Who will stop Israel's craziest settlement plan ever?
A new mega-settlement would be the death sentence for a viable future Palestinian state. But with the shameful silence of the 'pro-peace,' two state supporters in Israel's coalition government, the only hope for halting the plan rests with Biden and Blinken
by Hagit Ofran 5 December 2021 Haaretz
The story of this new Israeli settlement is almost too wild and fantastical to be believed.
What is planned for the Palestinian neighborhood of Qalandiya ("Atarot" in official Israelispeak), north of Jerusalem, is a new settlement the size of an entire city. It would be an enclave surrounded by a dense Palestinian urban continuum and detached from any existing Israeli settlement. Perhaps its most delusional attribute is that it could soon be established by an Israeli government basing its decision on maintaining what it calls the "status quo" for the settlement project.
In recent years, Israel’s housing ministry has prepared a plan for 9,000 housing units in the area of the old Atarot airport, but according to reports, Netanyahu’s government didn’t push it forward due to American pressure. The plan is considered lethal for the prospect of a two-state peace agreement because it interrupts the Palestinian continuum in the central metropolis of the future Palestinian state, between Ramallah and East Jerusalem. Even according to the the Trump Plan, itself far from a model for two states, the Atarot area was supposed to be part of the Palestinian entity.
If you want to stop the plan, you have to do it now, before it starts the planning process. All that is required for this is to postpone the hearing in the district committee to an unknown date, at a paltry political cost. However, after the planning process begins, it becomes much more complicated, difficult and politically costly.
So how come the current coalition government dares to do what even Netanyahu’s "full-on" right-wing government did not dare to do?
The Bennett government was formed on the basis of a consensus that there is no consensus on the issue of settlements and the occupied territories. Its core understandings were that the government would neither make far-reaching changes that might preclude the possibility of a future peace, nor would it make far-reaching changes that would advance a future peace. This was called maintaining a "status quo" on settlements.
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Supporters of a two-state solution in the government interpret this agreement as a sweeping exemption from taking responsibility for policy in the territories: "There is no chance of reaching an agreement anyway, so there is no point talking about it." They do not even seek to hold any consultation or ministerial forum to question the policies in the occupied territories. Their standpoint is: If we do not talk about something, it won’t happen.
Right-wing ministers (and with them also supposedly centrist Defense Minister Benny Gantz) also don’t talk about it. They are doing everything in their power to deepen Israeli control of the territories, and don’t even bother to engage with pro-peace partners in government.
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