Articles & Essays - February 2008
See below for excerpts to articles listed.
The end of Zionism - by Avraham Burg - 09/15/03 - Guardian
How the 1967 War Doomed Israel - by Tony Karon - 07/06/07
‘State has frozen E. Jerusalem building’ - by Etgar Lefkovits - 02/26/08 - Jerusalem Post
Israel to confiscate 766 dunams of Palestinian land near Hebron - 02/24/08 - Ma’an
Gaza residents form ‘human chain’ to protest Israeli blockade - 02/25/08 - channelnewsasia.com
In rare ruling, court orders settlers off Arab family’s land - by Akiva Eldar - 02/25/08 - Haaretz
Turkey launches ground offensive in northern Iraq - 02/24/08 - Sunday Times
Construction continuing in West Bank settlements despite PM’s pledge - by Amos Harel - 02/20/08 - Haaretz
Peace Now: Israel denies Area C Palestinians building permits - 02/21/08 - Haaretz
Third of settlements built on land seized for ’security purposes’ - by Meron Rapoport - 02/18/08 - Haaretz
UN officer reported Israeli war crimes before deadly bombing: widow - 02/06/08 - CBC News
How the EU helps Israel to strangle Gaza -
by David Morrison - 02/14/08 - The Electronic Intifada
After visit to Gaza, UN humanitarian chief deplores daily living conditions - 02/15/08 - UN News
Book Review: Israel and the Clash of Civilisations
by Raymond Deane - 02/11/08 - Electronic Intifada
Rule by fear or rule by law? - by Lewis Seiler & Dan Hamburg - 02/04/08 - San Franciso Chronicle
Egypt to recognise Copt converts - by Bob Trevelyan - 02/09/08 - BBC
English Translation: Israeli High Court Decision Authorizing Fuel and Electricity Cuts to Gaza (HCJ 9132/07, issued January 30, 2008) - 02/11/08 - Gisha
Can You Imagine the Protests Against Punishing All Israelis. - 02/10/08 - Desert Peace
Statement by UNICEF concerning the case of Omar Khadr - 02/08/08 - UNICEF
Israel: Winograd Commission disregards Israeli war crimes - 01/31/08 - amnesty.org
Sibel Edmonds Must be Heard - by Philip Giraldi - 02/04/08 - Huffington Post
Gaza’s Future - by Henry Siegman - 02/07/08 - London Review of Books
Human Rights Watch - 2008 Report: Democracy Charade Undermines Rights - 01/30/08 - hrw.org
Starving Gaza - by Saree Makdisi - 02/03/08 - The Nation
The ‘Problem of Evil’ in Postwar Europe - by Tony Judt - 02/14/08 - New York Review of Books (Vol 55, No. 2)
Middle East Internet Blackouts Spur Geopolitical Suspicions - by Paul Joseph Watson - 02/02/08 - Global Research
Wartime Use of Contractors - 02/02/08 - Associated Press
Fallout from the Gaza Earthquake - by Patrick Seale - 01/29/08 - Agence Global
Walk with Your People [Abbas] - by Rami G. Khouri - 02/04/08 - Agence Global
Blowback from the GOP’s Holy War - by Juan Cole - 02/01/08 - Salon
Giving Israel a Pass - by Barry Lando - 02/01/08 - Truthdig
Permanent Settlements or “Temporary Outposts” — Is There a Difference? - by Talia Sasson - Settlement Report | Vol. 18 No. 1 | January-February
A Guide for the Perplexed — Negotiations After Annapolis - by Jeff Aronson - Settlement Report | Vol. 18 No. 1 | January-February
The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.
