On May 15, 2012, Jeremy Ben Ami, founder of J Street, and Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard and director of Emergency Committee for Israel, took part in a debate that addressed commonly-held positions of the pro-Israeli community on the future of Israel and Palestine. The debate itself was uneventful, a surprise given the fact that J Street and the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) represent views that are on opposing ends of the political spectrum. Both parties remained civil and even-toned. Ben Ami reiterated views that are integral to the left-leaning pro-Israeli platform; Kristol, for the most part, refused to engage him by claiming ignorance of many of the issues raised.
Bill Kristol was plenty clear on one point, however: for Kristol, continuing the 45-year military occupation of the Palestinian territories for an indefinite amount of time is the default option if a two-state solution cannot be realized. Because neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are close to engaging in negotiations, it would seem the intent of the Israeli government is for the occupation to continue. However, the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory is transforming this military occupation into what appears like an outright expansion of the state of Israel. The settlements are limiting the amount of land available for a Palestinian state and the expansion contradicts the notion that any kind of "status quo" is being maintained.
The occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, are owned by the Palestinians and are intended for a Palestinian state. That land is now diminishing rapidly under the authority and approval of the Israeli government. Since 1967, Israeli settlers have colonized much of the West Bank, which is approximately the size of Delaware. While the majority remains Palestinian, a substantial and increasing percentage of the region's population is now Israeli. In June 2009, for example, the IDF reported that approximately 304,569 settlers lived in the West Bank; this represented a 2.3 percent increase since January of that year. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel, by 2010, that number had reached 314,132 settlers in the West Bank; that's an increase of 10,000 settlers in just the West Bank within one year. On the whole, over half a million Israeli settlers resided in the occupied territories in 2010.
The facts are available to those who investigate this subject. In March 2012 the Civil Administration, an agency within the Israel Defense Ministry, was forced to release maps and documents that demonstrate how 10 percent of the land in the West Bank has been designated outright to Israeli settlers. The documents also reveal that the wall that was constructed in order to maintain Israel's security serves to strategically maximize the amount of Palestinian land granted to settlements. The Israeli Civil Administration is also seeking to legalize unauthorized outposts throughout the West Bank, which further increases the amount of land appropriated by Israel. These documents and policies lend credence to the hypothesis that the settlement-construction process has been orchestrated by the Israeli government. Inevitably, through the construction of these settlements and the legalization of unauthorized outposts, the state of Israel has been expanding.
That the settlements are expanding is hardly news to most people following the politics of the region. In 2010, for example, planning officials told Ha'aretz of plans to build 50,000 additional housing units in East Jerusalem alone; 20,000 of these housing units were already in advanced stages of approval and implementation. At that time, a representative of the NGO Ir Amim said that if these plans for construction go through, attaining a viable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via a two-state solution would be nearly impossible. Along these lines, former President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and leaders of European countries have urged Israel to halt the construction of settlements -- to no avail. In anticipation of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's approval of further settlement construction, Fatah spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi declared, "What Netanyahu is doing is clearly at the scale of a grand deception."
So is it possible for Israel to maintain the status quo, as Kristol asserted? With such rapid expansion, there is no static status quo. These takeovers of Palestinian land preclude the possibility of continuing the military occupation in its current form. Furthermore, the rapid expansion of settlements is rendering the possibility of two separate territories impossible. The settlements and the wall are rendering the borders between Israel and a hypothetical, already diminishing Palestine porous and fluid. These developments suggest that the current government of Israel is engineering a road to a greater Israel and not to two independent, sovereign states.
Josh Ruebner: 45 Years of Israeli Military Occupation and No End in Sight
Not in the interests of peaceful co-existence, not in the interests of Justice for ALL, not for anything.
No matter how many casualties, on either side, she will not give an inch of their stolen land back to their victims.
I have listened to other posters here who are quite happy to exist (in Israel) with this Status Quo.
Because they are used to living like that! They have been living like that their whole lives!
What they are not seeing is that they are in a CONFLICT; and that has a life of its own and will not stagnate, but will escalate. And we all know how "military things" have a tendency to explode.
They would be much wiser to apply Justice for ALL to resolve the conflict than more bullets.
And, deep down they're quite proud of that.... i.e., they can woop the civilians / subsistence farmers! WOW! Of course that is WITH American support.
