Settlements issue overrated, says top Israeli adviser

Jason Koutsoukis Herald Correspondent
May 29, 2009

AS THE US hardens its policy of zero growth in West Bank Jewish settlements, the policy circle around the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to reject it as unworkable.
In comments made this week before the visit to Washington by the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said that President Barack Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions."

It is the clearest example yet of the differences emerging between the administration of Mr Obama, who has vowed to vigorously pursue the peace process as part of a changed approach to the region, and Mr Netanyahu, presiding over a hardline government largely opposed to many concessions.

Chief among Mr Netanyahu's kitchen cabinet is Dore Gold, a distinguished former Israeli ambassador to the UN and a former foreign policy adviser to Mr Netanyahu when he first became prime minister in 1996.

Now the head of a leading Israeli think tank, the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Mr Gold told the Herald the issue of settlements in the West Bank was overrated as an obstacle to peace.

"The settlements themselves cover only 1.7 per cent of the actual land in the area we are talking about that could become a Palestinian state. Growth itself is infinitesimal."

Because the issue has been on the table for so long, he believes it has become an easy target for US foreign policy makers and something that US presidents feel comfortable talking about.

"It's not the key issue affecting peace in the Middle East, and it's never been a big issue for other countries in the Middle East. It's disingenuous."

Mr Gold, who has been involved in efforts of six prime ministers, two Palestine Liberation Organisation chairmen, and now a fourth US president to try to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, says it is time for a new approach.

Mr Netanyahu's argument to boost the Palestinian economy in the West Bank is important "to strengthen Palestinian Authority infrastructure, to strengthen security, to enable a new political reality."

"Whenever we sit down to negotiate over a Palestinian state, we get stuck on the same issues. We can't give Palestinians control of the air space. We can't allow a Palestinian state to make defensive treaties with countries like Iran. Settlement growth? The issue is the security of Israel, not whether someone can build an extension to their home in Efrat."

Sharing Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state will not happen - or not under Mr Netanyahu, at least, he said.

Mr Gold says preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is as much about securing the future of the other Gulf states as it is about safeguarding Israel.

with Agence France-Presse