The Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing by Other Means

Description

This article assesses the Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank as the outcome of a strategy formed immediately after the 1967 war and one which did not change until today. Understanding the settlement policy as the outcome of the 1967 decisions challenges the common perspective of the settlements as either a policy developing contrary to the wishes of the Israeli governments or as reaction to the lack of progress in the peace process and retaliation to Palestinian resistance. The historical assessment of the 1967 period is based on new declassified Israeli archival material and the rest of the period is viewed in relationship to that formative time. The main conclusion is that the strategy towards the occupied territories, and the settlement policy, were the continuation of the Israeli 1948 policy of taking much of Palestine as possible and having in it as few Palestinians as possible.