Why do some Israeli politicians wish to annex the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank?  Further, what is the legal process for annexing an occupied area whose ownership and sovereignty is in dispute both in the Middle East and in the international community?  These are pressing questions that come up in the wake of Israeli lawmakers putting forward legislation to annex the settlement, setting the conversation around the globe ablaze by Palestinians, the body of the United Nations, and Israelis themselves.  To the clear majority of the international community, the issue is settled: Israel is breaking international law.  Further, as one of the first major international relations issues in the Trump administration, this issue and its response to it by the United States and the Trump administration will be a great indicator of what is to come in the next four years.  In a time of radical jihadist pseudo-states taking territory, civil war causing refugees to flee their homelands and seek comforting arms abroad, and evaluation of what the future holds for one of the oldest civilization centers the world over, it becomes important to know how the world’s leading super power reacts to a nuclear-armed close ally taking internationally condemned actions.  Israel, using its settlement programs, has violated international law. To come to a lasting peace, the settlement turned city, Ma’ale Adumim, should be tied to the fate of Jerusalem, and a twenty-year moratorium should be placed on Israel’s settlement program, with a promise to dismantle the other existing settlements.

Some would argue that the Middle East has always been a hot bed of conflict.  The three major monotheistic religions all began in this area, particularly Israel, and all have holy sites within it, some of them, especially in the city of Jerusalem, being next to or on top of each other.  In the Middle Ages, Europeans waged war to retake the Holy Land of what is today Israel from Islamic rule.  These church-sanctioned wars of faith were called the Crusades, and those Europeans who fought crusaders.  Though areas outside of modern Israel were taken and battled over, the crown jewel of Jerusalem, the Holy City, was always the focus of these territorial wars.  For years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have fought over this land, with each faction laying claim to the region.  For the Jews, this is the site of their ancestors.  For Christians, their savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth walked through the area and was crucified in Jerusalem proper.  And for Muslims, although there are many holy sites in Jerusalem and in what is today Israel, Palestinian Muslims argue that they had been in the land continuously, uninterrupted, and in peace until the nation state of Israel was established, a homeland for the Jews following the tragedy of the Holocaust.  Although the Allied Powers of the Second World War had hoped that the establishment of Israel would be a solution to many a woe, it would only complicate matter further.  In 1967, shortly after founding the nation state of Israel, war broke out.  In only five days, Israel fought its neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and took territory from each, most notable the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the West bank from Jordan.  It was in 1968 at Passover that a group of Israeli Jews rented a hotel room in Hebron in the West Bank to be close to a major Jewish holy site; this was the first time in almost twenty-years, since the first Arab-Israeli War that Israeli Jews had been in the area.  At the time, the Israeli government granted them a temporary stay, and from this first religious excursion into the West Bank, we now have settlements of Israeli Jews in the once Jordanian land (Myre).  Another significant move was made by the Israeli government following the war, which was the annexation of East Jerusalem, previously solely populated by Palestinians and not a part of Israel.  The Israelis then declared Jerusalem to be the “eternal and indivisible” capital of their nation, however no other country, not even the United States recognizes this to be their capital, to the point that almost all embassies in Israel are in the coastal Tel Aviv (Myre).  In the time, Israel has engaged in building legally sanctioned settlements of Israeli citizens using taxpayers’ funds and with full support of the government.  These settlements happen in the disputed West Bank, an area that the Palestinians claim would be their land were a second state created.  Israel does not possess the land in the West Bank.  It is not a part of their nation officially.  This land was instead merely abandoned by the Jordanians following the conflict in 1967.  At this point, the Israeli government is, in the truest sense of the word occupying the area.

In a room of competing claims and claimants, who is the mediator?  Some millennia ago the answer would be simple – might makes right.  However, in our modern world, filled with democratic institutions and the idea of an educated citizenry, we look to the law.  The international community agrees.  The issue comes about from the Fourth Geneva Convention which in Article 49, paragraph 6 states that “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies,” (Watts, 443).  By allowing its own civilian population to move into the occupied area, they are violating an agreement which their own government signs on to and has previously held up in its own defense.  Per Watts, the Geneva Convention also, through Article 1, ensures an obligation by signed nations to “ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances,”.  The body of enforcement for this document is the United Nations.  However, with Israel being such an ally and interest to the United States, Watts argues that “the United States consistently uses its veto power… to block proposals to intervene and enforce the Geneva IV against Israel.”  The United States’ position on the Security Council has acted as a safeguard for Israel to do as it pleases in the West Bank.  This has allowed the Israeli government to consistently and detrimentally degraded the very existence of Geneva IV by undermining the portion that Israel disagrees with, which undermines the first Article, which requires that states commit to all parts of Geneva IV.

This long practice of overriding any action or negative talk about Israel within the international community could be at an end.  In December, the United Nations Security Council issued a resolution condemning the Israeli settlement program, a vote which the United States, as a voting member of the Security Council abstained from (Collinson, Stephen).  The Obama administration had increasingly pulled further and further away from blindly supporting the nation state of Israel and for good reason.  Although they are our ally, the international community is in near universal agreement that what they are doing with the settlement program in the West Bank is completely illegal.  Per Watts, “the President of the European Union (“E.U.”) also warned Israel that ‘settlement building anywhere in the occupied Palestinians Territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law,’ as Article 49(6) explains,” (450).  The entire Middle East community of Muslim nations is in unanimous agreement that Israel’s treatment of Palestine and settlement building in the West Bank is illegal.  Some of these states even argue against the very being of Israel, but all agree that this program is incompatible with international law.  It is not merely the Muslim nations of this world that are against Israel’s actions with settlements, but the whole of the international community, including UN leadership.

