TPM Reader BG chimes in …
I basically agree with everything that you’ve written. I believe that the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is and has been a major problem in resolving the issue. It must be resolved, and the resolution is for most of the settlements to be dismantled and their inhabitants relocated back to within the Green Line. As a volunteer for Rabbis for Human Rights in 2000, I witnessed first hand the moral decay represented by the settlements and their most radical inhabitants.
But, I must note that it was not the issue of settlements that was the principal problem in causing the collapse of the Camp David negotiations in 2000. Indeed, the Barak government was willing to give up most of the settlements (with the exception of Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion), and relocate their inhabitants. Israel also accepted Clinton’s proposal of December 2000 which would have seen Israel ceding close to 96% of the West Bank.
Rather, the Camp David negotiates collapsed upon issues concerning sovereignty in Jerusalem and Palestinian Right of Return. So, while the settlements are and were a major issue, and I believe a continuing shame for Israel on a number of levels (which I need not get into here), this was one of the issues where the parties were in the closest agreement, and which the Barak government was willing to make far reaching concessions.
What happened in the 2000 Camp David negotiations is a very controversial question. But I don’t think we need to get into all the nitty gritty of it. Because you still have the key issue, which is this: at some point you’ll need to have have a two state solution. Barak may have agreed to dismantle most of the settlements, though it’s a bit more complicated than that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he would have been able to deliver on that commitment politically. However that may be, at some point you need to have a two state solution. That means wrapping up the settlements. And the more you let them grow, the more and more difficult it will become to uproot them because the entire Israeli political system will become more and more hostage to the radicalism and, as BG puts it, the moral decay of the settlements.
Ben Gurion, who was no slouch in his Zionism, saw this all very clearly in the aftermath of the Six Day War. Trying to settle and absorb the West Bank was the height of folly. Unfortunately he was old and retired. And many people who should have known better got swept up in the logic of settlement.
A longtime reader wrote in in response to my post below saying that I was off base since Hamas doesn’t recognize even the concept of the settlements — in the sense of distinguishing between towns in Israel proper, the pre-1967 borders and those in the West Bank. But that misunderstands my point. I don’t think Hamas makes that distinction. But I don’t think that’s the point. I thought I’d print what I wrote him in response.
I’m actually not sure how much we’re disagreeing. In many ways I agree that Gaza and the West Bank have become two separate issues — not just in terms of negotiating strategy but in terms of final outcomes. But Israel has a profound strategic interest in a viable settlement with the West Bank Palestinians. Come up with some settlement of that issue and the Gaza issue because much, much less of a big deal. But no settlement of the West Bank issue is possible with continued expansion of settlements. Indeed, I would say no settlement is possible without uprooting almost all the current West Bank settlements, with the possible exception of some in the girdle around Jerusalem. That’s the core issue. And what’s happening right now in Gaza does not change any of that. Of course, Hamas makes no distinction of the Green Line. That’s a given. But I don’t think that’s the point. Israel desperately needs the West Bank issue settled. Everything that makes that more difficult endangers the state.
From TPM Reader MK:
Was pleased to see your quick post about Webb and criminal justice reform.
Webb does appear to be the new Democratic champion of these issues. I heard him speak at the National Press Club earlier this month. While he’s clearly just learning the field, he’s also courageous on some of the most fundamental points of citizenship and, of course, color. While he’s hung up on locking away ‘the right people’ — without entirely specifying who they might be — he’s willing to think of the problems in ways that can be solved with ‘alternatives to enforcement.’ That’s a sea-change from the ever-increasingly punitive rhetoric and practice Americans, mostly young Americans, have been subjected to for nearly forty years.Anyway, he will, thankfully, replace Joe Biden as the standard bearer among forward-thinking Democrats on this issue.
Of course, over the years Democrats have been horrendous on issues of punishment, crime, incarceration, and all the mechanisms we have to try to prevent these things. Have they been as bad as Republicans? No. Have they been bankrupt and awful? Unequivocally. Biden, Schumer, Cuomo, most of all President Clinton, they have been abominable. You know this, of course. But I’m writing to say thanks for raising this issue on the blog. Democratic blogs have, generally, been as silent on this issue as the Democrat leadership has been negligent and nasty.
Anyway, here’s to hoping Obama and the Democrats show the courage to take on the great human problems of our time in 2009.
As the Israeli assault on Gaza unfolds, and we receive new information about the death toll and new predictions about the prospects for any peace settlement, I wanted to refocus back on the essential issue that is still with us and will continue to be with us after this blow up fades into memory like the Second Lebanon War, Jenin, and the terrorist attacks and back and forths of the 1990s. Since the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process began going on twenty years ago, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have continued to expand every year. The settler population was 130,000 in 1995 and had grown to 270,000 by 2007 — through a mix of natural increase and immigration. The numbers have continued to increase right through the Olmert government, which I think really wanted to get about the business of uprooting settlements and solving the core issues. But he wasn’t willing or able to do it. Whatever you can say about Palestinian terror attacks or missiles into Southern Israel and whatever you can say Israeli incursions and aerial attacks, the situation is insoluble without dismantling those settlements. And that is why Hamas, as much as it thrives on war and confrontation, is a distraction — for some an intentional one, for others unintentional — from this core point. That’s why I think Bernard Avishai is right in his post from last week. The settler issue is intractable without an outside hand.
A new president is coming into the White House but the story remains the same in the Middle East as a new round of violence has erupted in Israel and the Gaza Strip …
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) wants the Senate to go ahead and seat the winner of the Coleman-Franken recount (i.e., Franken) even if there’s a formal election contest. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.