Matt Yglesias

Bronfman Argues for Settlement Freeze

As Dana Goldstein points out, Edgar Bronfman (”one of the main funders behind the Birthright Israel program, which sends young American Jews to Israel to develop their Zionist sympathies”) is not exactly one of the usual suspects of the Jewish left on the debate over America’s Israel policy. Still, he sees the logic of the push for Israel to get real about halting settlement construction and beginning to reverse it:

At a certain point, there will be more Arabs than Jews living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, thereby leading to one de facto apartheid state if no resolution to the conflict is reached via a two-state solution. [...] But continued “natural growth” in West Bank settlements cannot be allowed to take priority over the possibility of normalized relations with the entire Arab world. Peace with its neighbors, not the sensitivities of a small minority of religious settlers, has to be Israel’s ultimate objective.

Right.

Netanyahu Proposes “Settlement Freeze” That Would Allow for Much New Settlement Construction

I’d say the developments reported by Ethan Bronner in The New York Times show that even very modest American pressure can force the Israeli government to try to do something to heal the breach. But it’s important to be clear that this doesn’t actually amount to very much:

Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months as part of a broad Middle East peace endeavor that included a Palestinian agreement to negotiate an end to the conflict and confidence-building steps by major Arab nations, senior Israeli officials said Sunday. [...] The freeze would not affect construction that was already under way, nor include East Jerusalem. But it would mean that during the specified time no construction of any kind could start even in the close-in settlement blocks that Israel expects to keep in any future two-state agreement with the Palestinians.

The combination of the short duration of the promise with the exemption for “already under way” development seems to deprive this of much real force. This wouldn’t halt any projects on which ground has been broken, and it wouldn’t halt continued planning, etc. for any projects planned to be undertaken in the near future. And my guess is that there’s probably a lot you could do to fudge the difference between a “shovel ready” but not-yet-underway project and one that’s already begun.

There’s no reason it should be this hard for Israel to agree to just stop and thereby toss the ball back into the Palestinians court.

Despite “Natural Growth” Claims, Migrants Continue to Drive Settlement Growth

Maaleh Adumim, West Bank (Wikimedia)

Amy Teibel has an excellent piece out for the AP exposing the lie behind “natural growth” of settlements:

Israelis moving to the West Bank accounted for more than a third of settler population growth in recent years, undercutting Israel’s argument that it is continuing settlement construction only to accommodate growing families already living there.

The so-called “natural growth” rationale for building on land the Palestinians claim for a future state has vaulted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into an unusually vocal and public clash with the Obama administration, which has come out strong against continued settlement expansion.

On the merits, the case for a “natural growth” exemption is extremely weak anyway, but it does need to be understood that this isn’t a good faith debate about natural growth. The idea is to open up a reasonable-sounding loophole in order to allow for unabated settlement growth. Peace Now has a useful list of the top four loopholes settlers seek to exploit and why none of them should be allowed.

The Truth About Settlements

Daniel Kurtzer and Ariel Sharon light Hanukkah candles (Israel Government Press Office)

Daniel Kurtzer, who served as US Ambassador to Israel during George W. Bush’s first term, corrects the record on Israel’s settlements. The key factual takeaway is that what Obama is doing is actually seeking to achieve what’s always been American policy on this issue, not trying to get the Israelis to do anything they haven’t agreed to previously. He then goes on to poke holes in the “natural growth” concept:

The pattern of population growth in the territories actually undercuts the natural-growth argument. Since 1993, when Israel signed the Oslo Accords, Israel’s West Bank settler population has grown from 116,300 to 289,600. The numbers in East Jerusalem increased from 152,800 to more than 186,000. This goes far beyond the natural increase of families already living in the settlements. Inserting the provision of “natural growth” in official documents started with the 2001 Mitchell Report and the 2003 “road map,” reflecting recognition that the concept was being abused as a justification for expanding settlements. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that every administration since 1967 has articulated — that settlements jeopardize the possibility of achieving peace and thus settlement activity should stop. This does not diminish the Palestinians’ responsibilities, especially their commitment to stop violence and terrorism and uproot terrorist infrastructure. President Obama emphasized this in his Cairo speech. But Palestinian failures in no way justify Israeli failure to implement their road map commitments with respect to settlements and outposts. It is time for Israel to freeze all settlement activity and dismantle the unauthorized outposts.

The other thing I’ve heard from people is that it’s somehow logistically impossible to totally freeze settlement growth. Even if this were true, it would be a red herring—if the difference between the Obama administration and Netanyahu were really a technical logistical issue, you could work it out. What we’re seeing is a broad disagreement about policy. Obama wants peace and a two-state solution, Netanyahu has an approach that would preclude such a solution.

Meanwhile, it’s not true. Americans for Peace Now has a very useful document called “How to Freeze Settlements: A Layman’s Guide” that I would recommend to anyone who’s interested in exploring this issue in detail.

Lieberman Argues for Settlement Expansion

Via Faiz Shakir, it seems that Joe Lieberman appeared on Bloomberg and joined efforts by congressional hawks to bail Bibi Netanyahu out of his clash with the United States government by putting pressure on Barack Obama to back off his opposition to settlement expansion:

I thought the focus on the President’s direct call in that speech in Cairo for the Israelis to freeze all settlement activity — including the ‘natural growth‘ of settlements that everybody agrees are no longer settlements — …that was risky in the sense that it may lead listeners to believe that the main reason there is not an Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is the Israeli settlement policy.

I don’t think I would call the settlement freeze the “focus” of Obama’s Cairo speech, but he did focus on the need for both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict to live up to their commitments. Israel has previously promised to halt settlement activity, and while halting settlement activity is hardly the only barrier to peace, I think it’s clear enough that a cessation of Israeli land grabs is a necessary condition for peace.

Lieberman’s reference to “settlements that everybody agrees are no longer settlements” appears to refer to West Bank settlements built near the Green Line that more-or-less have the character of suburbs of Jerusalem. Israel hopes to annex most or all of these settlements in a final peace agreement. And perhaps some of them will be annexed. But the unilaterally decide that some settlements can and should be expanded because they’re “no longer settlements” is just a naked effort to prejudge the issue and circumvent the diplomatic process.

Meanwhile, if you look at a map you can see that while the built-up footprint of some of these “suburban” settlements is quite small, the municipal boundaries of the settlements are extremely expansion. Allowing for the “natural growth” of the settlements would entail cutting off the Arab portion of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, displacing Bedouin from surrounding desert areas, and in effect making any kind of peace involving shared access to Jerusalem impossible. In other words, though “natural growth” of some existing blocs may sound like a small thing in the scheme of things, it would in fact shortly doom any hopes of reaching a realistic negotiated settlement.

Obama Means Business on Settlements

White House photo

The White House released a statement yesterday after President Obama’s chat with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The bottom line is that Obama’s not backing down:

The President and Prime Minister had a constructive, 20-minute conversation. The President reiterated the principal elements of his Cairo speech, including his commitment to Israel’s security. He indicated that he looked forward to hearing the Prime Minister’s upcoming speech outlining his views on peace and security. The President also noted that Senator Mitchell would be in Israel again tomorrow as he starts his fourth trip to the region as the Special Envoy for Middle East peace.

The reference to Israel’s security highlights why the substantive case for a focus on settlements is so strong. Many dovish people in the United States were inclined to question the wisdom and morality of Israel’s 2008 attack on the Gaza Strip or its 2006 attack on Lebanon. But the Israeli government clearly maintained that such actions were necessary for Israeli security, and many people were and are inclined to believe them. By contrast, absolutely nobody with any grip on reality believes that settlement expansion is necessary for Israeli security.

In terms of US domestic politics, nobody can plausibly say that Obama is jeopardizing Israeli security or the safety of Israel’s citizens. All he’s doing is trying to enforce longstanding, but always ignored, American policy.

Clinton Denies Knowledge of Secret Bush-Era Agreement on Settlements

Talking to ABC News’ George Stephanoupoulos in an interviewed aired earlier today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied the existence of any record of an alleged secret Bush-era deal with the Israeli government granting them a loophole out of their public, international agreement to halt settlement activity.

Meanwhile, to be clear about why this issue is important it’s not that a settlement freeze will bring about peace. Rather, it’s that any kind of realistic peace agreement will require the dismantling of many settlements. And if the Israeli government doesn’t have the willingness—or the political will—to so much as freeze expansion, then there’s no way they’ll be able to do the dismantling. And, similarly, if there are arguments which hold that freezing expansion is wrong or impossible on the merits, then those same arguments imply that the settlements can never go. That totally poisons the water for peace.

Rep Ackerman Clarifies Position: Supports Peace, Supports Obama, Supports Settlement Freeze

Americans for Peace Now has an important story clarifying the views of Rep Gary Ackerman (D-NY) on the Obama administration’s push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians:

On the heels of this morning’s historic Obama speech in Cairo, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) — the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia — issued a statement this afternoon entitled “ACKERMAN URGES FREEZE ON SETTLEMENT CONSTRUCTION, NOT GROWING FAMILIES.” (the text is not yet available online, so the document is copied at the end of this post).

The genesis of this statement is reports in the Jewish press last week that seemed to imply that Chairman Ackerman was endorsing so-called “natural growth” of settlements, and was thus breaking publicly with President Obama’s demand for a settlement freeze that includes “natural growth.” Earlier this week, an article in the Capitol Hill newspaper “Politico” used apparent Ackerman quotes to bolster its highly questionable thesis that even Democrats in Congress are urging Obama to “back off” on the settlement issue.

Well, whatever the Jewish press and Politico thought (or hoped) Ackerman’s views might be, today’s statement is clear: Chairman Ackerman is not saying families shouldn’t grow, or that people should not have babies, but he is saying that settlement construction must stop, period. This is the view that the Chairman, clearly and unequivocally, has articulated today. It is a welcome and important clarification from Chairman Ackerman.

I did an item critical of Ackerman based on that Politico report, so I feel a special obligation to correct the record. Ackerman, as a Jewish representative from a district with many Jewish constituents, has—like Rep Robert Wexler (D-FL)—an especially important role to play as an advocate for a progressive approach to the region. He should be the kind of member who signals to other members that it’s kosher to be against settlement expansion.

Meanwhile, it’s too bad that The Washington Post thinks its readers need to get commentary on this issue from the slipshod and dishonest Charles Krauthammer. Much better information is available at TAP Online where Gershom Gorenberg has a piece on the truth about settlement expansion, including the fact that “natural growth” apparently includes the ability of current residents of Israel proper to buy heavily subsidized housing in West Bank settlements.

Israeli Peace Camp Heartened By Obama’s Approach, Some NY Democrats Pushing Back

My man AD sent me these two links from Haaretz showing Israel’s once-demoralized peace camp is taking heart from the Obama administration’s recent hard line on the settlement issue. Meanwhile, back at home Israel hawks are working to undermine Obama’s effort to simply enforce what’s long been actual American policy. Leading the way are opportunistic Republicans, and some Democratic members of congress from New York:

Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said focusing on settlement activity “detracts” from top U.S. goals in the region. However, he added: “I do not support a settlement freeze that calls on Israeli families not to grow, get married, or forces them to throw away their grandparents. Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane.”

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday that “we have to be careful not to cross the line where it sounds like we are exerting overwhelming pressure . . . on our rather isolated ally.”

Weiner here is capturing the cognitive dissonance that afflicts a lot of the conventional discourse on this subject. He doesn’t want to say that he supports continued Israeli land grabs or that he stands with the settlers. But heaven forbid anyone actually criticize Israel or exert meaningful pressure on the largest recipient of American foreign aid! Ackerman, meanwhile, is more straightforward. To him, halting settlement expansion means telling people not to have children. And telling people not to have children is unjust. But of course as Ackerman well knows, people are never going to stop having children. Which means that, by Ackerman’s logic, the settlements can never stop expanding. But everyone knows that for peace to be achieved, many settlements would have to be removed. Ackerman’s position is just the position that peace is impossible, and that Israel must fight forever to squeeze the Palestinians out of the West Bank, while the Palestinians must fight forever for the destruction of Israel.

This is a bleak vision, and I think it would be nice if the people who hold to it would come out and say so rather than pretending they’re interested in peace.

Bush’s Secret Settlement Freeze Agreement

The latest twist in US-Israeli relations is that the Israeli government is claiming that it’s unfair of Barack Obama to attempt to enforce America’s longstanding nominal policy position against Israeli settlement expansion because the Bush administration reached a secret agreement “that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement ‘freeze.’”

Now it would certainly be interesting to know if any such secret agreement was ever formally put down. It was widely understood that the Bush administration had a policy of winking at Israeli violations of Bush’s stated position on this issue, but a formal “we didn’t really mean it” clause would be good to know about.

Still, it’s not clear why Barack Obama would consider this, rather than longstanding official American policy, publicly released documents (i.e., the “road map”), international law, and basic common sense to be controlling. Nor is it clear what standing the Netanyahu administration even has to point to these kind of agreements, given that Netanyahu has repeatedly made it clear that he has no intention of following earlier Israeli commitments to work toward a two-state solution. Bottom line is that settlement expansion makes peace impossible and should be halted. A settlement freeze hardly ensures peace, but its absence precludes it.

Congress Pushing Back on Obama’s Anti-Settlement Stance

I’ve remarked twice before that I’ve been surprised by the level of seriousness with which Barack Obama seems to be pursuing the settlement freeze issue. It’s been official American policy that these settlements are illegal and ought to be stopped for a long time, but the tradition is to offer clear signals that the U.S. is in fact willing to turn a blind eye. Thus far, Obama hasn’t done that, and now the pushback is beginning:

“There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies, and the president is tiptoeing right up to that line,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who said he’d heard complaints from constituents during the congressional recess. “I would have liked to hear the president talk more about the Palestinian obligation to cut down on terrorism.”

What’s telling right there in Rep. Weiner’s statement and as pointed out by Ben Smith, the author of the piece, is that none of Obama’s critics are willing to say he’s actually wrong. Obama wants a settlement freeze, and as Smith reports “few will defend illegal Jewish outposts on land they hope will be part of a Palestinian state.” But the sense seems to be that it’s somehow unfair for Obama to actually criticize Israel for doing bad stuff, even if we agree that the stuff is bad.

I think the complaint that Obama has somehow failed to mention that Palestinian terrorism is unacceptable is just factually wrong. What’s more, Obama hasn’t just said terrorism is bad, he’s committed to an effort to rebuild the kind of state institutions in the West Bank that can provide provide security. But details aside, there’s a real “two wrongs don’t make a right” issue here. If it’s wrong for Israel to expand settlements—and it is—then it’s wrong for Israel to expand settlements and pressure should be brought to bear to make them stop. Settlement expansion doesn’t make the murder of civilians okay, and terrorism doesn’t make land grabs okay.

Netanyahu Surprised to Learn that Obama Means What He Says on Settlements

As I said yesterday, I’ve been a bit surprised (in a good way!) by how tough and united the Obama administration has been in terms of pressing Israel to freeze settlement activity. Laura Rozen reports that Netanyahu’s surprised too, he was apparently expecting empty talk and loopholes:

Last night, shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a confidante. Referring to Clinton’s call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, “What the hell do they want from me?” [...]

In the 10 days since Netanyahu and President Barack Obama held a meeting at the White House, the Obama administration has made clear in public and private meetings with Israeli officials that it intends to hold a firm line on Obama’s call to stop Israeli settlements. According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu’s dismay, Obama doesn’t appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was. [...]

It’s not just the administration that’s delivering Netanyahu that message, however. Whereas in the past Israeli leaders have sometimes eased pressure from Washington on the settlements issue by going to members of Congress, this time, observers in Washington and Israel say, key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team’s message to Netanyahu. What changed? “Members of Congress have more willing to follow the leadership of the administration … because [they] believe it is in our national security interest to move toward ending the conflict and that it is not a zero sum for Israel,” the former senior Clinton administration official said.

Good on Obama. But also good on the members of congress. It seems to me that Netanyahu has been hoping to be able to get away with defying the administration by getting congressional allies to pressure the White House, thereby causing the White House to decide that they’d rather give in than jeopardize their agenda. In part, this change in congress just reflects members of congress recognizing the realities of the situation. But I also think that the advocacy of new groups like J Street — currently running a campaign to support Obama’s position on the settlemeent issue — is helping to stiffen the spines of people with the right instincts.

Clinton, Obama Clash With Israel Over Settlement Freeze

I’ve been saying the Obama administration should make a serious push for a settlement freeze since Election Day, but I have to admit that I didn’t really think it would happen:

Rebuffing Israel on a key Mideast negotiating issue, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the Obama administration wants a complete halt in the growth of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, with no exceptions. President Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions,” Clinton said.

