This has been the case in recent months with the Obama administration putting heavy pressure on Israel to freeze construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While the U.S. has a plethora of reasons to call for the freeze, the situation on the ground is more complex than a policy decision.
“Jews have lived uninterrupted in the land of Israel for thousands of years,” said Jennifer Mizrahi, Founder and President of The Israel Project, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that educates the press and public about Israel. “There’s a lot of empty land in the West Bank…it is an inexpensive way to live for people working in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.”
The West Bank—the land to the west of the Jordan River and the east of Jerusalem—is a hodge-podge of Arab villages and cities, legal Jewish settlements, and illegal Jewish settlement outposts. The entire area, spanning about 2,200 square miles, is crisscrossed and surrounded by checkpoints, roadblocks, and a partial wall separating the West Bank from Israel proper for security.
“I think it’s much more complicated for people in America who tend to think that Jews live on one side of the wall,” said Ms. Mizrahi. “It’s much more like a checkerboard. You have literally one community on one hill, and three hills over you have another community. [But each community is] visually different in architecture.”
Calls for Change
President Obama has repeatedly called for Israel to halt building and expanding construction on settlements in the West Bank.
Settlements, or groups of Jews who have established communities throughout the West Bank, number in the dozens.
Various reports from 2007 through today have put the area’s settler population between 270,000 and 300,000. According to a July, 2009 report issued by the Israeli European Policy Network, by the end of 2007, the Jewish population in the West Bank was 276,045.
The Israeli government has repeatedly said that halting legal settlement building in the West Bank (there are some settlers who have illegally settled there), is not an option. They cite the need to build for the natural expansion that comes with births, marriages, and relocation to new areas. Some say that though the issue appears to be simple on the surface, it has deep and complicated roots.
“It’s something that can’t be explained by political ideology,” said Arieh Eldad, a member of the Israeli parliament, in his office last month. “There’s a claim by some that the settlements are a key issue in the peace process.”
Eldad belongs to an organization that believes in the right to build settlements in Judea and Samaria (essentially the West Bank). He sees the question of Jewish settlers being irrelevant in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
“If we are occupiers in Judea and Samaria, we are occupiers in Haifa,” said Mr. Eldad. “If we don’t have a right to live in our historical cradle, we don’t have a right to live anywhere.”
Tricky Timing
Obama’s focus on urging Israel to halt settlement construction has become a major part of his foreign policy agenda. But the reality on the ground is quite different.
According to B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based independent organization of academics, attorneys, journalists, and Israeli parliament members, the complicated circumstances are made worse by rogue acts of violence on both sides.
B’Tselem notes that actions against Palestinians range from aggressive to deadly. They include blocking roadways to impede Palestinian life and commerce, shooting solar panels on roofs of buildings, torching automobiles, shattering windowpanes and windshields, destroying crops, uprooting trees, and intimidating local merchants.
According to statistics gathered by the United Nations Relief Works Agency, Jewish settlers target Palestinians, but Palestinians also commit egregious acts, including stoning and sometimes murder.
One incident against Palestinians in late May 2009 was in the lush valley of Wadi Qana near the Arabic village of Deir Istiya. According to the U.N., a group of Israeli settlers escorted by Israeli security forces uprooted an unknown number of olive trees.
The mayor of Deir Istiya, which is called “the village of olives”, Nazmi Salman, says the eight Jewish settlements that surround his village also represent a psychological threat.
“We are in prison here,” said Mr. Salman. “It’s a very dangerous life.”
It’s not hard to see how Mr. Salman can make such a statement. From the window of the town hall, at least one settlement is visible. Other settlements, similar-looking simple groupings of stucco colored houses with reddish roofs, can be seen from almost any number of vantage points in the village. It is hemmed in on three sides and there is no reason to believe that the number of settlers won’t continue to grow.
“This is a good area and a beautiful area, but we are suffering from the settlements,” said Mr. Mansour while standing amidst lemon and olive groves in Wadi Qana last month, where his elderly father tends trees. “We want to correct it, but the main problem is politics.”
Mansour adds that because of the complex political issues and disputes over rights to the land, Arabic villagers cannot build in Wadi Qana, which they claim is their ancestral land.
“We can’t build here anymore,” said Mr. Mansour.
Despite the disputes, so far the Israeli government is not budging on calls from the U.S. to halt expansion of settlements. In a televised interview with CBS on June 15, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he doesn’t want to put what he sees as a freeze on life in settlement areas.
“I think that the question of avoidance of expansion in the territory is different from freezing life,” said Mr. Netanyahu in the interview. “There are children and babies that are born there. What are you going to do with them? You must supply them with a kindergarten. You must supply them with schools. What we talk about is to continue to live normal lives without judgment.”
Friends Read Free