Israel must stop building settlements
That is certainly the conventional wisdom. Elliott Abrams dissents. For him, anti-settlement advocacy is a distraction. Abrams writes that the expansion of the Israeli settler population basically entails population growth in existing settlements, which will become part of Israel under the expected terms of any two-state deal.
What Abrams is against is taking new land for settlements:
Israeli settlement expansion beyond the security fence, in areas Israel will ultimately evacuate, is a mistake: It wastes Israeli resources and needlessly antagonizes the Palestinians who live nearby.
This kind of expansion is also rare; thus it isn’t much of a threat to peace talks.
There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the peace process, however. For a closer look, I recommend Abrams’ recent cover story in the Weekly Standard. The details are important, but the essence of argument is this. Fatah can’t make peace. Hamas won’t. American efforts to keep negotiations going are a waste of energy that could spent dealing with real problems in the West Bank.
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3 Responses to “Israel must stop building settlements”
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington, ~page 269 of The 5000 Year Leap.
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests.” ~ George Washington
“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
Hey maybe if Israel can't stir up enough support for settling maybe Bin Laden can appear again with a new videotape saying he is wholly against Israelis settling those areas and will “fight with all his might” to oppose it…
Yep, that ought to do the trick. It always does…
Abrams writes that the expansion of the Israeli settler population basically entails population growth in existing settlements, which will become part of Israel under the expected terms of any two-state deal.
Yes — by grabbing huge amounts of Palestinian land via the Apartheid Wall, which is NOT being built along the Green Line but instead snakes in and out to enclose the settlements! The settlements are a major, if not the biggest, obstacle to peace. Abrams' dismissiveness about this issue is absolutely unconscionable.