Freeze the Settlement Freeze
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to approve new Jewish settlements on the eve of a possible settlement freeze is the latest round in a cycle that has been repeated so many times over the past 40 years that it would seem mundane if it were not so dangerous.
The cycle goes something like this: American or international pressure mounts on Israel to stop settlement activities in the occupied territories. Israeli settlers and their supporters then gather even more energy to expand onto more Palestinian land, build more exclusively Jewish settlements, and destroy more Arab homes before the so-called "freeze" comes into effect.
The peace process, not surprisingly, becomes a joke while this happens. Eventually, world pressure subsides and the freeze fails to materialise. In the end, more Jewish settlements appear. Indeed, the great paradox of this cycle is that more settlements are built during times of negotiations than during times of conflict.
This pattern can be traced to 1967. Israelis understand that the only reality in politics is the reality on the ground. So long as Israeli soldiers control the occupied territories, the idea of a settlement freeze will not take root. In fact, the demand for a settlement freeze is nothing more than a call to arms to a wide group of Israelis and their supporters to go and build on stolen Palestinian land.
When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was preparing for his historic visit to Jerusalem, a group of settlers created the settlement of Elon Moreh near Nablus, the most populated West Bank city. When former United States Secretary of State James Baker began his shuttle diplomacy for peace, his ultimately unsuccessful efforts actually resulted in more settlements, with a new one started just hours before he was due to arrive for talks.
Baker postponed his visit and later vented his frustrations to the US Senate Committee on Appropriations. He resented "being greeted" every time he came to the Middle East with yet "another settlement". Baker's efforts eventually led to the Madrid peace conference in 1991, but that, too, failed to resolve the conflict. And, while Palestinians and Israelis did reach a secret agreement a few years later that was publicly declared at a White House ceremony, construction of Jewish settlements didn't stop. In fact, since the 1993 Oslo Accords the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories has doubled.
The creation of new settlements has often been accompanied by hostile media reporting -- even within Israel -- as well as international condemnation, yet the settlement train has not stopped. It continued to race ahead even during the days when Israel's government rotated between Likud's Yitzhak Shamir and Labour's Shimon Peres between 1984 and 1990.
The Shamir government would be defeated at the polls, and the incoming Labour government would declare a freeze on all settlement construction, even on buildings that had already been started. But, despite the decrees, ways were found to continue building, to absorb new residents, and to increase the settler population.
For the US, the settlements have proven to be an equal-opportunity obstacle, obstructing both Republican and Democratic diplomacy. The Clinton administration attempted to put brakes on then-Prime Minister Netanyahu's efforts to construct a new settlement near Bethlehem. After a short hiatus, construction resumed. The Bush-Cheney Administration, the most pro-Israeli in memory, fared no better. Today, Har Homa, built on Jabal Abu Ghnaim with the aim of cutting off Bethlehem from Jerusalem, is home to 19,000 settlers.
This cycle has become so bizarre and confusing that Palestinians are not sure whether they should hope for continued tensions with Israel (which usually means no new settlements) or for continued negotiations (which usually provide cover for building settlements). On January 5, 2007, the day Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss a new round of talks, the Israeli Construction and Housing Ministry issued a tender for the construction of more units in Ma'ale Adumim, an exclusively Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.
Of course, whenever the Israelis defy the world over the settlements, as is now once again happening, US and other officials "denounce" and "regret" the decision. But, at the end of the day, despite these few statements and perhaps even a UN resolution of opposition, the pattern established over the past 40 years is clear: the decision stands.
Jeff Aronson, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, concludes that Israeli leaders will continue to be able to fool their American counterparts on this issue. Some Israeli right-wing leaders like Menachem Begin, Shamir, and Netanyahu trumpet their settlement achievements. Others, including Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Ehud Olmert "talked left and built right".
Palestinians are caught in a Catch-22: if they insist on a settlement freeze, Israel pre-emptively begins to build new settlements. Unless and until Israel pays a heavy price for its illegal activities in the occupied territories, it is hard to imagine a successful peace process taking shape.
Daoud Kuttab, a former professor at Princeton University, is General Manager of the Community Media Network. This article was commissioned by the Project Syndicate.
Follow Daoud Kuttab on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daoudkuttab
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"Unless and until Israel pays a heavy price for its illegal activities in the occupied territories, it is hard to imagine a successful peace process taking shape."
sad but true . . . I don't agree with Jeff Aronson .. ." that Israeli leaders will continue to be able to fool their American counterparts on this issue" . . . are they fooling them . . or is it just that our politicians are addicted to the status quo and have been bought by the AIPAC . . .
Europe isn't much better . . . they scream about Iran wanted to develop nuclear power plants for domestic use . . .but conveniently ignore the fact that israel has over 250 nuclear weapons and has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty . . israel won't accept international law . . . it breaks it every day . . . and won't even sign the Geneva Convention . . . I try to undertand the reasons but it just seems like gross hypocrisy and cowardice to confront the real enemy to world peace . . .
To this day, Israel has not chosen to attempt to annex the West Bank.
If they did, all of it's people would become Israeli citizens. That is not what they want. Instead, they are drawing out a plan to ethnically cleanse as much of the area as possible, in order to annex only areas that are Palestinian free. They will continue for as long as the US will continue to fund this crushingly expensive and morally dubious enterprise. When the Israeli people begin to feel the true cost of this deplorable program exclusively on their own shoulders, they will throw off this rotting albatross in a hearbeat.
It's time to cut off aid to Israel, as we have done to so many other countries when their actions fly in the face of US policy or maintaining basic human rights. In this case, its both, and as such the settlements lead to increased and completely avoidable terror against both Israel and the US.
As usual an essay on the West Bank that fails to consider an important historical fact. When Israel took the West Bank in 1967 it was taken from Jordan, not a Palestinian state. In the almost 20 years Jordan controlled the territory no mention was made of a Palestinian homeland.
The simple fact is Israel requires the West Bank for our defense. In 1973 one of the major reasons Jordan stayed out of the war was the fear it would lose even more territory. To make it easier for the Arab Legion to cut Israel in half in a war is foolish.
Israel is not currently expanding the number of settlements, it is adding more hmes to settlements already in existence. And why should Jews be barred from living there? If someone in the Knesset proposed an end to any Arab land onwership inside Israel the outcry would be deafening. I guess if it is Jews being displaced the Arab apologists on this site are happy.
by dispalcing you mean stealing more land or worse building on dipsuted land the outcome is same, building on illegal land...
your flawed logic has no outcome sorry to say, and please take the jordan story elsewhere.
One way of judging whether or not what you are saying is true is the degree to which other nations accept or reject your proposition. As it turns out, not a single nation on EARTH, Including the US, agree with your reading of the facts. By the way, this international opinion has remianed rock solid for decades.
All of this is foolish banter..si
great article, with the current health care debate we can see how obama's hands are being tied by the corrupt lobbyists who don't want consumers to benefit because they are busy making their bank accounts fatter...w
we need to change the lobbying game to get more meaningful things done...
Hogwash! As if all that oil money the Arabs have robbed from us over the decades would not buy more Congressional access?? Only problem is...most Congressme
Did you say the same thing for the last 8 years when BU$HCO allowed settlement building..
Thanks for writing in! Thought-provoking, especially as regards the settlement building taking place mostly during periods of negotiation. And of course, should the Palestinians cease to negottiate, they will be blamed for wanting to extend the hostilitie
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