Israeli settlements in territory they captured in the 1967 war are intended to make it politically impossible for any Israeli government to relinquish that territory. There isn’t any other purpose to building these illegal settlements. So, I don’t want to hear a bunch of whining from Netanyahu about how a settlement freeze should be part of final status negotiations. Illegal settlements are a major source of danger for American citizens and property because our acquiescence in and subsidization of the settlement activity is the single biggest grievance Muslims have with American foreign policy. We are paying Israel to paint a bullseye on the back of every American city. Simply monitoring the resulting terrorist activity costs us billions of dollars and puts strains on our civil liberties. It would be hard to overestimate the cost to American taxpayers of illegal Israeli settlement activity. There is no single policy or action anywhere in the world that is more directly endangering and costly than Israeli’s settlements. Anyone that argues otherwise is a liar.
Israel would have to pay us more than a trillion dollars to compensate us for the true cost of their illegal settlements. And no amount of money can compensate us for the lives that have been lost and the damage that has been done to our civil liberties as a direct result of our unwillingness to force a stop to settlement activity.
We have no incentive to tolerate any growth (natural, or otherwise) of illegal Israeli settlements. We should consider them the equivalent of handing over a weapon of mass destruction to our sworn enemies. They are not a bargaining chip. They are a danger that needs to be eradicated. I don’t care one whit whether the Bush administration had an informal agreement with Ariel Sharon that he could keep certain settlements. If Bush agreed that Hamas could have a nuclear bomb, that agreement would not be respected by the Obama administration. And any agreement that Israel can keep settlements is the equivalent of handing a nuclear bomb to Hamas. It places us is the exact same position of taking on needless and senseless risk for no good purpose.
There is only one thing that Israel needs and deserves. That is peace and recognition within their U.N. approved pre-1967 borders. They can have that peace and recognition tomorrow if they are only willing to accept it. It is our job to make it politically possible for Israel to accept it. And that can only be done by the credible threat of abandonment. The most pro-Israeli position possible is the position that Israel must be forced out of the settlements completely. If Israel were to do that, no one would ever complain again if they needed to use force to protect themselves. America would assure their security in perpetuity. The rest of the world would come to their defense just as surely as they came to Kuwait’s defense. But, until then, Israel’s settlements cost America too dearly for them to be tolerated.
Very well put…who’s reading and listening to this essential wisdom ?
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from Dershowitz
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."And that can only be done by the credible threat of abandonment.
That’s true, but how could a credible threat be created? For it to be credible, there would have to be a consensus among a majority of Americans that Israel should be abandoned if it does not change. What coalition might come together to form such a majority? The coalition of people who would be unwilling to cut off aid to Israel is already far larger than the non-coalition of people who would be willing to really zero out the funding and withdraw the implicit security umbrella. That leaves the silent majority, which doesn’t know the details of the situation and never will, meaning it can be easily swayed by fear and guilt and lingering outrage over various events in the past.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how America’s current approach gets changed – or gets changed before Israel itself changes course due to pressures from other quarters.
Obama has the power of the pen in his hands to hold or delay Israel’s yearly stipend of 3 billion plus free grants of military equipment. If Obama has the fortitude, it could be the best weapon available.
Via our support and aid to Israel, our values have been trashed to the point where we are seen as culpable for every Israeli war crime during the past two decades.
I agree with you completely, but if Obama turned off the financial juice, AIPAC would go ballistic and the American Congress as well as the American Executive would have a nervous breakdown. S..t walks and money talks and US politicos are addicted to money for electoral campaigns. Hence, when Israel cracks the whip, America jumps.
Crazy is it not?
Don’t disagree with you at all on Congress and AIPAC’s hold. But the Executive is responsible for carrying out legislation, and at that point, Congress takes a back seat. Obama could hold up the aid package.
I worry about Israeli retaliation. We’ve found a handful of their operatives, how many more have we missed?
You’re absolutely right, of course. All it would take is to quit writing checks. You evidently feel that proposing this is not a waste of breath, unlike speaking of changing the 2-party hegemony in the US. And yet the prospect of the US pulling Israel off the cash nipple is as likely as enabling third parties at home. Both would require revolutionary mindsets.
Settlements will have to be abandoned a lot of them. The Israelis need to face facts only the return of Palestinian land to the Palestinians will bring legitimacy to any peace process.
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In a move that will triple the size of its industrial park, the West Bank city of Ariel has received final approval to construct 27 new factories, city Mayor Ron Nachman told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The park itself was first approved in 1998 and already has some 12 factories on its site, according to Nachman. The new factories will be constructed on land that had already been zoned for the park, which is located some 17 kilometers over the Green Line and across the highway (Route 5) from the Barkan Industrial Park.
Remember the Palestinian terror originating in Qalqilya?Construction will take 15 months to complete, at which point the new factories, mostly for steel, aluminum, plastic and metal companies, will contribute between 1,500 to 2,000 new jobs to the area, Nachman said.
