BARKAN, West Bank — Micha Drori is living the Israeli dream: a house, a yard, a wife, and three kids. The 42-year-old businessman has found an affordable alternative to Israel’s booming real estate market in a quiet community he loves, with a commute of less than half an hour to his job near Tel Aviv.
What’s the catch? He’s a West Bank settler.
The fate of Jewish settlements took center stage this week with the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state. In contrast to the prevailing image of settlers as gun-toting religious zealots, the majority are in fact middle-of-the-road pragmatists seeking quality of life. Many shun the settler ideology and say they will uproot quietly, if needed, for the sake of peace.
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I'm sorry, but I'm just not believing what the AP is pimping here. Sorry. It's Israel's side of the story.
‘‘We will not sit here and burn tires if the government will tell us to leave. We will just leave,’’ Drori said. ‘‘When the proper solution will be found I don’t believe that something will stop it like settlements. Houses can be moved . . . I don’t think the settlements are a problem.’’
And houses can be bulldozed.
For the Palestinians, though, the settlements are a huge problem....
And not just them. Try the whole world, more or less.
For five years, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to engage in talks while settlement construction continued. As talks finally got underway this week, the Palestinians threatened to walk away again after Israel announced plans to build 3,000 new apartments.
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Also see: Settling on This Post
It's Israel's way of saying they really don't want a peace, they want a piece. All this talk and meeting simply gives them cover and improves their image while they resort to the same behavior time after time.
In all, Israel has built dozens of settlements since 1967 that are now home to about 550,000 Israelis. Settlements dot the West Bank, the heartland of a future Palestine, and ring East Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ hoped-for capital, making it ever more difficult to partition the land between two states.
That map on the right was back in 2005. That means there is even less green now. I don't see how you create a two-state solution, even with land swaps.
While religious Jews, attracted to the West Bank because of its biblical significance, pioneered the settler movement four decades ago, the settlements today have expanded into a more accurate reflection of Israeli society. The profile of a settler can vary from a suburban Jerusalemite to a nonpartisan, ultra-Orthodox seminary student to a commuting high-tech executive to a socialist farmer in the Jordan Valley.
I suppose that is somehow a good thing. Makes you wonder what is the difference between the radical and the moderate seeing as they are both squatting on Palestinian land.
Drori, for instance, is secular and never imagined living outside central Israel. But he has found a home in Barkan, an upscale settlement of nearly 400 families with a vibrant community center. From his backyard Drori has a clear view of the Mediterranean coast.
‘‘The air is nice, the weather is good, the view is wonderful. I think this is most of the reason that people come here,’’ he said.Meanwhile, next door, Palestinians are thirsting for water.
This really has the feel of an Israeli public relations pitch, doesn't it?
About a third of all West Bank settlers could be defined as ‘‘ideological,’’ according to Yariv Oppenheimer, director of the antisettlement watchdog group Peace Now. He said these settlers, the driving force behind the settlement enterprise, are politically active and tend to live in the more outlying areas, often closer to Palestinian villages and ancient Jewish religious sites.
And tend to commit terrorism that is little discussed.
The rest are ‘‘economic’’ settlers who take advantage of the benefits available to live a higher quality of life than they could have afforded in Israel proper.
In other word, it is GOVERNMENT POLICY to ENCOURAGE SETTLEMENT! So let's not kid ourselves anymore with stoo-pid Kerry conferences and meaningless press announcements about peace.
While these settlers tend to still hold hawkish political positions, they are not as hard-core over territorial compromise.
Now we get into the semantic nitpicking!
Many of the economic settlers would evacuate quietly in return for fair compensation, but likely won’t have to because they are within the major blocs Israel would probably keep in a land-swap deal.
They have to be paid to leave, $o it is not quiet at all.
Related: Israel Intends to Keep All Settlements
But NO PRECONDITIONS says Nutenyahoo!
Even if the current talks can reach a similar understanding, most experts believe that more than 100,000 settlers in outlying communities would have to be evacuated. It won’t be easy. Settlers have vowed to put up more of a fight under any West Bank withdrawal than they did to the 2005 evacuation of 9,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, said distinctions between settlers and their various motivations could be taken into consideration during negotiations. Regardless, she said they were all part of the problem.
That's right.
‘‘They are all illegal and people will find any rationalization to explain why they are there,’’ she said....
Even if they have to distort history and cry Holocaust™at every opportunity.
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Related: West Bank settlers, by the numbers
