Opinion | Who Will Stop Israel's Craziest Settlement Plan Ever?

Israel's controversial separation wall and construction machinery working on the tarmac of the former Atarot airport near Qalandiya, between the West Bank city of Ramallah and annexed east Jerusalem Credit: AHMAD GHARABLI - AFP

The story of this new Israeli settlement is almost too wild and fantastical to be believed.

 
What is planned for the Palestinian neighborhood of Qalandiya ("Atarot" in official Israelispeak), north of Jerusalem, is a new settlement the size of an entire city. It would be an enclave surrounded by a dense Palestinian urban continuum and detached from any existing Israeli settlement. Perhaps its most delusional attribute is that it could soon be established by an Israeli government basing its decision on maintaining what it calls the "status quo" for the settlement project.

 
In recent years, Israel’s housing ministry has prepared a plan for 9,000 housing units in the area of the old Atarot airport, but according to reports, Netanyahu’s government didn’t push it forward due to American pressure. The plan is considered lethal for the prospect of a two-state peace agreement because it interrupts the Palestinian continuum in the central metropolis of the future Palestinian state, between Ramallah and East Jerusalem. Even according to the the Trump Plan, itself far from a model for two states, the Atarot area was supposed to be part of the Palestinian entity.

This Monday, the District Planning and Construction Committee, under central government jurisdiction, is expected to discuss the first step of the planning process, known as depositing. The planning procedure is a bit like a snowball. Once you start promoting the plan, it has a life of its own, the bureaucracy gets into gear, economic and legal expectations are created, and it becomes increasingly difficult to stop it.

 
If you want to stop the plan, you have to do it now, before it starts the planning process. All that is required for this is to postpone the hearing in the district committee to an unknown date, at a paltry political cost. However, after the planning process begins, it becomes much more complicated, difficult and politically costly.

So how come the current coalition government dares to do what even Netanyahu’s "full-on" right-wing government did not dare to do?

 
The Bennett government was formed on the basis of a consensus that there is no consensus on the issue of settlements and the occupied territories. Its core understandings were that the government would neither make far-reaching changes that might preclude the possibility of a future peace, nor would it make far-reaching changes that would advance a future peace. This was called maintaining a "status quo" on settlements.

Supporters of a two-state solution in the government interpret this agreement as a sweeping exemption from taking responsibility for policy in the territories: "There is no chance of reaching an agreement anyway, so there is no point talking about it." They do not even seek to hold any consultation or ministerial forum to question the policies in the occupied territories. Their standpoint is: If we do not talk about something, it won’t happen.

 
Right-wing ministers (and with them also supposedly centrist Defense Minister Benny Gantz) also don’t talk about it. They are doing everything in their power to deepen Israeli control of the territories, and don’t even bother to engage with pro-peace partners in government.

This was the case when settlers established the Evyatar outpost, and the defense minister, in exchange for their "consent" to evacuate, sent IDF soldiers to occupy a military post that had no security logic behind it and whose establishment had already led to the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians in daily protests against the outpost.

 
This was the case when an unnamed official in the Civil Administration set a date for a discussion of objections to the settlement plan in the E1 area outside Jerusalem which is considered a political red line that the world, including the Americans, strongly oppose.

 

Palestinians wait to cross the Qalandiya checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem as they head to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for the first Friday prayers of Ramadan Credit: ABBAS MOMANI / AFP

And this is what happens now when the housing minister decides to drop a political bomb and promote the plan for the new settlement in Qalandiya.

 
Israel’s Minister of Housing has the authority to promote housing plans and issue tenders for construction, and he does not need any formal approval from the government. In all previous governments, the practice was that in matters with high political sensitivity, such as the massive promotion of settlements, or construction in acutely controversial areas, decisions were only made in coordination with the prime minister and/or a forum of senior ministers.

 
But the current government won’t deal with controversial political issues, which means any minister can do as s/he pleases. They have a free hand, no matter how explosive the issue.

 

Construction machinery working on the tarmac of the former Atarot airport near Qalandiya, between the West Bank city of Ramallah and annexed east JerusalemCredit: AHMAD GHARABLI - AFP

Supporters of peace in Israel’s governing coalition have had enough time to understand that something is crooked here. It is impossible to set aside the issues of occupation and settlement under the rubric of the "status quo" and avoid dealing with it. They cannot let the right wing and Gantz alone determine the government’s policy on the most crucial issue for our future.

 
The fear of two-state supporters getting into an argument, inevitably blasting the government’s policies, even triggering its dissolution, is understandable. But one must at least say something, make demands, do something.

 
According to the committee agenda, there is one more day to stop the plan in Qalandiya/Atarot. It may be that U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken steps in to scuttle the process. If the ‘pro-peace’ parties in power continue to act like the three monkeys, not hearing, not seeing and not saying anything, the destruction of any chance for peace will be registered in the names of Meretz, Labor, Yesh Atid, Kachol Lavan and the United Arab List.

 
Hagit Ofran works at the Settlement Watch project of Peace Now. Twitter: @hagitofran