Israeli settlements are not the main obstacle to peace and their prospective
limited expansion does not preclude the eventual emergence of a Palestinian
state, according to a Washington Post editorial published on
Wednesday.
In “Overheated rhetoric on Israeli settlements,” the paper’s
editors denounced as “counterproductive” the international community’s incessant
criticism of Israeli plans to build thousands of housing units across the Green
Line, primarily in Jerusalem, as doing so “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.”
But the
paper’s editorial board came out against any unilateral action, whether on the
part of Israel or the Palestinians, which “complicate[s] the negotiations that
are the only realistic route to a Middle East peace.”
With respect to
settlement construction in general, the Washington Post’s editors highlighted
the fact that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had adopted the policy of his
predecessors by “limit[ing] building [in settlements] almost entirely to areas
that both sides expect Israel to annex through territorial swaps in an eventual
settlement.”
The paper, citing a study by the S. Daniel Abraham Center
for Middle East Peace, said this will enable 80 percent of Israeli settlers to
be incorporated into Green Line Israel as part of a peace deal through agreed
upon land swaps approximating 4% of the West Bank – or less than the 5% proposed
by US president Bill Clinton 12 years ago.
With respect to plans to build
in E1 in particular, the Washington Post attributed Israel’s motivation to the
desire to “prevent Ma’aleh Adumim – which will almost certainly be annexed to
Israel in any peace deal – from being isolated”; which “is the same reason the
Palestinians claim that Israeli annexation of the land would cut off their
would-be capital in east Jerusalem from the West Bank.”
Accordingly, the
paper believes that the status of E1 “is a difficult issue that should be
settled at the negotiating table, not by fiat,” and that it is “hardly the
‘almost fatal blow’ to a two-state solution that UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon described.”
The editorial also emphasizes the hypocrisy of such
rhetoric at the same time the Security Council is doing nothing to halt the
slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in Syria.