There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out.
by Avraham Burg - 09/15/03 - Guardian
How the 1967 War Doomed Israel
The religious Zionists saw the West Bank and holy land to be “redeemed,” or “liberated” by settlement, and with the tacit support of all Israeli governments since then (and the more active support of some) they rushed to build permanent structures and settle a civilian population there, in defiance of international law, in order to preclude the possibility of returning that land to the Palestians as a basis for peace.
by Tony Karon - 07/06/07
‘State has frozen E. Jerusalem building’
A group of right-wing legislators charged Monday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has frozen construction in Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem as a result of the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
“There has never before been a situation like this in the history of Jerusalem where an Israeli government actively freezes building,” said MK Uri Ariel (NU-NRP) during a special party meeting held in the southeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa.
The lawmaker called the de facto freeze in building “a national disgrace” for the state of Israel.
by Etgar Lefkovits - 02/26/08 - Jerusalem Post
Israel to confiscate 766 dunams of Palestinian land near Hebron
Israeli authorities issued a military order on Saturday to confiscate 766 dunams (a dunam is 1000 square meters) of Palestinian
land belonging to the West Bank town of Adh-Dhahiriyya as well as land belonging to the Ramadin clan south of Hebron. The land is to be used for expansion of the Israeli settlement of Eshkolot.
Palestinian cartographic expert Abdul-Hadi Hantash told Ma’an’s reporter that the Israeli authorities handed warrants to Palestinian farmers. According to the Israelis the confiscation orders fall under the category of “border adjustment.”
Hantash compared the confiscation orders with his maps, and concluded that the affected area will actually be more than 900 dunams. An additional 2400 will fall behind the Israeli separation wall, which he says is a form of indirect confiscation.
02/24/08 - Ma’an
Gaza residents form ‘human chain’ to protest Israeli blockade
“The Siege of Gaza Will Only Strengthen Us,” “The World Has Condemned Gaza to Death” and “Save Gaza” were among banners brandished by demonstrators, who were gathering peacefully.
02/25/08 - channelnewsasia.com
In rare ruling, court orders settlers off Arab family’s land
Ten days ago, Magistrate’s Court Judge Irit Cohen confirmed that the 11 residents of the Shaarei Tikva settlement had agreed to leave the property of their own will. After failing to convince the court, which rejected their claims that Atef’s father had sold the property when Atef was merely 6 years old, the settlers gave up.
by Akiva Eldar - 02/25/08 - Haaretz
Turkey launches ground offensive in northern Iraq
Supported by air power, Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq in their first major ground incursion against Kurdish rebel bases in nearly a decade and killed dozens of militants, the military said. But Turkey sought to avoid confrontation with U.S.-backed Iraq, saying the guerrillas were its only target.
02/24/08 - Sunday Times
Construction continuing in West Bank settlements despite PM’s pledge
A new neighborhood comprising 27 trailers is currently under construction at the settlement of Eli, north of Ramallah, even though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed publicly after the Annapolis conference that any such building would cease.
Even though some of the trailers are being set up on land privately owned by Palestinians, the authorities are taking no action.
by Amos Harel - 02/20/08 - Haaretz
Peace Now: Israel denies Area C Palestinians building permits
Israel denied 94 percent of the building permit requests submitted by Palestinians living in Area C of the West Bank over the past seven years, the Peace Now group reported Thursday.
70,000 Palestinians live in Area C, which according to the Oslo Accord gives Israel full civilian and military control of the area.
In all, 91 of 1,624 requested permits were approved, Peace Now said. By contrast, 18,472 apartments and homes were built between 2000 and September 2007 in Jewish West Bank settlements, the group said, citing Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
02/21/08 - Haaretz
Third of settlements built on land seized for ’security purposes’
More than one-third of West Bank settlements were built on private Palestinian land that was temporarily seized by military order for “security purposes,” according to a report by the Civil Administration that is being published here for the first time.
by Meron Rapoport - 02/18/08 - Haaretz
UN officer reported Israeli war crimes before deadly bombing: widow
A United Nations military observer sent e-mails home to Canada reporting that Israel was bombing schools and waging “a campaign of terror against the Lebanese people” shortly before he was killed by an Israeli bomb in Lebanon, said his widow. …
02/06/08 - CBC News
How the EU helps Israel to strangle Gaza
How is Israel able to strangle the Gaza Strip when there is supposed to be an international crossing between Gaza and Egypt not controlled by Israelis?
