FACT
Today, the Palestinian leadership propagates the myth that settlements are an obstacle to peace negotiations, and that all settlement construction must cease before negotiations can resume. This has never been true in the history of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. Israel captured and settled Sinai and did not agree to remove settlements there in advance of negotiations with Egypt. After Egypt agreed to a peace treaty, Israel evacuated the Settlers from Sinai. Israel did not have to change its policies regarding settlements to achieve peace with Jordan. Once King Hussein agreed to normalize relations, however, Israel made territorial and other concessions in exchange for peace.
When Israel and the Palestinians began their secret talks in Oslo, the PLO did so without first demanding a settlement freeze. The ensuing Oslo peace process was also conducted without a settlement freeze. In fact, the Palestinians continued to negotiate through 2008 without ever making a freeze a condition of talks.
So what do the Palestinians hope to accomplish by demanding that Israel freeze all construction not only in the West Bank, but also in their capital, Jerusalem?
Apparently they still hold out hope that the United States and the international community will force Israel to capitulate to all their demands without requiring them to end the conflict with Israel and to agree to a compromise that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state that incorporates less than 100 percent of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The future of Jewish communities in the West Bank is a key issue for Israel and the Palestinians. Because of its sensitivity, it is considered a “final-status issue,” meaning that it needs to be resolved at the end of negotiations not in advance of them.
Moreover, just as the evacuation of Gaza served as a demonstration that it is a myth to suggest that settlements and “occupation” are the obstacle to peace, there is also a historical precedent that disproves the Obama administration’s notation that a settlement freeze will encourage Palestinians to negotiate peace. During the Camp David peace process, Menachem Begin agreed to a three-month settlement freeze in response to Jimmy Carter’s Obama-like belief that settlements were the obstacle to resolving the Palestinian issue. Like Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat also maligned the Israeli concession and the Palestinians refused to discuss Begin’s proposal for autonomy. It was a catastrophic mistake.
Had the Palestinians accepted autonomy, there is little doubt they would have a state today. In addition, at the time of Camp David, only about 12,000 Jews lived in the West Bank. Because of their intransigence in the last three decades, they have remained stateless while the Jewish population has grown to nearly 300,000.
This unwillingness of the Palestinian Authority to restart negotiations because of settlement construction represents a new tactic to avoid making the tough decisions and sacrifices that will come with any final-status agreement. Some Palestinians believe time is on their side and that their population growth will eventually overwhelm Israel. So far, however, demography has worked against them as the Jewish settler population has grown and, by their own admission, made it more difficult to create a state in all the territory they claim. This situation will only grow worse if Abbas does not take advantage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of a 10-month freeze on settlement construction.
“I hope that this decision will help launch meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said.352
By launching this unprecedented moratorium on settlement construction, Israel has removed the Palestinians’ latest excuse for avoiding negotiations. It would be yet another, in a long record of squandered opportunities if Abbas did not immediately return to the table and negotiate a lasting and equitable peace on behalf of his people.
