Israel's "settlements"

2015-03-12-NYT-netanyahu-west-bank-settlements

Netanyahu and the Settlements
By JODI RUDOREN and JEREMY ASHKENAS
New York Times, 2015-03-12

[The summary from the Times's main web page:]

The Israeli leader’s settlement policy resembles his predecessors’,
but it is a march toward permanence
at a time when prospects for peace are few.

ELI, West Bank —

Singing and dancing greeted a triumphant Benjamin Netanyahu
when he visited Eli, then a young settlement of 959 residents,
shortly after first becoming Israel’s prime minister in 1996.
“We will be here permanently forever,”
he declared in nearby Ariel that day,
promising to renew
the internationally contentious construction of Jewish communities
across the land Palestinians plan as their future state.

Struggling for settlers’ support ahead of Israel’s March 17 elections,
Mr. Netanyahu returned last month to Eli,
now a boomtown of more than 4,000 people
that sprawls across six hilltops amid Palestinian villages and farmland.
This time, he did not speak about new building,
but his presence was a statement in itself:
Eli is among dozens of isolated settlements whose expansion and entrenchment
threaten the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Steady growth of settlements across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem,
which most world leaders consider violations of international law,
complicates both the creation of a viable Palestine
and the challenge of someday uprooting Israelis,
who are now raising a second and third generation in contested areas.

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