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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Sean Gannon
Journalist - Irish & Israeli Affairs

The Reddest of Palestinian Red Herrings

Continuing Palestinian terrorism and not Israeli settlement construction is the real obstacle to Middle East peace

The international sound and fury which has greeted Israel’s decision to green-light the construction of housing in the West Bank town of Givat Ze’ev underlines once again the success of the Palestinian propaganda machine in casting the settlement issue as “the ultimate obstacle to peace.” For example, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the move “may put in jeopardy the peace process” while the UK Foreign Office condemned “all Israeli settlements anywhere as… a serious impediment to a negotiated two-state solution.”

But the settlement issue is, in fact, the reddest of Palestinian red herrings. The presence of 280,000 Israelis in the West Bank certainly makes the creation of a Palestinian state more complicated but it is hardly an insuperable barrier. For while 42% of the land was appropriated for settlement activity down through the years, only a fraction was actually developed with the result that the majority of the settlers live in a small number of built-up blocs, about 80% of them in communities located along the Green Line. Jerusalem’s annexation of these ‘bedroom settlements’ (with territorial compensation for the Palestinians from inside pre-1967 Israel) is the recognised solution to the problem, discussed by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators as far back as the Stockholm meeting of May 2000. It was then placed on the table at Camp David two months later where, although the sides differed on the percentages, agreement was reached on the principle. And while there was some regression on the matter at the January 2001 Taba talks, the annexation of these settlement blocs remained the accepted way forward and formed a fundamental part of what Ehud Barak described as “many other exchanges of ideas” in the post-Taba period. This includes the Geneva Accord which the late Chairman Arafat called “a brave initiative which opens the door to peace”.

Therefore, construction within ‘consensus settlements’ such as Givat Ze’ev and Ma’aleh Adumim has no bearing on the shape of a final peace deal; they will remain Israeli by mutual agreement and there can be no meaningful argument with respect to their ‘natural growth.’ Nor, for that matter, does building (long since frozen) in communities outside these blocs affect the final outcome of negotiations; either these will be annexed as part of an agreement or they will not and, as the August 2005 evacuation of Gaza demonstrated, construction within them is irrelevant in this regard. The same is also true of the so-called ‘unauthorised outposts.’

International demands for an Israeli settlement freeze are therefore nothing more than a transparent attempt to assuage the anger of a Palestinian leadership that has fetishised the settlement issue to the extent that its chief negotiator, Ahmed Qureia, has described it as “a kind of terror against the peace process and against the Palestinian people.” But such self-serving overstatement cannot obscure the fact that Palestinian terrorism remains the real obstacle to Middle East peace. The prospects for a final agreement are today being frustrated, not by the building of bungalows as the Palestinians maintain, but by the rockets and missiles that have relentlessly rained down on Israel since the withdrawal from Gaza, almost 700 of them in the last two months alone. The focus on the relatively low Israeli casualty figures (“only” 12 have so far been killed by Qassams) ignores the fact that every strike is intended to cause carnage and that good fortune alone has prevented multiple fatalities. On the eve of the Annapolis conference, 25,000 Israelis daily faced the prospect of death in a rocket barrage. Now, with Iranian-made Grad missiles striking the heart of Ashkelon city, 10 times this number is threatened.

As Ehud Olmert confirmed at Annapolis, it is this ongoing terrorist campaign which discourages Israel “from moving forward too hastily” towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. The result of the disengagement from Gaza has been the emergence of an Iran-sponsored Islamist terrorist entity which is now waging a war against Israel’s very existence. Meanwhile, the possibility that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (where the IDF’s security presence alone is preventing a complete Hamas takeover) would inevitably lead to a ‘second Gaza’ within sight of Tel Aviv is one Israel cannot afford to discount, especially given that even the so-called “moderates” of Fatah are now talking of a “third intifada”. Indeed, in an interview with Jordan’s Al-Dustur just one week before the Mercaz HaRav massacre of eight young religious students, Mahmoud Abbas himself declared that while the Palestinian Authority is presently “unable” to pursue armed conflict, “in the coming stages things may be different.” It is not the construction of settlements but this threat of continuing terrorism that is paralysing the Middle East peace process.

© Sean Gannon 2007 Reprinted with Permission

Seán Gannon graduated in history from University College Dublin and works as a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, publishing mainly in Ireland, Britain and Israel. He is currently preparing a book on Ireland's relationship with the state of Israel since 1948. He is a prominent advocate for Israel, being a featured writer with the Israel Hasbara Committee and chairman of the Irish Friends of Israel, a media response group which endeavors to correct the bias and error in the reporting of the Middle East conflict in Ireland.