JVP News Roundup: Settlements

In his column this week, Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery takes recently resigned leader of the Meretz party, Yossi Beilin to task for setting the precedent, some twelve years ago, of the "settlement blocs." (Avnery's article is not yet posted online, but should be up shortly at this link). In his agreement with Mahmoud Abbas, commonly known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement, Beilin sought to undermine the determination of the settlement movement to block any compromise with the Palestinians by annexing the major settlement blocs of Gush Etzion, Ma'ale Adumim and Ariel to Israel. Since this would mean that the vast majority of the settlers would remain where they were, he hoped that would be enough to overcome the settlers' opposition.

The plan backfired. Instead of this being the grand compromise that would lead to an agreement, the idea of Israel maintaining the settlement blocs became a given. Particularly after the ill-advised letter from George W. Bush to Ariel Sharon in 2004, where Bush guaranteed that Israel would never go back to the pre-1967 borders, Israel's control of the three settlement blocs became the point from which the Palestinians would have to compromise further. Beilin could not be accused of having any love for the settlements (and, indeed, few Israelis are as hated by the settlers as Beilin), but the incident demonstrates again the huge shadow the settlements cast over any hope of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and the disproportionate influence the settler movement has over Israeli politics.

An excellent description of the role the settlements have played since 1967, their tactics and goals as well as a comprehensive history of the settlement movement in Israel and the Occupied Territories can be found in the recently published book, "Lords of the Land: The War for Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007," by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.

By no means should it be understood that the settlers have somehow subverted the otherwise noble intentions of the Israeli government. On the contrary, one of the key strengths of the settlement movement is that its adherents can be found at the highest levels of the Israeli government. Government officials are a major factor in the success of the settlement project and in its continued growth. A report in 2005 by the former head of the State Prosecution Criminal Department, Talya Sason was supposed to focus only on the so-called "illegal outposts" (and one should always keep in mind that all the settlements beyond the Green Line are unequivocally illegal under international law; the illegality referred to in this term is contravention of Israeli law, which describes many of the more established settlements as well), but revealed much about the settlement enterprise as a whole.

Once again, the issue of the settlements presents itself as the major stumbling to diplomatic processes. Avnery's indictment of Beilin raises the key issue of the failure of peace movements with regard to the settlements: the eagerness to compromise too soon has led peace groups to abandon the essential principle that any negotiations must start from the point that all settlements must be removed and any alteration in that formula must be arrived at by mutual and genuine agreement. The fear of most in the Israeli left of directly confronting the settlers has led to a situation where there is little real pressure on Israel even to abide the agreements it has made with regard to evacuation of settlements.

Israel has repeatedly committed to settlement freezes and to the removal of "outposts," yet, with few exceptions, has generally not kept to its promises. And every day, when Palestinians see a new building being constructed in a settlement or Israeli soldiers protecting a new caravan of mobile homes on a hilltop near a Palestinian village, it only serves to reinforce for Palestinians the idea that Israel is not interested in a peaceful resolution but only wishes to take more and more West Bank land.

In the wake of the Annapolis conference, Israel renewed its commitment to the threadbare "Roadmap," which does include a requirement that Israel stop building settlements. Yet, while it specifically excludes "natural growth of settlements," Israel routinely used this very excuse to justify continued expansion of existing settlements. And the United States has done nothing about this. Israel has claimed that it is "thickening" rather than expanding the settlements.

The same sort of semantic game is played in distinguishing between the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The municipal area of Jerusalem has expanded to many times the size it was in 1967, and Israel maintains that Jerusalem is not occupied territory and therefore not covered by the ban on construction. Thus, we have the issue of Har Homa/Jabal Abu Ghneim.

The Har Homa project set off riots when ground was first broken in 1997 (a major factor in laying the ground for the second intifada), is now to be expanded. While Israel maintains that it is within its rights to do this, Ehud Olmert is annoyed about the timing of the announcement and has made some procedural changes to how such projects get approved as a result. But this is nothing more than window dressing. It is meant to cover up the very real intention to establish irreversible facts on the ground in East Jerusalem and make any negotiations over the status of this part of occupied territory moot.

Indeed, Olmert's decision to approve new housing tenders means little, as many have been approved over the years,

In this article by Ha'aretz, two writers (neither of whom is particularly left-leaning) analyze American frustration with Israeli foot-dragging and the Olmert government's maneuvering to find loopholes through which it can avoid making good on the meager commitments it has made. While the analysis here is sound as far as it goes, it gives short shrift to two important points. One is that, while Condoleezza Rice is not acting completely outside of the Bush Administration's program, she is not getting specific support in her efforts to get Israel to freeze its settlement activity. The president has repeatedly voiced general support for negotiations and for Rice's work, but has not been willing to use any sort of real pressure on Olmert, something Rice cannot do on her own.

The other is that the United States is, in fact, quite capable of using real pressure to get Israel to live up to its commitments under the Roadmap. Particularly in light of the complimentary words bestowed upon the Palestinian Authority regarding their crackdowns on Palestinian militants in the West Bank, the absence of genuine American action on this front dims any hope. It need not be terribly dramatic, but merely a tool that both George Bush the first and even this younger Bush have both used in the past to pressure Israel, the reduction of loan guarantees. Yet even this is missing.

This situation is emblematic of the problem with having the United States as the broker between Israel and the Palestinians, a problem even more acute with this administration than it had been in the past. If there are no consequences to Israel's expansion of settlements, why would Israel refrain from expanding them? And such consequences can only be meted out by the United States. Yet, if the US is going to side with Israel, where, then, will the pressure for concrete action come from? And if such pressure is not forthcoming even when the PA is mobilizing its security forces much more widely and much more harshly than it has in the past, then when will it come?

The significance of the problem cannot be overstated. There are many issues in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the conflict itself goes beyond the questions of land, the occupation and the settlements. But the question of land is the most immediate issue, and the one which must be dealt with before other questions can be addressed. It is this question which propels the day-to-day confrontation in the West Bank.

To be sure, the question of the settlements is discussed, yet results on the ground are absent. This is a reality that is clear well beyond the Palestinian territories, and throughout the Arab world. The continued expansion of settlements established the fact that peace conferences like Annapolis are merely covers for the continuing occupation and confiscation of land. People see that even when the US criticizes an Israeli move it does not back up that criticism with action.

For the Palestinians, the issue of settlements is a huge one. Every settlement, big or small, is a challenge to their ability to ever assume sovereignty in the West Bank. Yet the recent events demonstrate again the difficulty of the Palestinian position. The prerequisite from the Palestinian point of view for talks is a mere freeze in settlement construction. This really isn't all that much to ask. Settlement apartments routinely sit empty for long periods. There is no desperate need for more housing, even if one were to accept that such an excuse would have any weight next to the illegality of the settlements in the first place and the fact that Israel has agreed to the freeze in their construction.

Yet Palestinian appeals for outside intervention have fallen on deaf ears. The stalemate in negotiation was broken only due to the fact that Mahmoud Abbas is under great pressure to continue with talks despite the conditions. But such talks barely rise to the level of a joke as long as settlement construction continues.

Avnery was correct in assailing the "settlement bloc" compromise. This needs to go even further. Removing the settlements and confronting, once and for all, the settlement movement will not, in and of itself, bring peace or resolve many of the other issues that bring Israel and the Palestinians into conflict. But it is the most obvious immediate step. Without that, there can be no resolution, whether in one state or two, of this conflict. but building under their authority has not yet commenced. It is precisely this sort of bureaucratic finagling that has enabled the settlement project for so long.

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