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Source: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2015/10/14/kerry-links-palestinian-terror-to-settlement-expansion/
Kerry Links Palestinian Terror to Settlement Expansion
(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - Secretary of State Kerry made an unhelpful, mistaken, and ill-informed comment about the current wave of Palestinian violence when he linked it to "a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years." There has simply not been "a massive increase." There has been a steady growth in settlement population, though the bulk of that growth is in the major blocs that Israel will clearly retain in any final agreement. But any massive increase in the number of settlements or in their physical size is flatly false. The frequent Palestinian claim that Israel is "gobbling up" the West Bank so that "peace will be impossible" is what Kerry is repeating. It's a false claim and he should know it. Kerry seems to believe that the real culprits, when Palestinians stab Israelis to death, are people who build a new housing unit in a settlement. The writer, a senior fellow at CFR, was a deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration.