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The Legal Status of the West Bank
Sign posts are seen in front of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim near Jerusalem November 13, 2013. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday his peace negotiators had resigned over the lack of progress in U.S.-brokered statehood talks clouded by Israeli settlement building. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK – Tags: POLITICS) – RTX15BNL
The legal status of the West Bank has been a thorny issue wrapped in confusion, historical change, as well as ideological motivations at the expense of legal clarity. Below is a brief treatment of the issues pertaining to the legal status of the West Bank and it is designed to be an introductory overview. I would direct the reader who seeks additional information to another brief synopsis published recently in the Jerusalem Post Magazine titled: “50 Years of Law Versus Reality” (www.jpost.com May 26, 2017). Also listen to and read the work of Eugene Kontorovich at: http://insct.syr.edu/legal-case-israels-settlements/ a legal expert who devotes scholarly attention to the issue. Below is my own distillation of the issues, based on the above sources, designed to establish some foundation for discussion.
Israel never imagined there would be 400,000 Jews living in the West Bank in a complex and politically charged project called the “settlements.” The land mass that includes the West Bank has been of questionable and debatable legal status for the last 50 years for sure but even before that. What is currently referred to as the West Bank was the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire who were defeated in World War I. The land became part of the British mandate and slipped into additional confusion about who had legal rights. When Israel took control of the land after Israel was attacked in 1967 (the Six-Day War) it fell into the category of “belligerent occupation.” This is a category of international law that requires the conquering force to adhere to a few rules of occupation. Under belligerent occupation the occupying force maintains the rights of the local people, agrees not to change the face of the land, and means that it cannot annex the land but is holding it temporarily. When land is acquired through force or war belligerent occupation is a mechanism for maintaining citizen rights and allowing political decisions to develop.
One of the controversies and difficulties about the legal status of the West Bank is whether or not to apply the principles of The Hague Regulations or the Geneva Convention. Belligerent occupation is a principal from The Hague regulations. The Geneva Convention requires more humanitarian rule even including returning conquered land. But the Israelis argued that Jordan was not a legitimate owner because they had only recently annexed the West Bank in the 1948 war. So Israel argued that it took disputed land from a wartime situation and did not conquer it from a sovereign nation, that is, they did not conquer the land from a legitimate state namely Jordan.
This is a key legal issue: did Israel acquire the West Bank from a legitimately recognized state that had sovereign power, which means according to the Geneva Accords Israel has obligations for peace negotiations, or was the West Bank genuinely disputed property.
The argument by Israel that all of the West Bank was negotiable provided justification for the ballooning settlements. As the settlements have developed, historical and legal arguments about the rights of the Jewish people – supported by a variety of historical documents ranging from the Bible to the Balfour declaration – have become more pronounced. The preponderance of evidence supports the notion that acquiring land by building settlements is illegal. But, on the other hand, Israel argues that it is still engaged in belligerent occupation and protecting the rights of the local inhabitants, that is, the Palestinians.
The legal status of the land acquired in 1967 is clearly debatable such that there are legal principles under which Israel is culpable according to international law, or principles that support Israel’s presence. In either case, the current situation is not sustainable.
Settlements Just Aren’t Going to Be There in the End
Sorry my friends who are blindly supportive of Israel but the US failure to veto UN Resolution 2335 was correct and justified. In December the United Nations passed a resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policies including the construction of new housing. The vote was 14-0 in favor of the resolution and the United States abstained.
This caused an outpouring of anger and accusation claiming that the Obama administration initiated the failure to veto, and the whole thing was “shameful,” and “hostile to Israel.” The vote was nonbinding so various sanctions are not on the table. But it does have the possibility of internationalizing the conflict even more than it already is, and simply adding to the list of criticisms Israel must suffer.
Yet the fact remains that no solution, no progress toward end of conflict, is going to include half a million settlers in the West Bank. The key issue, the fundamental principle, is for Israel to remain and continue to be Jewish and Democratic. It simply cannot do this in some sort of binational state or in circumstances in which Israel must oversee a hostile minority. The two state solution is the only answer that safeguards both Israel and begins the process of developing a Palestinian national and political identity along with institutions that protect and bolster Palestinian life.
Obama should have made this point and been more critical of the settlements even earlier in his presidency. In fact, he has talked plenty about Israeli-Palestinian peace along with lofty generalities about our interests, but has really done very little to bring a two state solution into effect. This last minute abstention just before he scoots out of office was actually gutless on Obama’s part and helped the resolution lose some of its impact. So Kerry, in an effort to chastise and influence Israel, delivered a speech trying to appeal to moderate Israelis.
Kerry’s speech was a cogent analysis of the current situation including admissions of deep despair between the two sides accompanied by anger, frustration, and unproductive indifference. More than a few specialists who weighed in on the issue wished the speech had been delivered a few years earlier.
The basic principles of a future solution – there are six of them – are easily agreed upon and they include the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state with the right to exist. Israel also seeks a declaration of the “end of conflict” which provides a foundation for discussion and negotiation.
True enough, the resolution is a rebuff to Israel but if the United States is going to be taken seriously as a negotiation partner, a fair and genuinely engaged partner, then it must be possible to point out disagreements and differences of opinion between the US and Israel. The settlements are described in the resolution as a major obstacle to the two state solution, and primarily responsible for the stagnation and lack of progress toward peace. It is true that the United Nations seems woefully biased and unbalanced when it easily finds ways to criticize Israel while the violence in Syria rages on and they do little or nothing about human rights violations around the world. Still, that should not stop the UN from doing what it must.
But all of this commotion notwithstanding, the world is going to change on January 20 and highly symbolic United Nations votes (in the most vacuous sense of the term) will seem pretty insignificant.
Should Israel Exist
Recently, an acquaintance sent me an article with the inflammatory title “Why Israel Should Not Exist.” My acquaintance sent it eagerly and mentioned how much he was awaiting my response because the article was so trenchant and challenging. You can read the article here. Upon realizing that it came from the publication “Counterpunch” I knew it was going to be pretty left of center but I read the article carefully and gave it its due. What a collection of nonsense and distortions! The article should be an exercise in a journalism class on recognizing bias and manipulating the readers. But let’s take a look at it point by point. Maybe somebody will learn something.
The text is full of clichés and politically loaded language and the author seems to flitter by them so easily I get the impression that they are common and taken for granted in his thinking. Single words or phrases are categories for entire spaces of reality and I can usually tell when someone has organized his reality according to some common clichéish categories. Here are just a few examples: the term “Zionist” in the numerous places below appears with frequency because the author imposes the normal caveat that he is not anti-Semitic but anti-Zionist. I will give him this distinction just because it’s important to defend the difference between being anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist, but I doubt sometimes that people are really making a distinction. There is clearly anti-Zionism that is a cover for anti-Semitism. But we won’t go there today. The sections below in quotes are taken from the article in question. We start with the author’s conception of Zionism.
- “Zionism is for that sector of the Jewish people that believes it is their God-given right to establish a state of Israel in the holy land at the expense of the Palestinians who lived there for 2000 years” Zionism is about no such thing; it is nothing more than a concern for the care, cultural development, and security of the Jewish people. Zionism says nothing about Palestinians or God-given rights to land. These things happen to emerge but they are not part of actual Zionism. Zionism is philosophically rooted in the principle of self-determination – the same principle applied to Palestinians and other groups.
- “Zionism is a continuation of European colonialism.” The author and his minions better start following these issues a little more carefully. In fact, Israel was one of the first to decolonize the Middle East. The Balfour declaration helped Arab nations escape the colonial clutches of France and the United Kingdom. The Balfour declaration was good for the Arabs. Moreover, there were plenty of states that became colonies or protectorates but only Israel gets accused of being “colonial.” Here’s where you better be careful about claiming your anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. The colonial settler charges are rooted in the ideological denial of Israel’s connection to the land. And to continue if you need more arguments, the term settler colonization is only applicable if the population has no historical or indigenous relationship to the land, which clearly is not the case for the Jews. Calling Israel a settler state is nothing more than name-calling. Anyone who does it is already ideologically grounded and biased and simply interested in attacking Israel. Again, the “I’m anti-Zionist not anti-Semitic claim” gets a little unsteady. American racists always had it explained to them how they didn’t understand their own racism. Why would liberals critical of Israel be less subject to such influences?
- The author loves the phrase “Zionist project.” This is postmodern language for intentional hegemony and criticism. If you refer to it as the “Zionist movement” or “Zionist aspiration” it would not be so devilish sounding.
- Good God, the author quotes Ilan Pappe as an authorative of source. Don’t you realize man that he is the most discredited academic in Israel? The author’s bed table reading must be pretty scary. You might as well quote Chomsky on the American media.
- The source (quoting Pappe) says that Israel destroyed 400 Palestinian villages, massacred thousands of civilians and forcibly displaced almost 1 million Palestinians who ended up in refugee camps. He then uses the phrase “ethnic cleansing” to describe what the Jews did to the Palestinians. He even invokes the term Holocaust. The author of the article doesn’t even hint that other historians, far many more of them who are more credible, discount all of these numbers. Sure, there were some unfortunate circumstances of war and Israel is not completely innocent but most of the Palestinians fled and there are far fewer documented instances of wrongdoing than in most violent conflicts.
- The claim that the United States has used its veto power to prevent anti-Israel resolutions is a piece of circular reasoning that has nothing to do with the issue. Do you know how easy it is to gather up a few people who will sanction some Israeli United Nations act or support a resolution condemning Israel. All you have to do is go to a few of the Arab delegation and they will gladly condemn Israel. Nobody takes it seriously.
- “Almost half a million Jews live in the illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem despite UN resolutions demanding that they be dismantled” Sorry my friends but the legal status of settlements is just not established. Painful as it is for you, you cannot simply and glibly point to illegal settlements. Nor can the movement of Israelis be regarded as violating the human rights of the occupied individuals. The situation is unlike that of the deportation of Jews to their deaths in the Nazi extermination camps. The 1949 Geneva Convention was aimed at preventing in the future what had happened in World War II: the forced transfer of large numbers of Jews by Nazi Germany and associates to the extermination camps. It was never intended to apply to Israeli settlements.
- There is no international law to ban Jews, whether Israelis or otherwise, from settling in the area of the original Palestine Mandate established by the League of Nations. The Mandate clearly says, in Article 6, that the administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage … close settlement by Jews on the lands, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.” Eugene Rostow argued thirty years ago that “until the final status of a particular area is resolved, there is no legal basis for barring Jews from settling there.”
- “There is a disproportionate number of Palestinians killed in this conflict.” Call it what you like, but the Israelis have the right to defend themselves. They have been subjected to terrorism and a host of violent incidents all of which justify response. It’s unfortunate but these things are relational and the behavior of one side is dependent on the behavior of the other. This response is typically viewed as an excuse by those critical of Israel but there’s little more to say – it’s a simple fact.
- I will dispense with much of a response to “apartheid.” Apartheid is a political system that has nothing to do with Israel. Israel has no laws forcing its citizens into residences or legal restrictions. But remember, if he wants to use the word “apartheid” to describe the condition of Israel’s Palestinian Arabs—who enjoy rights denied to many ethnic and religious minorities throughout the Middle East and beyond—so many countries are going to quack that the term is going to lose any meaning. We should reserve “apartheid” for countries that deny an entire ethnic, racial or religious group the right to citizenship or the right to vote. Israel isn’t one of them.
- Finally, the author poses the standard “one state solution”. This is simple enough to respond to because it’s a nonstarter. It would mean the end of the state of Israel and the noble Zionist aspirations to simply find a homeland for the Jews would all be for nothing and make no sense. No Israeli, except in the most extreme case, supports a one state solution. Even if they are not religious or particularly nationalistic in the end they want a state of Israel, devoted in some way to Jewish particularity, to be standing.
I will stop here because there is always no end to these arguments especially when the participants would not recognize the end anyway.
Best of Luck to the Kerry Talks between Israelis and Palestinians: But There Is Not yet Enough Pain
The fact that Secretary of State John Kerry has organized talks between the Israelis and Palestinians is noteworthy for two reasons – it’s a positive anytime you can bring these two sides together, and the world has issued a collective shrug. Israelis are generally bored with the Palestinians and don’t believe there is anyone really to talk to. The cynicism over the possibility of anything actually coming of these talks is extensive. Few people are even paying attention because they are so sure that this will all be an empty exercise. Even President Obama seems distant from the process.
But we should avoid cynicism and I am all for any sort of engagement and it can be anytime, anyplace, and even under less than ideal conditions. There are numerous posts on this blog at various points in time explaining the advantages of communicative contact (e.g. see July 8th 2013). There are good reasons to have talks all of which are pertinent to unpacking this complex conflict and repackaging it into something sustainable. Let’s look at a few of them, but first a little context.
