‘Settlements do not serve Israel’s security interests,’ say former officers

Former officers in the Israel Defence Forces have said that Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank “do not serve Israel’s security interests,” Quds Press has reported. The comments were made in a report issued by the Centre for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy.

“The idea that settlements reinforced Israel’s national security was accepted in the past, but it is no longer acceptable today,” they explained. “The civilian Israeli existence scattered across the West Bank does not contribute to defence; it is a burden on the security forces that consumes much of the resources of the security services, doubles friction points and lengthens defence lines.”

The officers pointed out that the army calls up more than half and sometimes two thirds of its forces at any one time, and about 80 per cent of them serving in the West Bank are employed in the defence of the settlements. The rest are deployed along the so-called Green Line, the 1949 Armistice Line which has served as a de facto border for decades.

Read: Israeli settlements are obstacle to peace

According to Palestinian activist Ghassan Daglas, at first, Israel claimed that settlements in the West Bank were built for security purposes. “However, the reality is that they were built for religious purposes,” claimed that specialist in Israel’s settlement policy. “The settlers succeeded in promoting this idea because they are currently the majority of the Israeli community and they have their voice heard in the government.”

A Palestinian study showed that the area covered by Israel’s illegal settlements in 1992, one year before Oslo, was 77 square kilometres, with 248,000 settlers living there. By 2016, though, those figures were 197,000 square kilometres and 763,000 settlers.