Putting the brakes on Israeli bulldozers

The idea that the Obama administration can advance the Middle East peace process by having Israel freeze its construction of Jewish colonies in the West Bank stretches credulity.

Does any serious observer of the region believe that Israel's appetite for land - owned for generations by Palestinians - is going to abate?

The Israeli land grab has continued for four decades, in defiance of international law and most US presidents. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been trying to secure a halt, but his efforts follow a well-worn path that typically ends in charade.

Just weeks ago, the Israeli government evicted two extended Palestinian families from their homes in Occupied East Jerusalem, clearing the way for more houses for Jews in traditionally Palestinian neighbourhoods.

Israeli colonies have become a kind of concrete kudzu to Palestinians. The Fatah party recently renewed its commitment to resisting them, holding that "the Palestinians have the right to resist the Israeli occupation by all possible means."

But for the Jewish state, the colonies are eminently sensible and their growth is almost certain to continue, either openly or stealthily. As Interior Minister Eli Yishai put it on August 10, expanding colonies near Occupied Jerusalem is vital for "security, national interests, and is just and necessary."

Every new Jewish apartment complex enlarges and deepens the Jewish footprint on occupied land. The California-style townhouses atop the hills of West Bank are seen as security buffers for an Israeli island in a hostile area. Israel's feeling of vulnerability is intensified by the growing Arab population already within its borders.

The colonies have become affordable suburbs for Israelis otherwise priced out of the metropolitan markets. More than 300,000 Jewish colonists now call the West Bank home.

Further, religious and ultrareligious Jewish colonists insist they have divinely bestowed title to the land.

Palestinian Arabs are too weak to legally or militarily challenge the Jewish state's internal expansion. An Israeli court recently ruled that Israel can now confiscate land belonging to Palestinians who once resided in an area but are now refugees pending final settlement.

Having lived in Occupied Jerusalem for five years during the days of the peace process in the 1990s, I watched colony builders nibble away at what were once Palestinian homes, villages and pastures.

From Occupied Jerusalem southward, the construction of the Har Homa colony crabs outward to the doorsteps of Palestinian Bethlehem. From the air, these colonies appear a terrestrial octopus, extending out to ultimately link up with the more militant Jewish colonies farther south in Hebron, another city with a large Palestinian majority.

Colony-building resembles military flanking and encirclement manoeuvres, isolating Palestinian population centres. In Occupied Jerusalem, there are at least half a dozen Arab neighbourhoods, including the Mount of Olives, threatened by Israel's voracious hunger for land.

Quoted in the newspaper Haaretz, Sarah Kreimer of Ir Amim, a group specialising in Israeli-Palestinian relations, says, "In each of these places, plans are being advanced for construction whose ultimate purpose is to disconnect the Old City from Palestinian Jerusalem."

Israelis have brilliantly created a sense of inevitability to all this. Yet the moral difficulties of moving indigenous peoples off the land by subterfuge or force are obvious. When in the past I've raised the ethical implications of these land appropriations, Israelis have dismissed me, saying, "Hey, you Americans did it to the Indians."

American presidents have often quietly nudged Israel to freeze the colonies, but their actual leverage has been minimal. Israelis have elected both doves and hawks as prime minister, but virtually all Israeli governments supported colony expansion in varying degrees.

Jewish political clout in America ought not be underestimated. A former chairman of the American Israel Political Action Committee once boasted to me, "We got [Sen] Chuck Percy [an Illinois Republican who was narrowly defeated in 1984] when he crossed us on the Palestinians." US President Barack Obama will face a similar threat at election time if he defies Israel's expansionist instincts.

US presidents have so frequently pledged unshakable support for Israel that it has created the illusion that US and Israeli interests are identical.

It might be useful for Obama and his Middle East team to publicly point to serious differences with Israel when they arise.

If the US can have public disagreements with its allies, including Britain, why should Israel be exempted from what could be a healthy debate?

Jewish colony construction may temporarily downshift into neutral. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may hail "a building freeze". But if the past is prologue, the first time Obama is distracted by another domestic or international crisis, and Washington isn't looking, the Israeli bulldozers will be back at work.

Walter Rodgers served as the CNN bureau chief in Occupied Jerusalem for more than five years.