JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Debating the settlements

By Ami Eden · June 29, 2009

The Los Angeles Times published point-counterpoint op-eds on settlements.

First, Yisrael Medad, head of information resources at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem and resident of the West Bank town of Shiloh, offered up a defense of the settlements:

No one, including a president of the United States of America, can presume to tell me, a Jew, that I cannot live in the area of my national homeland. That's one of the main reasons my wife and I chose in 1981 to move to Shiloh, a so-called settlement less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem. ...

I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology.

Suppose someone suggested that Palestinian villages and towns in pre-1967 Israel were to be called "settlements" and that, to achieve a true peace, Arabs should be removed from their homes. Of course, separation or transfer of Arabs is intolerable, but why is it quite acceptable to demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area? Do not Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in the state of Israel? ...

Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch supplied a sharp condemnation of settlements:

The debate over Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is often framed in terms of whether they should be "frozen" or allowed to grow "naturally." But that is akin to asking whether a thief should be allowed merely to keep his ill-gotten gains or steal some more. It misses the most fundamental point: Under international law, all settlements on occupied territory are unlawful. And there is only one remedy: Israel should dismantle them, relocate the settlers within its recognized 1967 borders and compensate Palestinians for the losses the settlements have caused. ...

Removing the settlements is mandated by the laws of the Geneva Convention, which state that military occupations are to be a temporaryThe economic and social cost of Israeli settlements to the Palestinian population, stemming in part from Israel's need to protect them, are enormous. The 634 (at last count) roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints erected to control the movement of lawful residents of the territory make travel an ordeal. Sometimes even getting to work, school or the home of a relative is impossible for Palestinians. Every day, they must wait in line for hours to show their IDs, and some days they are randomly rerouted, told to go home or, worse, detained for questioning....

In addition to the op-eds, the L.A. Times supplied a guide to settlements by Gershom Gorenberg, a prominent critic of Israeli expansion in the territories. And The Jerusalem Post also has put together a guide.