For all those settlements you say cannot be frozen or dismantled, it is simple, include them in Palestine. If they do not like being in Palestine, they will know what to do, they will be just a few miles from a country they do like.

Excellent post, Bernard.

Agree with Tintin and Brad that this is an excellent post. Such a refreshing contrast from the tripe peddled by Rosenberg in the name of "peace," the insidious provocations of the Mondoweiss crew, and the moralizing of Cobban.

It seems pretty clear to me that Obama's call for a total settlement freeze was intended to "reset" the situation and regain some credibility for the US as an honest broker after the debacle of the Bush years. On the political side, the call for a freeze would benefit the PA and Abbas whose legitimacy was severely undermined by continuing negotiations while settlements continue - fostering his image (deserved?) as an ineffectual leader. Perhaps the Obama team also believed it was placing the Netanyahu government in a lose-lose scenario. Either agree to the freeze, in which case his coalition falls apart, or reject the freeze, in which case the Israeli center-left turns against him, also potentially bringing down his government.

While I see the merit in Obama's approach and in fact support his call for a total freeze (recognizing that Avishai's eminently sensible solution is beyond the capabilities of the parties at this point), his policy has not, at least at this point, gone according to plan. To the contrary, Netanyahu has cannily turned the situation to his advantage, casting himself as the defender, not of the far flung outposts in the West Bank, but of the families living in the "mainstream" settlements that Israel would keep in a final agreement. Abbas has, under US cover, refused to negotiate, and the Arab world has remained silent.

As Michael Doran explains:

Obama is now on the horns of a dilemma. If he backs down on natural growth, he lays himself open to Arab claims that he is a hypocrite. On the other hand, if he sticks to his guns, he will become Israel’s senior city planner, rejecting building permits for a school one day, and a new home addition the next. The president can certainly win the fight over building permits, but he must already be asking himself whether it is really worth the prize. Victory will eat up at least a year of precious time, and it will not have a strategic impact.

If Obama found Netanyahu difficult to coerce, he failed to charm the Israeli Left. Israeli pundits have noted the conspicuous absence of a pro-Obama coalition on the Israeli political scene—this, despite the fact that the Israeli Left detests the settlements as much as or more than Obama himself. Many Israelis simply do not understand how the country’s security dilemmas fit into Obama’s larger scheme. With respect to the issue of gravest concern, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Obama’s strategy remains worryingly opaque. And with respect to the Palestinian question, many Israelis are skeptical about the power of any American president to overcome the Hamas-Fatah split, and to create conditions on the Palestinian side that will achieve a two-state solution capable of guaranteeing Israeli security. In a context fraught with uncertainty, Obama is inviting the Israeli Left to join with him in a fight against Netanyahu in order to achieve… well, what precisely?

In addition to the vagueness of his goals, Obama’s body language has dealt the Israeli Left a weak hand. The Cairo speech cast Israel as a bit player in a U.S.-Muslim drama. The President, stressing his Muslim ancestry, did not take the time to fly to Jerusalem, where he might have reasoned with the Israeli public about the value to it of abandoning the Bush-Sharon agreement. Instead, his advisers denied flatly (and falsely) that such an agreement had ever existed. As a consequence of this disingenuousness, many Israelis fear that the administration aims to buy goodwill from the Muslim world by distancing itself from Israel, and they wonder whether settlements are not simply the first of many concessions that will be demanded. With such doubts swirling in the air, it is difficult for the Israeli Left to trumpet the Obama agenda.

****

The President’s advisers promised him that taking a principled stand on settlements would generate goodwill in the Arab world. There is no doubt that the Cairo speech struck a chord with many Arabs. But goodwill of that sort is not a strategic commodity. Even a popular honest broker cannot reshape the iron interests of the parties on the ground, none of whom see much benefit in taking risks to achieve a goal that they do not really believe in. Many Western diplomats tell themselves that peace is nearly at hand, but the parties on the ground—Arab and Jewish alike—are highly skeptical. And for good reason. The power of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria, supported by Iran, looms in the background. It is highly unlikely that, in the next four years, a major breakthrough will take place. In order to maintain good relations with Washington, the leaders in the region will certainly play along with the Obama administration. But the name of their game is not “Peacemaking” but, rather, “Shift the Blame.” Its object is to take positions that paint one’s rivals as the real obstructionists in the eyes of Washington.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/07/obamas-opening-gambit/

Wasn't the primary goal of the settlement enterprise to create facts on the ground to strengthen Israel's negotiating position in any final peace settlement?

Why is Israel still trying to recruit as many Jews and "Jews" as possible to move from around the world into the West Bank?

If it's not reasonable to stop settlement growth now, or cede most settlements in any peace agreement, where will we be in 5 years? 10 years? 40 years?

Clever, clever, clever.

Might equals right.

Might equals "a total freeze is now out of the question."

Might equals "These urbanized areas are clearly not going to be moved or dismantled. And they cannot stop growing."

Might equals "For most Israelis, the line between Israel and occupied territory is self-evident."

Might equals "Give us your farmland with the water, and go take that land in the Negev. It's just as good, and it's more realistic."

I am hard-pressed to find the underlying logic in this post. Bernard Avishai, a pretty sharp guy from my home state, seems to be running together the issue of a settlement freeze with the separate issue of dismantling or moving settlements. To freeze settlement building is not to make any decision whatsoever on the disposition of existing settlements in the final status agreement of a two state solution. Nor is it to pre-judge those issues in any way.

