Even before world powers signed the nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already determined that its inspection mechanisms were full of holes. At an air force flight school graduation ceremony on June 25, Netanyahu warned that the “many tens of billions of dollars” that will flow into Iran’s coffers once sanctions are lifted will serve, among other things, to expand its conquests in the Middle East. The issue of the supervision over Iran’s nuclear facilities keeps taking center stage in the campaign Netanyahu is waging against the agreement among members of Congress and the American media. “You don’t have inspections within 24 hours — you have 24 days before you can inspect any site that you find suspicious in Iran,” Netanyahu said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. “Can you imagine giving a drug dealer 24 days’ notice before you check the premises? That’s a lot of time to flush a lot of meth down the toilet.”

There’s no doubt that with a country such as Iran, which has gained a deserved reputation for hiding facilities and material that can be used to build nuclear weapons, signing a piece of paper is not enough. Internal operating procedures and external inspection mechanisms are an integral component of any agreement resolving or managing a conflict. Without exception. But it is only fitting that anyone demanding tighter inspections of his neighbor’s backyard take care of his own first. As the Babylonian Talmud says, "Remove the beam from between your eyes" (Arachin 16b), meaning, "Practice what you preach." Every house built in the occupied territories sits on a sufficient amount of dynamite to blow up any chance of ending the conflict with the Palestinians or forging regional peace.

The dynamite of the settlement enterprise, established in 1967, is produced without supervision, in violation of international law and often in contravention of Israeli law. Some quarter of a million settlers have joined the 110,000 Jews who lived in the West Bank at the time the Oslo Accord was signed in September 1993. Not only is the government not supervising the implementation of its commitment under the 2003 Road Map to freeze construction in the settlements and dismantle outposts, last week elected Israeli officials promoted a bill legalizing the lawlessness in its backyard. The government’s Legislative Affairs Committee approved on July 19 a proposed bill anchoring the status of the Settlement Division — a department in the World Zionist Organization that serves as one of the state’s central settlement construction arms. Three days later, the Knesset gave the bill preliminary approval by a vote of 65 to 41.

The ministers and Knesset members who supported the legislation — including the representatives of the farming communities in the Zionist Camp, Knesset members Eitan Broshi and Danny Atar — ignored the objections of the Ministry of Justice professional cadre to the bill and the pre-election commitment of their party leader, Isaac Herzog, to shut down the Settlement Division if elected prime minister.