Should We Settle for Settlements—or Peace?

Pretty much everywhere in the world, Israel’s legitimacy is accepted, but its post-1967 expansion is not. The Palestinians not only lost their homes and their country in 1948, but have seen what remains of their meager territory continually encroached upon by Israel for the purpose of building settlements. Much, if not most, of the land was taken illegally and without proper compensation. Today, Israeli settlers live extremely comfortable, government-subsidized lives, while most Palestinians do not even have enough food to feed their families and are harassed and sometimes terrorized by these same settlers.

This disjunction explains why few uninvolved observers accept the United States’ description of itself as an honest broker in the conflict. As longtime U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller has explained, “In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can’t recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity—including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions—does to the peacemaking process.” Some Israelis have exploited this inaction to the nth degree. Israel’s settlement population has doubled in number since 1993, when the Oslo accords were signed, and grew by 14,500 people in 2007 alone. As long as this pattern continues, peace will be impossible.

President Barack Obama’s June 4th Cairo speech, however eloquent and brave, will ultimately be judged meaningless by its intended audience if not backed up by deeds. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” he stated. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Obama’s demand outright in his Bar-Ilan response, but according to a poll published by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonot, a majority of Israelis prefer a settlement freeze to a conflict with Obama. Unfortunately, the so-called “pro-Israel” community in the United States, from right-wing Jewish leaders like ADL’s Abe Foxman and ZOA’s Morton Klein to the neoconservative writers in the pages (and pixels) of The Weekly Standard, Commentary and The New Republic, is once again siding with Israel’s hard-liners against both a majority of Israelis and the president of the United States, preferring tough talk to the possibility of peace.

A nearly perfect specimen of this position could be found in a piece by the noted neocon and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer entitled “The Settlements Myth,” which ran the day after Obama gave his speech. “No ‘natural growth’ means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining,” Krauthammer wrote. “It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them—not even within the existing town boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out….The entire ‘natural growth’ issue is a concoction. Is the peace process moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren?”

Such sad stories about poor Jewish bubbes and babies could break your heart. But they conflict with Israel’s unambiguous May 2003 obligations to “freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)” within a week. Never mind that, Krauthammer advises. Better for Obama to worry about “Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel,” and “Mahmoud Abbas, [turning] down every one of Ehud Olmert’s peace offers.”

Many things could be said of this argument. First off, note that these settlements rest on land illegally expropriated even according to Israel’s own laws. No one is preventing the settlers from moving to towns or cities that are legitimately Israeli, and incidentally, not bad places to live, either. The Palestinians, however, have nowhere else to go. Note also Krauthammer’s divorce from the most obvious aspects of political reality. Ehud Olmert may have made a peace offer in 2008 but he was in no position whatsoever to deliver on it, given that he was well on his way to being replaced and possibly indicted. (Ehud Barak made a similarly incredible offer minutes before leaving office; that appears to be a pattern among Israeli prime ministers.)

Finally, listen to how closely Krauthammer’s victimology mirrors the arguments of the Israel-deniers. Here’s Krauthammer: “In Middle East negotiations, he [Obama] told al-Arabiya [the Dubai-based television station], America will henceforth ‘start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating.’ An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone—Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity.” Now here’s Khaled Mashaal, leader of Hamas, talking to Time: “The Americans have an abundance of experience in pressuring countries around the world. Why is it only in the case of Israel that America does not intervene?”

Nobody is equating sympathy for Israel with sympathy for Hamas, but we already know where decades of indulging the hard-line settlers leads, and it sure isn’t the road to peace. Hagit Ofran, the head of the Settlement Watch Project for Israeli Peace Now, clarifies the point quite nicely: “Do we want to continue to build settlements, or do we want peace?”

We know Netanyahu’s and the neocons’ answer. Perhaps it’s time we gave our own.

Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and City University of New York’s graduate school. His latest book is Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America.