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Settlements Aren't the Problem

(Jerusalem Post) Editorial - The U.S., UN and PA - among others - castigated the Israeli government's decision this week to move forward with building plans for 1,500 residential units beyond the 1949 armistice line. Israeli building is not an obstacle to peace. Most of the announced projects are slated for places such as Ma'ale Adumim, Betar Illit and eastern Jerusalem. In any two-state solution that would conceivably receive broad Israeli support, these places would remain part of the Jewish state. For U.S. administrations at least since the Clinton era, the notion that Israel must retreat to the 1949 armistice lines and that east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria - the cradle of Jewish history - must be made judenrein is hardly a given. The 2000 Clinton parameters, President George W. Bush's 2004 letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, negotiations Prime Minister Ehud Olmert conducted in 2008, all were based on the principle that Israel would retain major settlement blocs in any two-state solution. The idea that Jewish settlements are "an obstacle to peace" is based on the morally repugnant premise - supported by the international community - that the very presence of Jews in these territories is an affront to the Palestinians, while in Israel there are 1.6 million Arabs with Israeli citizenship. The real obstacle to peace remains Palestinians' rejection of the very idea of a uniquely Jewish state. To this day Palestinians deny the Jewish people's ties to the Land of Israel; they refuse to see the Jews as a distinct people that has a right to its own state. Peace will come the day that the Palestinian people recognize the Jewish people's right to national self-determination in its historical homeland. Blaming settlements misses the point.
2013-11-01 00:00:00
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