Israeli Settlements

Colonization or defensive strategy?

Nov 09, 2023

Signalizer: Beit El, a settlement of 6,500 residents located in the Binyamin Region of the West Bank

We’ve covered a lot of ground:

November 1: An overview of the Jewish people’s ancient connection to Israel, from 4,000 years ago to the State of Israel’s birth in May 1948.

November 4: The pivotal Six-Day War of 1967, how it came to pass and how the Jews defended their national home so successfully that its territory expanded.

Today, I’ll look at Israel’s settlement program that emerged as a result of capturing new territory in 1967.

The program is characterized by Israel’s critics as illegal and offered as an excuse for Palestinian terrorism. Last month, the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that the killing of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas terrorists on October 7 “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan called Guterres “completely disconnected from the reality in our region” and demanded his resignation.

Israel says its settlements are justified because they’re built on land it took in a defensive war against three Arab armies, and that they form part of its defensive strategy, which is necessary in a region of 350 million Muslims who want to eradicate it.

In a prepared statement to Congress in 1977, Ann M. Lesch, former representative in the Middle East for the American Friends Service Committee, said the following about settlements in the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem:

“Both sets of settlements had acknowledged strategic purpose: the government signaled its intention to prevent the Syrians from returning to the heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee, from which they could train their guns on the Israeli fishermen and farmers below. The Jerusalem suburbs were popularly dubbed the ‘Rogers Plan Housing,’ indicating that their construction sought to preempt American pressure on Israel to leave East Jerusalem.”

The Rogers Plan was a 1969 proposal by US Secretary of State William P. Rogers to end hostilities after the Six-Day War. It included stipulations that Israel withdraw from some of the land it won in the war, an idea Israel called an attempt to appease the Arabs at the expense of Israel. Thus settlements in East Jerusalem would make it harder for any such future American proposals to gain traction.

Israel began settlements in occupied territories immediately after winning the Six-Day War. The first ones were founded in the Golan Heights in July 1967, followed by others in the West Bank in September.

They later appeared in the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula as well, but the latter were dismantled or evacuated in 1982 (when Israel return the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for Egypt’s recognition of Israel as a legitimate sovereign state) and the former were dismantled in 2005 (as part of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, when it transferred the area to Palestinian control).

Today, there are nearly 300 settlements and outposts in the Golan Heights and West Bank (including East Jerusalem), with a combined population exceeding 700,000. Settlements were authorized by the Israeli government, while outposts were developed independently without government authorization.

Because Israel has now annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, Jewish communities there are no longer considered settlements under Israeli law. This leaves settlements in only the West Bank, where, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 451,700 Jews lived in 2020.

The image atop this article is from a photo of Beit El, a settlement of 6,500 residents located in the Binyamin Region of the West Bank. Below is a photo of Ma’ale Mikhmas, a settlement of 1,700 people in the same region:

Ma’ale Mikhmas, a settlement of 1,700 people located in the Binyamin Region of the West Bank

Israel made no bones about its mission to annex the lands it conquered in the Six-Day War.

In late-1970s and early-1980s reports by Matityahu “Matti” Drobles, we find Israel’s reasoning stated plainly. Drobles was a Jew born in Warsaw, Poland, who was interned in the Warsaw Ghetto by Nazi Germany. After World War II, he moved to Israel and served as a member of the Knesset for the Gahal and Likud parties between 1972 and 1977.

As chairman of the Settlement Section of the Jewish Agency, he produced the Drobles Plan, a placement of Israeli settlements in a manner that breaks up the West Bank in what appears at first glance to be a golf course map. Its primary goal was better security for Israel by preventing contiguous Arab development on lands that would increase the likelihood of future attacks. Drobles wrote:

“The source of our right to Eretz-Israel [traditional Jewish name for the Land of Israel], the moral basis of the Zionist movement and of the State of Israel, is the ancient link between the Jewish people and its country, a link that has not ceased for 4,000 years. This link starts in the mountains of Samaria and Judea [in combination, now commonly referred to as the West Bank], and through all generations refers mainly to them…”

“In Judea and Samaria, the total area exploited for any purpose — building, development projects, or farming — is not more than 30% … the demographical question that overshadows the horizon of the future generation is not, where will the boundary between Jews and Arabs inside Eretz-Israel be, but which population will fill the vacuum of Judea and Samaria. Will it be filled by the Jewish population who is pressed, almost choking in the hot, moist plain in the west, or perhaps by an overpopulated Arab world rising as a threat from the east? …”

“The history of Eretz-Israel teaches us that who sits on the mountain, controls, finally, the whole country. In our days, in the era of electronics and computers, … the issue of the domination of Judea and Samaria has become again a key issue for the existence of the State of Israel.”

His most forceful argument in favor of settlements was the following:

“The state lands and the uncultivated rocky grounds in Judea and Samaria must be seized immediately, to settle the areas between the centers of the minority populations and also around them, in order to minimize the danger of development of another Arab state in these territories. Being cut off by Jewish settlements, the minority population will find it hard to create a territorial and political unity and continuity.

“There must be no doubt as to our intention to hold forever the territories of Judea and Samaria, otherwise an increasing unrest might arise among the minority population, that will cause repeated attempts to establish an additional Arab state in these areas. The best and most efficient way to remove the slightest doubt about our intention to hold Judea and Samaria forever, is an accelerated colonization drive in these areas.”

Drobles’s view was partly born out by what happened in Gaza. Israel left Gaza in September 2005, all of its settlements and security presence, and returned control to Gazans. Supporters of Palestinians cheered, but the cancer of Hamas immediately started spreading. Martin S. Indyk wrote at Brookings in December 2005 that while everything looked promising, malevolence lurked under the surface:

“Gaza today is ruled not by the Palestinian Authority but by competing warlords, armed gangs, security chiefs, and terrorist organizations. …some Gazans suggest that the time has come to create their own independent state in the part of Palestine that has now been liberated. … Fostering negotiations will grow only more challenging when January elections bring Hamas into the Palestinian political mainstream with its terrorist abilities intact.”

That’s what happened.

Gazans elected Hamas in January 2006, fired rockets at Israel and brought on Israeli bombardment of northern Gaza, and attracted a promise of emergency aid from Russia. The new phase started in blood, and its latest chapter is bloodier still: last month, Hamas advanced its goal of eliminating Israel, with the murder of 1,400 Israelis. Now Israel is back in Gaza, rooting out Hamas terrorists and planning to reestablish a security presence akin to what it removed in 2005. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News this week that Israel would maintain indefinite “overall security responsibility” in Gaza once it removes Hamas from power.

Josef Federman of the Associated Press noted: “Experience suggests that any Israeli security role will be seen by the Palestinians and much of the international community as a form of military occupation.”

Yes, it does.

When Israel is absent, terrorism breaks out. When Israel is present, it’s accused of unfair occupation.

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories dreams of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, and believes that such a future “will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end.” It wrote in May 2002:

“Israel uses the seized lands to benefit the settlements, while prohibiting the Palestinian public from using them in any way. This use is forbidden and illegal … As the occupier in the Occupied Territories, Israel is not permitted to ignore the needs of an entire population and to use land intended for public needs solely to benefit the settlers.”

It demanded that “the Israeli government act to vacate all the settlements.”

The United Nations cites Article 49 of the Geneva Convention when stating that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. It has reiterated this view numerous times over the decades, for example, in December 2016. From coverage of its 7853rd meeting:

“The Security Council reaffirmed this afternoon that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.”

The “peace and security” part is the forever sticking point, with Israel refusing to accept paper promises of an end to violence, for obvious reasons. Every time it obliged since the day of its creation, it suffered deadly attacks, and is therefore reluctant to give an inch to the demands of organizations located far from the danger zone.

But they persist.

Israel Policy Forum takes a different view. It believes Israeli settlements do more harm than good, because:

The settler population in the West Bank is dwarfed by an 85% Palestinian majority,
Distribution of settlers is ineffective for the purpose of securing Israeli dominance, failing one of the goals presented in the Drobles Plan,
Settlements depend on Israel for support, making them a drain on the nation’s resources.

The government of Israel reminds detractors that some settlements are not new, but date back to long before modern criticism of Israel’s defensive methods as illegal and/or ineffective. Hebron, for instance, existed throughout centuries of Ottoman rule:

“Many contemporary Israeli settlements have actually been reestablished on sites which were home to Jewish communities in previous generations, in an expression of the Jewish people’s deep historic and abiding connection with this land — the cradle of Jewish civilization and the locus of the key events of the Hebrew Bible. A significant number are located in places where previous Jewish communities were forcibly ousted by Arab armies or militia, or slaughtered, as was the case with the ancient Jewish community of Hebron in 1929. …

“In short, the attempt to portray Jewish communities in the West Bank as a new form of ‘colonial’ settlement in the land of a foreign sovereign is as disingenuous as it is politically motivated. At no point in history were Jerusalem and the West Bank subject to Palestinian Arab sovereignty. At issue is the right of Jews to reside in their ancient homeland, alongside Palestinian Arab communities, in an expression of the connection of both peoples to this land.”

It rejects the UN’s connecting of international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict to the settlements. In Israel’s view, the settlements merely extend to Jews the same residential rights as the local population of Arabs, with both groups being connected to the land.

Israel further claims that settlements in the West Bank were allowed only after “an exhaustive investigation process, under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel, and subject to appeal, which is designed to ensure that no communities are established illegally on private land.”

And Israel has no intention of ending its settlement program.

It approved over 13,000 settlement housing units this year, nearly three times the number approved last year. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a believer in settlements, vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank. The United States opposes the push as an impediment to its desired two-state solution.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to peaceful negotiations on various matters, including Jewish settlements. It’s terrorists and their backers who keep the Middle East a trauma zone, ruining gestures of good will, such as Israel’s 2005 exit from Gaza.

But can the emergence of Islamic terrorists, hell-bent on the destruction of Israel, be separated from the Arab cultures that repeatedly create them? Is it even possible to root them out permanently?

Israeli Settlements

Colonization or defensive strategy?

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