UPDATE
Thank you to Foreign Policy magazine for acknowledging the error, amending the article and publishing the following correction:
*Corrected, Aug. 26, 2015: The Israeli government agreed to freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank in 2003 as part of the Roadmap for Peace plan. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Israel agreed to a settlement freeze in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
* * *
A feature article in Foreign Policy magazine examines “The New Face of Jewish Terror” – the radical fringe of Jewish extremists believed to be responsible for recent attacks on Palestinians.
In the course of the article, the writer attempts to trace the growth of this extremism to the post-1967 settler movement.
The issue of settlements is often fraught and frequently cited by the Palestinians and many media outlets as being a primary “obstacle to peace.” Which is why it is important to get the facts right.
The Foreign Policy article states:
In 1993, the Israeli government signed the Oslo Accords, in which it officially committed to freezing settlement expansion. (Since then, settlements nonetheless have expanded drastically.)
This statement creates the impression that Israel has been in violation of its treaty commitments since the very day that it signed the Oslo agreements. This statement is also factually incorrect.
In fact, neither the Declaration of Principles (DOP) of September 13, 1993 nor the Interim Agreement (“Oslo 2”) of September 28, 1995 contains any provisions prohibiting or restricting the establishment or expansion of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
When he presented the Oslo 2 accords before the Knesset on October 5, 1995, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated, “I wish to remind you, we made a commitment, meaning we reached an agreement, we made a commitment to the Knesset not to uproot any settlement in the framework of the Interim Agreement, nor to freeze construction and natural growth.”
Under Article XXXI(5) of Oslo 2, the issue of Jewish settlements is to be addressed in the final status negotiations. According to an internal Israel Foreign Ministry legal analysis prepared on March 18, 1996 by Joel Singer, the Foreign Ministry Legal Advisor under the Labor Government, Israel rejected Palestinian attempts to bar new Jewish settlements in the context of the Oslo process.
According to Singer, “In the course of the negotiations on the DOP, the representatives of the PLO tried to obtain a clause prohibiting Israel from establishing new settlements. Israel rejected this demand.” Thus, Yasser Arafat agreed to the Oslo Accords despite the fact that he failed to achieve a halt in settlement activity in the interim period.
Foreign Policy and the journalist responsible for the article were both notified of their error some days ago by HonestReporting. We’ve yet to see any correction or amendment to the article.
This is not a question of whether settlements are right or wrong but one of factual accuracy, which is why Foreign Policy’s lethargic response is so disappointing.
Featured image: CC BY gnuckx via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