Certainly, free movement was the promise held out in the comprehensive Agreement on Movement and Access, signed more than two years ago by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first of the six components of this agreement was that there would be a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah, controlled by the PA and Egypt. At the time, this was hailed as an historic step on the road to a Palestinian state — for the first time, it was said, Palestinians would have access to the outside world free from Israeli control.
So, how was Israel still able to impose a suffocating blockade on the Strip, home to almost 1.5 million Palestinians, eighty percent of them refugees? After Palestinian forces opened the border wall on 23 January, breaking the siege, many Palestinians blamed Egypt for not doing the same much earlier to relieve the suffering and deprivation that had brought Gaza to within days of running out of food and medicine. But however complicit Egypt may have been it was not alone.
It was primarily through the good offices of the European Union (EU), which had a formal role in managing the Rafah crossing, that Israel always had a veto on the opening of the crossing. In practice, whenever Israel didn’t want the crossing open, the EU obligingly kept it shut.
The Rafah crossing was open almost every day from 25 November 2005 to 24 June 2006, though not for 24 hours a day as intended. However, after 24 June 2006, when an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinians, the EU, at Israel’s insistence, prevented it from opening regularly and then kept it closed completely since 9 June 2007, after Hamas took control of Gaza.
by David Morrison - 02/14/08 - The Electronic Intifada
After visit to Gaza, UN humanitarian chief deplores daily living conditions
During his first official visit to Gaza since taking up the post just over a year ago, Mr. Holmes saw the sewage lagoons at Beit Lahiya, where the waste-water system is in a precarious state, and the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where the director told the Emergency Relief Coordinator that the interruptions to supplies of fuel and electricity as a result of the restrictions was having a particularly disastrous effect on the dialysis and neo-natal wards.
02/15/08 - UN News
Book Review: Israel and the Clash of Civilisations
Much debate on conflict in the Middle East is beset by contradictions and unanswered questions. These include: If the war in Iraq was motivated by oil, then why was it opposed by so many within the oil industry itself? Was the US incited by the omnipotent Zionist lobby to a war that is opposed to America’s vital interests (and is the lobby omnipotent?)? Or is Israel merely a tool of the US establishment, seen as a vital defender of Western interests in the recalcitrant Orient?
In his second book, Nazareth-based English author Jonathan Cook seeks to cut these Gordian knots, and in the process proposes an uncompromisingly grim diagnosis of what is happening in the world’s most unstable region, and why it is happening.
by Raymond Deane - 02/11/08 - Electronic Intifada
Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.
According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.”
by Lewis Seiler & Dan Hamburg - 02/04/08 - San Franciso Chronicle
Egypt to recognise Copt converts
The group’s lawyer said the ruling was a victory for religious freedom. An Egyptian court has ruled that 12 Christians who converted to Islam and then reverted to Christianity can have their faith officially recognised.
by Bob Trevelyan - 02/09/08 - BBC
The content of the decision leaves me no choice but to use harsh words: this court decision sets a dangerous precedent authorizing collective punishment and deliberate deprivation of basic humanitarian services for Palestinian residents of Gaza – who need fuel and electricity to run hospitals, pump water and sewage, heat and light their homes, and lead normal lives. The court decision offers little in the way of legal reasoning to support its conclusions, and we find its factual inquiry to be flawed.
02/11/08 - Gisha
Can You Imagine the Protests Against Punishing All Israelis. - 02/10/08 - Desert Peace
Statement by UNICEF concerning the case of Omar Khadr
On 4 February 2008, a military commission at Guantanamo Bay will review the case of Omar Khadr and decide whether his prosecution for war crimes should proceed. Omar Khadr was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 for crimes he allegedly committed when he was 15 years old.
