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 greater sense of community. But she faces bigger questions than a typical home purchase. Their community is the Israeli settlement of Karnei Shomron in the occupied West Bank.

When asked if she saw her settler family as an obstacle to peace, Braslavi replied: “No to being here.

“On this land?” I asked.

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

This settlement, like hundreds of others, is embedded in Palestinian land and surrounded by a security fence. The border that separates the West Bank from Israel is called the Green Line. It was concluded as part of a ceasefire agreement following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which began with the creation of the modern state of Israel.

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

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

But Rachel Braslavi doesn’t believe she lives on Palestinian land: “No, I don’t. I believe that some of the first places Jews went in biblical times were in Judea and Samaria. So to me, that’s part of our Indigenous right to be here.

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

“When I was in my 20s, I came from America to live in Israel,” she said. “And I saw this step as, in a sense, 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 to make a meaningful contribution you had to cross the Green Line and create facts on the ground, so to speak.”

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

“Just strengthening the existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” Braslavi replied.

“In the West Bank?

“Yes.”

The settler population has grown by more than 200 percent since 2000. The Israeli government encourages these moves by funding military guarding and funding public services such as buses and schools.

Judith Segaloff moved to Karnei Shomron from Detroit seven years ago and says she can afford a larger home here than she would have on the other side of the Green Line. She took us on a tour. “Across the street is our mall,” she said. “We have an ice cream parlor. This is our sushi shop.”

I asked, “Do you have any friends or relatives who don’t agree with you living in a settlement?”

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

Segaloff says she’s excited about plans to expand a development just off the road. She believes the Israeli presence provides security.

“But it is also a contested place,” I said, “a place that is considered occupied territory.”

“Some,” Segaloff said.

“From the international community.”

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

Asked about the settlers’ claims that the land is theirs – historically and biblically – Eid said: “We have documents that prove we own this land that we have farmed since time immemorial. “Are you asking the settlers where they come from?”

He and his wife Tamador, a high school science teacher, invited us to tea. They say they are most concerned about increasing violence from Israeli settlers, which encourages them Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly right-wing government. According to the UN, there have been more than 1,400 attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinians or their property since October 7 last year.

The Eids are also frustrated that the fence and checkpoints surrounding a settlement have cut them off 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, “Is there room for introspection here?” Have you ever thought, ‘Maybe we aren’t the best partners to find a path to peace’?”

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

The differences on this side of the security barrier are striking. Incomes are a fraction of those in Israel, and Israel controls the 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 the Tel Aviv Universityremarked, “James Carville coined the phrase, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ In Israel-Palestine they say, ‘It’s the settlements, stupid.'”

Regarding settlers who claim that they have not taken land from anyone, that no one has lived there before them, Sharon said: “Of course it wasn’t done individually. Occupying a land does not mean having a house on which it can be pastureland, and it can also be the area reserved for the self-determination of a people.

“Settlers are making a security argument that Israel is safer with the settlements,” I said.

“The security argument is complete nonsense,” Sharon replied. “The settlements are not a security asset, they are a security.” loadBecause the defense and protection of numerous civilians deep in the densely populated Palestinian territory is a huge burden for the military.”

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

David Makovsky, a fellow at Washington Institute for Middle East Policysaid: “We have ideologues on both sides of this equation who are determined to thwart any adjustment.”

In 2013, Makovsky was part of the team that attempted to negotiate a peace agreement. That failed proposal and two others would have resulted in the Palestinians retaining about 95% of the West Bank.

But today, with the increasing number of settlements — blue dots on the map, some far from the Green Line — determining boundaries could be even more complicated in a two-state solution.

The negotiations had changed under Donald Trump, said Makovsky: “Until Trump, all US approaches to peace were similar. Under Trump and in collaboration with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he doesn’t want to choose which settlements make it and which don’t.” . So the Prime Minister convinced the President that every single settlement would be called Israel. Now this creates an impossible Swiss cheese situation.

Now the settlers may have another ally with influence over 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.

However, there is a historical precedent for settlement evictions. Almost 20 years ago, The Israeli government believed that leaving Gaza was a path to peace.

According to Makovsky, “For the settlers, 2005 is their Waterloo, their defeat.” At that time, Israel expelled all 8,000 settlers from Gaza.

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

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

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

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

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

“I wouldn’t leave willingly because I’m raising my family here and, you know, I built my dream home,” she said. “Why does the peace agreement have to come at my expense to give up my homeland?”

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Story produced by Sari Aviv. Editor: Ed Givnish.