Yousef Munayyer
32 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
Israeli occupation o the West Bank
began. Nevertheless, Israel has forged
ahead with its expansion and has
enjoyed unÁinching U.S. support, even
as Israeli ocials periodically warned
about its irreversibility.
Palestinian leaders also made decisions
that reduced the chances for a workable
partition—none more signiÄcant than
agreeing to the Oslo framework in the
Ärst place. In doing so, they consented
to a formula that encouraged Israel’s
expansion, relinquished their ability to
challenge it, and sidelined the interna-
tional community and international
law. Under Oslo, the Palestinians have
had to rely on the United States to
treat Israel with a kind o tough love
that American leaders, nervous about
their domestic support, have never
been able to muster. In the 26 years
between the 1967 war and the signing
o the Oslo accords in 1993, the popula-
tion o Israeli settlers (not including
those in occupied Jerusalem) grew to
around 100,000. In the 26 years since
then, it has reached roughly 400,000.
As the failure o the peace process
became clearer over time, Palestinians
rose up against the occupation—some-
times violently. Israel pointed to those
reactions to justify further repression.
But the cycle was enabled by Palestinian
leaders who resigned themselves to
having to prove to Israel’s satisfaction
that Palestinians were worthy o self-
determination—something to which all
peoples are in fact entitled.CONQUER AND DIVIDE
Arguments about the conÁict often
devolve into shouting matches about
who bears more o the blame for the
failure o the two-state solution. Butresistance and the normalization o
relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
But a vast settlement-building project
never sat easily with that goal and
created strong political incentives to
avoid it. Today, large numbers o Israelis
support keeping much o the occupied
territories forever. A week before the
Israeli election in September, Netanyahu
delivered a televised address announcing
his intention to annex the Jordan Valley
and every Israeli settlement in the West
Bank—a move that would eat up 60
percent o the West Bank and leave the
other 40 percent as isolated cantons,
unconnected to one another.
What was remarkable about Netan-
yahu’s announcement was that it was so
unremarkable: among Jewish Israelis,
annexation is not a controversial idea.
A recent poll showed that 48 percent o
them support steps along the lines o
what Netanyahu proposed; only 28
percent oppose them. Even Netanyahu’s
main rival, the centrist Blue and White
alliance, supports perpetual Israeli control
o the Jordan Valley. Its leaders’ response
to Netanyahu’s annexation plan was to
complain that it had been their idea Ärst.
This state o aairs should not come
as a surprise to anyone, especially
policymakers in Washington. In fact,
one national intelligence estimate drawn
up by U.S. agencies judged that i Israel
continued the occupation and settle-
ment building for “an extended period,
say two to three years, it will Änd it
increasingly dicult to relinquish
control.” Pressure to hold on to the
territories “would grow, and it would be
harder to turn back to the Arabs land
which contained such settlements.”
That estimate was written more than
50 years ago, mere months after the