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.
