Just because the editorial page of the WSJ called for a stop to settlement activity, once upon a time, did Obama's top two or three advisers think that they have all the subtleties covered, when they put him out on the issue so starkly, quite the way they did? (Frankly, I suspect it is why his poll numbers are down, but I have no proof of that, whatsoever...).
Andrew Sullivan writes:
I can't see any conceivable peace in the region without an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and dismantling of the settlements.
Look, "settlements" has a long history in Israel, and the "origin" of settlement has had many different political backdrops, over the course of 30 years. Why and how settlements occurred in the 1960s and 1970s is quite different than what Netanyahu / Sharon did in the 1990s and well into the 2000s, under the reign of George "The Decider" - there is a startling map that shows an almost fantastic relative rate of expansion under Oslo, as best memory serves.
What's more, there is a legal history to how land was "appropriated", that is important to come to grips with, even if it means learning the word "usufruct". (And please don't think I know the half of it!).
To my mind, "settlements" - restricted settlement activities - are best understood as prejudicial to the final peace. The language of "illegality" is ... well, so problematic, it's almost a dead end.
So, hear Judt, when he writes:
...no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed.
Or Mubark, when he writes:
Despite the setbacks of the last few years, it is important to remember that many of the elements of a solution have already been negotiated. After nearly two decades of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since the initiation of the Oslo peace process, many of the details of a final settlement are well known. Furthermore, the Arab Peace Initiative, adopted at the Beirut summit of 2002, provides a regional framework for such a settlement. For the first time in the history of the conflict, the Arab states unanimously committed to full normalization and security for Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines and a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue.
