...“I am not a Greater Israel guy and I have no objection to dismantling settlements as part of a peace deal, but getting so hung up on freezing settlement growth is not wise because it is not the most important issue out there,” argued Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University.(*)
The far bigger concern, he said, is that the Palestinians are unable to make similar concessions because of their political divisions and weakness.
Israelis have turned rightward and most analyses suggest that the reason is a growing fear of regional threats, notably Iranian-backed parties like Hezbollah and Hamas, on Israel’s borders.
Sarah Honig, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, a conservative paper, put it this way a week ago in a column: “Settlements aren’t the problem and removing them isn’t the solution. Israel foolishly dismantled 21 Gaza Strip settlements in 2005. Did peace blossom all over as a result? Precisely the reverse occurred. The razing of Israeli communities was regarded as terror’s triumph, expediting the Hamas takeover.”
The settlements are a complex issue that resonates in surprising ways here. Zionism began 125 years ago through the Jewish purchase of land in Palestine and the building of settlements (*) on what the Jews saw as their ancient homeland. When Israel won additional territory in the 1967 war, a conflict it felt was imposed on it, many here viewed it as the miraculous continuation of Jewish national rebirth in the biblical heartland. Religious Jews began settling there, but others were attracted by low prices, open space and a pioneering ethos.
Criticism ensued immediately, including American government condemnation. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids a country to settle its civilians in areas conquered militarily. Israel set up military outposts that turned into civilian settlements...
The Israelis say they had unwritten agreements with the Bush administration to continue building, as long as no new settlements were built. Bush officials say that is only partially true. The Obama administration says such winks and nods are over. It is signaling the Arab world that it is shifting policy. Whether it does so, and how the Netanyahu government responds, will make for high drama in the coming months.
[notice how the term "settlements" - and, for that matter, "Palestine" - is anachronistically used here. of course, it's better than "colonies" which actually was the official term in all Zionist publications. but more importantly, it wasn't just the Jews who "saw as their ancient homeland this country. the whole world did.]
and from letters-to-the-editor in the NYTimes:
To the Editor:
In President Obama’s push for Mideast peace, one key unasked question is: Can the Islamic world accept a non-Muslim state in the middle of an Arab-dominated region? If the answer is no, then all negotiated agreements are nothing more than subterfuge.
Howard Schwartz
Englewood, N.J.
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To the Editor:
To those of us who desire a just peace in the Middle East, it was disappointing to see President Obama, in the interest of evenhandedness, gloss over some inconvenient truths.
To create an appearance of equivalence between the Holocaust and the condition of the Palestinians, he said of them: “For more than 60 years, they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.”
The inconvenient truth, which he failed to acknowledge, is that, for the first 19 of those 60 years, the West Bank and Gaza were administered by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, and that it was under the administration of the Arab nations that the Palestinians were confined to refugee camps.
At any time during those first 19 years, the Arab nations could have provided “a life of peace and security” by, for example, establishing a Palestinian state or integrating the people into their own countries. Instead, they kept them confined to the camps as pawns in a propaganda war against Israel.
At the same time, Jewish refugees from Arab countries were forced to flee their homes by the backlash to the establishment of Israel.
In contrast to the actions of the Arab nations, Israel took them in, sometimes requiring daring rescue missions, and integrated them into their modern, Western-oriented society, just as they did, one might add, for the Arabs who chose to remain as citizens of Israel.
Joel S. Engel
Armonk, N.Y.
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