If one is trying to restart a peace process to deal with an ongoing conflict, the first thing you do is get an armistice or truce. You try to get both sides to freeze the current situation in place and at least not make things worse. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that means getting the Palestinians to put down the rockets and the weapons, and getting the Israelis to stop the settlement activity. This just seems like common sense to me. Surely Israel can put down the shovels, turn off the bulldozers and keep the cement in the warehouses for a while as we move forward with creating the diplomatic and negotiating structures that will be necessary to forge a final status agreement.

Obama’s position on this matter is utterly and unassailably reasonable. It really represents no more that a return to the broad international consensus approach that prevailed prior to the woeful Bush years. It is also a position on which he probably would have received the cooperation of the Israel government had either Livni or Barak been elected. So I am perplexed that there are now so many people willing to run interference for a right-wing Israeli government defending an extremist line. Stand with the guy who has common sense on his side – please.

Now, I agree that it would also be useful if Obama moved to define the end state more clearly, and if he and his international partners began to speak more decisively about the likely locations of the eventual borders. I also think it would be useful if he and his partners began to float publicly the idea of a UN commission that might take charge of this issue if the Israelis and Palestinians keep dragging their feet, and that might shoulder the international responsibilities for the conflict that have shirked and neglected for decades.

But freezing current Israeli expansion is an obvious first step in dialing down the conflict and moving forward in an atmosphere of reduced tension. One dispiriting realization these days is that it is hard to have any confidence in the resolve of American Jewish community, which contains many well-meaning and reasonable members with sincere aspirations for a responsible and peaceful resolution of the conflict, when they start bailing and getting cold feet at the slightest signs of difficulty. Why are liberal American Jews giving aid and comfort to Netanyahu and Lieberman? They really need to stand with their president and help present a united American front.

But Bernard, how can we get the Palestinians to sit down and work on a border if the whole time that process is going on the Israelis are being allowed to work on moving the border, and if every time they do move it the result is treated as an accomplished fact? Don't we have to get the the facts on the ground to stop evolving first, before we can begin working on which ones will be undone and which ones won't?

What if Obama says, "OK, forget the freeze" and the next day they Israelis move a plan to introduce 100,000 more people and a caravan of trucks and bulldozers into new, currently uncolonized parts of the West Bank?

The US has to establish some bona fides here, or nothing can move forward. Not only will the Palestinians lose confidence in Obama's capacity for leadership, but so will the other international leaders and people who are looking on to see if Obama has the strength to handle a modest test of his will and power. If he can't even stand up to Israel's right wing, and chickens out over a little Netanyahu grandstanding, how can anybody think he will be able to see this through?

Moving 100,000 people is hard, but its easier than moving 200,000 or 300,000 or 400,000.

Did you catch this today?

A new global survey has found a vast improvement in views of the United States since the election of President Obama. But it also finds broad opposition to one of his crucial policies — sending more troops to Afghanistan — and confirms a drop in confidence in the United States among Israelis....according to the survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project....Mr. Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo gave his standing a statistically insignificant boost among Palestinians. But Israeli confidence in Mr. Obama to do the right thing slipped from 60 percent before the speech to 49 percent afterward. Israelis were the only people polled who gave the United States lower ratings than in past surveys....

I fail to see why Israel should be rewarded for building illegal settlements. If the settlements were built in violation of international law they should be dismantled, period. Israel must get their own radicals under control, to facilitate a sincere and sustained effort to make peace today, or the simple matter of demographics will ensure that they do not exist tomorrow.

I do not believe Israel is capable of saving itself. It must accept an intervention from the international community that simply imposes a peace on both sides and then enforces it. The first step has got to be both sides agreeing to abide by international laws.

If you start by giving Israel a concession on it's violations of international law you send the wrong signal to both sides.

Ptroub says:
"There is NO, absolutely NO justification WHATEVER for ANY settlement beyond the 1967 line."

Does anybody have a justification for this besides Israel being more powerful, and having more influence over the U.S. government?

If Palestine cedes any of this land in exchange for other land, it should be up to the Palestinians to decide on what terms, if any, this stolen land is ceded to Israel.

That's my opinion, consistent with international law. What's yours, and is it backed by more than the law of the jungle?

RE - "America needs to offer support, and fast, for a 1:1 land swap"

MY COMMENT - So do you, like Elliott Abrams, believe that an acre of desert land in the Negev is equal to an acre of land in East Jerusalem? What a scam!

Beyond a certain point Unrealpolitik becomes undiscussable, and one is reduced either to spoof or to silence.

Happy days.

At this point, I'm not sure drawing up borders would be a simnpler and more efficient exercise than a call for a settlement freeze. The freeze is in fact taken seriously as a meaningful opening gambit; thus the agita, angst and demagoguery in response to it. An attempt at border drawing would bring with it as many enraged responses, sends a less sharp statement, and would soon be tangled up and thwarted by political miscreants. In either case the immediate goal, freezing or drawing, is going to fall short. The former works better as a statement that we're resetting the dialogue and if, as Bernard claims, everyone really knows which settlements stay and which go, why do we need an unofficial border to make clear that the government had better stop investing in those that will obviously go. Those who don't want to hear that message are not going to be convinced by an ersatz border.

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