But, some of those civilians, especially the children can be quite challenging and require additional bullets, which I am sure bothers the Zionists due to the increase to the "costs per victim" allocation in their budget.
if they like it and live good with it, why should they want to change it?
The author said that if Israel truly wants to be part of the West then it will have to end its occupation of Palestinian territories and accused Israelis of being "unbelievably irresponsible" (via Daily Dish):
In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can't, it'll have to dispense with the occupation. It's as simple as that.
It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can't govern other people against their will. It can't continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day. And it's unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I'm afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I'm a prisoner of that knowledge. I can't un-know it.
Israel, from the day it was proclaimed as the re-institution of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish people's homeland, based on the Balfour Declaration, 1917; and based on those elements of international law that followed, i.e. San Remo conference decisions, 1920; the League of Nations decisions, 1922; and the irrevocable United Nations Charter, Article 80, of 1945, has been eager to achieve an accommodation of peaceful coexistence between Arab and Jew, between the Muslim-Arab world, local and regional, and the newly formed nation-state of the Jewish people.
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.pdf
Sadly, to this day, 64 years later, all that Israel has had to face - despite many risky gestures of good-will - have been attempts - military, economic, diplomatic and demographic - to undermine Israel's very existence and the eventual demise of this tiny liberal democratic state that is the ethical and legal expression of the Jewish people to its right to national self-determination and independence on a small part of its historic homeland.
A true breakthrough would be a simple statement by the Arabs, in Arabic, Hebrew and English, accepting Israel's RIGHT to be, to exist as the sovereign NATION-STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE.
Sadly, this has not been forthcoming for 64 years, hence, the status quo.
NOT TRUE ONE SINGLE TINY BIT.
Instead, as long as they have the military strength, they only intend to have their Eretz Israel.
Anything shy of that is a lie, and you know it.
1948, Israel's Proclamation of Independence, rejected
1967, Israel's call for peace, rejected
1978, Begin/Saadat's proposal, rejected
And, prior to Israel's proclamation, the list of rejections by the Arabs, local and regional, has been as follows:
1920, San Remo Conference decisions, rejected
1922, League of Nations decisions, rejected
1937, Peel Commission proposal for peace, rejected
1947, United Nations proposal, rejected
One can hardly be mistaken who has advanced peace proposals - in addition about singling, writing, educating and speaking about peace, and who has called, to this very day, for Israel's demise...!!
Let us be reminded of Israel's offers:
1995, Rabin's Contour for Peace, rejected
2000, Barak's peace offer, rejected
2005, Sharon's gesture for peace, rejected
2008, Olmert's peace offer, rejected
2009 to present, Netanjahu's invitation to peace talks, rejected
Perhaps it is high time the Arabs, local and regional alike, should apply a degree of introspection and ask themselves: Why haven't we accepted any of these offers.
P.S. A clue, the answer is built into the PLO's Charter...!!
P.S. another clue Likud charter, and last time I checked Bibi is on record derailing Oslo record so don't try to play the poor israelis card...what Barak proposed in 2000 was a state with big daddy israel watching over the airspace, no military etc...if yo think this was such a good idea, lets do the same with Israel, US can guarantee the security after all US is paying for most of the stuff anyway
But, with her arrogance from strength, she has no interest in Justice, only how many bullets will it take to get their ERETZ ISRAEL.
And you know that as well as you know your name.
Actually, Christians, Muslims and Jews have lived in the West Bank for millennia. The point is Jews don't get preference over other people.
"For Israel's Arabs It Is Not Apartheid"
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1102/for-israels-arabs-it-is-not-apartheid
By the way, under international law the West Bank isn't actually 'occupied territory' it is 'disputed territory'.
Don't believe what you read in the Israeli tabloids!
She doesn't even do that, since the only people who's views she presents (she doesn't actually provide a single quote) is from 2 americans, who don't represent israel, israelis or their government; and Ashrawi, a palestinian backbencher.
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.pdf
In short, legally, Jordan is the Arab part of former "Palestine", while the rest is the Jewish part. Sadly, the Arabs still have not accepted this legal reality.
All the while yelling at the Jews who were left with the tiniest sliver of land imaginable.
At the very least, I think Jordan should absorb the "West Bank" Palestinian controlled areas as a State within the State of Jordan.
But NOBODY wants to deal with that population. We saw what happened when King Hussein was forced to deal with it. He made what's going on in Syria right now look like child's play.