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How to Overcome the Settlements Impasse
[Foreign Policy] Laura Rozen interviews David Makovsky - A flurry of upcoming meetings between senior U.S. and Israeli officials suggest that Washington is determined to try to overcome the current impasse over Jewish settlements in the West Bank "There needs to be a conclusion to the U.S.-Israel impasse over settlements that deals with the core principle that the Obama administration is seeking to promote: no prejudging of negotiations," said David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "This can be achieved by the Obama administration's focus on 'no geographic expansion' of settlements with a mechanism to monitor its implementation," he said. "The current approach of the administration, with its focus on the phrase 'settlement freeze,' sadly uses an axe when a scalpel is needed. The current approach sets an unrealistic bar. If the Israelis want to build vertically without expanding the constructed footprint of the settlement, this has nothing to do with any conceivable interpretation of land encroachment." "Therefore, by perpetuating the impasse with Israel instead of bringing it to a swift conclusion, [the U.S. is] blocking the very idea that we seek to promote: commencing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations."