Growing population with a need to expand? A political move? Or is the land actually Israeli in some fashion and they’re just getting around to moving in? If that’s the case, why do they have to destroy Palestinian homes to do so? It seems to tick a lot of people off, and I know more about the history of the conflict than modern day politics, but given all that it seems there would be a good reason for it. Of course that makes the faulty assumption that people act in their own best interest, but that something else altogether. So… why build settlements? Let’s hope I can get an answer before this turns out like all Israeli/Palestinian threads…
Some settlers believe that they should be there for religious reasons.
It’s mostly political. Putting people in and giving them claim to an area makes it harder to remove them, thus making it a big concession that they can offer during negotiations.
In case like Jerusalem, however, they have no intention of giving up East Jerusalem (they annexed it a long time ago) so that has the effect of rendering it a fait accompli.
They’re conquering one block at a time and no one is putting any significant pressure on them to stop.
Is that the reason why they started establishing settlements? Because at this point, with the amount of Israeli citizens living in the West Bank, evacuating them would be extremely difficult. What I mainly wonder is why the Israeli government first got this idea in the first place. It makes no sense to me, even looking at it from a Zionist perspective.
I’d imagine that they started building settlements because the land was theirs. They won it in a war and solidified their hold after another one. For me, they’re not occupying land that belongs to someone else, they defeated Jordan (and Syria and Egypt) and took it from them. That’s how it’s always been in the past, why is this any different?
I realize that my view is not that held by most, but I also suspect that a lot of people hold the “occupation” position for political reasons.
I think the Israelis were simply overoptimistic, back in 1967, that they could make the West Bank – “Judea and Samaria,” the real heart of what they saw as their historic homeland – their own. That they could outnumber the Palestinians with Jewish colonists. That the Palestinians would just get fed up and leave, or something.
Sad thing is, they’re all cousins anyway, aren’t they? I daresay the average Palestinian is at least as nearly related to a Jew from New York as to an Arab from Riyadh.
That doesn’t explain why they build though. Wyoming is ours but there’s no one rushing to settle there. Even if it is their land, it’s still a provocative thing to do whether it should be or not. What I mean is, it increases tensions, so why build in the ‘occupied territories’ specifically? Why not just build on what is more commonly recognized as Israel? Is there just not enough space? I take it it’d be safer to do so. Maybe cheaper. So why not? That’s pretty much what I’m getting at.
Thanks for the input everyone. I know it’s unlikely to get a definitive answer everyone agrees on, but at least having more info on the subject is nice.
I believe Israel views holding these lands as key to maintaining a strong defense strategy. Settling the lands is a means of maintaining ownership.
Is it really true that the settlements are “destroying Palestinian homes” in order to be built?
I’ve seen some photos of settlements; they seem to be on sort of remote, mountainous land. Were there really homes there before, which were destroyed to make room?
Why did we settle the West and South West after taking it from the Indians and Mexicans? We DID settle quite vigorously, including in Wyoming. That we aren’t doing so today is because we have secure borders and a stable population…and we already have settled the land from coast to coast.
Were the Palestinians any less provoked when Israel wasn’t pushing settlements? Did not settling prevent the various Arab neighbors from attacking Israel? What is in it for Israel to not settle the lands they won through right of conquest? Where is the benefit? For a long time Israel kept settlement to mainly for defensive/strategic/tactical reasons (excluding Jerusalem of course) as a bargaining chip…but what’s the point now? Any bargain should have happened in the 70’s or 80’s if it was going to happen. It hasn’t and it seems totally unlikely that it ever will.
Because it’s political popular with Israeli voters, and there doesn’t seem to be any downside to most Israelis. If they didn’t build in the OT, would this magically make the Palestinians come to the negotiating table with a serious intent to halt the violence and forge a lasting peace? The Israelis completely abandoned Gaza, ceding it to the Palestinians and forcibly removing Israeli settlers (who were voting citizens in Israel)…has this sparked a joyful and spontaneous push for peace and puppies? Hardly. The Palestinians simply use their territory in Gaza to randomly toss rockets or launch attacks on Israel. Why would it be different in the other OTs??
Where is this land that’s recognized as Israeli? Recognized by whom? The Palestinians? That’s the hearth of the matter…the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israels right to the land they have. As for the OT, it was seized from other countries during various attempts to attack Israel. Jordan has given up it’s claims (as Egypt had over Gaza). Syria still lays claim to it’s lost territory, IIRC, but I don’t think they seriously believe they will ever get it back, not without a decisive defeat of Israel.
As for why they build in the OT, some of that land is quite good, with good water access, so that’s part of the ‘why’. It’s political popular with the voting public in Israel, is the biggest part. Israel is a democracy, so what’s popular with voters becomes public policy. There doesn’t seem to be any urgent need to step on the voters, since it seems unlikely that anything would make the Palestinians feel better about Israel.
Also, in a lot of the WB region, there actually are strategic and defensive reasons for building in the area…it acts as a shield from any potential future attacks. And Jerusalem is, well, Jerusalem…Israel claimed the city, has wanted it to be the official capital and has zero intentions of giving back any part of it, so settling it with their own people has a certain logic to it.
