Starboard Broadside

60 Minutes just broadcast a very compelling piece on Israeli settlements, in which Bob Simon goes to the West Bank and speaks with Israeli settlers and Palestinians affected by the settlements. (h/t to Glenn Greenwald for the video and some links)


(We do not endorse the above ads from CBS)

There are few groups in this world, save perhaps the obvious ones, such as al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, that I dislike as much as extremist Israeli settlers. (I also don't like hard-right evangelicals. Notice a trend here? - they are all religious extremists). Why do I despise them so? Because they will probably result in the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy if they continue to have their way (and they are having their way - settlements have grown by 69% in the past year).

Basically Israel has three options here.

1. Israel could reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians, of which the contours are fairly clear. Israel would withdraw all settlements from the West Bank, or perhaps cede some Israeli land to the Palestinians in exchange for keeping some settlements. That would be the preferable outcome. The prospects for this are not great. Leaders like Olmert, Livni, and Barak want to remove the settlements (Livni is featured in the video) and might if under enough American pressure. Benjamin Netanyahu, I am far less confident about. He recently said that though he will stop building settlements but will let them expand if he is PM. Perhaps with enough American pressure he might reverse himself, but I am not hopeful. This entire mess is complicated by the lack of a strong unified Palestinian side. Fatah is weaker than ever, and while Hamas will need to be negotiated with, they will likely make things difficult.

2. Israel could incorporate the Palestinians into Israel in a one-state solution. Under this plan, all Arabs would have the right to vote. Because of the demographics involved here - Arabs will likely make up 47% of the people in Israel and the occupied territories by 2020 due to higher birth rates- this will necessarily mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Somehow I do not think that too many Israelis will be happy about that.

3. Israel could keep the settlements and basically impose an apartheid-like system upon the Palestinians in a system in which the Jewish minority would rule the Arab majority. To a degree, there already is de facto apartheid in the occupied territories. But because of the demographic time bomb, it will eventually become even more pervasive and oppressive. I say apartheid-like and de facto because the comparison is not completely apt. Israel's system would not be based on race like South Africa's. It would, nevertheless, still be similar to apartheid, as Arabs would be denied full rights and would live under a different legal system from the Palestinians (Apartheid is basically Afrikaans for separateness - two different systems). Here I quote former IDF member Jeffrey Goldberg, who writes for the Atlantic.

A de-facto apartheid already exists in the West Bank. Inside the borders of Israel proper, Arabs and Jews are judged by the same set of laws in the same courtrooms; across the Green Line, Jews live under Israeli civil law as well, but their Arab neighbors—people who live, in some cases, just yards away—fall under a different, and substantially undemocratic, set of laws, administered by the Israeli Army. The system is neither as elaborate nor as pervasive as South African apartheid, and it is, officially, temporary. It is nevertheless a form of apartheid, because two different ethnic groups living in the same territory are judged by two separate sets of laws.

(A side note about Goldberg - he is no dove. But, like even Sharon, he recognizes the threat the settlers cause to Israel. Read this.)
This would mean the end of democracy in Israel. Once of the reasons the US (and I) support Israel is that is one of the few democracies in the region. Once that disappears...

Long story short, Obama is going to have to put pressure on the Israelis to begin to dismantle the settlements. (Read former US diplomat Aaron David Miller on how and why this might be done.) The prospects for peace are not good. But peace is in Israel's, the Palestinians' and the U.S.'s best interests. Let's hope that Obama can begin to move everyone down that road.