Israeli settlements

For decades, the US kept calling Israel’s settlements in the West Bank illegal while doing absolutely nothing to stop them and, arguably, stopping others from intervening. The rhetoric appears to have finally caught up with the actions. From a practical perspective, the change is meaningless. The peace process has been dead for the past 20 years — far-right Israeli PMs Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu made it brutally clear during their tenures that Israel intends to eventually annex its West Bank settlements by force. For background, Israel first took control of the West Bank from Jordan as a result of the War of 1967. Since then, it has maintained military control over the territory. Although Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, says “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”, Israel began building illegal settlements in the region almost immediately.

In 1978, US President Jimmy Carter issued a memo calling the settlements “inconsistent with international law”. This memo has been official US policy since then. Even administrations that opposed it did not formally change it until Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially repudiated it. He reasoned that calling the settlements inconsistent with international law has not brought peace and that because there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, it is unnecessary. But no one in their right mind thought that declaring the settlements “illegal” would magically get rid of them and bring peace, or that there would be an internationally imposed settlement. The point always was that the settlements are a major barrier to peace. Israeli security around the settlements cuts off Palestinian communities and makes economic development impossible for them. Meanwhile, the settlers, many of whom are now quite influential, oppose any peace deal that would create a viable Palestinian state because this would force them to leave their illegally-occupied properties. 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2019.

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