{"id":21691,"date":"2020-08-15T05:06:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-15T05:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=21691"},"modified":"2020-08-17T18:10:42","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T18:10:42","slug":"israel-suspends-formal-annexation-of-the-west-bank-but-its-controversial-settlements-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/israel-suspends-formal-annexation-of-the-west-bank-but-its-controversial-settlements-continue\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel suspends formal annexation of the West Bank, but its controversial settlements continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dov Waxman<\/a>, University of California, Los Angeles<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: In a historic agreement<\/a> announced by President Trump on Aug. 13, Israel has suspended its plan to formally annex parts of the contested West Bank territory, in exchange for establishing full diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. However, Israel\u2019s existing settlements in the West Bank, which Palestinians claim as their land, will continue to expand.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here, a professor of Israel studies<\/a> and the author of a primer on the Israeli-Palestinian confict<\/a> explains the history of the West Bank settlements \u2013 and why they\u2019re so controversial.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Houses<\/a>
A new housing project in the West Bank settlement of Naale, part of the Israeli government\u2019s 2019 push to increase its presence in the disputed territory.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Ariel Schalit<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

1. Why is ownership of the West Bank so contested?<\/h2>\n

In May 1967, not a single Israeli lived in the West Bank, a hilly region
\nabout the size of Delaware. It was home to roughly a million Palestinians, who had been living under contested Jordanian control for two decades.<\/p>\n

Israel conquered the West Bank during the Six-Day War<\/a> in June 1967. Soon afterwards, Israeli civilians began moving to the region, initially to areas like Kfar Etzion that had been home to Jewish communities before Israel\u2019s founding<\/a> in 1948.<\/p>\n

In 1968, a rabbi named Moshe Levinger<\/a> and a small group of followers who embraced a messianic version of religious Zionism moved into the ancient city of Hebron, in the heartland of the West Bank. Hebron is a holy city for Jews because it is believed to be the burial place<\/a> of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.<\/p>\n

The population of Israelis living in the West Bank has mushroomed over the years. An estimated 430,000 Israeli Jews<\/a> now live in 132 officially recognized \u201csettlements\u201d and in 121 unofficial \u201coutposts\u201d that require, but haven\u2019t yet received, government approval. Constituting about 15% of the West Bank\u2019s total population, these \u201csettlers\u201d live in their own communities, separate from the area\u2019s approximately 3 million Palestinian residents.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The West Bank city of Hebron was one of the first places Israeli settlers moved after Israel won the West Bank from Lebanon in the 1967 war.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Ariel Schalit<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2. Why do Palestinians object to the Israeli settler movement?<\/h2>\n

Though they are neighbors and sometimes co-workers, relations between Jews and Palestinians on the West Bank are seldom friendly<\/a>. West Bank Palestinians, who are majority Muslim, see themselves as the area\u2019s indigenous inhabitants; many of their ancestors have lived and farmed in the West Bank for many centuries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Palestinians contend that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are built on stolen land and that the settlers\u2019 use of water \u2013 a scarce resource<\/a> \u2013 is likewise illegal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Palestinians frequently experience harassment from extremist Israeli settlers, sometimes as Israeli soldiers look on<\/a>. There are hundreds of reports<\/a> of extremist settlers, many of them armed, violently attacking Palestinians<\/a>, burning their fields and uprooting their olive trees.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Israel has appropriated West Bank land to build a network of roads connecting settlements to Israel and to each other. These roads are generally off-limits<\/a> to Palestinian drivers, hampering their freedom of movement and making travel within the West Bank more difficult and time-consuming.<\/p>\n

The Israeli army security checkpoints that dot the West Bank, which are meant to protect Israelis from terror attacks<\/a>, also restrict and complicate the ability of Palestinian people to move around.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Palestinians on their way to Friday prayers during Ramadan pass an Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem, June 8, 2018.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Majdi Mohammed<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

3. Why do Israelis want to live in the West Bank?<\/h2>\n

Israelis choose to live in the West Bank for many reasons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The popular stereotype of Jewish settlers as religious fanatics determined to reclaim the entire ancient homeland they believe was given to Jews by God is not quite accurate. It\u2019s estimated<\/a> that only about a quarter of West Bank settlers live there out of ideological conviction.<\/p>\n

Still, these fervent settlers are a vocal and highly visible minority. They generally live in smaller settlements, located deep inside the West Bank.<\/p>\n

They see their presence as a means of ensuring permanent Jewish control over the area, which they call by the biblical names \u201cJudea and Samaria<\/a>.\u201d These settlers believe that by living in the West Bank they are serving God\u2019s will and helping to bring about the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.<\/p>\n

Most Jewish settlers in the West Bank, however, live there for economic reasons.
\nIsraeli government investment and incentives<\/a> aimed at encouraging Jews to settle there have made the cost of living lower than inside Israel.<\/p>\n

Many Jews in the West Bank are secular, particularly those who emigrated from the former Soviet Union since the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

Others, like the growing number of ultra-Orthodox Jews living in the West Bank<\/a>, may believe that God gave the West Bank to Israel \u2013 but they move there primarily because they can find affordable housing and a better quality of life.<\/p>\n

4. Are Israel\u2019s West Bank settlements legal or not?<\/h2>\n

Most legal experts and the United Nations<\/a> agree that Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 1949 Geneva Convention<\/a>, which Israel signed, prohibits an occupying state from moving its own civilians into the territory it occupies. According to the International Court of Justice<\/a>, the U.N.\u2018s main judicial body, the West Bank is considered occupied territory because it was not part of Israel before the Israeli army conquered it in 1967. Territorial conquest is also forbidden by international law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government has previously said<\/a> that the Geneva Convention is not applicable to the West Bank because it only refers to a state occupying another state\u2019s land. Israel considers the West Bank \u201cdisputed territory,\u201d not occupied territory.<\/p>\n

Further, Israel\u2019s government has argued, even if the Geneva Convention did apply, it would only prohibit forcible population transfers, like the mass deportations carried out by Nazi Germany \u2013 not the voluntarily movement of people into occupied territories.<\/p>\n

This story is an updated version of an article<\/a> originally published Nov. 25, 2019.<\/em>\"The<\/p>\n

Dov Waxman<\/a>, Director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies, University of California, Los Angeles<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dov Waxman, University of California, Los Angeles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":21692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[3666,3668,8497,8496,1553,8494,3667,6610,8495,8493],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21699,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21691\/revisions\/21699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}