While the world’s media wrings its hands in despair at the thought of peace talks collapsing over the prospect of renewed Israeli ‘settlement’ activity the need for just a bit more perspective could hardly be greater. Of course it seems we can’t hope for the American President to widen his perspective and depart from the same unquestioned narrative of ‘the settlements’ that is readily available in the international press. Indeed with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to walk away from negotiations Obama has been helpfully requesting that Israel extends its ban on Jews building homes in their communities in the West Bank. But those Statesmen who are really interested in lasting peace in the region will first pursue a freeze on one or two other things such as Iranian nuclear armament and Hamas military activity long before they call for a freeze on Jews building houses on hilltops.
When it comes to Israel any assertion, if repeated often enough in the media, becomes fact soon enough and an unquestionable truth not long after that. Ask just about anyone and they will confidently tell you that Israeli settlements are the primary obstacle to peace. The alleged illegality of these small isolated Jewish communities dotted across the biblical regions of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is now a sanctified tenet of the doctrine of the prevailing orthodoxy on this subject. That a relatively minor matter of suburban planning around Jerusalem has apparently become the issue upon which world peace now stands or falls is as incredible as it is implausible. The truth is that the ‘settlement’ issue was one invented by the Israeli Left as a way of explaining why their formula for peace was failing and was a very successful way of masking over the fact that the Palestinians were in reality proving totally unviable partners for peace. Today the ‘settlements’ are turning out to be the perfect excuse for Abbas to dodge the demands of peace talks, but as a political issue they are really the creation of the Israeli Left.
Yet surely if Peace in the Middle East is genuinely what the world is in pursuit of then the first thing to do is to bring an end to armed conflict. Surely the continuation of violence a priori negates peace as a possible reality. You would think then that stopping the continuing barrage of missiles that have been spewing out of the Gaza and onto Israeli civilians in recent days would come higher up in the world’s concerns than whether or not some Jewish villagers had got planning permission for a new kindergarten. Well apparently not, or not according to just about any British news source that is. And what about educating your populations for coexistence? Wouldn’t you think that would be a pretty vital requirement for future coexistence? It is an obligation incumbent on both sides under the Oslo peace plan after all. And yet this summer over 100,000 Palestinian children attended Hamas run summer camps where they are indoctrinated into anti-Semitic hatred of Israelis and trained in terrorist activities and armed combat. A further 15,000 attended the even more blood thirsty Islamic Jihad’s summer camps; no singing Kumbayah around the fire at night of that much you can be assured. And yet it would seem that these events are of less interest to the likes of the BBC than whether or not some Israeli teenagers have put a caravan on a deserted Samarian hilltop. And if stability in the region is what world leaders are really after then you’d imagine that insuring that Iran doesn’t gain nuclear weapons would be of greater concern to them than whether or not the Cohen family will be adding a granny annex to their home in their Judean village next month. Yet when you listen to the current debate on the matter you really have to wonder if the answer to any of these questions would be yes.
And as rockets from Gaza continue to fall on Israeli territory surely that only further raises the question of how much can really be achieved from talking with Abbas, what is it really in his power to grant? What can he possibly give Israel in return for concessions so drastic that they would threaten to tare the country apart without guaranteeing either the creation of a viable Palestinian State or protection for Israelis from continued terror attacks? Nothing that Netanyahu, Abbas and Hillary Clinton can decide in these negotiations will stop the Iranian backed Hamas and Hezbollah from continuing to wage their war for the annihilation of the Jewish State.
And so with these grave prospects hanging over the region the last thing that should be on anyone’s mind is whether or not Jews have the right to continue developing communities in their religious and historical homeland.
