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Israel-Palestine

Netanyahu’s settlement bluff

12.04.12 | 4,094 Comments

(from The Telegraph)

In no other part of the world does town planning lead to talk of ambassadors being recalled. But Israel’s plans to build thousands of homes in the area around Jerusalem known as East-1, or E1, has caused a diplomatic firestorm, with envoys in London, Paris and Madrid being “summoned” for the ritual dressing-down.

European governments are said to be furious at the move, which will, at a stroke, bisect the West Bank and surround East Jerusalem with a palisade of Israeli homes. Just days after the boost of enhanced UN recognition, the putative state of Palestine is set to find itself cut in half and with its capital city amputated. This would potentially spell doom for the “two-state solution”.

There’s only one problem with this breathless narrative: Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement was a bluff. Building in E1 is highly unlikely to take place, at least any time soon. The Israeli prime minister is like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, begging the world to stop him from jumping.

Threatening to build in E1 – connecting Jerusalem to Ma’ale Adumim, one of the biggest Jewish settlements in the West Bank – is something Israeli governments do from time to time.

Yitzhak Rabin was the first prime minister to float the idea, but got no further than exploring planning options before he was assassinated in 1995. Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to move the project along, in his first term in the late 90s, were slapped down by an order from Bill Clinton.

In the early 2000s Ariel Sharon dreamed of building an industrial park, hotels, shopping centres and 3000 homes in the area. But when even a president as sympathetic to Israel as George W. Bush signalled disapproval, Sharon had to settle for constructing a police headquarters there instead, on the pretext that it was a security necessity.

Netanyahu’s announcement is the latest move in this battle of wills between Israel, the United States and the wider international community over E1.

But few in the media have noticed that the move amounts to far less than it seems. In fact the decision was not an order to start construction in E1, but to begin the process of planning and zoning – as Netanyahu’s office hastily clarified yesterday. The initiative is almost certain to get lost in the wheels of bureaucracy once the front pages move on, as it has done in the past.

So why announce it at all? Posturing on E1 makes sense for Netanyahu with an election coming up in January – just as it did in 2005, when he launched his campaign from a hilltop in the area. Last week’s UN vote reinforced many Israelis’ sense that their country is a victim facing global persecution, and annoying the international community strikes the appropriate note of defiance for the prime minister.

More cunningly on Netanyahu’s part, drawing attention to E1 may have been a feint, designed to distract from plans to build elsewhere in occupied East Jerusalem, which would be normally provoke huge opposition.

Make no mistake, the project is a long-term goal of the Likud Right, and Netanyahu would love nothing more than to send in the diggers. Calling it “counterproductive” and damaging to the “peace process”, as the US State Department did yesterday, misses the point: forestalling the possibility of a Palestinian state is the barely concealed purpose of the whole settlement enterprise.

That’s why until something happens that fundamentally alters the rules of engagement – the arrival of a hardline Republican in the White House, for instance – E1 will remain a rocky expanse of escarpments, ravines and hills.

And for that, Israel should be grateful. A Palestinian state is Israel’s only chance to free itself from the burden of ruling several million disfranchised people in a never-ending occupation. If one day the bulldozers finally do move in and that dream is destroyed, the idea of Israeli democracy will be buried somewhere in the rubble.

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