Maen Rashid Areikat: Israeli settlements are no ‘secondary issue’
WASHINGTON POST
Letter to the Editor
Israeli settlements are no ‘secondary issue’
Published: October 18
The Oct. 15 editorial “A U.S. ‘reset’ with Israel?”
stated that President Obama “erred in centering his push for
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a secondary issue: Israeli
settlement-building in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
Illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory are not
secondary; they are the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian problem and have
been for the past two decades.
Israel’s settlements undermine the possibility of an
independent Palestinian state ever coming into being. Moreover, the
attack campaigns mounted by extremist settler groups against Palestinian
farmers, holy sites and even olive trees (Palestinians’ most treasured
crop), thanks to a lack of serious deterrence by the Israeli government,
are making the settlement issue an existential threat to not only
Palestinians but also the prospects of resolving this conflict
altogether. In fact, many Israelis have been complaining about the destructive effect the settlers have had on Israeli society itself.
If anything, Mr. Obama didn’t make the settlements issue primary enough.
Maen Rashid Areikat, Washington
The writer is chief representative of the general delegation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the United States.
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