SETTLEMENT MONITOR

Edited by Geoffrey Aronson

This section covers items—reprinted articles, statistics, and maps—pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the , including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.

The Settlement Freeze and its Antecedents Settlement Freeze Redux (excerpts) ...... 174

AFocusonEastJerusalem The Very Eye of the Storm, by Akiva Eldar (excerpts) ...... 178 Turkish Documents Prove Arabs Own East Jerusalem Building, by Nir Hasson (excerpts)...... 181 The Planning Crisis in East Jerusalem: Understanding the Phenomenon of “Illegal” Construction, by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (excerpts) ...... 181

THE SETTLEMENT FREEZE AND ITS ural growth” of settlements. Settlements ANTECEDENTS must be evacuated as part of a final status plan that establishes Palestinian sovereignty SETTLEMENT FREEZE REDUX (EXCERPTS) and enhances Israeli security, but to do so will require a degree of commitment— From Settlement Report, May–June not to a freeze in settlements but to their 2009. removal—that neither Israel nor the inter- Israel’s ever-expanding network of civil- national community has yet been able or ian settlements in the occupied territories willing to muster. is viewed by its partisans and opponents The administration of Pres. Barack alike as the most significant obstacle to the Obama is considering resurrecting the freeze creation of a viable, sovereign Palestinian idea as a key element of its policy. Israeli state. Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sig- Mahmud Abbas is conditioning a renewal naled his opposition, noting that “if Israelis of discussions with Israel on an Israeli com- cannot build houses in the West Bank, Pales- mitment to freeze all settlement, echoing a tinians do not need to build either.” demand originally made in 1992 during the U.S. officials believe that despite the pre-Oslo Washington talks.... failure of all previous attempts to freeze Yet, for more than three decades, on- settlements, the idea still has merit. But again off-again promotion of a settlement achieving the goal of peace and security freeze by the has failed to for both Israelis and Palestinians requires a slow settlement expansion, thereby under- strategy rooted in historical experience and mining the credibility of U.S. diplomacy. the vital requirements of both peoples. A More often than not, attempts to establish settlement freeze falls short of this standard. a freeze resulted in U.S. support for settle- Settlement evacuation, not a freeze, is a ment expansion, most notably the Clinton more credible and necessary objective, more administration’s endorsement of the “nat- closely attuned to the essential long-term

Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 (Summer 2009), pp. 174–184, ISSN 0377-919X, electronic ISSN 1533-8614. C ! 2009 by the Institute for Palestine Studies. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: jps.2009.XXXVIII.4.174. SETTLEMENT MONITOR 175 interests of both parties and firmly rooted tion of Menachem Begin in 1977, there was in past Israeli practice, most recently in a legitimate basis to view a cessation of set- Gaza. Placing a freeze at the center of a U.S. tlement as a confidence-building measure. diplomatic effort that calls for confidence- In a