Did you see Ethan Bronner’s analysis of the tent protests in the New York Times today? It’s not what it says, it’s what it doesn’t say. Not until the last paragraph does he tentatively raise the connection between Israel’s construction of settlements/colonies and the housing shortages and other economic problems in Israel itself.
And when Bronner does raise the issue, he does it in a roundabout way, quoting a rightwing columnist who says that the solution to Israel’s housing crisis is still more West Bank colonies:
Martin Sherman, a right-wing columnist for The Jerusalem Post, argued on Friday that the easy way to solve Israel’s housing crisis was to build more West Bank settlements because the settlement construction freeze last year caused the crisis.
The protesters tend to argue the opposite: the investment in West Bank settlements has reduced building in Israel proper and a shift is needed. That view, Mr. Sherman argued, exposed the movement’s real nature. “Genuine nonpolitical social protest?” he concluded. “Give me a break!”
Apparently Bronner doesn’t read his own op-ed page, where Dimi Reider and Aziz Abu Sarah of +972 made the connection between occupation and housing shortage in calm, persuasive detail.
