◼POLITICS BloombergBusinessweek June 29, 2020A Land Rush
In the
West Bank
36
ARIEL SCHALIT/AP PHOTOJanuary, when President Trump unveiled what he
called a peace plan that greenlighted annexation
in return for a commitment from Israel to enter
negotiationsthatcouldleadtoa limitedPalestinian
state.AlthoughPalestiniansrejectedtheplanas
one-sided, Netanyahu signed on to it at a White
House ceremony.
It’s unclear exactly what form annexation might
take, or even whether Netanyahu will ultimately
go through with it. If he does, the Palestinians
say they’ll cut off all cooperation with Israel and
declare an independent state. And he faces strong
opposition abroad, with many countries saying
such a move would break international law, make
Israel a pariah, and risk an outbreak of violence.
“There will be no security and stability without
giving the Palestinian people their rights,” says
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Jewish settlers have lived in the West Bank since
the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel seized the ter-
ritoryfromJordan.Todaysome400,000settlers
liveinWestBankenclavesranging fromposh
single-family villas and condos on hills overlook-
ingJerusalemtooutpostsofmobilehomesand
convertedshippingcontainersdeepinthedesert.
Eveninsuburban-style settlements adjacent to Israel
proper, families typically shelter behind walls and
high fences separating them from the West Bank’s
2.6 million Palestinians—most of whom live in urban
tenements or crumbling farmhouses. Early settlers
often viewed the area, which they call Judea and
Samaria, as the Biblical heartland of the Jewish peo-
ple, but later waves have been attracted more by
the relatively low cost of living and generous govern-
ment support than they are by religion.
Even as values across Israel have surged in recent
years, prices in settlements have outstripped those
elsewhere as more families choose to live in the
West Bank. In Leshem, a hilltop settlement east
of Tel Aviv, a 1,400-square-foot villa that sold for
960,000 shekels ($280,000) a decade ago now costs
2.5millionshekels.DeveloperHareyZahavLtd.
(“mountainsofgold”inHebrew)hassoldabout
650 homes—rangingfromfour-bedroom garden
apartments to six-bedroom penthouses with Jacuzzi
baths, large terraces, and views of the Tel Aviv sky-
line—and expects to sell the final 30 this year. “It’s
become like a suburb,” says Zeev Epshtein, owner of
the developer. “It’s for successful, bourgeois, Zionist
religious families.”
Real estate agents anticipate a further rise in
prices with annexation, as it would lift a signifi-
cant psychological barrier for many would-be buy-
ers. “The first thing people search for in real estateThe Jordan Valley settlement of Ma’ale Efraim
isn’t exactly prime real estate. The land is arid
and rocky, it’s more than an hour’s drive from
Tel Aviv—Israel’s job engine—and it’s in the mid-
dle of a decades-long conflict that shows no signs
of ending. And yet Shlomo Mizrahi, owner of local
real estate agency Ad Habait, says property val-
ues there have jumped more than a third over the
past couple of years as politicians have vowed to
permanently claim the land for Israel. “There’s
no doubt that the second we started to talk about
annexation, it increased interest,” Mizrahi says.
Ma’ale Efraim sits in an area that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is pledging to annex, pos-
sibly as soon as July 1. Palestinians insist the
land—about a third of the Israeli-occupied West
Bank—belongs to the state they hope to build,
but Israelis say it’s strategic territory that it can’t
give up. The issue gained renewed relevance inRunning for reelection is never easy. “You
start making enemies Day 1 on the job,” Messina
says. Yet sitting presidents over the past century
usually managed to win because the office car-
ries tremendous power to shape the direction of
the country—and with it public sentiment toward
its occupant.
Trump has always been more comfortable as an
outsider. He ignored political convention four years
ago and wound up fine. Maybe he will again. Right
now,however,passingupthebenefitsofincum-
bencyhelpsexplainTrump’scurrentstruggles,just
asBiden’sabilitytomimicthepersonaofafamiliar
incumbentaccountsforhissteady,andgrowing,
lead.�JoshuaGreenTHE BOTTOM LINE Trump may be the incumbent, but he’s
running much as he did in 2016, as an incendiary outsider. Biden,
meanwhile, benefits from the incumbency effect of having been VP.● As Israel plans to annex disputed areas,
property values in Jewish settlements are rising