Settlements and obstacles to peace

Israel's unabated construction of illegal settlements in the occupied territories of Palestine is the main obstacle to the implementation of the two-state solution. International criticism is ignored in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Since the international community will not take punitive action against Israel, Israel has the green light for new settlements.

Jewish settlements in Palestine proved useful in the past. The Jews eventually got their state, but not all they wanted. Judea and Samaria (in the West Bank) are also part of the "promised land". New settlements have a reason, a purpose.

Towards the end of the 19th century only about 24,000 Jews lived in Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, although the empire had a Jewish population of about half a million. In 1882 the Zionist movement sent the first wave of Jewish settlers from Europe to Palestine. The history of Jewish settlements had begun and has never stopped since. Conflicts and bloody confrontations with the local population followed.

In 1896 Theodor Herzl, a jurist and journalist, published his book The Jewish State. Herzl was convinced that his dream of a Jewish state in "the promised land" would become a reality. He wrote: "When many Jews cooperate simultaneously, it is perfectly reasonable, and the realisation of the plan offers no difficulties worth mentioning."

In his book, Herzl outlines in detail how to organise, finance and administer the future state. To the astonishment of the reader, the local people who lived in that land, Arab Palestinians, are never mentioned in the Jewish State, as if Palestine were a vacant stretch of land waiting to be populated and developed. What would be the fate of these people? What Herzl, president of the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland (1897), leaves in the dark is brought to light by English Zionist Israel Zangwill. The Arabs should be expelled ("transferred") from their homeland:

"We cannot allow the Arabs to block so valuable a piece of historic reconstruction. And therefore we must gently persuade them to 'trek'. After all, they have all Arabia with its million square miles. There is no particular reason for the Arabs to cling to these few kilometres. 'To fold their tents' and 'silently steal away' is their proverbial habit: let them exemplify it now." (Nur Masalha, "Expulsion of the Palestinians, 1882-1948"; Institute of Palestine Studies, 1992)

There is a strong and growing campaign in Israel calling for the annexation of "Judea and Samaria". Religious nationalism is hard to beat. As David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, said, "What's important is not what the nations say, but what the Jews do."

Manfred Liebig

Freiburg, Germany