What the State Department has Been Saying
Settlement Report | Vol. 18 No. 5 | September-October 2008
Do Settlements Represent Facts on the Ground?
Rice: No . . . and Yes
Question: With that [in] mind, Secretary Rice, I mean Israel has defied you publicly. You [called] for a hold on settlements and they’re constructing thousands of new units. What are you going to do about it? Or is the Bush administration (inaudible)?
Secretary Condoleezza Rice: The settlement issue with Israel is not unique to the Bush administration.
Question: At a time when it’s the most urgent--
Secretary Rice: The settlement issue is not unique to the Bush administration at a time when negotiations are going on either. There’s a pattern here. And we’re going to continue to raise it. I am hopeful that the Israelis understand that we very seriously are concerned not just about the activity itself, although that’s an issue, but about the effect that it has on the confidence of the parties--of the Palestinians but also of the United States. There’s no effort here to create facts on the ground. And we believe and have said that the realities on the ground have to be taken into account when any agreement is done. And a lot has happened since 1966.
But that said, it isn’t acceptable to keep trying to create realities on the ground, new realities on the ground. And I think there is an important message there to the Israeli leadership.
Question: What kind of pressure are you putting on the Israeli leadership so that it’s not just dialogue (inaudible)?
Secretary Rice: Israel is a sovereign government. And they’ve always said that they have a different position about this. But again, some of this comes down to whether the United States, when asked, is going to accept that new realities have been created on the ground or whether or not we continue to believe that when we talked about population realities on the ground, we were talking about population realities on the ground at the time. I think that’s an important distinction here.
Rice Interview with the CNN Editorial Board,
New York, June 19, 2008
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State: Israel’s Roadmap Obligations Unclear and Subject to Dispute. The US Cannot Determine the Legitimacy of Settlements Until a Final Status Agreement Is Reached
[State Department Spokesperson] Mr. Sean McCormack: In terms of the settlements issue, I know that that was on the agenda for us to talk to [Defense] Minister [Ehud] Barak about. Our position on that is well known. We’ve talked about it. The fact that there are these continuing activities with respect to settlement activity is a problem. We have talked to the Israelis about that. We’ve talked to them about their Roadmap obligations and we’re going to continue to do so. We’re also going to continue to talk about the political track, which is ongoing. . . .
Question: Apparently, based on his comments to reporters, the Israelis consider that--those [newly announced settlement] units as justified and there’s no indication they’re backing down on it.
Mr. McCormack: Well, you know, again, they have their point of view, we have our point of view, with respect to the Roadmap obligations. Our view is not changing, and we’re going to continue talking to them about it. You know, ultimately, however, these questions about settlements where--you know, where lines are drawn, what is legitimate, what is not legitimate, with respect to Roadmap obligations, are only really ultimately going to be settled by a final negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. You’re not going to have these kinds of questions. You’re not going to have these kinds of bumps in the road with respect to negotiations when these issues of settlements come up.
And so our focus is to work with both sides to get as far as we can in achieving a settlement on all final status issues by the end of the year. That remains our goal. We’re going to continue to push on that goal. And ultimately, when you get to that point, whether that’s in this administration or some administration down the road, these questions aren’t going to become the grist for daily news stories anymore because the issues will have been settled.
State Department Daily Briefing, July 29, 2008
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Rice: A Long Slog
Secretary Rice: Well, if you remember, the--Annapolis had three tracks. One was Roadmap implementation. The parties undertook, in 2003, a number of obligations to try and move the process forward, kind of on-the-ground obligations. And so, for instance, the Palestinians said that they would dismantle the infrastructure of terror. The Israelis made some representations about dismantling outposts.
It’s a slog, to be quite frank.
Rice Remarks with Aspen Institute President
and CEO Walter Isaacson, August 3, 2008
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Stop Settling, Please
On the settlement issue, I think I’ve made very clear the U.S. position that the settlement activity is not conducive to creating an environment for negotiations, yet negotiations go on. We continue to press the Israelis about their Roadmap obligations and to work with the Palestinians on their Roadmap obligations as well.
Rice remarks with Palestinian president
Mahmoud Abbas, Ramallah, August 26, 2008
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In the land of the settlers, disengagement is a bleeding wound. It changed not only their relationship with the state, but also the relationship amongst themselves. The central leadership has crumbled, and the settlement movement today is led by wild groups of young people who are openly fed up with Israel and its institutions. And this anger makes them lose it. Almost not a day goes by without an incident vis-à-vis the security forces. A settler wrests away a soldier’s rifle; a group of children yells “Nazis” at the reservists guarding them; IDF Central Command jeeps are blocked; a police cruiser’s tires are slashed. On occasion, when a settler is arrested, they impose a siege on the police station and try to get their friend out by force, as if we were some kind of foreign colonialist regime in Zimbabwe or Congo. They are mad at the IDF, show contempt to the law, and refuse to accept the state’s authority. This is the case in the outpost of Migron, as well as the daily infiltrations to the evacuated settlement Homesh and to Joseph’s Tomb; this is the case in settlements such as Yitzhar and Tapuach. And as always, they do the job for their rivals--because more than any spineless Yossi Beilin speech, they define the place they live in as “not Israel.” This is a lawless land, lacking respect, where people who are different than us live and conduct themselves in line with codes we don’t understand. It is a land that has rejected all the basic values that hold us together: The respect to IDF soldiers, the sense of solidarity, the realization that the police do an exhausting job under impossible conditions. These people create a situation whereby, when the day comes, and the agreements are signed on the lawn in Washington, it will be easier to give up this land, which isn’t really ours; this land where not only the laws and landscape are different, but also the people.
Yair Lapid, Ynetnews.com, August 19, 2008 |
