The Obama administration is putting Israeli settlements front and center and Israeli politicians are doing their best to spin the issue. Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely has held her conference opposing the two-state solution where Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon argued against ending the conflict with the Palestinians. Ha’aretz quotes Ya’alon as saying, “We have to disavow the commonly held perception that we should find an imminent solution.” Towards the center of Israeli politics, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seeking to bring a “compromise” on settlements to Obama when he visits Washington next week. According to the Associated Press, Barak will offer to dismantle settlement outposts in exchange for allowing Israel to continue to expand the vast majority of settlements.
Barak’s proposal, which Netanyahu supports, is clearly not a compromise at all, it is simply a demand to continue the status quo. Even the AP points out, “The wildcat outposts are a peripheral part of Israel’s West Bank settlement enterprise because only a few thousand people live there.” As a point of reference there are over 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Barak’s offer is totally inconsequential towards ending Israeli control over the West Bank, and if anything it should raise questions about his support for these very outposts. Both Ibn Ezra and Max Blumenthal has shown lately that the outposts are spreading with the active support of the Israeli military.
In the AP article, chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia makes the common sense point, “what does a peace process mean when settlements are continuing on the Palestinian territories?” He has a more in depth, and interesting, interview with Akiva Eldar in Ha’aretz in preparation for Mahmoud Abbas’s visit to Washington later this week. From the interview:
Do you believe Israel would agree to evacuate Ma’aleh Adumim’s 35,000 residents?
Qureia: “[Former U.S. secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice told me she understood our position about Ariel but that Ma’aleh Adumim was a different matter. I told her, and Livni, that those residents of Ma’aleh Adumim or Ariel who would rather stay in their homes could live under Palestinian rule and law, just like the Israeli Arabs who live among you. They could hold Palestinian and Israeli nationalities. If they want it – welcome. Israeli settlements in the heart of the territories would be a recipe for problems.
This idea, while controversial among Palestinians, is an interesting way of turning Israeli intransigence on its head. If Israelis are not willing to leave the settlements then they are welcome to stay in Palestine, but only if they are willing to live in equality with Palestinians, and not from a position of dominance. So far there have not been any signs that Israel would be willing to do this.