The Unique Nature of the Talks
The Kerry Talks are supposed to focus on final status issues; that is, the crucial six issues which are the status of Jerusalem, refugees, borders, Israeli security, settlements, and the Palestinian right of return. These issues have been ignored in the past and sometimes defined as too difficult and hence put off for a future date. Read some background on final status issues here . Barak and Arafat made some attempts at a final status agreement as did Olmert at Annapolis. These efforts failed and the explanation always was that the two sides were still too far apart. But it is also the case that both sides simply cannot imagine themselves settling on the decision. Conservative political blocs in Israel oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, and Palestinian leadership is a proxy for the larger Arab world and feels very uncomfortable giving up anything or recognizing Israel.
The divisions that separate these two groups run deep especially when it comes to the special status of Jerusalem and refugees. Jerusalem just may be the most intractable problem because of its sanctity. The Palestinians, on the other hand, choke on the possibility of any recognition of Israel and will not accept their presence as a Jewish state. Gritty and thorny as these issues are talk is all the two sides have and there are reasons to engage it.
The Palestinians have been frustrated and thus decided to go around the Israelis through, for example, their petition to the United Nations as a basis for claiming statehood. Any final agreements must be and should be the result of negotiation between the two principal sides, and the Palestinian petition to the United Nations was counterproductive and responsible for the deterioration of the process. Israel and the United States opposed the Palestinian petition to the United Nations and threatened financial pressures. The proposed talks can help repair the damage to the relationship between the three parties (the US, Israel, and the Palestinians) and move the center of discussion back to the principals.
Secondly, the United States does not have the luxury of waiting around. Even though the conflict has been with us for decades and seems to be a constant on the political playing field, one in which the issues are fixed in people’s minds and will not change much, it remains a powerful symbol of difficult ethnopolitical conflict and the “clash of civilizations.” Moreover, the US has practical “on the ground” concerns with respect to terrorism, balanced international relations, oil, democracy development, and national security. Although the claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the cause of so much international tension is simply unjustified, it is a combustible political symbol that arouses ethnopolitical passions around the world.
The settlement issue must be solved. Israel will have difficulty moving settlers and the Palestinians have stated that they want no Israeli presence in the future state of Palestine. A Palestinian state must be negotiated by the two sides and cannot come into being otherwise. The two-state solution is the only way that Israel remains Jewish and democratic and there is considerable work to be completed before the contours of this potential state are fashioned.
Finally, talking to one another is the only way that compromises and adjustments will be made. Both sides have powerful positions that control aspects of the discussion and direct communicative encounters are the only way these compromises and adjustments will come into being.
My guess is that these talks will fail but at least represent a step in a long journey. It’s possible that both sides believe the other will be the cause of the failure and have agreed to enter into the discussions for that reason alone. Sadly enough, I’m still of the opinion that there is insufficient pain. In other words, if conflicting parties have to wait until they are at a “hurting stalemate” before they get serious than these two parties simply aren’t hurting enough yet.
Settlements are Clearly Illegal – Say Some
Those who argue that Israeli settlements are illegal cling to their position with considerable passion. They maintain that settlers are living in a fictional world with a tremendous commitment to Israel but not to human rights or anyone else. The arguments are typically made on the basis of international law – which is a questionable and still unclear legal domain with respect to matters of legitimacy and efficacy. But in any case, the challenge to the Geneva Accords is directly confronted. The Geneva Accords, the argument goes, is concerned with people, not land, and claiming that the Accords do not apply to the West Bank because it is not strictly the territory of a sovereign state is inconsistent with the spirit of the convention. The Accords are further interpreted as protecting any group of people who find themselves in the clutches of an occupying power. This argument than devolves into discussion of the minutia of the Geneva Accords including interpretations and intentions that are probably impossible to know with any reliability. Those who deny the legality of the settlements claim that the near universal consensus on the matter is sufficient to establish the argument.
The international standing of the United Nations does not rise to the level of commonly accepted international law, but it is a significant body that functions in a legal capacity. That said, United Nations Security Council resolutions consistently call for Israel’s withdrawal from the territories and reaffirms the conviction that Israel is occupying the land illegally. The UN regularly treats the Israeli occupation as illegal and often defines it as a simple fact which is not subject to dispute. If it is possible to establish the territories as “occupied” then settlement activity is illegal. The West Bank is consistently considered occupied by the UN and this by definition makes settlement activity illegal. Very simply, it is somebody else’s land.
