THE WASHINGTON POST ‘BREAKS THE CODE’: WHY SETTLEMENTS ARE KEY TO ISRAELI SECURITY, NON-NEGOTIABLE

The front page of today’s Washington Post features an article entitled "Israel Concentrates Jewish Settlements in Key Zones." In a striking departure from the neuralgic coverage often given the subject of Israeli settlements in the "occupied" territories by the Western media, this article "breaks the code" on Israel’s approach to such settlements.

According to Jackson Diehl, the Post’s correspondent in Jerusalem, the preponderance of these housing complexes are situated in "areas [that] control key routes between the Jordan valley and the Mediterranean coast and between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as access to the West Bank’s main water supplies…. Construction has been concentrated in these strategic border areas."

Nearly as importantly, Diehl also notes the broad-based political support these critical settlements enjoy in Israel: "The areas targeted [for settlements construction] in the current building boom already have been declared crucial to Israel’s future security by the opposition Labor Party and other domestic proponents of territorial compromise with the Palestinians."

In short, these key Israeli settlements on the West Bank represent an essential ingredient in the strategic depth vital to present and future Israeli security. As such, they are not negotiable in any Middle East peace conference.

Interestingly, on 14 October 1991, two members of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors made essentially these points in separate speeches to the National Leadership Conference of the State of Israel Bonds Organization in Washington. Douglas J. Feith, who was formerly a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council staff and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and the Center’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., outlined respectively the historical and strategic considerations which render any wholesale swap of "land-for-peace" — such as that demanded by the Arab confrontation states, the Palestinians and increasingly the Bush Administration — a formula, at best, for a gridlocked "peace process" and, at worst, a security disaster for Israel.

Highlights of Feith and Gaffney’s comments are attached.