Day after day, Israeli settlement construction continues.\u00a0 Even when officially slowed or halted, unauthorized outposts continue to spring up across the Palestinian territories as the Israeli government endorses consent by largely ignoring the illegal actions.\u00a0 Condemned by the International Court of Justice and the global community at large, settlement expansion threatens the very basic concepts of nation-state establishment.\u00a0 These settlements, then, serve not only to hinder true peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, but they represent an internally calculated, and globally tolerated, tool of Israeli expansion and long-term land acquisition plan.<\/p>\n
Time is on the side of the Israelis.\u00a0 In 1970, less than 2,000 Israeli settlers lived on the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem).\u00a0 In 2009, more than 300,000 settlers call Palestinian land on the West Bank their home and now, with resumed government supported construction, their numbers are preparing to take another leap. \u00a0The Israeli government clearly understands that significant settlement evacuation is a prerequisite for a two-state agreement and thus the best, and quite possibly only, option for peace.<\/p>\n
To say that they believe another option is possible simply insults their intelligence: how could a Palestinian nation-state exists with pockets of Israel swelling within its boundaries? \u00a0Despite this knowledge, settlement construction continues as an interest in peace is feigned through crafted talks and strategic photo shoots with world leaders.\u00a0 This process of appeasement brilliantly serves as a distraction while their population in the Palestinian territories steadily increases. As hospitals, schools, shopping malls, and picturesque western-style homes with gardens and swimming pools are constructed, Israeli occupation begins to resemble normalcy.<\/p>\n
Young Israelis, who have grown up with the social construction that Palestinian land is nothing more than a fabrication of the anti-Semitic international community, do not realize that some of the East Jerusalem communities, such as the entire city of Ma\u2019ale Adumim that is located on land acquired during the 1967 Six-Day War, are actually settlements. \u00a0These settlements look, act and function like any other Israeli town or city and, in many cases, are actually attached to pre-1967 Israeli land in an attempt to increase the appearance of their legitimacy.\u00a0 These young Israelis, then, are more victims of an ideology than deliberate perpetrators of occupation. \u00a0Just as Aden Abigil, the young former Israeli soldier who posted photos of her smiling self next to blindfolded Palestinian prisoners on Facebook, did not understand why her actions were inappropriate, these young Israelis know nothing more than the narrative that has been hammered into both their conscious and subconscious since birth.\u00a0 The Occupation is a tragedy not only to Palestinian youth, but Israeli youth as well.<\/p>\n
This process of land acquisition, settlement and social legitimization shows no signs of being reversed.\u00a0\u00a0 Global leaders, including US President Obama, continue to accept the appeasement strategy of the Israeli government.\u00a0 He has taken a step in the right direction by calling for an end to settlement construction and not verbally stepping down upon Israeli\u2019s rejection.\u00a0 Yet, these are words and not actions.\u00a0 It has become a well-known fact that Israel, although a developed nation with European-influenced social policies, has received more global aid than any other nation state or political entity since WWII.<\/p>\n
For the most part, no conditions are attached to these funds.\u00a0 Human rights violations, military occupation and the fostering of an apartheid state are clearly not reasons to remove\u2014or even restrict\u2014foreign aid to a flourishing nation state.\u00a0 Consequently, no initiative exists for the evacuation of settlements, as neither foreign relationships nor national income is at stake.\u00a0 Thus, the unspoken plan is that the Israeli government will continue to receive foreign money, appease the international community and buy time until expanding settlement activity morphs into established towns that will one day be situated within the official borders of the nation state of Israel. \u00a0While Obama\u2019s pressure to end settlements is unprecedented in US-Israeli relations, a nonviolent action to demonstrate conviction would send a better message.<\/p>\n
As the international community continues to accept the appeasement of Israel, Palestinians continue to live at the mercy of a foreign occupying force whose actions receive a global blessing. \u00a0\u00a0These international governments, however, cannot take full blame.\u00a0 As long as the citizens of these consenting nations continue to remain silent and allow their leaders to act out a role determined by political Zionism, we are all to blame for the dismal situation, and even more dismal future, of the people within the land that should be called Palestine.<\/p>\n
______________________<\/p>\n
Ashley Lackovich-van Gorp is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, a PhD student in Leadership and Change, peace activist and humanitarian worker.\u00a0 She has an MA in inter-ethnic relations with a thesis on Minorities in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.\u00a0 She lived in Jerusalem between 2007-09 working to promote peace among Palestinian youth throughout the West Bank and Gaza. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS<\/em> <\/strong><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong><\/span>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Young Israelis, who have grown up with the social construction that Palestinian land is nothing more than a fabrication of the anti-Semitic international community, do not realize that some of the East Jerusalem communities, such as the entire city of Ma\u2019ale Adumim, are actually settlements. These settlements look, act and function like any other Israeli town. These young Israelis, then, are more victims of an ideology than deliberate perpetrators of occupation. The Occupation is a tragedy not only to Palestinian youth, but Israeli youth as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}