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| Volume XVI, Fall 2009, Number 3 |
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EXCERPT
Do Settlements Matter? An American Perspective
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| Daniel C. Kurtzer |
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Ambassador Kurtzer holds the S. Daniel Abraham Chair in Middle East
Policy Studies at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs. During a 29-year career in diplomacy, he served
as the U.S. ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001) and Israel (2001-05). He is
also the coauthor of Negotiating Arab–Israeli Peace: American Leadership
in the Middle East.
Since 1967, one of the most pervasive
questions in the Arab-Israeli peace
process has been whether or not
Israeli settlements represent a fundamental
blockage to progress. This question is
surely on the agenda of the Obama administration
as it weighs its options for advancing
the prospects for peace. Thus, it is timely to
review this matter in some detail.
There is a school of thought in Israel
and among some Americans that argues
that the settlements issue has been overdrawn
and that it does not account for the
failure to make progress in negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians. The
latest iteration of this view was in an oped
by Elliott Abrams, the former deputy
national security adviser in the administration
of President George W. Bush. In an
article entitled, “The Settlement Freeze
Fallacy” (The Washington Post, April 8,
2009), Abrams wrote that Israeli settlement
activity past and present has no
impact on whether or not the prospects
for Israeli-Palestinian peace are advanced.
Abrams dismissed past settlement activity
— “[T]hose settlements exist and there
is no point debating whether it was right to
build them” — and minimized the impact
of current building. He argued that most
construction takes place in settlements that
even Palestinians recognize will remain in
Israel and that “[m]ost settlement expansion
occurs in ways that do not much affect
Palestinian life.”
Abrams’ argument represents just a
small part of the rationale underpinning
the views of those who believe settlements
are not an obstacle to peace. This school of
thought says that the West Bank and Gaza
are not “occupied territory” but rather
“disputed” territory, that is, territory whose
ultimate status has yet to be determined.
Israel has historical rights in these areas,
and Jewish settlement existed in some
places well before the advent of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict. (Some add to this
argument the religious dimension, pointing
to the biblical borders of the land promised
to the Israelites and the particular religious
significance of some areas in the West Bank,
such as Bethlehem and Hebron and Beit El,
for example.) It is further argued that Israel
took control of these territories not as a
result of aggression, but rather in a defensive
war in response to Arab belligerence in
1967. Thus, the conflict between Palestinians
and Israelis has less to do with these
particular territories than with the refusal
of Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of a
Jewish state anywhere in historic Eretz Israel.
This argument is underlined by the fact
that the conflict existed even when Arabs
controlled these territories before 1967.
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