In June 1967, Israel took over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza by force,

contrary to Article 2.4 of the UN Charter.

These territories have remained under Israeli military occupation ever since, contrary to the

wishes of the Palestinians who live there. If there is to be a settlement between Israel and the

Palestinians, Israel must withdraw from these territories.

In all that time, the international community has imposed no sanctions of any kind on Israel to

make it withdraw. Israeli aggression has paid off.

* * *

Contrast that with the international community’s response when Iraq took over Kuwait by force

in August 1990. Then, economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq immediately and, when that

didn’t work, within months a large military force was assembled to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

At no time since 1967 has Israel been under significant international pressure to withdraw from

the territories it occupies. Instead, Israel has been richly rewarded by the US and the EU during

that period – it has been the recipient of more US aid than any other state in the world

(approximately $100bn) and, since 2000, the EU has given it privileged access to the EU market

for its exports.

* * *

The focus at the moment is on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. But why should

Israel be allowed to negotiate about how much, if any, of the territory it acquired by armed

force 43 years ago to give up, and when to give it up? Should the international community not

simply insist that Israel end its military occupation of territory acquired by force?

In negotiations with Palestinians, Israel is in a position to dictate terms, since it dominates the

occupied territories, militarily and economically. And, if Palestinians refuse to agree to those

terms, they will continue to live under Israeli military occupation. It’s heads Israel wins and tails

the Palestinians lose.

These negotiations are equivalent to allowing a thief to negotiate with his victim about the

amount of stolen goods he is going to give back, while he keeps his boot on the victim’s throat.

The blunt reality is that Israel will not give up the territory it occupied in 1967, until outside pressure

is brought to bear to force it to do so.

* * *

Meanwhile, Israel continues to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East

Jerusalem, on the territory that is supposed to belong to a future Palestinian state. A B’Tselem

report published in July 2010 on Israel’s settlement policy begins:

“Some half a million Israelis are now living over the Green Line [the 1967 border]: more than

300,000 in 121 settlements and about one hundred outposts, which control 42 percent of the

land area of the West Bank, and the rest in twelve neighborhoods that Israel established on

land it annexed to the Jerusalem Municipality.”

Israel’s settlement project is about staking a claim to land east of the Green Line for

incorporation into a Greater Israel. The former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, spelt this out in

1973: when asked what is to become of the Palestinians in the West Bank under Israeli

occupation, he replied:

“We'll make a pastrami sandwich out of them … We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in

between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West

Bank, so that in twenty-five years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States,

nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”

The project is open ended, the objective being to incorporate as much West Bank territory as

practicable into a Greater Israel, and, by so doing, obstruct, or prevent, the creation of a viable

Palestinian state.

Settlement building in the occupied territories is in no way necessary for the security of Israel. It is

about expanding across the Green Line.

* * *

All of Israel’s settlement building is contrary to international law, because it involves the transfer

of Israeli civilians into territory occupied by Israel. That is contrary to Article 49(6) of the 4th

Geneva Convention. The international community should have made Israel stop long ago.

The Road Map is the internationally accepted framework for negotiations between Israel and

the Palestinians about a two-state solution. Israel accepted it in May 2003. It requires that Israel

“freeze all settlement activity (including the natural growth of settlements)”, prior to negotiations.

In violation of this agreement, Israel refuses to do so and the international community has failed

to make it do so.

Israel’s “moratorium” on settlement building, which ended on 26 September 2010, never fulfilled

the Road Map requirement – it was never a freeze, and it never applied to East Jerusalem. In a

Ha’aretz article on 28 September, entitled Settlement freeze? It was barely a slowdown, Dror

Etkes said of it: “What took place in the past few months is, in the best case scenario, not more

than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units that were built in settlements”.

* * *

At the time of writing, Israel is refusing to renew this token “moratorium”, even on a temporary

basis, let alone freeze settlement activity altogether. Building in Jewish settlements in the West

Bank is now free from any restrictions.

By contrast, building for Palestinians is severely restricted by Israel in Area C of the West Bank,

where Jewish settlements are situated. Area C comprises approximately 62% of the West Bank.

This is not a temporary measure. It has applied more or less since the Israeli occupation began in

1967.

A fact sheet published in August 2010 by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian

Affairs (OCHA) describes the plight of Palestinians in Area C as follows:

“Difficulties in obtaining building permits … for construction and/or rehabilitation of buildings,

prevents the construction of housing to meet natural population growth. In addition, the

inability to build or rehabilitate schools and health clinics significantly impedes the adequate

provision of basic services. …

“As a result, Palestinians needing to build in Area C are left with no alternative than to build

without a permit and risk demolition of their structure.”

