Back in 2005, Israel uprooted all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza, evicting their 9,000 residents, in order to advance peace. But in the seven years since, Israel has been targeted by nearly 9,000 terrorist rockets from Gaza. Clearly, settlements are not the reason. Rather, it is our enemy’s determination to deny the Jewish people the right to independence in our ancestral homeland. – Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren
Stop scapegoating Israeli settlements
Jewish apartment complexes aren't preventing peace — Palestinians' refusal to negotiate is
By Michael Oren / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 4:15 AM
RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS
Apartments are seen in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim near Jerusalem.
Back in 2005, Israel uprooted all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza, evicting their 9,000 residents, in order to advance peace. But in the seven years since, Israel has been targeted by nearly 9,000 terrorist rockets from Gaza. Clearly, settlements are not the reason. Rather, it is our enemy’s determination to deny the Jewish people the right to independence in our ancestral homeland.
That is why Palestinian Arabs fought for decades to prevent the establishment of Israel in 1948 and why, over the next 20 years, Arab armies tried to destroy us — before there was a single settlement. That, and not the settlement issue, was why the Palestinians turned down Israeli offers of statehood in the West Bank and Gaza in 2000 and 2008.
And that is why last month, Hamas in Gaza launched yet more rockets at Israel, and why the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority refused to negotiate with us for the past four years. Instead, it unilaterally declared sovereignty in a UN General Assembly resolution that denied any security for Israel or recognition of it as a Jewish state.
Israel, for its part, recognizes the Palestinians as a people who could have a state if their leaders agreed to sit with ours and work out the complex issues between us. One of those issues is borders, and it includes the settlements, which have created — to use President Obama’s words — “new demographic realities on the ground.”
Those realities include Jerusalem neighborhoods built after 1967, home to more than half of the city’s Jewish residents and only a few minutes’ drive from downtown. Successive Israeli governments have insisted that Jerusalem remain Israel’s united capital. “I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a joint meeting of Congress in 2011. “But I believe with creativity and goodwill, a solution can be found.”
Then there are the West Bank settlements. These communities provide strategic depth to our borders which, before 1967, were as narrow as 8 miles across. But the West Bank — Judea and Samaria — is also the birthplace of our people, our tribal lands. The West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho appear in the Bible, but Haifa in modern Israel does not.
The settlements reflect the right of a people to live in its homeland. We are willing to qualify that right — painfully — if the Palestinians agree to live with us in peace.
Still, all of the settlements account for a very small percentage of the West Bank. Most of them are concentrated in blocs that have become suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Everyone — Americans, Israelis and Palestinians — understands that these blocs will always remain part of Israel, even if a Palestinian state is negotiated.
All of the building recently approved by the Israeli government was in Jerusalem and these blocs. So, too, were the preliminary plans for construction in the area known as E1, which were approved last week.
E1 is a stretch of desert, less than 2 miles long, connecting Jerusalem to its suburb of Maaleh Adumim, home to 40,000 Israelis. Every Israeli prime minister in the past 40 years, including Ehud Olmert and Yitzhak Rabin, has planned to build in E1 in order to prevent Maaleh Adumim’s isolation.
That construction will not, as the Palestinians claim, divide the West Bank. Just look at a map: E1 in no way obstructs Palestinian Ramallah’s access to Jericho and Bethlehem. In a negotiated two-state solution, short tunnels under E1 can also connect Ramallah with the Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
In his congressional address, Netanyahu acknowledged that “some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders” after a genuine peace agreement. Israel is committed to achieving that goal, and settlements will not be an obstacle. Together with Obama, whose support for Israel’s right to defend itself and demand for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks has been unswerving, we stand ready to do the difficult work of peacemaking.
Even today, after all the terrorist rockets and denial of our rights, we remain at the negotiating table, waiting for the Palestinians to join us.
Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/stop-scapegoating-israeli-settlements-article-1.1217232#ixzz2Em8XZyvz
