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Q: Are West Bank Settlements an Obstacle to Peace in Israel?

By James Zogby and Jean AbiNader
Insight on the News
Posted on Monday September 2, 2002

YES: Palestinian villages have been trapped and strangled within these Israeli compounds.

“U.S. opposition to the settlements is political. Washington feels that Israel would be better protected and more accepted inside borders where there are no settlements, so a decision on their future must be accepted on the basis of their feasibility.”
— U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, May 29.

“The president [George W. Bush] has already said in the April 4 statement and in other settings that his view [is] that Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza is unhelpful, not conducive to making progress. And he has even said flatly that settlement activity must stop.”
— Briefing by a senior American official, June 6.

Shortly after Israel’s victory in the 1948 war, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, proclaimed a “double miracle” had occurred. As a result of the Israeli forces’ victories and the large number of Palestinian refugees created by the conquest, the new state of Israel, he noted, was larger than that which had been proposed by the U.N. partition plan, and it included fewer Arabs!

The same situation did not occur in 1967. A number of Israelis noted at the time that although they had more land, they also had to rule over more Arabs. The Israeli government began to build settler colonies in the occupied territories to better position itself for administering the newly conquered territories and for laying claim to portions of which it wanted to retain control if and when it had to withdraw from some areas. The United States and the United Nations protested vigorously. The practice of establishing civilian colonies in occupied territories is a clear violation of international law. It also was, as the United States made clear, an obstacle to future peace.

During the last three decades, there have been many U.S.-led efforts to broker or force an Israeli commitment to freezing settlement construction, yet the settlements continue to grow. It was almost 10 years ago that then secretary of state James Baker worked hard to achieve a historic compromise on settlements. In an effort to build the confidence necessary to coax Arabs and Israelis toward peace, Baker succeeded in getting a number of major Arab governments to agree to terminate enforcement of their secondary economic boycott of Israel in exchange for Israel’s agreement to a settlement freeze.

However, since that time Israel’s settlement presence in the occupied territories has more than doubled! While the Israelis continue to claim that they have not built new settlements and only have allowed for natural growth of existing settlements, their claims are patently false. Today, what Israel calls “greater Jerusalem” virtually is surrounded by a “great wall” of new concrete settlements, which Israel calls “extensions of existing neighborhoods.” In fact, they spread from hill to hill, ringing the city. Palestinian villages have been trapped within these Israeli compounds and strangled.

While the Israelis continue to claim that they will not confiscate new land on which to build these extensions, this too is an artful fabrication. Large areas of Palestinian land surrounding settlements already have been seized by Israel and are defined as “state” (that is, Israeli-controlled) lands.

Aside from all of this, there are in fact dozens of new settlements that have been developed in the last decade, some as so-called “private” ventures, a practice by which successive Israeli governments have attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility. But all receive government assistance in the form of infrastructure support and protection.

As damaging as this cancerous growth of new housing has been to the Palestinians, the dramatic expansion of the network of “Jewish-only” security roads — in reality superhighways connecting many of the settlements to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — has been even worse. Large swatches of Palestinian land have been taken and declared off-limits to facilitate the construction and operation of these roads. The impact of this network of roads has been to cut the occupied territories into pieces.

All of this has been in direct fulfillment of the original Likud plan for the occupied territories, first defined in an October 1978 World Zionist Organization white paper entitled Master Plan for Development of Settlement in Judea and Samaria 1979-1983. Written by Matityahu Drobles, it was described as a plan “making concrete and realizing our right to Eretz Israel.” In the paper, Drobles details a plan to construct settlements and roads around the settlements of the minorities [i.e. the Palestinians], but also between them, this in accordance with the settlement policy adopted in Galilee. Describing the intent of this plan, then economics editor of the Jerusalem Post Meir Merhav told Time magazine in March 1980 that the West Bank “is to be carved up by a grid of roads, settlements and strongholds into a score of little bantustans so that [the Palestinians] shall never coalesce again into a contiguous area that can support autonomous, let alone independent, existence.”

All of this, of course, was verbally opposed by successive U.S. presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush. Whether decrying the settlements as “illegal,” “obstacles to peace,” “unhelpful unilateral acts” or “provocative” and “impediments,” opposition was clear, but no forceful and definitive action was taken to bring about a halt in their growth.

