In June 1967 Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza strip, saying that they would relinquish these areas in return for peace. This Israeli claim has now been proven to be a public relations ploy. Palestinians and Arabs have continuously offered peace for land but Israel has refused to give up the Palestinian territories. 
If Israel was willing to give up land for peace, one might ask, why has it built exclusive Jewish settlements on lands it plans to return? 
Every Israeli government since 1967 has planned, built, subsidized and protected Jewish settlements and settlers in occupied lands. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with cases of prolonged occupation, states clearly that occupying powers are not allowed to expropriate land or to move its citizens to occupied territories. Since then, numerous UN General Assembly and UN Security Council resolutions have opposed Jewish settlement building. Official US policy has ranged from calling settlements “illegal” to “an obstacle to peace.” Washington has repeatedly called on Israel to reverse its settlement policy without any success. US officials have asked Israel to “stop it, suspend it, end subsidizes to settlers, freeze it and take a time out,” yet it has continued uninterrupted. 
When the Oslo peace process began, respected independent Palestinians like Haider Abdel Shafi complained that the process will fail because it lacked an Israeli commitment to suspend settlement building during the five-year interim period. I remember during those days in 1994 that along with other Palestinian journalists I attended a special press briefing with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. When a journalist complained about the Rabin government’s continued settlement activity, Peres tried to deny it. 
When he was faced with statistics of Palestinian lands expropriated for settlements and bypass roads, he shrugged the issue aside. You ought not to concentrate on this issue, he preached to us; all this will become irrelevant once there is a solution that will see the West Bank and Gaza as an independent Palestinian entity. 
Now eight years later, the independent Palestinian entity has not materialized, and the handful of Palestinian cities that were evacuated by Israeli troops are now brutally occupied with nearly 2 million Palestinians living under permanent house arrest. Nablus has been under continuous 24-hour curfew for more than 16 days. 
For sure Israel has paid a heavy toll for its policy of occupation, assassinations and collective punishment. Many in Israel want nothing less than their army to leave  the Palestinian territories. However, there is the small problem of the Jewish settlements dotting Palestinian lands. From tiny hilltop settlements to small cities, more than 130 of these exclusively Jewish settlements have created a security nightmare for the Israeli Army. And the Israeli public is paying a high price for their government’s policy of building and protecting these illegal outposts. 
These settlements are turning Israel not only into a military occupier but also into an apartheid state. Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza get subsidized housing, plentiful water, freedom of travel, no curfews and none of the settlers’ relatives gets their homes blown up - even in the case of Hebron’s Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 praying Muslims, or the settler who killed a Palestinian teenage girl last week. Settler’s cars have different license plates than Palestinians, they don’t get stopped at checkpoints, they vote for Israel’s Knesset and get 24-hour army protection on West Bank and Gaza roads built and used only by Jewish settlers. The Palestinian population in the north of the West Bank was forbidden from driving on these roads this week. Forty-four Palestinian homes were demolished as a punishment for having a member of their family involved in attacks against Israelis. 
The Bush administration is on the record as supporting the creation of the state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza alongside the state of Israel within three years. Some members of this administration seem to think that this goal, supported by the majority of Palestinians and Israelis as well as the international community, can happen without a position on illegal settlements. The Israelis are given a free hand to violate international law and grant their army-protected bulldozers special status to continue stealing Palestinian lands to build Jewish homes in occupied lands. 
A peaceful resolution to the conflict is possible. A determined and unified US administration can ensure that in the Middle East there is a secure Israel and a free Palestine. This can’t take place while one side plunders the land of the other. Settlements are clearly an obstacle to such a dream. 
One has to be stupid not to realize and accept that. 


Article of  Daoud Kuttab (an award winning Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem and the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University in Ramallah).