By Terence Smith
The headline splashed across the front page of today’s (August 16, 2024) Washington Post told the story:
“ ISRAEL SOLIDIFYING CONTROL OVER THE WEST BANK — AND ITS FUTURE
Recent Moves by Netanyahu Coalition are Putting Two-State Solution Out of Reach”
In a thoroughly-reported investigative article that ran two full pages illustrated with photos and a map, The Post laid out the long-standing and thinly-concealed Israeli plan to absorb the occupied West Bank of the Jordan and prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state. “Victory by Settlement,” the right-wing Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich called it.
When the United Nations’ highest court ordered Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded: “The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land.”
The article goes on to state that there are nearly three million Palestinians living on the West Bank today and some 500,000 Jewish settlers. It documents a “creeping, decades-long encirclement of Palestinian communities, followed more recently by rapid expansion and unchecked violence” by settlers.
The Post notes that the pace of settler assaults of Palestinians and their homes and fields has doubled under the Netanyahu coalition government’s administration. Scores of Palestinians have been killed in some 1,100 separate incidents in the last year, including one yesterday. Five Israeli settlers have died as well. The United States has imposed sanctions on some of the more extreme and violent settlers, but with little effect.
With scores of Israeli settlements scattered across the West Bank, the path to a genuine, two-state solution is hard to imagine.
It is an old story, of course, dating back to the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel occupied the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem. I covered that war as a young foreign correspondent for The New York Times and remember when the first right-wing settlers moved into a hotel in the West Bank city of Hebron and declared their intention to stay.
At a press conference shortly thereafter in Jerusalem, I asked Defense Minister Moshe Dayan what he intended to do about these rump, would-be settlers.
Dayan scoffed at the question: “If we can solve the big issues, like borders and Jerusalem,” he said dismissively, “the settlers will be no problem.”
That was 57 years ago. I’ve wondered since whether Dayan believed what he said then, or simply couldn’t conceive of what was coming.