02/08/08 - UNICEF
Israel: Winograd Commission disregards Israeli war crimes
… the Commission chose to limit its work to reviewing military strategy and political decisions, and made no serious attempt to investigate violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, committed by Israeli forces or to recommend measures for holding those responsible for such violations to account. It recommends the development of mechanisms to ensure the effectiveness of fighting within the framework of international humanitarian law standards, immediate investigations by the army when there are concerns that international humanitarian law was violated and better preparedness for responding to humanitarian problems arising from military action. But it essentially brushed aside available evidence of serious violations of international law, claiming that interpretations of international humanitarian law are controversial, that it did not have the capacity to deal with the volume of data, that the alleged violations were already being investigated by other bodies, and that such allegations are used as propaganda against Israel — whereas it did scrutinize military strategies and the conduct of certain operations in detail, including in cases which were already being investigated separately.
01/31/08 - amnesty.org
Article III of the Constitution of the United States defines treason as giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. This has been interpreted by US courts to include the selling or betrayal of defense secrets to foreign powers. Sibel Edmonds is talking about treason at the highest levels of the United State government and it is clear that a cover up is going on orchestrated by the Bush Administration that is being aided and assisted by an acquiescent media. It is time that Sibel’s voice be heard.
by Philip Giraldi - 02/04/08 - Huffington Post
Olmert’s statement, made shortly before the breakout, that Gaza’s residents could not expect to lead normal lives while missiles from Gaza were hitting Israel would have been perfectly reasonable if Gazan residents had indeed been allowed to live ‘normal’ lives before the most recent tightening of the noose and if it were the case that Gaza’s civilian residents had any control at all over the firing of the missiles.
As Olmert knows, neither is the case. The siege of Gaza was imposed by Israel because Israel’s government and the US administration intended to undo the results of Hamas’s victory in the elections of 2006. Initially, they thought they could achieve this by arming Fatah’s security forces and encouraging them to promote anarchy in Gaza in a way that would discredit Hamas. When Hamas ousted Fatah security forces, Israel blockaded Gaza in the hope that its population would overthrow Hamas. The Qassam rockets were the consequence, not the cause of these misguided Israeli and US manoeuvres.
by Henry Siegman - 02/07/08 - London Review of Books
Human Rights Watch - 2008 Report: Democracy Charade Undermines Rights
The established democracies are accepting flawed and unfair elections for political expediency, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2008. By allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy meaningful, the United States, the European Union and other influential democracies risk undermining human rights worldwide. …
Human Rights Watch has documented a number of elections manipulated through: outright fraud (Chad, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Uzbekistan); control of electoral machinery (Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Malaysia, Thailand, Zimbabwe); blocking or discouraging opposition candidates (Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Libya, Turkmenistan, Uganda); political violence (Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Lebanon); stifling the media and civil society (Russia, Tunisia); and undermining the rule of law (China, Pakistan).
01/30/08 - hrw.org
When Israel limited commercial shipments of food — but not humanitarian relief — into Gaza in 2006, a senior government adviser, Dov Weisglass, explained that “the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger.”
Israel’s “diet” was taking its toll even before last week. The World Food Program warned last November that less than half of Gaza’s food-import needs were being met. Basics including wheat grain, vegetable oil, dairy products and baby milk were in short supply. Few families can afford meat. Anemia rates rocketed to almost 80 percent. UNRWA noted at about the same time that “we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their growth is slowing, because our ration is only 61 percent of what people should have and that has to be supplemented.”
By further restricting the supply of food to an already malnourished population, Israel has clearly decided to take its “diet” a step further. If the people of Gaza remain cut off from the food aid on which their survival now depends, they will face starvation.
