I like to think of myself as pro-Israel. I am proud of my Jewish heritage. I believe that Israel has a right to exist and to keep itself safe from harm. I believe that Palestinian and other Arab terrorism against Israel is illegal, immoral and unacceptable. But Israel's policies don't make it easy to stay pro-Israel, especially when its government stakes out positions that can only be seen as actively working against peace.
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Take this week's little fiasco. The Israeli government announced plans to build 238 new housing units in the disputed territory of East Jerusalem. This is merely a continuation of Israel's long-term policy of constructing hundreds of settlements in occupied territories that should form the majority of a future Palestinian state. It is even enshrined in Israeli law that such settlements, even when built by private citizens, must be protected by the Israeli army and police forces after a rubber stamp approval process.
There have been some promising steps on settlements in recent years — Kadima, one of the largest political parties in Israel (out of power because of the victory of a hardliner coalition in the 2009 elections), followed a policy of cracking down on settlement construction and withdrawing settlements from the Gaza Strip. But Prime Minister Netanyahu has reversed this process, choosing to form a coalition with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party (led by racist buffoon Avigdor Lieberman) rather than with Kadima after the last election. Yisrael Beiteinu refuses to curb settlement construction, so it has begun again.
Those Palestinians who are willing to talk peace demand a freeze on the construction of new settlements as a precondition for talks, and legitimately so. The installation of thousands of Israeli citizens in Palestinian land makes it that much harder to draw borders and set up functioning societies if and when a peace deal is reached. Settlers who have lived 20 or 30 years in their illegally constructed communities will, rightfully, claim that these settlements are their homes.
Netanyahu and Lieberman aren't idiots. They know exactly what they are doing. The walled-in, armed settlements sprinkled across Palestinian land can be seen as bulwarks against peace — as statements of intent to occupy the land they stand on forever. And from this I can only conclude that the Prime Minister of Israel does not want peace. By continuing a policy of imposing settlements on Palestinian land, he is sending a strong message — short-term gain for Israel trumps long-term peace for the region.
If that's what Netanyahu believes, then so be it. But if that's what he wants, he should stop the Kabuki dance he's keeping the pro-peace Palestinians and American negotiators in. And if he wants peace, then he needs to work as hard as he can for it — even if that means losing Lieberman's support and his political future.