This is good. Unfortunately for us, we’re not in one of those periods of time when Israel has a government that’s probably actually not that sympathetic to the settlers but faces domestic political difficulties in cracking down on them. If that were the case, then strong words from the United States might be enough to force change in Israeli policy. But the current government is a coalition between the right and the far-right, and gives every indication of being extremely committed to settlement expansion. This, naturally, raises the question of what American policymakers are prepared to actually do about the fact that the world’s largest recipient of American aid seems to have so little interest in our perspective on crucial regional issues.

Kerry & Obama Agree Settlements Must Be Stopped, But What Are They Going to Do About It?

Speaking yesterday about his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama appeared to call for a settlement freeze:

OBAMA: Now, Israel is going have to take some difficult steps as well. And I shared with Prime Minister the fact that, under the road map, under Annapolis there’s a clear understanding that we have to make progress on settlements, that settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward. That’s a difficult thing to recognize, but it’s an important one. And it has to be addressed. I think the humanitarian situation in Gaza has to be addressed.

Satyam Khanna reminds us that “Speaking to AIPAC last month, Vice President Biden and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) also called on Israel to freeze settlement activity.”

But of course Obama and Biden and Kerry aren’t just bloggers. They’re the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, respectively. And the United States isn’t a country that lacks leverage or influence over Israel. And yet I see absolutely no sign that the Israeli government is contemplating any kind of settlement freeze. So the question becomes what does the administration intend to do? Making sharp, to-the-point observations about the situation is nice. But the President has a harder job than I do. He can’t just say that “settlements have to be stopped,” he has to find a way to make it happen.

As Netanyahu Heads to Town, Israel Launches New Settlement

Maybe Barack Obama can mention something about this?

Israel has moved ahead with a plan to build a new settlement in the northern West Bank for the first time in 26 years, pursuing a project the United States has already condemned as an obstacle to peace efforts. The move comes on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, despite Western calls for Israel to halt its settlement activity. [...]

The initiative began three years ago, under the auspices of then-defense minister Amir Peretz, who promised to transform a former army outpost into a permanent settlement for evacuees from the Gaza Strip. The move was then frozen due to American insistence.

Realistically, I think both Obama and Netanyahu face strong political incentives to paper over their differences rather to have Obama state his position forcefully. In the short term, Palestinians will probably pay the biggest price for that. But Israel and the United States will come to grief, too, soon enough.

Israel Grabs More Palestinian Land, Sets Stage for Further Illegal Colonization of Palestinian Territory

Meanwhile, in the Middle East’s only democracy, settlements continue to grow:

Some 1,700 dunams of land in the northern part of Efrat were declared state land last week, paving the way for the West Bank settlement to start the process of seeking government approval to build there.

The Civil Administration issued the declaration after rejecting eight appeals by Palestinians against the move. A ninth appeal was accepted, and the land covered by this appeal was consequently removed from Efrat’s jurisdiction.

Barack Obama and George Mitchell need to make a serious effort to stop this. Opposition to settlements has long been official United States policy, but the overwhelming tendency has been for U.S. administrations to turn a blind eye to settlement expansion. The expansion itself is an impediment to peace, and American unwillingness to stand behind our own policy commitments is devastating to our credibility in the region.

Incidentally, my understanding is that a dunam is equal to a square meter, meaning that we’re talking about around 18,300 square feet.

Israel’s Irrealism on Settlements

This paragraph from a Jerusalem Post editorial on US-Israeli relations in the Obama years highlights the extent to which Israel desperately needs a U.S. administration that’s willing to tell it some stuff it doesn’t want to hear:

There are other issues that may cause stress in the US-Israel relationship. Settlements, always a sore point, take on greater importance when American diplomats believe a diplomatic breakthrough with the Palestinians is achievable. There is little support in Israel today for relinquishing control of the West Bank, given its bitter experience after removing all soldiers and settlers from Gaza. Israelis no longer believe that territorial concessions on their part will bring peace with the Palestinians. Most believe that the real issue blocking “peace” with Hamas and its allies is Israel’s existence, not its settlements. With Hamas in firm control of Gaza and growing in strength on the West Bank, it stretches credulity to believe that the Israeli public can be persuaded to entrust its security to agreements signed with Palestinian leaders who can’t or won’t honor commitments.