So today, more than 20 years after Merhav’s fateful analysis and America’s stern warnings, 10 years after Madrid and Baker’s historic compromise, the Drobles plan is near completion. In violation of unenforced international law, 400,000 Israelis have been transferred into settlements in the occupied territories (including what Israel calls annexed East Jerusalem), and the Palestinian areas have been carved up into pieces. More than that, tens of thousands of these settlers comprise a hostile and dangerous vigilante presence in the occupied territories, armed not only with weapons but also an uncompromising, theologically based, ideology of entitlement and conquest.

Many Israelis understand the dangers posed by this situation. They know the intent of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government remains the same: Occupy and resist negotiations. As Yossi Sarid, a leader of the Meretz party noted, “When you build new settlements or expand existing settlements, it means that you want to persist with the occupation and deepen it.” And prominent Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Shiff observed that “most of Israel’s governments have tried various ploys regarding the settlements — the excuses were absurd, because everyone understood that there was only one interpretation for settlement expansion: the creation of facts intended to help Israel close off the option of the Palestinians being able to establish a viable state.”

Former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti noted that the settlement enterprise is “not a demographic-physical matter that can be measured by the number of populated apartments and the increase in the number of settlers. It is a multiheaded hydra controlling millions of acres, water sources, roads, economic endeavors, huge budgets and especially unlimited real-estate potential.” The Department of State’s Mitchell report was quite clear: “A cessation of Palestinian-Israeli violence will be particularly hard to sustain unless the Government of Israel freezes all settlement activity — including ‘natural growth’ of existing settlements.” The Mitchell plan never was implemented and new settlement construction continues. According to U.S. and Israeli sources, in the last year the Sharon government has authorized dozens of new colonies.

Despite the horrific violence and reaction to Israel’s reoccupation and strangulation of many areas in the West Bank, the Sharon government hews to its settlement policy as a cornerstone of its security strategy, a policy that neither promotes Israel’s security nor enables it to pursue a strategic course of engaging the Palestinians to achieve a durable peace.

And Israelis know that neither the settlements nor the perimeter fence dividing Israeli and Palestinian lands will bring peace. In a recent poll, more than two-thirds of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories agreed that they would accept a decision by the government to withdraw from their communities, many in exchange for financial compensation. Less than 7 percent of those polled indicated that they would resist by any means government policies to remove the settlements. It is the Sharon government, through its building and subsidy programs, that is increasing liabilities for the settlers by maintaining the fiction that the majority of the settlements will continue somehow when a Palestinian state is formed. This fiction has grave consequences for Israel’s moral compass and its relations with the world community.

Perhaps American presidents should have been wiser, for Israel’s sake, and challenged its settlement policy more effectively. Allowing successive Israeli governments to recognize that the United States would not back up its words with actions seriously has damaged its credibility in the region and the perception of what the United States will do to promote a fair and credible peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In the final analysis, the settlements are the most visible and truculent reminder that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is the major obstacle to peace. The settlements are not merely political mechanisms to drive home the point that Israelis mean to stay on the land. The message heard by Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians is far more sinister. What they see is an Israel with unfettered political ambitions backed up by its overwhelming arsenal, including weapons of mass destruction. The occupation of Arab lands is the issue.

The underlying reality is that Israel’s security is contingent upon agreeing to a viable two-state solution and respecting the territorial integrity and independence of its neighbors — guarantees that are mutually negotiated and observed. There will be no significant shift in Palestinian and Arab public opinion toward Israel without Israel’s clear commitment to negotiations that include decisions about the future of the vast majority of settlements.

It is time for the United States to back up its opposition to settlements using whatever resources it has, a tactic that up until now it only has shown to the Palestinians. And we should press hard to obtain a public commitment from Israel to begin removing settlements, consistent with the three-year time frame proposed for Palestinian statehood.

When the United States can craft this initiative into a politically feasible and accountable framework, it will have made an effective intervention to promote realistic negotiations toward a workable peace. We cannot allow this folly, which is resulting in the loss of so many Israeli and Palestinian lives, to continue.

Zogby is president of the Arab-American Institute (AAI), a Washington-based nonprofit. He founded the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. AbiNader is AAI’s managing director and president and chief executive officer of IdeaCom, an international marketing firm. He also is a cofounder of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.