Netanyahu Not Doing His Part for Peace Between Israel, Palestine

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Monday March 03, 2014 · 7:25 PM PST

2014/03/03 · 19:25

During his recent visit with Obama, PM Benjamin Netanyahu had this to say about the peace process:

But facing a U.S.-imposed April deadline, the Israeli leader declared pessimistically that "Israel has been doing its part, and, I regret to say, the Palestinians have not."

For the sake of the argument, even if the Palestinians are not, it is clear from the article that Bibi is not either.

New Israeli housing statistics showed that Israel began building more than twice as many West Bank settlement homes in 2013 than it did the previous year.

The problem is that as long as Israel continues to build settlements, there will not be peace between Israel and Palestine. So the US-imposed deadline of April, which is artificial to begin with, will go out the door. The BDS movement will continue to grow and more and more isolation of Israel will happen.

President Obama laid out the choices:

Obama said the Israelis and Palestinians cannot maintain the status quo of low-level conflict. "There comes a point," he said, "where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices."
"Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?"

The consequences, as the President made clear, will be that fewer and fewer people will see Israel as a democratic state if they continue their policy of perpetual warfare against the Palestinian people. Israel may still be popular here. But human rights is not a popularity contest. It will be increasingly difficult for Israel to do business with the outside world as long as they continue to build settlements and, in effect, give the Palestinians the middle finger.

The President recently alleged that Russia's recent incursions into Crimea amount to violations of international law. But given that Israel is violating international law on a daily basis with their settlement construction, it is only fair to point out that they are doing the exact same thing as the Russians are doing. The President can't call for the isolation of Russia and then not expect Israel to get isolated when its violations have been ongoing for a lot longer.

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