US should reverse policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank - opinion

In a reversal of United States policy on Israeli building in Judea and Samaria (The West Bank), outgoing American Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Israeli settlements “Are… inconsistent with international law.”

He continued, “Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion, and in our judgment, this only weakens, doesn’t strengthen Israel’s security. It’s been longstanding US policy, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace.” 

It has always baffled Israelis why Americans consider Israeli building an impediment to peace when Palestinian terrorism is an obviously larger obstacle to peace.   

Objection to Jewish building in Judea and Samaria is relatively new and was never expressed by Israelis and their friends around the world. In January 1918, after England had issued the Balfour Declaration, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion wrote about the importance of building and settling the land of Israel, “Zionists must now take an inward direction, towards the Jewish people. All our material and spiritual assets must now be utilized to the great, urgent, and challenging task before us: the building of the land by the Hebrew people.”

In an article written for the Israel Policy Forum, an anti-settlement organization, Shaul Arieli wrote that Ben-Gurion’s building plans included today’s West Bank, “Prior to Israel’s founding and the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank, the territory contained several Jewish communities, as well as millennia of Jewish history and many of Judaism’s holiest sites, such as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

“Jordan expelled 17,000 Jews from the West Bank during the 1948 war,” he said.

Reaffirming Israel's historic and legal connection to the West Bank

BEFORE 1948, there were Jewish towns, farms, and villages throughout biblical Israel, especially in Judea and Samaria. There were towns in the Gush Etzion bloc in the valley along the Dead Sea; towns like Beit Haarava and Kalya were flourishing developments; and also in Israel’s south, like the biblical city of Hebron. In east Jerusalem the area called Atarot, where Israel’s prophets taught their messages, was an established Jewish population center. It was only the Jordanian army’s destruction of these Jewish areas that exiled the Jewish residents from their homes. 

Israel’s leaders have consistently spoken of the Jewish people’s strong and historic connection to Judea and Samaria. 

Menachem Begin spoke to the strong connection of the Jewish people and the State of Israel to Judea and Samaria, he said, “Israel will not transfer Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza district to any foreign sovereign authority, [because] of the historic right of our nation to this land, [and] the needs of our national security, which demand a capability to defend our State and the lives of our citizens.” 

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said, “Those who settle in Judea and Samaria are the pioneers of today. We have not taken a foreign land; we have reclaimed the land of our forefathers.”

PROF. TALIA Einhorn of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs addressed the Jewish people’s historical and legal right to Judea and Samaria, “The legality of the Jewish settlements in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza derives from the Jewish people’s historical, indigenous, and legal rights to settle in those areas, validated in international documents. Denying Jews their right to live in the Old City of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria means denying their ties to their biblical and historical homeland, precisely those ties that have been recognized in these documents.”

Yet, there have been Israeli politicians who have not understood the depth of the bond between Judea and Samaria and the Israeli people. The former head of the Meretz Party, Nitzan Horowitz said, “Construction in the settlements is rampant – even in the isolated settlements and in the illegal outposts.” He claimed that Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, were leading Israel into the “abyss” by aiming to solidify the Israeli development of Judea and Samaria. 

Horowitz’s comments weren’t much better than the current Meretz Party chair Yair Golan’s comments. Golan referred to some Jewish Israeli settlers as “sub-human,” saying, “These aren’t people; they are subhuman, despicable people... they should not get any support, and they should be removed by force from there.”

WHAT CAUSES people like Horowitz and Golan to veer from long-standing Jewish historical ties to portions of Eretz Yisrael, especially the heartland of the Jewish homeland, and declare that Jewish development of these areas is somehow nefarious, illegal, or immoral? When did they stop considering the building of Eretz Yisrael as a Zionist objective? 

Sadly, after the two-state solution began being taken seriously by foreign powers, some Israelis started to abandon the long-standing connection of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria. Although Zionism always stood for the Jewish development and settlement of the Land of Israel, a movement began in Israel that advocated for the appeasing of our enemies by stopping building in Israel and even retreating from lands in which Israelis were already established. This new approach was nothing less than treacherous to Zionist idealism and values. 

There were Israelis who thought that leaving disputed territories would make Israel safer. According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, that was the reason Israel withdrew its people and destroyed its towns in Gaza in 2005, “Israel’s plan of unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and North Samaria put forward by prime minister Ariel Sharon was carried out on 15 August 2005. The purpose of the plan was to improve Israel’s security and international status in the absence of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.” It might have seemed prudent at the time to give up parts of Eretz Yisrael to secure other parts of the land, but in 2024, post the Gaza and Lebanon pullouts, it has become clear that giving up parts of Israel will never bring Israel security – in fact, it makes Israel much less secure. 

Any honest and astute observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict understands that Palestinians have no interest in living in peace alongside a Jewish State of Israel. They aim solely to eliminate the Jewish state and replace it with a Palestinian state. Israel has reached out to Palestinians in peace multiple times, and each time Palestinians reject their offers. The Jewish people’s only option for security is to develop Judea and Samaria at greater speed and scope. Developing the land is consistent with Zionist values and has been the historic Jewish path. 

The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yericho, where she lives with her husband and six children.