Israel's West Bank Quagmire

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian areas are separated from each other by numerous Israeli-only roads, checkpoints, security zones, towns, settlements and outposts.

The chief cartographer of this maze was former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He enthusiastically promoted settlements in the occupied territories ever since he was the housing minister back in the 1990´s. He called them "facts on the ground" - a kind of fait accompli, which could not be ignored or disputed.

Mr. Sharon has been in a coma for more than three years, so he isn´t available to help anyone sort things out today. But if he were here and fully cognizant, he wouldn't be able to change the fact that the settlements are illegal under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war states:

"The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies."

Obama's Middle East Envoy, Former Senator George Mitchell, prepared a report on Israeli-Palestinian Violence in 2001. It said: "...customary international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibits Israel (as an occupying power) from establishing settlements in occupied territory pending an end to the conflict."

Since 1967, approximately 270,000 Israeli "settlers" have moved into the West Bank, creating the most insoluble puzzle in the entire Middle East.

This rigid and intractable problem was fractured on September 27th, 2008, by none other than Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He said in an interview that Israel must withdraw from nearly all of the West bank as well as East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians!

"We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories," Olmert said. "We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace."

At another point, Olmert said: "In the end, we will have to withdraw from the lion's share of the territories, and for the territories we leave in our hands, we will have to give compensation in the form of territories within the State of Israel at a ratio that is more or less 1:1. What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me. The time has come to say these things."

Omert also said that maintaining sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem, Israel´s official policy, would involve bringing 270,000 Palestinians inside Israel´s security barrier.

"A decision has to be made," he said. "This decision is difficult, terrible, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our innermost desires, our collective memories, the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years."

The Prime Minister´s statements were so counterintuitive and shocking that Israeli right-winger, Avigdor Lieberman, said Olmert was "endangering the existence of the State of Israel irresponsibly."

The last Israeli Prime Minister to be described in such terms was Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1994. A year later, he was assassinated by a radical right-wing Orthodox Jew, Yigal Amir, who claimed that Rabin's peace negotiations with Palestinians would return the West Bank to Palestinian control.

During his eight years as President, George W. Bush involved the United States in two terrible wars, but he brought us not one centimeter closer to a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some say it was for lack of trying.

President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will soon find out if Israel is willing to share "The Promised Land" with another people.