The LA Times’ Flawed Conversation on Settlements

The US put Israeli settlements back in the headlines after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Washington doesn’t view them as illegal.

Not surprisingly, the policy reversal was hailed by settlement supporters and denounced by critics, while skeptics viewed it as a political boost for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

All fair for discussion.

Unfortunately, a Los Angeles Times staff editorial skews the conversation, handing down its own verdict that settlements are “illegitimate” and skewing some fundamental information. The Times is entitled to its views, but staff editorials and legal opinions still need to be based on facts.

The Legality of Settlements

Blanket statements that settlements are illegal according to international law are not true and prejudice readers. While most of the world views settlements as illegal, Israel also has a compelling legal argument. Too bad the Times didn’t see fit to acknowledge that:

• The Jewish people have historical ties to the West Bank.
• Before Jordan seized the West Bank in 1948, Jews lived in the West Bank and privately owned land.
• Jordan never had sovereignty over the West Bank, which means the territory cannot be considered “occupied.”
• Settlements don’t displace Palestinians, nor does the Jewish population preclude territorial compromise.
• Settlements do not violate the Fourth Geneva Convention.
• The  Palestinians accepted the existence of settlements by signing the Oslo accords.

For a fuller explanation of Israeli arguments for the legality of settlements, see Eugene Kontorovich, Mitchell Bard, Eugene Rostow, Moshe Dann and Jeffrey Helmreich.

But the LA Times writes:

There’s little doubt that the settlements are provocative, illegitimate and an obstacle — perhaps an insurmountable obstacle — to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If the Times wants to debate the political wisdom of settlement activity, the editorial board will find rich, heated and nuanced discussions around Israeli dinner tables, the Knesset plenum and any place else in the world where Jews talk politics.

But the paper’s incomplete view of  the legal issues unfairly skews the conversation.

The Pre-Settlement Days

The argument that settlements are, as the Times puts it, “perhaps an insurmountable obstacle to peace,” doesn’t stand up to historical scrutiny.

Hundreds of Jews were killed by rioting Arabs in the pre-state years. In the 1950s, terrorists then known as “fedayeen,” attacked Jewish civilians, ambushed travelers, raped women and destroyed property. In 1952 alone, there were 3,000 such attacks. They all took place inside what’s now known as the pre-1967 borders.

Back then, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and served as a base for many of the deadly fedayeen  attacks. Settlements didn’t exist.

The main obstacle to peace was, and remains, Israel’s very existence.

Settlement Growth

The Times writes:

[In 1975], there were fewer than 5,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Today there are nearly 400,000. That doesn’t count those in the Golan Heights or the approximately 200,000 in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

Numbers like that might conjure up images of an Israeli cancer spreading across the West Bank. But the editorial’s numbers don’t indicate that settlers live on a mere three percent of the West Bank. The population growth feared by the Times takes place within already existing settlements. That gives Israelis and Palestinians a surprising amount of wiggle room to negotiate a border and get creative with land-swaps (like the one proposed by prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008 that Mahmoud Abbas rejected.)

The term, “traditionally Arab East Jerusalem” further skews the conversation.

• Traditionally Arab implies that this area of the city is inherently “Arab.”
• Capitalizing the word East makes it a proper noun.

There’s thousands of years of Jewish history in eastern Jerusalem. Jordan’s 19-year occupation doesn’t make  it “traditionally Arab” or justify a new proper noun. If ever there was an example of language being used to prejudice readers, this is it. (Related reading: Defining Bias: Misleading Terminology)

Would the Times describe the area of Compton as “traditionally Black South-Central Los Angeles?”

There’s much to discuss about settlements. But the Los Angeles Times unhelpfully warps the conversation.

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Image: fedayeen via Wikimedia Commons;