Brit Tzedek v'Shalom

Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace

The following is an Editorial in the Chicago Tribune from August 8, 2002. The area mentioning BTvS is highlighted in bold.

Rumsfeld and the settlements

Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are set to meet Thursday and Friday in Washington with a high-level Palestinian delegation, a development devoutly to be welcomed. No one is expecting any breakthroughs. Still, with the violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories at an unprecedented pitch, any and all efforts aimed at getting the combatants to take a breather should be encouraged.

The talks come as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are gingerly discussing economic incentives for the Palestinians along with an Israeli security plan approved Wednesday by the Palestinian Cabinet. Under the plan, Israeli troops would gradually withdraw from Palestinian areas, starting with the Gaza Strip, in exchange for Palestinian guarantees that no terrorist attacks would be launched from those areas.

These and numerous behind-the-scenes efforts are aimed at a land-for-peace deal under which Israel would eventually withdraw from territories it captured in 1967 and a peaceful, demilitarized but independent Palestinian state would be established there.

It was, therefore, unfortunate to hear Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggest Tuesday that Israel might not have to turn over what he referred to as "so-called occupied territory" to the Palestinian Authority and might not have to remove its settlements from that territory.

While Rumsfeld's remarks to a group of Pentagon employees do not reflect current U.S. policy, Palestinian leaders might understandably wonder whether they reflect future U.S. policy. The Palestinians are already suspicious of the administration, perceiving that it tilts unfairly toward Israel. Whether the remarks signal a policy shift, they are likely to encourage Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hard-line approach to the conflict and make it harder for the Israeli government to start de-occupying areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And despite their desire not to appear to reward the continuing Palestinian terror campaign, a majority of Israelis still support removing most of the settlements in exchange for peace.

Even if they aren't bothered by the illegal status of the settlements, most Israelis understand the political reality that they will never have peace unless the Palestinians get their longed-for state. Most Israelis also understand that Israel cannot remain both Jewish and democratic while it rules over an Arab population that is reproducing faster than its Jewish citizens.

Perhaps most compelling in the near term, Israelis understand that a continued occupation with no political settlement in sight will impose military and economic burdens they are not willing to shoulder for very long. According to a recent poll by the Israeli Peace Now movement, even a majority of the settlers are ready to give up their homes in the territories, in return for appropriate compensation, and move back inside Israel's pre-1967 borders.

Peace Now has called on the Israeli government to set up an agency to help settlers relocate, by stopping the flow of subsidies that keep people in the settlements and using some of that money to establish a fair compensation program. At the same time, a U.S. group called the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, which describes itself as pro-Israel but anti-occupation, proposes that the international community, led by the U.S., establish a fund to make it possible for settlers who choose to leave to do so.

Not a bad idea.