-XT
I don’t know that they’re overoptimistic, they’re playing the long game. Winning slowly by generations.
Israeli suppression of the Palestinians helps keep them in poverty, the irony being poor people generally have more children keeping the population of Palestinians larger than would exist with peace and stability. It also keeps the population curve on the young side (military age).
Generally settlemnts are not built on top of pre-existing homes, but if you have the impression they are generally remote mountainous land you are quite frankly wrong (though they do often occupy high points for various reasons such as to be defensible and to observe the surrounding Palestinian population). Many Palestinian homes have been destroyed because of settlement activity though as after they are built surrounding Paelstianin land is often cofiscated for ‘security purposes’.
:dubious: That should be obvious now. The benefit of not settling is that the existence of the settlements would not present an intractable political problem for any Israeli government trying to finally get rid of the West Bank, which has been nothing but trouble to Israel since they occupied it and always will be so long as it remains occupied. The Israelis have put themselves in a cleft stick, grabbed a wolf by the ears, etc.
Irrelevant. Lasting peace is (1) worth having and (2) impossible so long as the settlements exist.
Map of West Bank settlements. (In magenta.)
Perhaps it’s obvious to you…it’s not obvious to me, and pretty obviously not to the majority of Israelis either. Have you checked the date stamp lately? Consider when this all started, then consider when the Israelis actually won the various OTs under discussion. It hasn’t been a year or two…it’s been decades.
So, no…it’s not obvious at all, despite your use of the :dubious: smiley…
That presupposed that the Israeli government WANTS to get rid of the West Bank. Where do you get that they do? As for peace, it seems that shark has been jumped long ago, so, again, I ask…what’s in it for the Israelis to not settle territory that they pretty obviously control? Will it stop Palestinian attacks (even leaving aside that the OT belonged to other countries that lost wars with Israel)? What would be the basis of speculating that it would? What evidence that it would? And if it wouldn’t, then what’s the point?
Oh horseshit. 
The Israels have BEEN in deep shit since they decided to declare independence, and settling or not settling the various OTs isn’t going to change that one bit. Get real. They grabbed the various ‘wolves’ by the fucking nose and kicked them in the ass…repeatedly. They paid for the territories they gained by blood. But that’s all irrelevant at this point. The key is that whether they settle them or don’t settle them it buys them NOTHING. The test case was Gaza, and it was an epic fail. So, no point in holding back…it’s not going to gain them anything, especially peace.
Except that your number 2 should be ‘so long as Israel exists’…which is the key point. If there was a possibility for peace it would have happened decades ago when there wasn’t large scale settlements in those areas. If there was a possibility for peace it would have happened when the Israelis forcibly removed their own citizens from Gaza settlements and ceded the territory to the Palestinians. It didn’t happen, and at this point it’s not going to…so there is zero point from the Israelis perspective in holding back. There will be no peace, something that I think most Israelis have come to realize over the past DECADES that this fucked up situation has languished over.
-XT
It’s impossible even if the settlements disappear tomorrow. The issue is now, and always will be, the mere existence of the State of Israel. That Egypt and Jordan had the foresight to make a lasting peace doesn’t eliminate the immense ill-will that the Arabs have for Israel. In fact, 92% of all Egyptians think of Israel as their primary enemy to this day.
This is never going to go away unless Israel is either conquered or packs up and leaves on its own. Want odds on that? I’d say there’s a better chance of the Arab world repudiating the Three “Nos” of the Khartoum Resolution, which is to say, none at all.
But they’ve never annexed the land (except part of Jerusalem, I believe, and possibly the Golan as well?). If they had annexed the land, having won it in a war, the world would probably find settling Israeli citizens there acceptable, but it would have required either granting citizenship to the residents (as I believe has been done with Jerusalem) or expelling/obliterating them. The first option is unacceptable to Israelis for good reason, and the second one, well, maybe “[t]hat’s how it’s always been in the past” but today it’s just not seen as acceptable to the world. Even when it’s done to nations we don’t like.
What Israel is doing is some sort of in-between option, keeping the land as occupied territory and settling citizens there, but not considering it as actual national land. As I’ve said, even from a Zionist perspective, you’d think Israel would want its citizens to live on actual Israeli national territory, not on something whose status is in question. So I’m really wondering why the Israeli government ever thought this was a good idea. I hear the “national security” argument but I don’t get it.
Today, of course, it’d be very hard to go back and expel the tens of thousands of Israeli citizens who live in the territories, and in some cases have lived there for decades, if the territories ever become part of a Palestinian state. That’s why I think most Israelis don’t really want any peace accord. After all, Palestinian attacks are really more of a nuisance to them rather than a actual threat, they think (possibly with cause) that even with a peace accord they’d still be at risk of attack from other, scarier enemies such as Iran, and the process of signing a treaty creating a Palestinian state, even with limited land swaps, would still be painful to Israel, since it’d require evacuating many settlements. So to Israelis the current situation might just as well last forever.
ETA: feel free to correct my understanding where it is in error, if it is.
Considering that the entire state of Israel woudl fit inside San Bernadino County in California, it’s hard to consider any part remote.