Author Topic: Israel's Settlement Policy  (Read 703 times)

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Offline Manob

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Re: Israel's Settlement Policy
« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2017, 09:28:45 pm »
What is your position on the settlement policy?

I think expanding settlements is counter-productive to any possible future two-state solution peace agreement. I do not support the expansion of settlements. I think Netanyahu allows settlement expansion primarily as a result of domestic politics, because of his reliance on right-wing/settler coalition partners to uphold his government.

Ideally, from my point of view, settlement expansion activity would be frozen and a final border for a two state solution would be negotiated, in which certain Jewish-majority parts of the West Bank are traded for certain Arab-majority parts of Israel along the border. It should also be noted that a large Arab Muslim minority population lives in Israel and is relatively unmolested. For those Jewish individuals who really want to live in parts of the West Bank after a two-state solution is implemented, one could only hope that the new Palestinian state would be as tolerant of its Jewish citizens as Israel is of its Arab ones (although in practice, this seems unlikely).

Unfortunately, multiple rounds of negotiations towards a peace deal over the preceding decades have been unproductive, most famously when Arafat was offered ~98% of the land he was asking for but refused the offer at the last minute. During the current period when negotiating a peace deal seems unattainable from the Israeli perspective, it is understandable (but not justified) that settlement policy is driven primarily by short-sighted domestic politics, even if this damages Israel's international reputation and the prospects for a two state solution in the long run, as that is just how politics tends to work.