Settlements are growing constant in Israeli politics

The issue of settlements and the confiscation of land in the occupied Palestinian territories is at the heart of the debate and controversy over the decades-long negotiations. This position is intensifying with the Israeli government’s revelation that it has extended the 2009 decision about land expropriation, by deciding to confiscate an additional 101,532 acres extending from the Maale Adumim settlement in East Jerusalem towards Hebron, which forms the eastern buffer zone that extends to the Dead Sea. In 2009, the Netanyahu government decided to expropriate land which changed the facts on the ground. The area of the entire buffer zone is 386,473 acres, 177 acres of which were allotted as closed military zones, while other areas were classified as nature reserves. The buffer zone makes up 27 per cent of the West Bank.

What has distinguished Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s time in office since March 2009 is that it has been dedicated to its settlement policy and he has disregarded calls for it to end. Pressure has come from those sponsoring the negotiations as well as the Palestinian Authority, which wants a freeze on settlements as a pre-condition for returning to the negotiation table. This condition is a controversial issue between the US administration and the Israeli government, but the settlements remain the cornerstone of the “Jewish state”. One hundred days after being elected as prime minister, Netanyahu made a speech at Bar-Ilan University in which he adopted the two-state solution in theory; in practice, however, he agreed to any step that would establish “Israel’s authority” in the occupied Palestinian areas by expanding settlement construction. Americans and Europeans have found it difficult to dissuade him from continuing his settlement policy.

This poses a major challenge for the Palestinians and Israelis, especially after it became clear that the expropriation decision has taken in about 75 per cent of the West Bank. The efforts to stop settlement activities failed because of Israel’s persistence. Moreover, the support received by settlers from Netanyahu’s government made settlement expansion the core of Israeli policies. There are now more than 500,000 settlers in 144 “official” (but still illegal, in international law) settlements and 100 “unofficial” settlements scattered across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s government is seeking feverishly to establish settlement units and intensive construction in yet more Palestinian territory in order to tighten the siege on the Palestinians. Not only is this a flagrant violation of the Palestinians’ human rights and international laws and conventions, but it is also an obstacle preventing any significant progress towards the achievement of an independent Palestinian state.

It is also evidence of the bad choice made by the PA and a classic example of its inability to stand up to Israeli diktats during negotiations. Israel’s insistence on sticking to its constants leads to an acceptance of the presence of settlements on Palestinian land as an inevitability. It is ironic that from the Israeli perspective, settlements, along with the other “final status” issues, such as Jerusalem, the right of return of refugees, borders, water, security and so on, have all become Israeli constants and a red line in the policy adopted by Israel when negotiating with the Palestinians, and not the opposite.

The danger and seriousness of settlements and their relentless expansion is evident through a number of factors: Israel’s uprooting of olive trees; the demolition of Palestinian homes; the displacement of Bedouins and confiscation of their land in the Negev; measures to ensure the protection of illegal settlers; the prohibition of Palestinians using their land for construction and agriculture; and the prevention of them from using their groundwater. This is all a means to establish the necessary infrastructure for settlements and Judaisation, as well as connecting these Jewish colonies to the territories occupied in 1948. This is compatible with the Israeli vision of “negotiations” which has been proposed since the Madrid Conference. The magnitude of settlement and project planning carried out by Israel most certainly does not indicate that a Palestinian state is on the horizon, let alone on the horizon of negotiations, nor does it indicate that the Israelis will abandon settlements any time soon, as the two-state solution supporters believe.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadid, 26 February, 2015.

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