FACING
AN election in which his most dangerous competition is from the far
right, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adopted a familiar
tactic: a flurry of announcements of new construction in Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The predictable result has been a storm of denunciations by the United States and
every other member of the U.N. Security Council, along with dire
predictions that the new building would “make a negotiated two-state
solution . . . very difficult to achieve,” as British Foreign Secretary
William Hague put it.
The criticism is appropriate, in the sense that such unilateral action by Israel, like the unilateral Palestinian initiative to seek statehood recognition in
November from the U.N. General Assembly, serves to complicate the
negotiations that are the only realistic route to a Middle East peace.
But the reaction is also counterproductive because it reinforces two
mistaken but widely held notions: that the settlements are the principal
obstacle to a deal and that further construction will make a
Palestinian state impossible.
Twenty-five years ago, Israel’s government openly aimed at building West
Bank settlements that would block a Palestinian state. But that policy
changed following the 1993 Oslo accords. Mr. Netanyahu’s government,
like several before it, has limited building almost entirely to areas
that both sides expect Israel to annex through territorial swaps in an
eventual settlement. For example, the Jerusalem neighborhoods where new
construction was announced last month were conceded to Israel by Palestinian negotiators in 2008.
Overall,
the vast majority of the nearly 500,000 settlers in Jerusalem and the
West Bank live in areas close to Israel’s 1967 borders. Data compiled by
the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace show that more than
80 percent of them could be included in Israel if the country annexed
just more than 4 percent of the West Bank — less than the 5 percent
proposed by President Bill Clinton 12 years ago.
Diplomats
were most concerned by Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to allow planning and
zoning — but not yet construction — in a four-mile strip of territory
known as E-1 that lies between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, a settlement
with a population of more than 40,000. Palestinians claim that Israeli
annexation of the land would cut off their would-be capital in East
Jerusalem from the West Bank and block a key north-south route between
West Bank towns. Israel wants the land for similar reasons, to prevent
Ma’ale Adumim — which will almost certainly be annexed to Israel in any
peace deal — from being isolated. Both sides insist that the other can
make do with a road corridor.
This
is a difficult issue that should be settled at the negotiating table,
not by fiat. But Mr. Netanyahu’s zoning approval is hardly the “almost
fatal blow” to a two-state solution that U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon described.
The
exaggerated rhetoric is offensive at a time when the Security Council
is refusing to take action to stop the slaughter of tens of thousands of
civilians — including many Palestinians — by the Syrian regime. But it
is also harmful, because it puts pressure on Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas to make a “freeze” on the construction a condition for
beginning peace talks. Mr. Abbas had hinted that he would finally drop
that demand, which has prevented negotiations for most of the past four
years, after the General Assembly’s statehood vote. If Security Council
members are really interested in progress toward Palestinian statehood,
they will press Mr. Abbas to stop using settlements as an excuse for
intransigence — and cool their own overheated rhetoric.
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