Obviously, there’s a wide range of disagreement about how central the continued existence and expansion of Israel’s settlements are to preventing the emergence of peace. I would say they’re quite central. The Post, most Israelis, Jon Chait, and others disagree. But what the Post doesn’t have here is any kind of actual reason why Israel should continue expanding settlements or why it would be smart for Israel to resist U.S. pressure to halt their expansion. Whether or not Israel can or should “entrust its security to agreements signed with Palestinian leaders” it’s certainly not the case that Israel can trust its security to the settlements; they don’t help. And, again, whether or not the settlements are the crucial issue in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, they’re definitely an issue. And they’re a diplomatic issue for Israel in its relationship with relatively friendly regional states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey and in world public opinion more generally. And they’re expensive! And, as the editorial notes, a perennial source of friction with the United States. A smart Israeli government would halt settlement activity and expansion and perhaps even begin to dismantle some settlements. But it’s clear that that’s not going to happen if the logic of Israeli politics and policy just plays out autonomously so the United States needs to step in with some firm pressure.

Friedman: We Need State-Building in the West Bank

Thomas Friedman writes about the idea that building the possibility of an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires substantial capacity-building on the Palestinian side:

That said, once Obama is able to think afresh about the Middle East, he will find that the Bush team has left an interesting legacy here: 140,000 U.S. soldiers doing nation-building in Iraq and one U.S. soldier — actually a three-star U.S. Army general — doing nation-building in the West Bank. We need a better balance. [...]

Palestinians need the same chance. You can’t have a two-state solution without two states, and today the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which still supports a two-state deal, doesn’t have the institutions of a state, particularly an effective police force. Therefore, my hope is that Obama will focus not only on peace plans from the top down, but also on institution-building from the bottom up. The best way to isolate Hamas in Gaza is to build the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank into a decent government with steadily expanding control over its territory.

He goes on to describe a promising initiative in this regard that’s already under way. And it certainly sounds like a good idea to me. But on another level, this goes back to the centrality of the Israeli settlements to the situation. Israel doesn’t just let its citizens wander out into Palestinian land and build houses. It also takes action to protect them. That means a series of security barriers, checkpoints, special no-Arabs-allowed roads, and other restrictions on Palestinian movement. Those are not only inconvenient for ordinary Palestinians and offensive to their dignity, they make it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to exercise effective authority over its territory.

And recall the issue I raised in my “cycle of excuses” post. One needs to recall that the lack of Palestinian Authority efficacy is not just a result of settlement activity, but of a deliberate U.S.-backed Israeli strategy of degrading Palestinian Authority institutional efficacy back in the “isolate Arafat” period. Back then, the U.S. endorsed the view that Israel couldn’t negotiate a final settlement deal until it had finished destroying Fatah’s security organs. Now we’re in danger of endorsing the view that Israel can’t negotiate a deal until we build them back up again. The truth is that we need to move on all these fronts. We need to freeze settlement activity. We need to start working on building Palestinian capabilities. And we need to move forward on finding again on top-down political agreement.

Settlement Freeze

In the very early days of the Bush administration, George Mitchell was sent to the Holy Land to do a report on the Second Intifada. The resulting document contained ideas that, had Bush actually followed them, could conceivably have done a ton of good. One of the things on Mitchell’s agenda was a freeze of all settlement activity:

Settlements: The GOI also has a responsibility to help rebuild confidence. A cessation of Palestinian-Israeli violence will be particularly hard to sustain unless the GOI freezes all settlement construction activity. Settlement activities must not be allowed to undermine the restoration of calm and the resumption of negotiations.

On each of our two visits to the region, there were Israeli announcements regarding expansion of settlements, and it was almost always the first issue raised by Palestinians with whom we met. The GOI describes its policy as prohibiting new settlements but permitting expansion of existing settlements to accommodate “natural growth.” Palestinians contend that there is no distinction between “new” and “expanded” settlements; and that, except for a brief freeze during the tenure of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, there has been a continuing, aggressive effort by Israel to increase the number and size of settlements.

This is something I’ve written about several times in the past couple of weeks. And I think that absolutely the biggest thing President Obama could do to move the situation in a constructive direction would be serious public and private pressure on Israel for a total freeze on settlement activity. Appointing Mitchell to be his envoy to the region indicates some understanding of the importance of this issue. But as Mitchell’s report makes clear, settlement expansion has continued in the past despite nominal US opposition. Getting the job done will require something more robust.

