Last week, the Israeli government approved the construction of 486 new housing units in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The decision quickly elicited a characteristic response: the U.S. State Department announced that it was “deeply concerned,” while Nicolay Mladenov, the UN “special coordinator for the Middle East peace process” condemned settlement building as the main impediment to resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. None of these statements, writes Jonathan Tobin, is connected to reality:
[T]he one thing we can definitively say about the [the new homes] is that their construction will have zero impact on the prospects of revived negotiations with the Palestinians or on a successful outcome of such talks if they ever resume. . . .
[A]lmost all of these new housing units are in places that even the Obama administration has stated would remain part of Israel in the event of a successful peace negotiation. . . . [Furthermore], the language used to describe these developments is part of the problem. Nobody would call a new apartment building in an existing neighborhood in the United States a new town, but that’s essentially what is being done every time the construction of a house anywhere in Jerusalem or the West Bank (provided it is a house that Jews live in) is called a new settlement. . . .
Of course, to Israel’s critics and foes, the semantics of settlements and even legal questions about land aren’t significant. . . . Focusing on the settlements is the tactic the Palestinians have [deployed] since the Oslo Accords to excuse their strategy of avoiding peace. It’s a shame the U.S. government, the UN, and liberal publications like the Times echo their talking points.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/2139376-what-israeli-