94% of applications for building permits are refused by the Israeli authorities. And demolitions are

common.

* * *

Clearly, Israel applies one set of rules for Jewish colonists and a very different set for indigenous

Palestinians.

Unless US and EU put pressure on Israel

to end the occupation, negotiations are futile

In June 1967, Israel took over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza by force,

contrary to Article 2.4 of the UN Charter, which demands that “all [UN] Members shall refrain in

These territories have remained under Israeli military occupation ever since, contrary to the

wishes of the Palestinians who live there. If there is to be a settlement between Israel and the

Palestinians, Israel must withdraw from these territories.

The international community has allowed this occupation to continue for over 40 years. In all

that time, no sanctions of any kind have been applied to Israel to make it leave. Israeli

aggression has paid off.

Contrast that with the response from the international community when Iraq took over Kuwait by

force in August 1990.

Within hours of that invasion, the Security Council met and passed resolution 660, demanding

Instead of applying pressure to Israel to withdraw forthwith from the territories it has occupied

militarily since 1967, the international community has accorded Israel the extraordinary privilege

of negotiating with Palestinians under its occupation about how much, if any, of the occupied

territories to give up, and when to give it up.

Having held on to these territories for 43 years, it can be taken for granted that Israel isn’t about

to withdraw to the 1967 borders of its own volition. The question is whether the present Israeli

government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, will be prepared to withdraw at all. In February 2009,

during the election campaign, as a result of which he became Prime Minister, he stated his

party’s position as follows:

This negotiating framework might be tolerable if, in order to level the playing field, outside

pressure were being exerted on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders. The two possible

candidates for such a role are the US and the EU.

However, the US has made it clear that it isn’t going to help the Palestinians recover their

territory. President Obama said at the outset of the negotiations that the US “cannot impose a

Meanwhile, Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem,

on the territory that is meant to belong to a Palestinian state at the end of the negotiations.

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, published a

In 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) recognised Israel’s right to exist within its 1967

borders and adopted the objective of establishing an independent Palestinian state in the

remaining 22% of mandate Palestine.

Likud leader, Yitzhak Shamir, was Prime Minister at this time. He was in office from 1986 until he

lost an election on 23 June 1992. He was utterly opposed to Israel giving up any territory to a

Palestinian state. After the Madrid conference in late October 1991, the Bush administration

made a serious attempt to pressure Shamir into negotiating interim arrangements for self-rule

with Palestinians, but he refused to budge,

Palestinian autonomy/statehood have all failed, because they have all refused to relinquish the

territory conquered by Israel in 1967.

There is no evidence that Benjamin Netanyahu, Yitzhak Shamir’s successor as leader of Likud

and Israeli Prime Minister, is any more favourably disposed towards giving up occupied territory

to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. And, he is following Shamir’s vision of settlement

building without limit. Is there any doubt that, like Shamir, he sees this as a means to obstruct, or

prevent, the creation of a Palestinian state?

All of Israel’s settlement building is contrary to international law, because it involves the transfer

of Israeli civilians into territory occupied by Israel. This is forbidden under Article 49, paragraph 6,

of the 4th Geneva Convention, which states:

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the

The UN Security Council has made this clear in resolutions 446, 452 and 465, all of which demand

that Israel cease settlement building and remove existing settlements. For example, in resolution

446, passed on 22 March 1979, the Security Council states that “the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East” and calls upon Israel “to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab

territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of

Every year, the UN General Assembly passes a series of resolutions on Israel/Palestine including

one demanding that settlement building cease and existing settlements be removed, most

recently resolution 64/93 passed on 10 December 2009. This reiterates the General Assembly’s

demand “for the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in all of the

Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan,

and calls in this regard for the full implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions,

This resolution was passed overwhelmingly (as it is every year), this year by 171 votes to 7. EU

states voted for the resolution. The only opponents apart from Israel and the US were Panama

and four tiny Pacific states – Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau – which are US clients.

On this matter, and others concerning Israel/Palestine, Israel and the US have very few friends in

the world.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has also declared, in its Advisory Opinion on the

Under the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court (ICC), the colonisation of occupied

territory is a war crime. Article 8.2(b)(viii) of the Statute defines “the transfer, directly or

indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it

From the outset in 1967, it has been widely accepted internationally that Israel’s settlement

building in the occupied territories is contrary to international law, specifically Article 49,

paragraph 6, of the 4th Geneva Convention. Successive US administrations, beginning with the

Johnston administration, have said so and called upon Israel to cease and desist. Unfortunately,

the international community never applied sufficient pressure to make it cease and desist – and

Israel has kept building.