Moreover, if a territory is occupied then the occupying powers cannot transfer its citizens to the conquered territory, making what Israel does illegal. As I stated in last week’s post if the legal status of the land is unclear and no one has a clear political claim then settlement in that territory is permissible and the settlements would be legal. The defenders of legality claim that the prohibition against population transfer applies in cases unrelated to Israel; that is, if the land is available for use than those who moved there to use it are not violating any laws. But, of course, if the West Bank is considered to be official Palestinian territory then Israeli settler encroachment into that territory would be illegal.
Israel insists that its presence in the West Bank is militarily justified because of the attack on Israel in 1967 and Israel’s right to establish defensible borders as a result of success in the 1967 war. But the counter to this point is that Israel’s presence is not necessary for its security and that the occupation is thus illegal because it is a ruse for rank land acquisition. There is what is called “customary” international law which argues for the legal power of such “customary international law” when it represents the accumulated weight of international opinion. Even if there is no legitimately recognized international court, when it is a matter of overwhelming international opinion that settlement activity is illegal and inappropriate then such sentiment has the weight of legality behind it.
Finally, the International Court of Justice concluded that the mandate for Palestine was about self-determination for Palestinians and never mentioned anything about Jewish rights. Accordingly, any Jewish presence in the Palestinian territories is illegal.
The arguments on both sides of the issue can carry weight and have elements of them that are defensible. For that reason, the matter will not be solved on the basis of legal issues alone. Rather, the pressing interest of peace and solutions that respond to the needs of all parties are more important than legal debates. Having said that, I do not mean to diminish the importance of legal precedents and standing except to remind people that the law is simply a form of conflict resolution and some problems are solved by methods that do not involve formal legal arguments. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be one of them.
“The Law” and the Settlements
Even the beginning student of conflict management knows that some people simply will not change their mind or be convinced by arguments, no matter how unassailable, about historical incidents and accuracy. But the law is one of the best ways to understand an issue. Everyone wonders about the legal standing of settlements eventually. The video lecture below is a well done explanation of some issues and I highly recommend it.
Click The Legal case for Israel to hear the lecture.
But let me make a few other points. When some states don’t even recognize the legal legitimacy of the state of Israel, you know that” the law” is as easily manipulated and fungible as any other domain of knowledge. My goal here is not to explicate in detail elaborate legal arguments but to try and find some clear simplicity. In addition to the video above, a good reading pertaining to the legality of the settlements appeared a couple of years ago in the American Interest. It can be found here. Read the article in the American Interest at your leisure but we must begin with some basics.
What is now the West Bank was part of the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire that was largely ignored and lightly governed. After the Turks were defeated in World War I the current area of Palestine was assigned to the British who were given a “mandate” to administer the territory. Jews flowed into the territory of Palestine until 1947 when the British government wanted out of the mandate and the UN recommended the adoption of the partition plan creating one Jewish state and one Arab state. The Arabs rejected the partition and war ensued. It’s important to first point out that the UN resolution partitioning Palestine has no legal standing. The General Assembly has no authority of international law and the resolution was a recommendation only. As a result of the Six-Day War in 1967 Israel made further incursions into the West Bank as a security and buffer zone. This incursion resulted in increased “occupation.”
Some legal scholars argue that the West Bank and Gaza remain unassigned by the mandate. Others claim it is Palestinian territory. But one of the strongest arguments against the legality of the settlements results from the Geneva Convention in 1949. It stated that no occupying power (that would be Israel) can transfer its own citizens into occupied or newly acquired territory. Moreover, UN resolution 242 calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from occupied territory. But it is also clearly recognized that Israel in the Six-Day War fought a lawful war based on its inherent right of self-defense recognized by the UN charter. Israel’s incursion into the West Bank was the result of aggression and Israel had every right to defend itself including maintaining a security presence.
Two Arguments That Support the Legal Status of Israel and the West Bank
1. Since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I no country has any firm legal standing or recognized legal rights to the occupied territories. Hence, what is termed the territories has never been part of a legally recognized sovereign and consolidated state and thus the prohibitions about population incursions from the Geneva Convention do not apply. If Spain overwhelmed Portugal and began to establish Spanish communities and populations in land acquired through violence then this would be a clear violation of the Geneva Accords. But what is termed “the territories” does not meet the definitional standards of a sovereign state.
