Israeli election: liberal atheist settlers bring price boom to Ariel

Adi Elazar puts down his coffee and cups a hand to his ear, as if to say: listen to that. "It's the middle of the day, and it's quiet," he says in an exaggerated whisper. From the outdoor cafe table where Elazar and a friend are whiling away the afternoon, we hear cars in the distance and some papers flapping in the breeze. The odd shopper shuffles past, browsing unhurriedly at the window displays.

Ariel’s out-of-the-way sleepiness was just what Elazar, a 52-year-old retired policeman, was looking for when he and his wife, six months married, left Tel Aviv and moved here in the mid-1980s. Proudly secular, left-wing voters, they were drawn here, to what is now one of the biggest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, not out of ideological fervour but a more prosaic realisation that they were priced out of Israel’s biggest cities. In Ariel they could buy a house with a garden, “hear the birds, breathe clean air”. And with tax breaks and attractive mortgage terms, the state would help them make the move.

Built on a rocky elevation 17km (10.5 miles) east of the Green Line that divides Israel from the occupied West Bank, Ariel was founded in 1978, when 40 families erected tents on a hilltop where Palestinian farmers grazed their flocks. Today, it's the fourth-largest Israeli settlement in the West Bank, with a population of almost 20,000 and a direct motorway to Tel Aviv, less than 40km to the west. Accessed via a security checkpoint, the city has a university with 15,000 students, two industrial parks and its own hotel. It overlooks the Palestinian town of Salfit and 18 Palestinian villages.

Ariel has retained its self-image as a predominantly secular commuter town. Fewer than 15 per cent of its families describe themselves as religious, according to the mayor’s office, and 40 per cent of the population are immigrants, both secular and observant, from the former Soviet Union. “Ariel is not a religious place with religious people,” says Elazar, who plans to vote for the environmental party Green Leaf next week. “Most of the people are like me.”

Ideology of location

The rise of “quality of life” settlers is a departure from the settler movement’s origins in the late 1960s when, after its victory in the 1967 war with Jordan, Egypt and Syria, Israel encouraged and helped its citizens to move into what it refers to as Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the occupied West Bank.

Paltiel Gold, who moved here with his Ariel-born wife in 2001, said their rationale was purely financial: they couldn't afford a house near the west coast. He's a left-voting atheist. Living in a settlement doesn't sit well with him, Gold says, but he likes the clean air and the quiet. "When you meet the love of your life, things change, but I'm still liberal," he says.

In recent years Ariel has been experiencing a property-price boom. About 150 housing units are being built, having received the all-clear from the Israeli government in spite of strong international pressure.

One roadside sign advertises a development called “Green Ariel”, a set of “unique boutique buildings” where “100 families have already chosen a green apartment” within walking distance of the university. Demand far outstrips supply, and prices are rising as a result.

Ronit Nachum-Halev, who works at Be’muna, a Jerusalem-based estate agent that specialises in the settlements, says that 18 months ago she was selling three-bedroom apartments in Ariel for 750,000 shekels (€173,000). “Today it’s over the million-shekel (€230,000) mark. That’s the kind of price you find in non-settlements in Israel,” she says. Yet, even at that price it remains attractive; the going rate for a comparable apartment in Tel Aviv would be 2.5 million shekels (€577,000).

"People who came here came for a high quality of life," says Ariel's mayor, Eli Shaviro, sitting in his office in the town centre. "There's excellent weather, excellent travel and commuter links to Tel Aviv and central Israel."

On Shaviro’s wall is a huge aerial photo of the settlement, so detailed that every house can be identified. Most of the development is on the northern side, he points out, but he sees potential for almost 1,750 units in the south. The pattern in Ariel, says the mayor, has been that new units are authorised only after a terrorist attack; he doesn’t consider that a “legitimate” approach. “The city has basically looked the same for the last 15 years.”

Shaviro, a member of Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party, refers to "our Palestinian neighbours" and argues that, with neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian leadership in a position to advance the peace process at this stage, an "infrastructure of partnerships and co-existence" is needed at local level. He says Palestinian labourers work at the western industrial park and that a proposed medical centre will serve both Israelis and Palestinians.

Sewage flow

But Hadeel Hunaiti, field researcher in the nearby town of Salfit for the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq, dismisses Shaviro’s characterisation of relations. For many years, she says, Salfit and surrounding villages have suffered an elevated health risk and damage to agricultural land as a result of sewage flow, 80 per cent of which comes from the nearby settlement on the hill. She says a German funder offered to build a treatment plant in Salfit but that the Israelis would not allow it unless it also served Ariel; the Palestinian government refused, as to accept would be to recognise the settlement as legal. “These houses and factories are on land taken from Palestinian ownership,” Hunaiti says.” On the other side, Palestinians can’t build houses without permission from the Israelis, and getting such a permit is often impossible.

“Many houses were demolished by Israeli soldiers under the pretext of building without licence, and yet the Israelis don’t give licences. There are 18 villages in Salfit alongside 17 settlements and six outposts. It turns the villages into islands, cut off from one another.”

The "quality of life" settler came under the spotlight after the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, when there was serious discussion on territory swaps. Yet Ariel has come to exemplify the normalisation of the settlements, illegal in the eyes of the international community, in Israeli life. Its legitimacy in the eyes of the mainstream Israeli public means the leading parties, including the Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, insist it is one of the "major settlement blocs" that Israel must retain under any two-state solution to the conflict.

“No matter what happens, whether it’s the Likud or Labor, because we have a consensus status this city will not be in harm’s way,” says Eli Shaviro, the mayor. That sense of certainty that Ariel is too big to give up, coupled with the years of relative calm since the Second Intifada,estate agents say, may explain why people are willing to pay so much for houses.

At the same time, surveys show that non-ideological settlers would be more willing, if adequately compensated, to leave in the event of a peace deal.

“If there is an agreement, I will be the first to say, ‘okay, you want me to leave here? I’ll leave,’” says Adi Elazar, the retired policeman. “I’m not a lunatic or a fanatic.”

Paltiel Gold hopes that Israel can keep Ariel, but if it doesn’t he too would be prepared to leave. “I’m not connected to the land like the religious people, and if there’s any chance of real peace, I’m not going to make any trouble about moving.”