Mr. Sharon, an architect for decades of Israel's settlement policy, said this week that the evacuation of settlements should not even be discussed until his term ends next year. He encapsulated settlers' own beliefs when he referred to one of the most isolated and heavily defended settlements, saying, "The fate of Netzarim is the fate of Tel Aviv."

To Mr. Weinstock and many other settlers, there is a religious war under way here, one that will never end, and one in which advantage can be gained only by possession of land. This is a war not between Israelis and Palestinians, they say, but between Jews and Arabs. It began long before Jews took the West Bank, they say, and it would continue if they gave it up, until they surrendered Haifa as well and left the region.

To Palestinians, settlers are the embodiment of illegal occupation. With startling red-tile roofs, fences topped with barbed wire and patrols of Israeli soldiers, the settlements stand on the hilltops where the Palestinians' grandfathers' olive trees once did, a daily reminder, they say, of their freedom denied. Settlers, they say, are fair game for resistance fighters, under international law.

Some Israelis share their outrage. Dror Etkes, the coordinator of the "settlement watch team" for the advocacy group Peace Now, conceded that those who argued for settlements from a security standpoint, rather than a religious one, had "historical and psychological ground" to stand on. But while settlements might enhance Israel's security for now by cushioning it against attack, he said, they were so provocative for the entire region that they would doom Israel in the long run.

"I don't see how occupation of millions of people, and establishing an apartheid system in the West Bank, is going to contribute to a constructive solution," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/international/middleeast/28SETT.html