Are Settlements Really the Major Obstacle to Peace?

22 October, 2010

For nearly two decades, the Palestinian Authority conducted peace talks with Israel while construction in the Jewish settlements was continuing. Every now and then the Palestinian leadership would complain about the construction, but it never made a big fuss about the issue. Nor had it threatened to suspend the peace process.

The Palestinian leaders even "forgot," when they signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993, to demand that the agreement include an Israeli commitment to stop building in the settlements.

Palestinian leaders living in the West Bank can't say that they never saw the bulldozers working in the settlements.