They are now essentially out of food; the water system is faltering (almost half the population now lacks access to safe water supplies); the sewage system has broken down and is discharging raw waste into streets and the sea; the power supply is intermittent at best; hospitals lack heat and spare parts for diagnostic machines, ventilators, incubators; dozens of lifesaving medicines are no longer available. Slowly but surely, Gaza is dying.
by Saree Makdisi - 02/03/08 - The Nation
The ‘Problem of Evil’ in Postwar Europe
The first work by Hannah Arendt that I read, at the age of sixteen, was Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.[1] It remains, for me, the emblematic Arendt text. It is not her most philosophical book. It is not always right; and it is decidedly not her most popular piece of writing. I did not even like the book myself when I first read it—I was an ardent young Socialist-Zionist and Arendt’s conclusions profoundly disturbed me. But in the years since then I have come to understand that Eichmann in Jerusalem represents Hannah Arendt at her best: attacking head-on a painful topic; dissenting from official wisdom; provoking argument not just among her critics but also and especially among her friends; and above all, disturbing the easy peace of received opinion. It is in memory of Arendt the “disturber of the peace” that I want to offer a few thoughts on a subject which, more than any other, preoccupied her political writings.
by Tony Judt - 02/14/08 - New York Review of Books (Vol 55, No. 2)
Middle East Internet Blackouts Spur Geopolitical Suspicions
Unprecedented mass Internet outages throughout the Middle East and Asia after no less than four undersea Internet cables were cut without explanation are spurring suspicions that a major event of geopolitical proportions may be just around the corner.
Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.
According to InternetTraffic.com, Iran has been completely cut off from the Internet, though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog can still be accessed.
Most notably, Israel and Iraq are unaffected by the outage.
by Paul Joseph Watson - 02/02/08 - Global Research
CONTRACTORS OUTNUMBER TROOPS: There are 196,000 contract employees working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are 182,000 U.S. forces in both countries. Most of those are Army troops.
CONTRACT FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS GROW: Federal agents are handling more than 100 criminal investigations related to war contract fraud, bribery, false billing, kickbacks and theft.
ACTIONS BY THE ARMY: Service officials are creating a command to be led by a two-star general that will oversee defense contracting. The Army also is hiring 1,400 additional acquisition personnel.
PAY FOR PERFORMANCE: Military officials say they are shifting to contracts that pay companies for how well they perform and away from arrangements that give contractors little incentive to control costs.
02/02/08 - Associated Press
Fallout from the Gaza Earthquake
The most striking of the new realities is that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza — who had been reduced to abject misery by Israel cruel siege — will never again accept being locked up. Gaza must be allowed to breathe, to trade, to be supplied with the basic necessities of life, and to live normally.
If Egypt, under Israeli and American pressure, were to attempt to bottle up the Gazans once more, this could trigger riots in Cairo, which could destabilize President Husni Mubarak’s regime. Egypt must now walk a tightrope between Israeli and American pressure and the new reality of its relations with the Gazans.
by Patrick Seale - 01/29/08 - Agence Global
To the Palestinian people first and foremost, he would send the message that he is the president of all Palestinians, and that despite a severe ideological feud with Hamas he wishes to be the symbol of unity among all Palestinians. He would make the point that he is the leader of the Palestinian people, not the errand boy of the Israeli or American security services. He would also make it clear that Palestinians and Egyptians can jointly control their common border to allow normal life to return to Gaza’s 1.5 million people.
by Rami G. Khouri - 02/04/08 - Agence Global
Blowback from the GOP’s Holy War
… the failure of Islamophobia as a campaign strategy is no better illustrated than by the spectacular flame-out of Rudy Giuliani. Throughout his campaign (deep-sixed after his dismal showing in Tuesday’s Florida primary), the former New York mayor evoked the Sept. 11 attacks at an absurd rate. Giuliani and his advisors appeared to revel in demonizing Muslims. They also reveled in their own ignorance — never learning the difference between “Islamic” and “Muslim.”
