Israeli settlements and the growing divide between settlers and Palestinians

West Virginia native Rachel Braslavi says she moved to her new home so her family could have more space and a more community feel. But you’re faced with bigger questions than you might face when buying a typical home. Their community is the Israeli settlement of Karnei Shomron, located within the occupied West Bank.

When asked if he sees his settler family as impediments to peace, Braslavi responded: “No. I don’t. I really don’t. I feel like we have a right to be here. And I feel like Palestinians have a right to be here. “. be here.”

“On this earth?” I asked.

“Not this house,” Braslavi said. “But I mean, in the area.”

This settlement, like hundreds of others, is dug into Palestinian land and surrounded by a security fence. The border separating the West Bank from Israel is called the Green Line. It was drawn up as part of an armistice agreement following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which broke out when the modern State of Israel was formed.

But after Israel’s surprising military success in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel took more land, occupied the Palestinian territories, and Israeli citizens began building settlements.

Today, more than 700,000 Israelis live in these communities, which the United Nations considers illegal. They are scattered within the West Bank and East Jerusalem. About 15% of the settlers are Americans.

But Rachel Bralavi doesn’t see herself living in Palestinian land: “No. I don’t think so. I think some of the first places the Jews came to in biblical times were Judea and Samaria. So, to me, this is part of our indigenous right to be here.

I asked him, “To what extent was your decision to move here to a settlement cost of living versus ideology?”

“I came from the United States when I was 20 to live in Israel,” he said. “And I thought of that movement as my contribution to the Jewish people in our homeland. It didn’t matter where I lived in Israel.

“And my husband grew up here and saw it differently. He really thought that contributing in a meaningful way was crossing the Green Line and establishing facts on the ground.”

“What does ‘facts on the ground’ mean?”

“Simply by strengthening the existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” Bralavi responded.

“In the West Bank?

“Yeah.”

The settler population has grown more than 200 percent since 2000. The Israeli government encourages these movements, paying the military to guard them and funding public services such as buses and schools.

Judith Segaloff moved to Karnei Shomron seven years ago from Detroit and says she was able to afford a larger house here than she would have on the other side of the Green Line. She took us on tour. “Across the street is our shopping center,” he said. “We have an ice cream shop. Here’s our sushi shop.”

I asked him: “Do you have friends or family who disagree with you living in a settlement?”

“Sure,” Segaloff said. “Some of them won’t come to visit us.”

Segaloff says she’s excited about plans to expand a settlement just down the street. She believes the Israeli presence offers security.

“But it’s also a disputed place,” I said, “a place considered occupied territory.”

“For some,” Segaloff said.

“For the international community.”

“Well, they’ll just have to get over it,” Segaloff said. “You can’t live among people who want to kill you. They’ll just have to move and let us in.”

But not far away, on the other side of checkpoints and a security barrier, we met Palestinian Saher Eid, who lives in the West Bank village where his great-grandfather was born.

When asked about the settlers’ claims that – historically and biblically – the land is theirs, Eid said: “We have documents proving that we own this land, which we have farmed forever. Ask the settlers where they are from “.

He and his wife, Tamador, a high school science teacher, invited us to tea. They say what worries them most is the growing violence of Israeli settlers, emboldened by Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly right-wing government. Since October 7 last year, the UN estimates there have been more than 1,400 extremist settler attacks on Palestinians or their property.

The Eids are also frustrated that the fence and checkpoints around a settlement have isolated them from their own olive trees. Saher said his freedom was taken away: “He stole my land. He stole my olives. He stole everything.”

I asked him, “Is there any room for introspection here? Have you ever thought, ‘Maybe we’re not the best partners in trying to find a path to peace’?”

“We believe that if there were a Palestinian state without settlements, there would be broad support for peace,” Saher said.

The differences on this side of the security barrier are marked. Revenue is a fraction of Israel’s, and Israel controls water and much of the tax revenue.

Saher said he would welcome an Israeli living in Tel Aviv into his home, but not a settler: “No, because he is a thief.”

Assaf Sharon, professor of political and legal philosophy at Tel Aviv Universitynoted, “James Carville coined the phrase: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ In Israel-Palestine, ‘It’s the settlements, stupid.'”

As for the settlers who claim that they didn’t take anyone’s land, that no one lived there before them, Sharon said: “Well, of course, it wasn’t done individually. Occupying land doesn’t mean having a house.” “It can be grazing land, it can be land reserves for future construction and it can simply be the area reserved for the self-determination of a people.”

“The settlers argue in terms of security that Israel is safer with the settlements,” I said.

“The security argument is completely false,” Sharon responded. “Settlements are not a security asset; they are a guarantee burdenbecause defending and protecting dozens of civilians, deep in the densely populated Palestinian territory, is a tremendous burden for the military.”

He added: “The best way to ensure Israel’s security is to partner with the state or state-like entity that has an interest in preventing precisely this type of hostile activity.”

David Makovsky, member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy“We have ideologues on both sides of this equation who are determined to thwart any agreement.”

In 2013, Makovsky was part of the team trying to negotiate a peace agreement. That failed proposal, and two others, would have seen the Palestinians keep about 95% of the West Bank.

But today, with the growing number of settlements (blue dots on the map, some far from the Green Line), it may be even more complicated to determine the borders in a two-state solution.

The negotiations changed under Donald Trump, Makovsky said: “Until Trump, all of America’s peace approaches were similar. Under Trump, working with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he doesn’t want to pick and choose which settlements work and which don’t. “So the first minister convinced the president that each settlement is called Israel. That creates an impossible Swiss cheese situation. “Any Palestinian entity will be riddled with settlements.”

Now, the settlers may have another influential ally in President-elect Trump’s nominee to be the next ambassador to Israel: Mike Huckabee, who has said he is open to annexing parts of the West Bank.

But there is historical precedent for the evacuation of settlements. almost 20 years ago, The Israeli government defended leaving Gaza as a path to peace..

According to Makovsky, “2005 is for the settlers their Waterloo, their defeat.” That’s when Israel expelled the 8,000 settlers from Gaza.

At the time, I profiled a 17-year-old girl who was being forced to leave Gush Katif, her settlement in Gaza. Nineteen years later, the settlements are still front-page news. “Yes, that’s how it is in Israel,” said Rachel Yechieli Gross. Today she is a mother of three children and no longer lives in a settlement.

I asked him: “The fact that you left your home, your settlement as a teenager, shows that settlements can be closed. Could that be a step towards peace?”

“After October 7“I’m not so sure anymore because I really believed there could be a change,” Gross said. “But I don’t feel it anymore.”

Makovsky blamed the terrorist group Hamas, which he said “has really led to the growth of the Israeli right. If people in Israel thought that a Palestinian state was Costa Rica, they would line up to sign, because they want to end the conflict.” “They just want to be safe. But if they feel that a Palestinian state is a mini-Iran, they can’t find enough people in the phone booth.”

Back in the West Bank, Rachel Bralavi and her family are just five of the 700,000 Israeli settlers who are working to change, as she puts it, “the facts on the ground.”

“I wouldn’t leave voluntarily, because I’m raising my family here and, you know, I built my dream house,” he said. “Why does the peace agreement have to be at my expense, to give up my house?”

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Story produced by Sari Aviv. Editor: Ed Givnish.