JustASC

Ron Kampeas at JTA has some inside info on the Obama administration and the settlements. I wish he could name names, and I hope it appears in an article in addition to the JTA “Capital J” blog. It deserves wider distribution:

First – and I have this on the best authority – because the Americans simply do not trust Israel on settlements any longer. The feeling in the Obama administration is that Israel has turned “natural growth” into a “loophole you could drive an elephant through,” someone involved in the talks told me. Not only that, the mistrust is institutional – it has accumulated over the years and throughout the Bush administration. Without adding anything further, I can say my informant in this case would be in a position to know this at the highest levels.

More importantly, the settlements and their expansion are at the crux of Palestinian mistrust of Israel. The settlements have squeezed Palestinians off of their farm land, out of their livelihoods and have made getting around the West Bank a chore at best, a nightmare at worst. Nothing would signal goodwill more emphatically than an earthmover or two left to rust.