“Islamic” has to do with the religion founded by the prophet Mohammed. We speak of Islamic ethics or Islamic art, as things that derive from the religion. “Muslim,” on the contrary, describes the believer. It would be perfectly all right to talk about Muslim terrorists, but calling them Islamic terrorists or Islamic fascists implies that the religion of Islam is somehow essentially connected to those extremist movements.
by Juan Cole - 02/01/08 - Salon
But never again what? Never again massacres of Jews as the world looks on? Or never again should we Jews, who suffered so horrifically in the Holocaust, never again should we stand silent as innocents are slaughtered or driven from their homes by ethnic cleansing, or entire populations are punished for the actions of a few.
To get to the point, what causes so many Jews to turn ethically deaf and morally blind when the state of Israel itself is concerned?
As Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, asked in an essay, “Why is it virtually mandatory among Jewish intellectuals to oppose racism, repression and injustice almost anywhere in the world and unacceptable—indeed, for some, an act of heresy—to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor, choosing concealment over exposure?”
I continue: Why the refusal to recognize that in 1947 and 1948 Jewish fighters embarked upon a policy of ethnic cleansing that succeeded in driving tens of thousands of Palestinians from their fields and villages?
This is not a charge made by hate-filled Iranian or Syrian propagandists but one that has been meticulously researched and documented by Israeli historians themselves.
Why the reluctance to speak out when Israeli forces wreaked appalling death and destruction among civilians after they invaded Lebanon in 1982 and again last summer?
Hundreds of Jewish soldiers in Israel refused to take part in the campaigns. Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in protest. Why were major Jewish organizations in the rest of the world so silent?
Why no horrified response to Israeli leaders who measure success these days in body counts and order so-called targeted assassinations with rockets in densely populated civilian areas, knowing that many innocents may be blown apart for every terrorist who is hit? Are the 27 decorated Israeli pilots who refused to take part in such attacks to be considered anti-Semitic by their American cousins?
Why no outcry when Israel launches a brutal blockade—a collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinian men, women and children—threatening their supplies of fuel, food and medicines?
by Barry Lando - 02/01/08 - Truthdig
Permanent Settlements or “Temporary Outposts” — Is There a Difference?
The findings of the [2005] outpost report established that the main problem with regard to construction in the West Bank was construction without the involvement of the government, but rather through the unauthorized actions of state and public authorities. Under this scheme, construction was framed as expansion of existing settlement neighborhoods when in fact new settlements (outposts) were being created.
by Talia Sasson - Settlement Report | Vol. 18 No. 1 | January-February
A Guide for the Perplexed — Negotiations After Annapolis
Bush’s recognition and acceptance of the strategy at the heart of Israel’s settlements policy–that settlements are a factor that will determine the borders of the state–marked an unprecedented Israeli achievement that is shaping its diplomacy with the Palestinians. Insofar as Bush has eased Israeli concerns about the acceptability of its colonization effort, his assurances demonstrate that Israel’s preferred address for resolving this issue is Washington, not Palestine. Indeed, the Mitchell Report’s support for a settlement freeze, reiterated in 2003 in the road map, set the stage for extended and detailed, if ultimately inconclusive discussions between Israeli and American diplomats on the finer points of settlement expansion, a process that further compromised U.S. opposition, as a matter of principle, to Israel’s settlement policy.
In the post‑Annapolis era, Washington intends to insert itself as the “referee” with power to determine Israel’s compliance with its oft‑stated and more often breached commitment not to expand existing settlements or establish new ones. To the extent that Washington assumes this role, the value of Israel’s direct, bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians will be compromised, along with the atrophied policy of U.S. opposition to all settlement. Given this structure, any Israeli decision to revise its settlement policy in the foreseeable future is more likely to emerge from discussions between Jerusalem and Washington–along the Sharon‑Bush model, through which Israel believes, with good reason, that additional U.S. concessions on settlements can be won–rather than around the table with Palestinians.
by Jeff Aronson - Settlement Report | Vol. 18 No. 1 | January-February
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