Angry Settlers at "Little Sea"

Beyond his anger at Israel's general approach to negotiations, Anwar Sadat is outraged by Premier Menachem Begin's determination to hold on to 16 Jewish settlements in northern Sinai. Last week TIME's Robert Slater visited the largest of these settlements, Yamit (Hebrew for "little sea"). His report:

Community bulletin-board notices in Yamit range from the mundane to the momentous. One announces natural-childbirth classes; another appeals to the settler who left a pair of shoes in Sasoon's delicatessen to retrieve them. But mixed with these is a plea for volunteers to chauffeur townsmen to Jerusalem for a protest demonstration. Another seeks donations to a fund "to keep Yamit Israeli."

Established four years ago in the hot sun and sand of northern Sinai, 77 miles southwest of Tel Aviv, Yamit, like 15 other settlements near by, was built as an Israeli buffer between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Before last week's breakdown in peace talks, Begin had hinted that the territory might be handed back to Cairo. The idea touched off debate and diatribes throughout Israel, and the Premier subsequently said that the settlements would remain under Israeli sovereignty even if the Sinai is returned to Egypt. Prior to that promise, the settlers in Yamit were in an angry mood. The town is the one with the greatest expectations for growth. It now has a population of 1,500, divided almost equally between civilian residents and military families; the settlers hope that their seaside community will eventually become a regional center of 20,000.

"When Begin proposed giving back the Sinai, it just blew our minds," says Gary Mazal, 30, a New Yorker who settled in the desert 27 months ago. Mazal points out that Israeli governments have spent at least $7.5 million so far to build attractive concrete apartments and single-family houses, their grounds surrounded by palm and guava trees, as well as shops, schools and workshops.

Further planning, for the moment, seems impossible; already one investor who was prepared to put up $400,000 to build the settlement's first hotel has pulled back. The people of Yamit were outraged at the reaction when they offered 50 building lots for sale in Israel as a symbolic way to draw attention and secure support for their cause. The lots were sold quickly enough, but to speculators gambling on profits to be made from indemnities if and when the area is returned to Egyptian sovereignty.

Yamit's residents are Israeli and intend to remain so. Their streets are patch-worked with blue-and-white Israeli flags snapping defiantly in the desert wind. Should Begin or another Premier eventually agree to return Sinai to Egypt, the settlers intend to try by court action to hold the government to a 1971 promise to keep the settlements under Israeli control. But most of the residents would leave if the Egyptians returned. Says Carol Rosenblatt, a 36-year-old mother of three from Miami Beach whose thatch-roofed restaurant is a local gathering place: "I brought my kids here to live in Israel." However, a few are uncertain. Says Belgian-born Dov Segal, 37, who three months ago opened Yamit's first supermarket: "I don't quite know what Egyptian sovereignty would mean. But until I hear the full explanation of what it would be like, I won't say no."

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