Settlement sensitivity

Israeli settlements and Middle East peace are incompatible. This has been stated many times, most recently by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is cohosting U.S.-backed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Another oft-repeated and equally true statement is that peace is not possible without guarantees of Israeli security. What frequently gets lost in these assertions is another truth: Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not increase Israeli security. Rather, continued construction undermines security by inflaming tensions, sowing mistrust and threatening the success of negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held the first face-to-face talks in 20 months last week. They hope to forge a framework agreement for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, resolving in just one year the issues that have bedeviled their people for generations: borders, refugees, Jerusalem and, of course, security and settlements. The goal of both sides now should be to do everything they can to create the conditions under which an agreement can be reached. That should include continuing the partial freeze on new construction in West Bank settlements that Netanyahu declared 10 months ago and that is set to expire Sept. 26.

So far, Israeli leaders have indicated that they will not extend the freeze, and Abbas has said he’ll quit the peace talks if they don’t. Understandably, both sides are responding to their political base; in Netanyahu’s case, advocacy for settlements is coming from his Cabinet. But they must stay focused on negotiating peace. When it comes to security, Palestinian police have largely delivered in the West Bank during the last three years, notwithstanding the brutal attack by Hamas last week that took the lives of four settlers, including a pregnant woman. When it comes to settlements, however, Israel must match deeds to a declared commitment to peacemaking. As everyone involved in the conflict understands, settlements create “facts on the ground,” and are an implicit claim to land that was captured in the 1967 war and whose ownership is still to be negotiated. Since the war, nearly 200,000 Israeli Jews have moved into East Jerusalem; the West Bank settler population has grown to about 300,000.

In the weeks ahead, it’s possible that the two sides, under U.S. direction, may find an interim compromise that allows Israel to keep building inside settlement blocs that are likely to end up in Israel as part of a land swap in a final agreement. Fine, if that allows the negotiations to go forward. Because the primary goal is a peace agreement. But it would be better yet to have no settlement construction at all unless and until a land swap is negotiated. Settlements are considered illegal by most of the world and are today, as they have been for more than 40 years, an obstacle to peace.