can and must find its solution in the Kingdom of Jordan. At the conclusion of the
peace treaties, we shall insist that the advent of peace be accompanied by an end to
the Arab-Israeli conflict and that it be agreed that the Arabs shall have no further
claims on Israel.
SOURCE:Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Statement by the Prime Minister on the Palestinian Issue,”
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1947-1974/40+Statement+by+
the+Prime+Minister+on+the+Palestin.htm.Israeli Settlement of the Occupied Territories
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Israel’s capture of the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula, and West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, from its Arab neighbors during the June 1967 War raised
the prospect of the Zionist dream of “Greater Israel” becoming reality. Shortly after
that war, and at an increasing pace in the 1970s, a succession of Israeli governments
promoted or allowed the establishment of dozens of Jewish settlements in these terri-
tories. One idea behind the settlements was to allow Israel to tighten its hold on the
land, making it politically and practically impossible to relinquish it in any peace nego-
tiations with the Arabs. The negotiation of Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab
nation proved that expectation flawed: In 1978 Israel agreed to remove a handful of
settlements in the Sinai Peninsula and return the peninsula to Egypt as the price for
peace with its largest Arab neighbor. In 2005 Israel unilaterally eliminated Jewish set-
tlements in the Gaza Strip in response to the demographic and security challenges
posed by the presence of some 8,000 Israeli Jews in the midst of more than 1 million
Palestinian Arabs (June 1967 Arab–Israeli War, p. 94; Camp David Peace Process,
p. 118; Israeli Disengagement, p. 313).
Some of the settlements in the territories occupied by Israel resulted from official
policies publicly articulated by successive governments. Others, established with little
or no public announcement, stemmed from the behind-the-scenes actions of the mil-
itary or government agencies. Still others took hold through the actions of religious
organizations, sometimes with the implicit support of the government and in other
cases only after the government had tried with varying degrees of sincerity to block
their establishment.
However the settlements came about, four decades later, more than one hundred
of them were populated by nearly 450,000 Israeli Jews: approximately 200,000 set-
tlers in and around East Jerusalem, some 17,000 on the Golan Heights, about 230,000
178 ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS