SETTLEMENT ISSUES

By Edmund Sanders / LOS ANGELES TIMES

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JERUSALEM — This week’s Israeli-Palestinian peace summit in Washington has again put a spotlight on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank. Palestinian leaders say the U.S.-sponsored negotiations will collapse if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not extend his moratorium on most new housing starts, a 10-month program slated to expire Sept. 26.

Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff and the recently named director-general of the settler advocacy group the Yesha Council, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about what he thinks his old boss will do and the challenges facing the settler movement. Q: Settlement construction is at the top of the agenda for the peace summit. What’s Netanyahu going to do?

A: It’s hard to tell. Netanyahu is under tremendous pressure. The Obama administration is twisting his arm and bullying him into doing something (restricting settlement construction) he doesn’t believe in and in fact believes is against Israel’s interests. Q: What’s wrong with a temporary construction freeze in exchange for a possible peace deal?

A: Why should we have to pay a price to talk? It’s in their interest more than ours. We’re doing just fine. If they want to talk, talk. But we keep on giving, and things are just getting worse. There is not going to be a peace agreement anyway, not in the sense that Westerners think. We don’t believe Palestinian leaders want peace.

So it’s time to rethink this whole paradigm of a Palestinian state. If they had a state, Iran and radical Islam will funnel billions into Judea and Samaria (another term for the West Bank), Hamas will take over and soon, just like in Gaza, the missiles and shooting toward Israel will come. Q: What can you do if Netanyahu continues the construction moratorium?

A: Netanyahu was elected on a platform against Palestinian statehood and pro-settlements. I know because I helped him. We need to help Netanyahu back and help him keep to his beliefs and promises. That’s part of the campaign we’ve done called “A word is a word,” holding politicians accountable. But that campaign is only the tip of the iceberg of what we’re willing to do.

If he extends the freeze, that’s crossing a red line. Q: If not a Palestinian state, then what would you propose? A: The alternative is peaceful co-existence on the ground and simply strengthening the current, very positive trends with the economy and security. Removing the roadblocks. Giving Palestinians political rights to vote for themselves.

If they want to reach an agreement with Jordan to give them citizenship, so be it. Q: Many Palestinians say the status quo is unfair and not acceptable. A: There wouldn’t be apartheid. They’d rule themselves and we’d rule ourselves. We’d drive on the same roads. Arabs have fairly good lives. The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people want peaceful co-existence.

It’s just their leaders who are not okay with it. It’s not perfect. They want a full-blown state. But it’s a zero-sum game. If they have a state, we’ll cease to exist. That’s the best we can do.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

The single most important clipping in this batch. An American newspaper printed Bennett's positions - no Palestinian state, 'Judea and Samaria', permanent Israeli rule, 'there wouldn't be apartheid' - verbatim and unchallenged in 2010, while he was a lobbyist.

The paper's own framing words are mild ('settler advocacy group', 'settler movement', 'Jewish settlement construction'); every hard phrase on the page is Bennett's own. The interviewer does push: the last two questions put the Palestinian objection to him directly. 'Occupied' never appears.

The parenthetical '(another term for the West Bank)' after 'Judea and Samaria' is the paper's gloss, inserted inside Bennett's quote.

Cite this clipping

"SETTLEMENT ISSUES," The Star-Ledger, 2 September 2010. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2010-034. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2010-034