I Commentary Magazine skriver Evelyn Gordon om Israels bosättningar på Västbanken:
In an interview with Charlie Rose this week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate unless Israel freezes settlement construction is unjustified, because their claim settlements are stealing the land needed for a Palestinian state is pure “propaganda.” How so? Because “after 44 years, the whole Jewish settlement in the whole West Bank together doesn’t cover even two percent of the area.”
Is this mere propaganda on Barak’s part – a lie meant to downplay the devastating impact of Jewish settlement? Actually, Palestinians put the figure even lower: In an interview with the Arabic radio station As-Shams two weeks ago, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that based on an aerial photograph provided by European sources, the settlements cover only 1.1 percent of the West Bank.
Hon ställer också en berättigad fråga: Om bosättningarna är 1.1% av Västbanken, hur kan de vara ett sådant enormt hinder för fred?
So if settlements cover only 1.1 percent of the West Bank, why does the entire West deem them the main obstacle to peace? Because admitting that settlements aren’t the main obstacle to peace would force it to confront an unpalatable truth: that the real obstacle to peace is Palestinian unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in any borders.
It’s not that evidence of this has ever been lacking. In July, for instance, a poll found that 66 percent of Palestinians view the two-state solution as a mere stepping-stone to Israel’s eradication. Last month, a whopping 89.8 percent of Palestinian respondents in another poll said they opposed waiving the “right of return” – their demand to eradicate the Jewish state demographically by flooding it with five million descendants of refugees – “even if [that means] no peace deal would be concluded.” Translation: If getting a state of their own means giving up their goal of destroying the Jewish one, they’d rather keep living under “the brutal Israeli occupation.”
Med det fokus som är på bosättningarna skulle man kunna tro att de låg på 45-50%. Men de ligger alltså på 1.1%, och detta enligt palestinierna själva.
Samtidigt vägrar de palestinska ledarna eller deras folk att säga nej till “rätten att återvända”. Det är att säga nej till en tvåtstatslösning.