The painful cost to Israel of its settler adventure

[bemildred]

As friction between the Obama administration and Israel mounts over Washington's repeated calls for a freeze on settlement construction, anxious supporters of Israel's West Bank settlement enterprise ask one question with ever greater urgency and frequency:

Why should settlers have to pay the price for peace between Israel and the Palestinians?

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But in a real sense, it is precisely the question of the moment. Why, in fact, should settlers be made to pay the price for peace?

The answer, in short: Because of what the settlement movement has cost us, cost Israel. And because of what it is costing Israel now.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101538.html

[JonQ]

1. But I doubt even dismantling all the settlements

and moving the settlers back in to Israel proper, by force if necessary, would buy peace.

Much of the established hierarchy in Palestine is based around a constant feud with Israel. Peace would ruin all that.

[bemildred]

4. The point is not that removing the settlers would buy anything at all.

The point is that leaving them there is very expensive and also buys nothing at all.

[JonQ]

6. I wasn't disputing that point

merely the notion that they are causing the conflict that some (not accusing you of this, just in general) seem to have.

[bemildred]

7. It's true they are not the cause, but they are an obstacle to political resolution.

Not the only one, to be sure, but a major one. It seems fair to me to think that had Israel not indulged its settlement project in the OPT after the stunning win in the 1967 war, the conflict might well have been peacefully resolved by now.

The Israeli leadership tends to be far too paranoid about looking "weak", which is a sign of weakness for all to see. Parties that are genuinely strong do not sit around and obsess about the need to not look weak. One of the things I like about President Obama is that he shows little of that.

I tend to be more interested in arguments about what should be done now. The roots of this conflict can be traced as far back and as far afield as one cares to go, and you will be no less confused and no closer to a resolution than when you started.

[county worker]

2. "the price for peace"

What is meant by that? Does it mean the settlements and settlers must go?

If there was a real peace and the settlements became part of Palestine and the settlers lived there in Palestine as Jews, the price for peace would be the willingness to live in tolerance of each other and to not teach hate to another generation.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. The difference is less that it looks at first glance.

Most of the settlers would refuse to live under Palestinian rule, so even if they were legally permitted to stay, handing the settlements over will be tantamount to expelling most of the occupants.

[aranthus]

5. Why do you think that the settlers would move on their own?

I think the bigger problem is that the settlers represent a movement to take over the West Bank.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. Exactly.

If that ceases to look like a possibility, most of them probably won't want to live there any more.

[Scurrilous]

9. Study: Settlements get more state funding than Israeli cities

<snip>

"Jewish settlements in the West Bank get significantly bigger slice of Israeli government financial help than municipalities in Israel itself, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The settler population is also growing more than three times faster than the population of Israel proper, says the report, which traces the development of Jewish settlements since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The United States is calling on Israel to freeze all settlement activity so that stalled talks can resume with the Palestinians on a comprehensive peace deal that would determine the fate of settlements in a land-for-peace swap.

"While Israeli municipalities as a whole receive 34.7 percent of their income from and obtain another 64.3 percent from their own income, settlement municipalities obtain 57 percent from the (government), and only 42.8 percent from their own income," the study found.

Israel's government "allocates 4.1 percent its total budget for municipalities to settlements, although they constitute just 3.1 percent of the total Israeli population", the report adds.

The study by the Macro Center of the Israeli European Policy Network is entitled "Historical Political and Economic Impact of Jewish Settlements in the Occupied Territories."

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