Irish Diplomat: It’s All About the Settlements

Former Irish ambassador to the UN, Richard Ryan gives his opinion in the Irish Times on how best to guarantee Israel’s security. But what does he conclude is the single biggest obstacle to achieving this security and a two-state solution?

But behind the lurid scenario that has yet again unfolded before us, there continues to develop in the background perhaps the greatest threat to real and lasting peace. The Israeli settlements policy – and it is nothing less than a deliberate, steadily unrolling policy – is destroying systematically the very doability of that one remaining solution scenario. This Israeli official policy-rooted creep across the West Bank is eroding every day the vital cartography and viability of the nascent Palestine state on which the final deal, and Israel’s security, depend.

 

The Jerusalem – including East Jerusalem – component of this problem will require, and will receive, special and appropriately delicate attention. But, above all, right now, it is an absolute priority that this West Bank settlements policy be stopped and reversed. An Israeli and a Palestinian statesman would see this, but where are these statesmen?

It is perfectly legitimate to question Israel’s settlement policy. But to claim that it is the “greatest threat to real and lasting peace,” however, is to fly in the face of reality.

Indeed, nowhere in Ryan’s article is there any mention of Palestinian responsibilities for a lack of peace in the region. Nothing about terrorism, nothing about incitement, nothing about internal Palestinian conflicts.

And ultimately there is nothing from Ryan concerning Palestinian rejectionism and the real obstacle to peace – the failure of the Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Instead, for Richard Ryan, it’s all about the settlements.

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