He added that approval for the project had been given to him by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, but the ministry had no comment on the matter. Neither did the Prime Minister’s Office nor the Defense Ministry.
Peace Now, the non-governmental organization which monitors settlement activity, attacked the move. But Nachman defended the move by stating that this park employs both Jews and Palestinians.
“I want to ask how many jobs Peace Now has created for the Palestinians?” he asked and then answered his own question. “One big zero, while I, the mayor of Ariel, I have created jobs for both Jews and Palestinians, and this is the real and true meaning of co-existence.”
Separation wall in Qalqilya … co-existence?
Ariel settlement was established in 1978 … as a gift to Zionists and compensate the peace deal with Egypt. Providing economic incentives to Fatah Palestinians in the West Bank is Netanyahu’s peace proposal.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."damn few it seems, but it, the conflict, continues to keep the rich and powerful well rewarded.
l suspect this is part of one of tony blair’s iniatives that was unveiled just over 2 years ago.
he just was awarded the $1m Dan David prize. which specifically mentioned his industrial park project in jenin.
he’s been a busy
poodlebrit since leaving downing street.l wonder if he took that cushy position with the carlyle group that was being bandied about?…keeping in touch with all his pals…wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
When it comes to Palestine, Booman is about 30 years behind the curve. Once upon a time, in the latter half of the 1970s, so-called settlements might indeed have become a critical issue, had they been treated as such. That time is long gone. This is what “Palestine” now looks like. Arguing about “settlements” and “1967 borders” in 2009 is completely disingenuous.
Damn….says it all.
BUT throughout the 90’s the Zionist argument was that what can be built can be abandoned. So now’s the time.
Yep, that’s about thesize of it. The one-state solution is the only viable one. The question is when the Israelis come to terms with this.
What Guthman is referring to is the Israeli policy of ‘creating facts on the ground’ i.e. making a Palestinian state impossible by rendering it logistically and economically impractical. I heard a representative of the Netanyahu government say on the radio that expansion of settlements on the West Bank is moral because ‘children will want to live near their parents’. The policy of expropriation is designed to be more tolerable to American and European public opinion by being spread over a century or two.
I would add that Americans could really use that trillion dollars as they are even now being warned the safety-net they’ve been counting on is bankrupt.
Yet the Defense budget is sacrosanct and unassailable.
The US government forms alliances which the taxpayer is called upon to enforce worldwide. Every Administration adds to our encumberances and calls it their “legacy”.
Through the bad administration of foreign policy, whether deliberate or dumbskullery, the contractors who make up what we call the DOD reap rewards from the sale of the weapons of destrution, mass and otherwise, along with all the trappings of twenty-first century warfare. Profits, pallets of hundreds, it’s greed gone to Glory.
You know what that smell is in a KBR built head? It’s Capitalism baby.
And because this began as a discussion about Israel’s 1967 war, whenever I think of that war I think about an incident which struck home. Home port as it were. I remember an American vessel attacked by Israel at war. Thirty-four American dead. The USS Libery eventually limped home and was berthed not five miles from where I sit, and of all the questions about that “incident” that have not met up with their true answers I must add my own. “Why does nobody ever talk about it?”.
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USS Liberty comments @BooMan Tribune
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."For the first time in a long time I am hopeful.
The ONE person in the world that truly understands the problem best, is our president, and we should support him.
GREAT DIARY.
UPDATES: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/the-siege-of-gaza-has-been-broken/
“subsidization of the settlement activity is the single biggest grievance Muslims have with American foreign policy.”
Really??? Doesn’t have anything at all to do with the cold-blooded murder of over a million Muslims in Iraq, which, of course, Israel strongly warned against??? Has nothing to do with the relentless bombings of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Nothing to do with the numerous anti-Muslim measures passed since 9/11??? Sorry, but that is a blatant lie, and obvious, indisputable anti-semitism. The settlements are a difficult issue, but they have absolutely nothing to do with American security issues. Not in any way, shape or form.
Sorry folks, but if Israel disappeared off the face of the earth, the Muslims would still hate the US. What we’ve done in Iraq and other places in the Muslim world is going to cause hatred of us for a long time to come. Has nothing to do with Israel.
The major threat to American security comes from the Christians who control the Democratic and Republican parties, and who insist on constantly attacking Muslim countries. The thing to do is to stop blaming Israel and acknowledge that it is the US (and primarily the Christians) who are the problem.
“which, of course, Israel strongly warned against???“
Huh?!!!! Israel warned against the aggression on Iraq?! Was that in some alternate universe that you live in? Israel was, in fact, all for the aggression on Iraq, and has in fact participated in it in a number of ways. Israel was also the only country in the world in which the majority of citizens were not against the invasion.
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Sharon then launched a wild attack on bush accusing him of being neville chamberlain: the logic being that if arafat was hitler then, by definition, bush must be chamberlain, “Don’t repeat the terrible mistake of 1938 when the enlightened democracies of Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a convenient temporary solution. Do not try to placate the Arabs at our expense …
U.S.-Israeli “coöperation” on Iraq
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
At it again?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."