As Talks Begin, Jewish Settlements Loom As Challenge

[Purveyor]

By William Booth and Anne Gearan, E-mail the writers

PSAGOT, West Bank — The last time Israeli and Palestinian negotiators sat down for extended, serious peace talks in the waning days of the second Bush administration, the effort to reach a compromise was excruciating.

It could be even harder now.

In the past five years, the population of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has grown by about 20 percent, and pro-settler politicians have become major players in Israel’s government.

Here in the West Bank, which Palestinians claim as a basis of their future state, settlers have built museums, a full-fledged university, archaeological parks, shopping malls, heritage sites and wine bars. The impossible-to-miss message: These settlements are here to stay.

On Monday Secretary of State John F. Kerry acknowledged the challenge of old and new realities as he opened preliminary talks in Washington with Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/as-talks-begin-jewish-settlements-loom-as-challenge/2013/07/29/683d12b8-f88f-11e2-a954-358d90d5d72d_story.html

[oberliner]

1. The settlers built museums and parks?!?

Of all the nerve!

[shira]

2. Unbelievable the kind of shit posing as I/P analysis these days, isn't it? nt

[azurnoir]

3. ya well perhaps some Palestinians should stake out some 'ancestral' land

somewhere just east of Tel Aviv and build a museum and park, then we'll see who has 'nerve'

[delrem]

4. In some alternate world the Palestinians could stake out an area comprising 60% of pre-1967 Israel

as an "area Z", from which Palestinian defense forces could operate with impunity to relocate and transfer Jewish Israelis, so the PDF could "practice" in closed military zones, after which non-Jewish Palestinians could be "settled".

Other areas could be designated "R", "S", etc., determined entirely according as how the people in these areas submit.

This'd require an entire network of non-Jewish roads and infrastructure. The entire apparatus that the IDF has proved can work so well in "Judea and Samaria" would be copied, since as we know that would be righteous. First on the list would be night raids. What's a good "area Z" without night raids to lay the new reality down on the people being righteously governed? Plus, this would give Palestinian youth a chance to serve in the cause of righteousness, to demonstrate how the PDF is the most moral army in the world.

Israel has done such a good job of "separating nations" in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean that every technique so proven would be used by the PDF.