The Settlements Are Not An Obstacle To Negotiations, But Netanyahu Should Freeze All Construction

Ever since President Barack Obama's Cairo speech, the mainstream press has been abuzz with stories about how Israel is not heeding Obama's call for a total settlement freeze.  Many in the media have presented the settlements as a monolithic bloc and a major impediment to the peace process.  However, the settlements are not monolithic and they vary widely in their politics, strategic location, religiosity, and demographics.  Most importantly, they vary in the difficulty they present to achieving a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The reality is that a total settlement freeze is overkill to the Nth degree, but it is politically important for Obama to show that he is attempting to gain an allegedly major concession from Israel. While the continued existence of some of the settlements may be an obstacle to peace, there is no reason why any should be an obstacle to negotiations (what, after all, are negotiations for?).

Netanyahu has stated that the existing settlements will not grow in area, that no new settlements will be built, and that no more Palestinian land will be expropriated (that last one seems to be a corollary to the first two).  The reported tension with the United States comes from Netanyahu's insistence that so-called "natural growth" be allowed in the existing settlements.

As much of the left-wing commentariat has already written, "natural growth" is a sham.  There is no reason why people who live in settlements need to have more children at all.  If they choose to have more children and want a larger home, they have no legal entitlement to continue living in the same home or community.  As Gershom Gorenberg, a brilliant writer and perhaps the world's leading expert on the settlements, writes in the American Prospect, "Inside Israel, as in other developed countries, it's perfectly normal for people to change neighborhoods as their families grow. Grown children can't necessarily find or afford homes next door to their parents." He is quite right-- The settlements do not need to grow in population.

But why shouldn't they?  The major settlements close to the Green Line including Ma'ale Adumim (population 32,000+), Beitar Illit (population 38,000+), and Gush Etzion (population 20,000+), are in all likelihood, going to remain part of Israel (in exchange for Israeli land) as part of any final peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority.  There is no serious thinker involved with the negotiations who thinks otherwise.  So if they are going to remain a part of Israel and if they are not going to expand outwardly until final borders are negotiated, who cares if they increase in population?

Perhaps it is not these type of settlements that the Obama Administration is focused on.  After all, they are no more "settlements" than the so-called Palestinian refugee camps in the Palestinian territories are "camps."  They are small cities and large towns with shopping malls, schools, parks, restaurants, and everything else you would expect to find in such a city.  They are not FEMA trailers, tent cities, or Bedouin-style encampments. It must be then that the settlement freeze is really geared towards the numerous outposts dotting the West Bank.  They actually are FEMA-style trailers and temporary structures, with no amenities whatsoever.  Should Israel enforce a freeze on the construction of these outposts? Absolutely.  It has repeatedly claimed it would and then not followed through on its promises.  But these outposts are not the hindrance to peace that they are made out to be.

Just as the conventional wisdom is that the major settlements will remain a part of Israel, so too is it that the outposts will all be dismantled and (perhaps forcibly) evacuated.  Israel removed the settlers in Gaza , and they were far more entrenched than many of the hilltop outpost fanatics.  There is no reason to think that even if they increase in number in the short-term, Israel will not be able to remove them in the long-term. 

The number of settlements that present a genuine point of contention in negotiations are relatively few and far between.  Perhaps the most controversial of these is Kiryat Arba in Hebron.  This particular settlement is particularly tough to deal with because, while the settlers who live there are prone to violence and relatively unsympathetic, they, and the Israeli military presence that protects them, help to ensure access to the Cave of Machpela, where the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs are said to be buried.  Unfortunately, the experience of Joseph's Tomb shows that the Palestinians cannot necessarily be trusted to safeguard or allow access to Jewish holy places. 

Another contentious settlement is Ariel.  Ariel has a population of 18,000+ and is home to the College of Judea and Samaria, which has over 9,000 students.  It would seem as though a settlement of this size should be absorbed into Israel, but its position deep in Palestinian territory makes its final status less obvious.  (One possibility is simply for it to remain part of Israel. The lack of contiguity is similar to Mt. Scopus between 1948 and 1967 and West Berlin during the Cold War.)

These few but contentious settlements should indeed have all construction frozen, as the increase in population will increase the burden on the Israel Defense Force should it need to forcibly evacuate the residents.  A total settlement freeze serves only one purpose and that is to increase President Obama's standing within the Palestinian and international communities.  Despite the fact that continued non-territorial growth within many major settlements is by no means an obstacle to peace, increasing Obama's ability to bring the parties together makes a total settlement freeze a worthy experiment.  The President, Secretary Clinton, and former Senator Mitchell are all exceedingly intelligent people.  They too understand that many of the major settlements will be annexed to Israel and the outposts will be evacuated.  But they need to apply pressure on someone to show that they have an even-handed approach to the conflict, and there is no other issue about which they can realistically apply pressure. 

If Netanyahu can garner Obama additional credibility with the Palestinian people and Palestinian Authority, it would make a peace agreement that much more likely.  And since Netanyahu too knows that these settlements would end up annexed to Israel anyway he would lose nothing by the (necessarily temporary) total freeze in growth.