http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22judt.html
The author, Tony Judt of NY University, lays out the issue of settlements more clearly than anyone I've seen writing in the American Mass Media:
It is thus not by chance that the international press is encouraged to speak and write of Jewish “settlers” and “settlements” in the West Bank. But this image is profoundly misleading. The largest of these controversial communities in geographic terms is Maale Adumim. It has a population in excess of 35,000, demographically comparable to Montclair, N.J., or Winchester, England. What is most striking, however, about Maale Adumim is its territorial extent. This “settlement” comprises more than 30 square miles — making it one and a half times the size of Manhattan and nearly half as big as the borough and city of Manchester, England. Some “settlement.”
There are about 120 official Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank. In addition, there are “unofficial” settlements whose number is estimated variously from 80 to 100. Under international law, there is no difference between these two categories; both are contraventions of Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force, a principle re-stated in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.
Thus the distinction so often made in Israeli pronouncements between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements is specious — all are illegal, whether or not they have been officially approved and whether or not their expansion has been “frozen” or continues apace.He continues later in the article (and please do click on the link to read the full piece, the whole thing is worth reading...and if nothing else, the author probably gets paid by the click...)
Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.
To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.
There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth.He wonders how President Obama is going to move forward...
Thus President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond.
Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel’s defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy. They are nothing but a colonial takeover that the United States has no business subsidizing.
But if I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel’s settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of “authorized” settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel’s political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster. The United States would be humiliated in the eyes of its friends, not to speak of its foes. If America cannot stand up for its own interests in the region, at least let it not be played yet again for a patsy.I believe there are ways forward. That peace is possible. I believe that peace could be accomplished in a unified state, although such a state would not for long, if ever, continue with a Jewish majority population, thus ending the dream of a Jewish homeland, although not, perhaps the dream of a safe space for Jews. I believe that peace could be accomplished in a two-state solution, IF Palestine is truly an independent state, contiguous and with complete agency and authority like any other state in the world. This would require dismantling all the settlements in the West Bank or bringing them under Palestinian rule, an obviously contentious problem, but without either of those options, a Palestinian state becomes unworkable, spider-webbed, as it were, with the roads of a different nation running throughout it's heart. I also believe there are ways forward that we haven't yet imagined; that we have limited ourselves to two options, when there have to be more paths that will work.
As a member of the science fiction and fantasy community (writer, consumer, fan), I believe in the power of fiction to change the world. Here's my challenge to all my sff writer friends... lets imagine the way forward, lets put our creativity to the test and find a society, a politics that offers more than the two rather bleak and seemingly impossible options ahead of us. The Muslim community is fond of talking about the Radical Middle Way, sometimes referred to as a radical third way, let us imagine that radical middle way, that radical third way so maybe, at last the people of the Middle East can live in peace.
¶ 9:53 AM
