West Bank settlers diverse

MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank — This ultra-religious city became the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank this year, but visitors are hard-pressed to find the orange solidarity ribbons that became standard dress among settlers since Israel’s uprooting of the Gaza settlements two years ago.

The ultra-Orthodox and mainline settlers are both strictly religious but have different reasons for colonizing the West Bank.

Nationalist settlers want to hold on at all costs to the land claimed by the Palestinians as a future state. In contrast, ultra-Orthodox are seeking West Bank real estate as a low cost alternative to crowded neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

“People here are all religiously Orthodox, but they don’t consider themselves settlers. They don’t come from the ideology of settling the Land of Israel. … They don’t come from the ideology of fighting with the Arabs, or expelling them,” said Modiin Illit Council Member Yakov Vallenshtein, a boyish grin only partially obscured by a full black beard.

“Young couples preferred to come here, buy an apartment and start building a quality community life. They aren’t right wing or left wing. They want to buy on the cheap.”

The steady exodus from the city combined with the high birthrate among the ultra-Orthodox makes them a major driver of population growth in West Bank Jewish settlements.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the settler population in the West Bank has grown at a clip of 5.45 percent a year to about 275,000.

Without the ultra-Orthodox, that expansion would have been only 3.7 percent, according to the Ha’aretz newspaper.

That’s a potentially awkward demographic for the mainline settler movement.

The ultra-Orthodox newcomers subscribe to a theology that is deeply ambivalent about the a modern Jewish state.

While the nationalist religious settlers have become the new backbone of the Israeli army, the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi as they are known, prefer to get exemptions so they can continue religious study.

Two years after the government uprooted the Gaza settlements, the settlers in the West Bank still display the orange ribbons that symbolized their failed struggle to block the evacuation.

But in the ultra-Orthodox communities, the uniforms remain the same: black suits for men, wigs for women and no ribbons.

“The Haredi settlements aren’t on the same page,” said Ira Sharkansky, a professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University.

“These are exactly the sort of Jews that the [original] settlers don’t want to be like. This is the image of the Diaspora jew. This is the image against which the Zionists built themselves.”

With a galloping population growth of 12 percent last year, Modiin Illit is a city bursting at the seams. The expansion has been so swiftly it left city struggling to make up a shortfall on key infrastructure such as school classrooms.

Double-digit growth makes it impossible for the government fund enough classrooms, said Mr. Vallenshtein, who set up the Modiin Illit’s Citizens Foundation to fill in the gaps.

“The country is cutting all the time, it’s not giving anything, but the growth has been a success,” said Mr. Vallenshtein.

Peace activists accuse the government of ignoring the housing needs of the ultra-Orthodox inside of Israel and prompting them to cross over into the West Bank where the land prices are cheaper.

“The state is taking advantage of that fact that these people need unique housing solutions, and the only place that they are offering them solutions is on the other side of the Green Line,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, the spokesperson for Peace Now. “By doing that, they force them to become to settlers, even though they aren’t ideological.”

And yet, in moving to the West Bank, the ultra-Orthodox are shifting rightward from their traditional positions in the center of the political map.

Though Modiin Illit settlers are driven to the city for a better quality of life, said Mr. Vallenshtein, the location of their homes is a de facto act of the defense of the country.

“In actuality, when they come to live here, they’re strengthening the state of Israel,” he said, explaining the landing string of Ben Gurion Airport is in clear view from the hills of Modiin Illit. “If we weren’t sitting here, the Arabs would.”