Every “peace initiative” has been accompanied by the demand that Israel freeze settlement

activity. For example, the Reagan Plan set out by President Reagan in a speech on 1

September 1982 stated:

Likewise, the Mitchell Report, published on 30 April 2001, stated:

“Palestinians are genuinely angry at the continued growth of settlements and at their daily

experiences of humiliation and disruption as a result of Israel's presence in the Palestinian

territories. Palestinians see settlers and settlements in their midst not only as violating the spirit of

the Oslo process, but also as an application of force in the form of Israel's overwhelming

The chairman of the fact finding mission that drew up this report was George Mitchell, now

Obama’s Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. He went on to recommend, inter alia, that, in

order to build confidence prior to a resumption of negotiations:

“The GOI [Government of Israel] should freeze all settlement activity, including the ‘natural

growth’ of existing settlements.”

So, President Abbas was entirely justified in resisting direct negotiations while settlement building

continued. Israel’s 10-month “moratorium” on settlement building was never a complete freeze

(see below) and anyway it didn’t apply to East Jerusalem, so it didn’t meet the Road Map

requirement. And settlement outposts haven’t been removed either.

In June 2009, Obama was on Abbas’s side in insisting on a freeze on the Jewish colonisation of

the West Bank and East Jerusalem, prior to the start of negotiations. In his speech in Cairo, he

declared:

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This

construction violates previous agreements [eg the Road Map] and undermines efforts to

However, a few months later, in the face of opposition from Prime Minister Netanyahu, he

backed down ignominiously, and, instead of demanding that Israel halt settlement building prior

to negotiations, he began to pressurise the Palestinians to enter into negotiations without Israel

halting settlement building.

In early September 2010, Abbas reluctantly agreed to enter into direct negotiations with Israel –

despite the fact that, according to Obama in Cairo, Israel is violating previous agreements and

undermining efforts to achieve peace.

George Mitchell is now presiding over a set of negotiations, without Israel halting settlement

activity, which he recommended a decade ago as a necessary confidence building measure

prior to negotiations.

The question arises: what is the point in Palestinians seeking an agreement with Israel, when it

violates key aspects of a past agreement?

At the time of writing, the question dominating media attention is: will Israel renew its

“moratorium” on settlement building and save the negotiations?

A question that is worthy of media attention, but is receiving very little, is: what effect did the

“moratorium” have on settlement building while it was in operation? The answer is very little.

We are therefore talking about a drop of a little more than 400 housing units - some 16 percent

of Israeli construction in the West Bank over that period. …

“The real story behind the PR stunt known as the freeze took place in fact in the months prior to

that, during which the settlers, with the assistance of the government, prepared well for the

months of hibernation foisted upon them. In the half year that preceded the declaration of

the freeze, which started at the end of November 2009, dozens of new building sites sprang

up, especially in isolated and more extreme settlements east of the fence.

“This piece of information is also well documented in the bureau's numbers. In the first half of

2009, they started to build 669 housing units in the settlements, and then, as the months wore

on, the pace of construction increased. Thus in the second half of 2009, no fewer than 1,204

housing units were built - an increase of some 90 percent in construction starts as compared

with the first half of the year. …

“If we add to these statistics the fact that the government announced in advance that it

planned to approve, in any circumstances and with no connection to the ‘freeze’, the

construction of 600 housing units in various settlements, and the chaos and anarchy that exists

in some settlements and outposts, making it possible for every person to build where and when

he feels like it, we shall get quite a good picture of what really happened to the settlements in

the past few months.”

By contrast, Palestinian building is severely restricted by Israel in large areas of the West Bank,

and has been restricted since the Israeli occupation began in 1967. This is graphically described

built-up. As a result, Palestinians needing to build in Area C are left with no alternative than to

build without a permit and risk demolition of their structure.”

The Jewish settlements in the West Bank are in Area C, right next to the Palestinians living under

these severe Israeli-imposed building restrictions. There, even temporary restrictions on building

are fiercely resisted by Israel: it’s unthinkable, Israeli leaders tell us, that homes in these

settlements cannot be extended to cater for growing families, or that schools and health clinics

cannot be built or rehabilitated.