About time

The world’s richest nations, the Group of Eight, have added their voices to the international pressure on Israel to end its illegal settlement construction in the West Bank and open the crossings to Gaza so the impoverished Palestinian enclave can begin to rebuild after Israel’s devastating onslaught earlier this year.

With the Arab League also adding its voice, there is now solid international consensus that Israeli settlement construction in occupied territory is a primary obstacle to progress towards a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

It’s about time. For too long the world, primarily the West, stepped gingerly around Israeli and Jewish sensitivities.

A spade needs to be called a spade. Israeli settlements in occupied territories are a clear and indisputable attempt at creating an unalterable reality there. It is, in other words, simply a way for Israel to annex land acquired by war, something clearly illegal under international law.

And international law has to be the framework within which the international community judges each party’s responsibility during, preceding and after negotiations.

And while it is good to see international consensus on the issue, a word of warning: Israel is attempting to lure the international community into the same trap it lured the PLO in Oslo. In the guise of the apparently conciliatory stance of being willing to negotiate the settlement issue, Israel is actually trying to make the international community legitimise these settlements.

That must not happen. The framework must remain international law. All settlements in occupied territory and all 500,000 settlers are illegal. From that there can be no divergence. The settlements are and always were the biggest obstacle to a two-state solution.

Settlement construction is to blame for the outbreak of violence in the past. And if the settlement project does not immediately begin to be rolled back, settlements will be to blame for future outbreaks of violence.

There are no ifs and buts. And the practical and political problems any Israeli government will face in starting to dismantle the settlements should not dissuade the international community from standing firm. It is a problem of Israel’s own making.

In any case, as the Camp David agreement and the Gaza withdrawal showed, Israel can remove settlements when it wants.

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