Settlers see Israel vote as battle for survival

MAALEH MICHMASH, West Bank, Mar 20: For many Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, Israel's March 28 election is a do-or-die battle for their future.

In what has become the central issue of the campaign, they are fighting a plan by interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the expected winner of the poll, to remove isolated settlements as part of moves to impose Israel's final borders by 2010.

Thousands are campaigning feverishly for pro-settler parties to keep land they view as a biblical birthright.

Some analysts say if the pullout goes ahead, violence could erupt that would make protests over last year's dismantling of settlements in the Gaza Strip seem tame. That was the first Israeli withdrawal from land Palestinians want for a state.

''These are the most decisive elections for us that Israel has ever held,'' said Emily Amrusy, spokeswoman for the settlers' YESHA council. ''I feel as though I'm on trial and waiting in the dock for the verdict.'' A few settlers have joined Olmert's centrist Kadima party to try to minimise the number of settlements he might uproot from land Israel captured in the 1967 West Asia war.

Otniel Schneller, a former settler leader from Maaleh Michmash, a small enclave near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, is running on Kadima's slate for parliament.

His neighbours are so angry that many want him expelled from the red-roofed settlement.

Olmert has promised to set Israel's final borders if a Palestinian government being formed by the Islamic militant group Hamas does not recognise the Jewish state and disarm.

His go-it-alone approach would leave Israel in control of major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Palestinians view the settlements as a hated symbol of occupation. They have condemned the unilateral plan, saying it would not foster peace and that the retention of major blocs would prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

About 240,000 settlers live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. The World Court brands all the settlements illegal, a position Israel disputes.

''WE LOST THE PEOPLE''

Schneller opposed the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but feels a further pullout in the West Bank is inevitable following decades of conflict with the Palestinians that has eroded Israeli public support for the settlers.

The settlers' best bet now was damage control, he said. ''We have lost the people. A large part of the people don't feel they belong to what the settlement movement represents,'' Schneller said at his hilltop home in Maaleh Michmash, overlooking Jerusalem and Ramallah. ''We have to be a partner in resolving the conflict, to move from being those creating conflict to those who are seeking a solution.'' Schneller said it was unclear if Maaleh Michmash, home to 1,000 people, would remain part of the settlement blocs or be dismantled.

He hopes his influence will save it.

Ranked number 26 on Kadima's candidate list, Schneller should win a seat in the 120-member parliament. But that does not please his angry neighbours.

''Vote for Kadima to leave our settlement intact,'' Schneller tells a grocer near his home. ''I don't believe you,'' retorts Shalom Ben-Saadon.

Mark Cohen, an immigrant from Chicago who heads the Maaleh Michmash local council, said he did not think anybody in the settlement would vote for Kadima.

''Members approach me regularly asking that we do something to get rid of this man from our settlement. There are people here who are very, very upset.'' Analysts expect most settlers living in the fenced in West Bank enclaves to vote for the rightist Likud headed by former premier Benjamin Netanyahu or several far-right parties.

''BULL IN CHINA SHOP''

Many settlers voted for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the last Israeli election in 2003. Sharon then headed the Likud and was a long-time champion of the settler movement.

But following the popularity of his Gaza pullout, Sharon bolted the Likud to form Kadima. A few weeks later, on January. 4, he suffered a stroke that left him comatose.

Settlers have gone door-to-door in Israeli cities in a desperate bid to muster enough votes to erode Kadima's support.

''Kadima is like a bull in a China shop whose only aim is to destroy us,'' spokeswoman Amrusy said.

In their campaign, the settlers play on Israeli security fears of violence with Palestinians, and insist the country will be too small without the settlements.

''If we keep giving up land, soon we will be nothing more than a tiny spot on the map,'' said settler Shai Vashdy.

Some in Israel worry that if Olmert wins and starts uprooting settlers, ultranationalist anger could trigger bloodshed and further fragment Israeli society.

Around 200 protesters and police were injured in clashes when Israel dismantled an unauthorised settler outpost in the West Bank last month. Police described it as the fiercest violence they have ever faced from Israeli Jews.

''These are people for whom not only are their homes on the line, but the meaning of their lives,'' said Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli journalist and author of a book about the settlers.

''Therefore, the risks are very high.''

REUTERS