As Obama Tries to Shift the Debate, Will Democrats Continue to Endorse Israel's Colonization of the West Bank?

President Barack Obama has inherited a difficult challenge in pushing Israel to end the expansion of its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. With the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu categorically rejecting the idea of a freeze and with Democratic-controlled Congress ruling out using the billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to Israel as leverage, the situation remains deadlocked.

Along with many Israelis and other supporters of Israel, Obama recognizes that these settlements are one of the chief obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Given that Israel cannot be secure unless the Palestinians are also given the right to a state of their own and that a viable Palestinian state cannot be created as long as Israel continues colonizing Palestinian land on the West Bank, Obama sees a settlement freeze as critical.

Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan and other foreign policy dilemmas facing the new administration, however, the Democrats cannot blame Obama's challenges primarily on the legacy of George W. Bush. In the case of the Israeli settlements, much of the blame belongs to former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats who helped facilitate Israel's dramatic expansion of its West Bank settlements in the 1990s.

The Purpose of the Settlements

Although the 1967 Israeli invasion of the West Bank, then controlled by the Kingdom of Jordan, was initially justified to create a "buffer zone" to protect Israelis, it soon became apparent that the actual goal was to expand Israeli territory.

With enough Israelis living in sizable developments throughout the occupied territory, so went the reasoning, the demographics would be altered so as to make it impossible for a contiguous Palestinian state to emerge. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan acknowledged that although the settlements did not help Israel's security situation, they were still needed since, "without them the IDF would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population."

Ariel Sharon, who prior to becoming prime minister served as the housing minister in earlier right-wing governments overseeing settlement expansion, bragged in 1995 that these settlements were "the only factor" that had prevented then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from agreeing to withdraw from the occupied territories entirely as part of the 1993 Oslo Agreement.

Sharon, who has been praised as a peacemaker by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democratic leaders, expressed his pride in the fact that this had "created difficulties" in the negotiations with the Palestinians. Indeed, had Israel's Labor governments not had to worry about the domestic political consequences from such a withdrawal as a result of these illegal settlements, there would probably have been peace years ago.

Now with right-wing parties dominating Israeli politics and nearly a half-million Israeli settlers on land that was to become a Palestinian state, it will be even more difficult.

The Palestine Authority -- including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah party, and the Palestine Liberation Organization -- have already recognized exclusive Israeli control of 78 percent of Palestine, yet the Israelis have insisted on expanding their control over much of the remaining 22 percent through this colonization drive. While the Palestine Authority has administration over the majority of the West Bank's Palestinian population, Israeli occupation forces still control much of the land in between these towns and cities, with hundreds of checkpoints severely restricting the movement of people and goods within the West Bank, in order to protect these settlements. Clashes between right-wing settler militias, often back by the Israeli army, and local Palestinians are common.

These settlements and the swathes of territories connecting them to each other and to Israel divide the Palestinian-controlled territory into 43 noncontiguous cantons separated by Israeli checkpoints, thereby making the creation of a viable Palestinian state virtually impossible. Indeed, this appears to be the principle reason for Israel's colonization drive and why so many U.S. officials have supported it.

It is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention for any country to transfer its civilian population onto lands seized by military force. A landmark 2004 ruling by the World Court underscored the obligation of signatories such as the United States to make a good-faith effort to enforce such international legal obligations on countries with which they have influence, but Democratic congressional leaders joined President George W. Bush in denouncing the decision. Furthermore, under U.N. Security Council resolutions 446, 452, 465 and 471, Israel is explicitly required to withdraw from these settlements, but successive Democratic and Republican administrations -- with support of congressional leaders of both parties -- have blocked the United Nations from enforcing these resolutions.