With the world in agreement apart from the ‘guilty’ party, what course of action remains?  What can be done to rectify this wrong?  Some offer only the input of “two-state solution” which refers to the idea of creating two separate nation states from this land, one for the Israelis and for the Palestinians.  Though people frequently cite this three words ‘solution’, it offers little in the way of real, practical solution.  It ignores the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens living ‘illegally’ in the settlements.  It ignores the reality of their lives and discounts them as people, free in their own rights.  In the relentless pursuit for Palestinian ‘justice’, the settlers are forgotten about along with their rights to property that they bought, cultivated, and made a life at.  I do not know the grand solution.  Yet, I believe that through a series of small, meaningful negotiations and solutions a solution can approach without actors even realizing it.  John Kerry as Secretary of State offered the solution of dismantling the small settlements deep within the West Bank in a “tit for tat” strategy where the Israelis would be allowed to annex the territories on the border that would be hard to dismantle (like Ma’ale Adumim), and would then concede certain other territories to the Palestinians.  This strategy would not work.  The idea of treating rectification of the illegality of these settlements as a balancing one is an idea that I fully support however.  “To suggest that the settlers should have a right to remain with minority rights following the withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Force is an admirable fantasy. But the human rights community has a duty to ensure that they are adequately compensated, that they have recourse to nonviolent protest, and that force is used against them as a last resort. The international community must not parse away the rights of the settlers on the grounds that the occupation is illegal. Rather, it must view the problem as one of balancing the rights of a minority with those of the majority,” (Patton 4).  This idea was put forward in the Negotiation Journal and must be considered with serious thought as these settlers cannot be simply ignored, in spite of the illegality of their situation.  Even if the settlers chose to put themselves into this position, how many of them knew that they were actively breaking international law?  Did their children choose to move to settlements like Ma’ale Adumim?  For many of these people, the international legal framework is not even a matter for them, the goal of their settlement is entirely religious.  Israelis have a long tradition of this, including the very founding of the state of Israel.  The beginnings of Jewish, religiously motivated settlement are rooted deep and began before the twentieth century (Schoeps).

The reality of these settlements’ size and growth cannot be ignored, nor its inhabitants.  Ma’ale Adumim is akin to an American suburb.  While it acts as a buffer in the West Bank between the sacred Israeli treasure of Jerusalem and the disputed West Bank, it also has shopping malls, stores, small businesses, and an array of citizens, many who commute into Jerusalem every day.  Their lives cannot be ignored; nor can this infrastructure be destroyed.  I propose that Ma’ale Adumim be tied to the fate of Jerusalem and properly annexed only to the city.  This will be accompanied by a mandatory twenty-year moratorium on the building of new settlements.  All of this can be accomplished by the United Nations and this agreement can be made, but only, and it is important to stress this point, with the support of the United States.  The United States has blocked all previous attempts of enforcing Geneva IV on Israel.  On four separate occasions the United Nations, through General Assembly and Security Council, attempted to enforce Article 49 of Geneva IV, and on each attempt, been blocked by the United States (Watts, 450-459).  If Israel does not cooperate with the moratorium several avenues exist to punish their non-compliance with Geneva IV and the new agreement, but the most effective of which is to impose economic sanctions.  Per Watts, Israel received $2.8 billion in foreign aid from the United States in 2002 alone (464).  Their military and economy depend on this money, and cutting off the hose so to speak would have drastic consequences.

This first settlement of Ma’ale Adumim is crucial.  It shows Israel that the international community, including the United States believes in enforcement of Geneva IV.  The United States’ response to Israeli action regarding this proposal is critical for the future of the Israel, the United States, the Middle East, and the world.  One of the problems that terrorist organizations often cite is the occupation of Israel on Palestinian land.  They cite these settlements as proof of modern Western imperialism and use this to recruit new, corruptible minds to their cause.  By eliminating the settlement problem, the international community would be indirectly combatting terrorism by knocking this leg out from under the terrorist platform.  In so doing, the spread of terrorism, especially in the West, could be dramatically reduced.  Further, there would no longer be an incongruence with international law and the Israeli state.  Israel could begin to gain credibility with its neighbors once more, all of whom advocate against the settlement program, and for Palestinian independence.

This proposal will not solve the crisis in the Middle East.  Rather, this proposal could act as a stepping stone to achieving peace in the increasingly volatile region of the Middle East.  By signing on with this agreement and complying with it, deals would be more likely to be reached because Israel would have credibility in its international negotiations.  And were Israel not to cooperate, economic and military hardships due to a severe loss of funding would plague the nation until compliance is reached.  This would be the teeth backing up the United Nations and Geneva IV that the world so desperately needs.  The United States could also, by enforcing this overturn decades of thinking that it would never sway from Israel, regardless of the situation, and if the United States wishes to enforce Geneva IV on other nations (Syria, for example, for using chemical weapons against civilians), they must start by looking at their closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.  This agreement will lead to more down the line, which will eventually lead to peace in Israel and a lasting, meaningful agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The international community is in agreement: the problem of Israeli violation of international law has lasted far too long.  We must act now or lose credibility in all arenas of international law.  Israel’s settlement program is a slap in the face to the agreement that the international community made in Geneva IV.  To come to a lasting peace, the city of Ma’ale Adumim ought to be tied to the fate of Jerusalem, accompanied by a moratorium on the settlement program with a promise to dismantle other settlements.  The world, the Middle East, and the citizens of Israel deserve this agreement.  If the international community is to take any of its legislation seriously, it must get serious and enforce all parts of Geneva IV.  It is absurd to argue that others violate this agreement while allowing the elephant in the room to go on without being dealt with.  You cannot go into someone else’s yard and claim it as your own because they are not using it.  The age of homesteading is through.  And just like the age of homesteading is through, so is the age of state-steading, which is to say carving up new territory as your own, without the cooperation of all parties involved.
