Is the presence of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria an impediment to Israel’s ability to reach a settlement with the Arabs? “Just as terror is the greatest Palestinian threat to Middle East peace, so are settlements on territory captured in the 1967 war the greatest Israeli obstacle to peace,” complained The New York Times[1] The only solution is to evacuate them. This view became acceptable among some Israelis and American Jews, at least until the Jews were expelled (euphemistically called “unilateral disengagement”) from Gaza in August 2005. [2]
When the Al Aqsa Intifada began in late September 2000, The New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman visited Israel and Ramallah where he concluded, “This war is sick, but it has exposed some basic truths… to think that the Palestinians are only enraged about settlements is also fatuous nonsense. Talk to the 15-year-olds. Their grievance is not just with Israeli settlements, but with Israel. Most Palestinians simply do not accept that the Jews have any authentic right to be here. For this reason, any Palestinian state that comes into being should never be permitted to have any heavy weapons, because if the Palestinians had them today their extremists would be using them on Tel Aviv.” [3]
The Jewish population of Judea and Samaria is approximately 360,000 to 382,000. Jews living in Judea and Samaria during the 1948-1949 War of Independence were expelled. They did not return until after 1967. [4]
Israeli civilian settlement in Judea and Samaria began at the request of the Levi Eshkol government in response to political pressure to resettle the Gush Etzion Bloc and create a permanent presence on the Golan Heights. After the Six-Day War, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s government came under even greater pressure to allow settlements throughout the biblical Land of Israel. She responded by establishing a small number of security settlements in the Sinai, the Golan, and the Jordan Valley. [5]
Under the Eshkol, Meir, and Rabin governments there was significant settlement activity, yet by the time Menachem Begin and the Likud assumed power in 1977, there were only 3,200 settlers. By the end of Begin’s second term as Prime Minister in 1983, the number increased to 28,400. By 2004, there some 230,000. The IDF constructed roads that bypass Palestinian Arab towns and villages to protect the Jews from snipers, bombings, and drive-by shootings. [6]