The Dissonance

Jeffrey Goldberg had a piece on Hamas in yesterday’s New York Times that Noam Scheiber hailed as “hands down the best thing I’ve read since the Gaza conflict started.” Jon Chait deemed it “fantastic” and recommended this conclusion especially:

The only small chance for peace today is the same chance that existed before the Gaza invasion: The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan.

I wasn’t that big a fan of the piece, analytically, though it certainly is admirably witty. But be that as it may, it would certainly be desirable to see the more practical crew running Fatah having more support and control over the situation. But Israel’s attacks on Gaza are causing the reverse to happen just as the war in Lebanon 30 months ago had that effect. And, indeed, how Israel’s settlement expansions and growing network of roadblocks and special highways crossing the West Bank are weakening Fatah and the forces of Palestinian moderation. And of course recall that it was deliberate Israeli—and American—policy to weaken Fatah for years after the collapse of the Camp David talks. This “help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah” strategy is fine but it needs to be backed up by real steps. And the United States probably needs to take the lead since the Israeli political dynamic has become myopically focused on short-term issues. A president willing to demand a real freeze on settlement activity would be a great first step.

The Trouble With Politeness

Lurking amidst a fairly dull article about regional strategy in the Middle East, Richard Haass and Martin Indyk offer a provocative proposal:

When it comes to settlement activity, the Olmert government reduced new construction beyond the security barrier, but it also gave permission for the construction of thousands of new housing units inside existing settlement blocs and in greater Jerusalem, evoking an outcry from the Palestinians and Arab leaders. Obama will need to seek an understanding with the next Israeli prime minister that all settlement activity will be frozen for a certain time period (say, six to 12 months) while negotiators finalize the borders of a Palestinian state. Once an agreement on borders is reached, settlement activity could resume, but only in the agreed settlement blocs that would be formally annexed to Israel after the other final-status issues have been resolved.

I think there are two problems with the way they put this. One is that as Gershom Gorenberg’s Foreign Policy article on the settlements makes clear, it’s quite politically difficult for Israeli politicians to take on the settler lobby. So to merely “seek an understanding” might well be to lead to the understanding not being achieved. To be maximally effective, I think the United States need to commit itself publicly to this goal as well as raising it privately. Israelis need to understand that their leaders are under pressure from their country’s most important ally and that ordinary Israelis need to choose between the settlers and the United States. Second, a big part of why the U.S. needs to be involved in Israel-Palestine issues is the role the conflict plays in driving perceptions of America in large swathes of the world. So to get the maximum effect out of a serious drive for a freeze on new construction within settlements, we need to be seen as exercising pressure not just pleading behind-the-scenes.

Practical politics, I understand, pushes in the other direction. Lots of Americans who have no particular brief for the settlers are nevertheless very touchy about Israel being subjected to any kind of strong criticism and are very wedded to a narrative in which the failure of Oslo rests 100 percent with the Palestinians. Under the circumstances, speaking bluntly about the settlements is politically risky. But it’s much more likely to work, and much more likely to advance American interests.

Thus far most discussion of the Obama administration’s approach to the Middle East has tended to focus on personalities—Ross vs. Kurtzer in particular—but at the end of the day no envoy can make up for the fact that progress requires political courage.

Strange Oversight

Aaron David Miller is a notorious anti-semite veteran of US policy toward the Israeli-Arab conflict, with over 25 years of service in the field. And he says:

In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can’t recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity—including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions—does to the peacemaking process. There is a need to impose some accountability.

Todd Gitlin writely calls this “shocking.” Kevin Drum says “It’s sort of hard to imagine an equally important topic on the Palestinian side never even being raised with its top leadership.” And indeed it is. But of course to be clear, even-handed failure to bring up hugely important topics wouldn’t be any good either. Miller’s whole article deserves to be widely read.

Israel’s Test

It’s good news that Israel is evacuating an illegal (under Israeli law) settlement in Hebron, but as Moran Banai points out commitment to the rule of law requires Israel to act swiftly to dismantle all illegal settlements.

A big part of the issue here, of course, is that many if not all of the “legal” settlements are going to need to go at some point. And nobody on the Palestinian side is going to have any confidence that Israel will ever do that as long as the government continues to not enforce even its own laws against settlement expansion and outpost building.