On March 10 at 11.00 am, more than 30 armed settlers from the illegal Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on invaded the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani.
Days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged as the clear victor of Israel's elections and will lead the country for a fifth term, a campaign promise he made to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank is catching ire from House democrats
Taking the unusual step of publicly criticizing Israel and Netanyahu, today Eliot L. Engel, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Schneider,
all supporters of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, issued a statement cautioning against any "unilateral steps" to declare occupied Palestinian territory part of the state of Israel:
"As strong, life-long supporters of Israel, a U.S.-Israel relationship rooted in our shared values, and the two-state solution, we are greatly concerned by the possibility of Israel taking unilateral steps to annex the West Bank. Every one of Israel's frontiers plays an important role in its security, and Israel's ability to guard itself from threats is non-negotiable. We hope that any security measures are implemented within the context of preserving the eventual possibility of a two-state solution. Two states for two peoples, negotiated directly by the two sides, with mutually agreed upon land swaps, is the best option to achieve a Jewish, democratic, secure Israel living side-by-side with a democratic, de-militarized Palestinian state.
"This will not be easy. Palestinian leadership has been unwilling to accept any reasonable peace proposal or even to negotiate seriously toward a solution. To paraphrase Abba Eban, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And instead of negotiating, they have pursued unilateral statehood through the United Nations.
"Our fear is that such unilateral steps-whether from Israelis or Palestinians-would push the parties farther from a final, negotiated settlement."
Comment: The spectacle of AIPAC-supporting politician publicly pushing back against the Lobby is interesting. Why now? However, realists know the two-state solution has been unviable since Ariel Sharon's
injunction to the illegal settlers in 1998 to "grab all the hilltops" in the West Bank:
"Everybody has to move; run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements, because everything we take now will stay ours. Everything we don't grab will go to them." . ~ Ariel Sharon
"Jews should live in and around every Arab population centre... Jews should not leave a single place where they don't live and have freedom of movement." - Ariel Sharon
Nothing of course, about
Palestinian freedom of movement.
Sharon recounted standing on a dune near Gaza with cabinet ministers, explaining that along with military measures to control the Strip he wanted "fingers" of settlements separating its cities, chopping the region in four. Another "finger" would thrust through the edge of Sinai, helping create a "Jewish buffer zone between Gaza and Sinai to cut off the flow of weapons" and divide the two regions in case the rest of Sinai was ever returned to Egypt. That legacy disfigured and isolated Gaza, even years after Sharon implemented his policy of unilateral "disengagement" in 2005. He relocated the settlers to other illegal colonies in the West Bank and imposed a hermetic siege on the Strip, the consequences of which remain suffocating and deadly.
Comment: The spectacle of AIPAC-supporting politician publicly pushing back against the Lobby is interesting. Why now? However, realists know the two-state solution has been unviable since Ariel Sharon's injunction to the illegal settlers in 1998 to "grab all the hilltops" in the West Bank: Nothing of course, about Palestinian freedom of movement.