In addition, it has been cogently argued that the Geneva Accord was designed to respond to the Nazis who transferred populations for the purpose of colonization and to obliterate the existing population. This, the argument goes, has nothing to do with Israel whose settlements are not designed for colonization.
2. A second argument is that the occupied territories were assigned to the Jews by both the mandate and the United Nations partition thus giving Jews the right to use and settle the land. This is based on the assumption that the legal status of the territories has not been established and Jews have no fewer rights or less justified legal standing than anyone else.
I will state the arguments for the illegal nature of the settlements perhaps in the next post. But it is important to underscore that legal arguments are not always the best way to solve a problem. They often enough lack clarity and specificity and do not satisfy sufficiently both sides. Making a legal claim, especially in an unclear legal environment, can fail to satisfy either party. The Israelis and Palestinians should solve their problems themselves.
A Few Things That Needed to Be Talked about during Obama’s Visit
Obama’s visit to Israel was important but it probably suffer from too much media manipulation and too many platitudes. This is a time when Israel will be at the center of news stories around the world. And as tired as the world is of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there will be increased attention to the issue. For that reason alone it is a good time to influence the agenda and improve the quality of discourse that surrounds key issues in the Middle East conflict. There are three topics that deserve attention and could help move the resolution process forward by improving clarity and accuracy.
1.The first issue that could use some attention is the exaggerated tense relationship between Obama and Netanyahu. This is based simply on the notion that Obama is not sufficiently supportive of Israel. I grant you that Obama talks about Israel and the Middle East with greater nuance and understanding of what it will really take to solve problems but this does not detract from his support for Israel. He recognizes that Israel is essentially a mirror of the United States and, of course, the importance of security issues for Israel. Those who question Obama simply have to look at the record.
It took tremendous courage for Obama to confront the Arab League in Cairo in 2009 and unabashedly declare US support for Israel. Obama told them our support for Israel was steadfast. Expressing some well-placed defensible criticism of Israel (e.g. with respect to the West Bank) should be viewed as part of our support for Israel and its future state; it is certainly no sign of weakness.
2.A second misnomer is that Israel is not interested in peace, and amongst the Palestinians there is no one to talk to. Granted, Netanyahu is a stern negotiator who is not going to jeopardize Israel or give up much on his own watch. But as the saying goes, “there is a new sheriff in town” in the form of a reconstituted government that has moved, albeit slightly, to the center. The peace process is not easy and it never has been so I don’t expect it to change much. Still, Netanyahu has made more than a few conciliatory statements. He has come around to the recognition of a possible state for the Palestinians – at least he’s on the public record – and is capable of advancing the peace process.
The statement that there is nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side is also a common refrain that has the effect of shutting down the process and becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Abbas is respected enough and although he is not a powerful charismatic leader he is recognized as the legitimate leader who can make decisions in the name of his people. Abbas does have the challenge of doing something about Hamas and finding a way for future unity, but that seems to be a topic for the far future. Abbas must manage Hamas because most Israelis recognize that the only thing that followed their exit from Gaza was rockets. Israelis rightly claim that there is no evidence that conciliatory behavior on their part is reciprocated. Both sides are to blame for lethargic peace process.
3.The issue of the settlements has to be discussed more specifically and thoroughly. Israel suffers international condemnation and all the unpleasant epithets that go with it because of the settlements. There have been periods of time during settlement freezes when peace talks were supposed to flourish. But that rarely happens. This is because the role of the settlements is exaggerated. Even freezes on development cannot draw attention to realistic solutions. And both sides are equally to blame for perpetuating the conflict by constant references to the settlements. And undue focus on the settlements is part of this sentiment around the world that the Middle East can be pacified if only the Israelis and Palestinians would solve their problems. The Arab spring has brought the problems of the Middle East into sharp relief all of which have little to do with Israel and Palestine.
In the end, it is the quality of discussion and analysis that will make the difference in the peace process. Obama’s visit will help fortify relationships between the US and Israel as well as the Palestinian Authority. Obama should recommit to pressuring Iran and that will pacify the Israelis. But real progress requires more effortful deliberation designed to sharpen preferences and ameliorate differences.
Peace and Conflict Politics 