The Settlements Fallacy

Tom Wilson for Mosaic Magazine

Israeli settlements do not make peace less likely, nor is there any logical reason why they should. In many cases, the very opposite is true

At the beginning of last week the French President Francois Hollande was in Ramallah and, as is customary, he was calling on Israel to halt settlement building, “for the sake of peace and to reach a deal”. In doing so the French President was giving voice to the Settlements Fallacy.

Of course, it would be unfair to single out the French government as being uniquely misguided on this subject; which Western country doesn’t essentially take this line?

That, however, doesn’t change the fact that it is quite mistaken to assert causality between an increase in settlements and a decline in the prospects for peace.

Experience thus far certainly suggests that settlements do not make peace less likely, nor is there any logical reason why they should. In actual fact, those places that Israel has removed its civilians from, are today some of the most lawless, radicalised and dangerous areas in the region.

Presently within the West Bank, while Jewish communities sit on less than two percent of the territory, Jews constitute around twenty percent of the population there. Many of these people were born and raised in the communities they live in, they are second and third generation West Bank Jews.

In other words, this group, the so called settlers, are a well-established ethnic community, a reality that is not going anywhere, much like the Arab-Israeli citizens living within the rest of Israel.

For nineteen short years, during the Jordanian occupation 1948-1967, the West Bank was ethnically cleansed of Jews. Prior to that, there were ancient and flourishing Jewish communities throughout the West Bank, most prominently alongside the religious sites in Hebron and in the Jewish villages south of Bethlehem.

There were Jews in the West Bank continuously before the Jordanian occupation and there have been ever since.

What reasonable person could seriously advocate returning this area to its Judenrein status during the brief Jordanian occupation? The very fact that this is what the Palestinians have been demanding hardly speaks of an attitude towards coexistence and reconciliation.

Just as the Palestinian leadership refuses to officially recognise the Jewish State, if Palestinians are unable to countenance living alongside Jews as neighbours then what does this say of their willingness to end hostilities with the Israelis?

By encouraging Palestinians in their desires to see Jews exiled from settlement communities, the international community radicalises and emboldens Palestinian hopes of successfully waging a war for driving out all Jews and totally defeating Israel. In those places that Settlements have been uprooted the Palestinians have increased their support for hardline groups and Islamic extremists have taken control.

The most obvious example is Gaza. There, in August 2005, the Israeli government evicted nine thousand Israelis and pulled out entirely with the intention that this area would serve as the first step towards full Palestinian independence.

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