From Settlement Freeze Redux, in Settlement Report | Vol. 19 No. 3 | January-February 2009 by Geoffrey Aronson
...Settlements must be evacuated as part of a final status plan that establishes Palestinian sovereignty and enhances Israeli security...Settlement evacuation, not a freeze, is a more credible and necessary objective, more closely attuned to the essential long-term interests of both parties and firmly rooted in past Israeli practice, most recently in Gaza...The only context in which a freeze could be implemented is as a consequence of an Israeli decision to remove settlements and the Israeli army from occupied territory...
...A cessation of settlement requires Israel to repudiate the linkage between settlement, security, and sovereignty that is at the heart of its defense and settlement doctrine in the occupied territories...a freeze as currently understood does not address the symbiotic relationship between settlements and security at the heart of Israel’s policy of occupation and settlement. It assumes that settlements can be addressed while ignoring the broader security framework in which they exist. If the Obama administration is committed to ending the conflict, promotion of a freeze is of less consequence than a forthright initiative to create a new security framework that protects legitimate Israeli and Palestinian national security interests and that ensures the removal of settlements and an Israeli military withdrawal from the occupied territories...
...Major elements of national legislation and administrative practice that have devolved planning and budgetary power to settlements will have to be undone, as will the host of decisions taken by representative settlement councils. Powers of taxation, planning, courts, and construction will require radical revision to reflect the requirements of a freeze as will the complex system of material and budgetary incentives granted to individuals and business enterprises to encourage settlement expansion.
The requirements necessary for an effective settlement freeze reveal an undertaking so complex and requiring an Israeli political decision so profound that no Israeli government would undertake except as a result of a broader decision to terminate occupation...
What I don't understand is Geoffrey's harping on the "security" issue. It's illogical.
Without the hills of Judea and Samaria, without an IDF presence there, without freedom of movement for the GSS there, Israel simply has no security to speak of.
So what "security" is Aronson promoting?
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