JEWISH WORLD

12 JEWISH WORLD • APRIL 1 - 7, 2022 continued on page 30 Etzion (37,000) and Givat Ze’ev (37,000) — encompassing 37 com- munities. That is roughly one-third of all the settlements and 71 per- cent of the total Jewish population. At Camp David in 2000, Israel in- sisted that 80 percent of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria be under Israeli sovereignty. An agreement to dismantle the settlements outside the blocs would require the removal of more than 140,000 people. The expecta- tion during the Camp David talks was that roughly one-third of the Jews living in other settlements would agree to move into these blocs or other parts of Israel. This assumption has never been tested, and that number could be larger or smaller. If it is accurate, the per- centage in the blocs would reach 80 percent but still require Israel to evacuate nearly 100,000 people, or the equivalent of the entire city of West Palm Beach. This assumes that Israel was not forced to re- move any of the thousands of Jews in eastern Jerusalem to make way for a Palestinian capital. How many Americans remem- ber the cost and trauma that was involved in evacuating 9,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip? Do the par- rots seriously believe any Israeli government is going to send in the army to remove 100,000 or more Jews from their homes? Oh, but won’t they voluntarily leave in the interest of peace? Given decades of Palestinian in- citement, terror, intransigence and the indoctrination of children with hatred, what do you think it will take to convince Israelis that Pales- tinians are seriously prepared to live in peace? Another handshake like the one to seal the Oslo accords? O K, the settlers are not fools, but they’ll leave for money. Many settlers would give up their homes if they were compen- sated and believed that it would contribute to peace. The United States has said it won’t pay for the removal of settlers, so it would cost the government of Israel bil- lions of dollars to pay thousands of Jews to leave their homes. The true believers that the Land of Israel is more important than the State of Israel will not move at any price. By MITCHELL BARD L et’s be clear. There is one reason and one reason only why Palestinians have not achieved independence and no peace agreement has been reached with Israel. The Palestinians are not interested and have rejected every opportunity to achieve both. Still, U.S. officials and others continue to squawk like parrots about a “two- state solution,” as if their mere vo- calization would make it so. In his letter to Prime Minis- ter Ariel Sharon in 2004, Presi- dent George W. Bush wrote what should be obvious, that given “new realities on the ground, includ- ing already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealis- tic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be lowing in the footsteps of Bush’s successor, former President Barack Obama, in refusing to acknowl- edge those realities. Pointless as it may be, given their myopia, let’s remind the president and his dip- lomats of life “as it is” rather than a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” Any fi- nal-status agreement, he said, “will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that re- flect these realities.” Sadly, President Joe Biden is fol- as they would like it to be in Israel and the “disputed territories.” Yaakov Katz recently published his annual collection of statistics on Jewish communities in the West Bank (and, yes, he calls it the West Bank) based on Israeli government data. According to his report, the Jewish population is now nearly half a million (490,493, to be pre- cise), an increase of nearly 17 per- cent over the last five years. This does not include 330,000 Jews liv- ing in parts of Jerusalem that are in “disputed territory.” If you put your head in the sand and ignore the Palestinian objective of creating a state “from the river to the sea,” and believe that they will settle for a Judenrein state based on the 1949 armistice lines with eastern Jerusalem as their capital, more than 820,000 Jews would have to be re- moved from their homes — nearly 12 percent of the Jewish population of Israel. Apparently, the Palestinians believe the Jews will march like lem- mings into the sea for their benefit. Now, for those who insist that settlements are the obstacle to peace, I refer you to paragraph one. Also, a historical reminder: If the Palestinians had accepted autono- my in 1979, the number of settlers would likely “I have been frozen at around 10,000. If the Palestinians had fulfilled their Oslo obliga- tions, the number would have been roughly 170,000. Had PLO head Yasser Arafat not rejected Ehud Barak’s peace offer, the figure would have been 200,000. When Bush wrote his letter to Sharon and unsuccessfully sought Palestinian support for his Road Map, there were 246,000 settlers. The last time the Palestinians engaged in serious negotiations, in 2008, they walked away from an independent state and left 260,000 Jews on “their land.” In the succeeding 13 years, that number has increased by nearly 90 percent. Congratulations, Palestinian Au- thority leader Mahmoud Abbas.Your intransigence is really paying off.You are the true father of the settlements. So, here’s a reality check for the parrots: Most two-state pro- posals envision that Israel will annex Betar Illit (pop. 67,000) and five settlement blocs — Ma’ale Adumim (50,000), Modi’in Illit (91,000), Ariel (65,000), Gush It’s Demography, Stupid! Political reality in Israel and the territories Then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (right) met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008, in the last face-to-face negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. PERSPECTIVE “Any nal-status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that re ect new ground realities.”