Netanyahu's puzzling settlement strategy
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to publish construction tenders, whether real or not, is likely to frustrate US policy-makers.
How can one describe Israel's insistence on strengthening the settlements while negotiations with the Palestinians are underway? Wisecracking? Arrogance? Disregard for international public opinion? Or perhaps merely a misunderstanding by the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the significance of such a policy, its implications and its dangers?
On Jan. 10, it came out that the prime minister has given the green light for a new round of construction in the settlements as part of what has already been nicknamed the “prisoner release-construction” equation. Nothing helped — all the Palestinian warnings, requests and threats as to the destructive results of such a construction announcement were for naught. Ever since negotiations with the Palestinians began at the end of July 2013, the Netanyahu government has announced the building of 3,422 housing units in the territories (according to the NGO Peace Now's data), including “mountain ridge” settlements. These are the very settlements that are under discussion by the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating teams for possible evacuation in the framework of a future peace agreement.
In response to the “third pulse” release of 26 prisoners on Dec. 31, Israel’s Housing Ministry, under the current leadership of Uri Ariel, published tenders for marketing plots of land for about 1,900 residential units beyond the Green Line in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, bringing condemnations and threats upon Israel.
But before we examine the significance of boycott threats and sanctions on Israel, let’s make some sense out of the numbers. Not all construction tenders turn into actual buildings. From the moment a tender is announced until tenants actually enter their new apartments, at least three years elapse while plans are submitted and authorized and the actual construction is carried out. For example, plots in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot and Neveh Yaakov, which are included in the Housing Ministry’s latest announcement, were already marketed in the past. There were no takers then, and there is no guarantee that there will be interest now. In other words, sometimes the same tenders are announced repeatedly, evidently with the sole intention of demonstrating (to whom is unclear) that Israel is in the midst of a construction boom in the settlements.
