My own thoughts on Why Settlements

One of my major questions after watching the documentary “Unsettled” was why would the government establish settlements if their goal was to eventually turn the land over to the Palestinians. What I have discovered through my research is that the Israeli governments have maintained an ambiguous policy towards the occupied territory. They had to decide between allowing their people to expand into the historical land of Greater Israel, or leave the land unoccupied as a bargaining tool during negotiations with the Arabs. Original Israeli policy at that time was to deny any Jewish settlement of these areas or even Jewish resettlement of specific locations where Jews had resided up until the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Many attempts were made by Gush Emunim to establish outposts or resettle former Jewish areas, and initially the Israeli government forcibly disbanded these settlements. However, an increasing number of settlements were established as it became evident that Arab states would not negotiate with Israel. A decisive turning point was the Khartoum Arab summit, in August and September 1967, which seemed to shut the door on the possibility of negotiations with Israel or recognition of Israel in any form. In the absence of peace talks to determine the future of these and other occupied territories, Israel ceased the enforcement of the original ban on settlement.

I think that the government decided to finally cave into the demands of their citizens that demanded settlements because of the benefits that the Israeli government viewed they would provide. One of these main benefits would be that these settlements could be used as a basis for negotiation of borders. This conviction grew from the historical experience, that the UN Partition plan of 1947 had awarded Israel territories on the basis of those areas that had large concentrations of Jews. As we can see with the separation wall that is currently being constructed, this barrier does not follow the original Green Line boundaries and instead is cutting into Palestinian territory as a way to incorporate large settlements into Israel.