Netanyahu is using colonies to buy time

US President Barack Obama's foreign policy has focused largely on rectifying the global financial crisis, transferring troops from a smouldering Iraq to the Afghanistan-Pakistan front of the war on terror, opening diplomatic dialogue with Iran and pushing in earnest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, as a result of Israel's typical stalling tactics, the issue of Jewish colonies on Palestinian lands has slipped into yet another US president's agenda.

The first step taken by Obama's team towards solving this prolonged conflict was to call for a freeze on Jewish colony construction. The immediate Israeli response was to stall. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a pretence of acquiescing, but soon found loopholes - such as claiming that new colony activity would not commence, but that work already under way would be completed. Another ploy was to allow vertical, but not horizontal construction to proceed.

In the West Bank, all manner of building permits and physical freedoms are granted to Jewish colonists, while the Palestinians are denied their rights. East Occupied Jerusalem is an even more grotesque case. Palestinians there are allowed to leave for the West Bank, but are not permitted to return. In early August, Netanyahu signed off on the eviction of more Palestinian families (some 50 people) in Shaikh Jarrah, one of the only remaining Arab neighbourhoods in what Israel calls 'Greater Jerusalem'.

And then there is the issue of fundamental Jewish colonists who are young, brazen and armed; who shoot at Palestinian farmers and civilians; who burn and chop down Palestinian orchards and who set up 'outposts' on hilltops that are often removed by the Israeli Army. Sometimes these outposts are permitted to remain, as if on the frontier of civilisation. The colonists plant flowers in the unpopulated desert and then eventually the outposts are connected up to the Israeli grid and become permanent fixtures. One cannot help but wonder if Israel is permitting these colonies to continue to flourish to support the dream of a 'Greater Israel'. A map of this Zionist dream can be found on the 10 agorot national coin - which is used most often, ironically, as change on the Palestinian mini-buses that bounce along the windy roads of the West Bank.

The dream of a 'Greater Israel' stretching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates has largely been abandoned. Instead, the Zionists have had to settle for maintaining a Jewish majority in Israel, which was previously achieved by welcoming the world's Jewry. As immigration has slowed to a trickle, Israel now permits colony construction in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem to continue. Netanyahu has affirmed that the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip ordered by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2005 was a mistake that will not to be repeated. The West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem also have biblical connotations for the Jews - who believe that as Judea and Samaria they once formed the kingdom of David. Three hundred thousand colonists help to maintain the Jewish majority in Israel. Democracy is about demography here.

Colonies seem to have been part and parcel of Israeli state policy for years. In the aftermath of the 1973 war, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the two sides signed a peace agreement. In return, Israel was granted implicit US permission to continue colony construction in the West Bank. Israel thus killed two birds with one stone: it was seen to be making peace with a regional rival and was allowed to go ahead with its colonisation of territories occupied in 1967, where large Jewish colonies such as Ariel are located atop aquifers.

A similar public relations coup was achieved during the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. The Israeli Army forcefully withdrew Jewish colonists from their beachside homes in Gaza and from rooftops in Kadim, Ganem, Homesh and Sa-Nur, four small colonies in the northern West Bank. Nine thousand colonists were removed from the Gaza Strip, each family receiving between $200,000 (Dh735,600) and $300,000 in compensation, plus $30,000 to relocate to Galilee or the Negev Desert. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the evacuation costs were estimated at around $870 million initially, plus another $250 million granted afterwards by the Knesset's Financial Committee. Foreign aid was also offered to transfer the greenhouses to the Palestinians, who rejected the deal.

Now imagine the exorbitant costs that would be incurred in relocating 300,000 colonists. The bill for this would be footed by tax-payers in any international states involved in advancing the peace process towards a supposed two-state solution. But all this misses the point: Jewish colonies should not even be under discussion because everyone knows they are illegal under international law.

As sincere as the Obama administration may be in its efforts to achieve peace, the colony issue is merely preventing it from dealing with the real issues - such as Palestinian refugees' right of return and the tug of war over Occupied Jerusalem.

Stuart Reigeluth is a Middle East specialist based in Madrid.