SECRETARY KERRY: We have to be clear about what is happening in the West Bank.
The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition
is the most right wing in Israeli history, with an agenda
driven by the most extreme elements.
The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described
as “more committed to settlements than any in Israel's history,” are leading in the
opposite direction.
They're leading towards one state.
In fact, Israel has increasingly consolidated control over much of the West Bank for its
own purposes, effectively reversing the transitions to greater Palestinian civil authority that
were called for by the Oslo Accords.
I don’t think most people in Israel, and certainly in the world, have any idea how
broad and systematic the process has become.
But the facts speak for themselves.
The number of settlers in the roughly 130 Israeli settlements east of the 1967 lines
has steadily grown.
The settler population in the West Bank alone, not including East Jerusalem, has increased
by nearly 270,000 since Oslo, including 100,000 just since 2009, when President Obama's term
began.
There's no point in pretending that these are just in large settlement blocks.
Nearly 90,000 settlers are living east of the separation barrier that was created by
Israel itself in the middle of what, by any reasonable definition,
would be the future Palestinian state.
And the population of these distant settlements has grown by 20,000 just since 2009.
In fact, just recently the government approved a significant new settlement well east of
the barrier, closer to Jordan than to Israel.
What does that say to Palestinians in particular – but also to the United States and the
world – about Israel’s intentions?
Let me emphasize, this is not to say that the settlements are the whole or even the
primary cause of this conflict.
Of course they are not.
Nor can you say that if the settlements were suddenly removed, you’d have peace.
Without a broader agreement, you would not.
And we understand that in a final status agreement, certain settlements would become part of Israel
to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 49 years – we understand
that – including the new democratic demographic realities that exist on the ground.
They would have to be factored in.
But if more and more settlers are moving into the middle of Palestinian areas, it’s going
to be just that much harder to separate, that much harder to imagine transferring sovereignty,
and that is exactly the outcome that some are purposefully accelerating.
Let’s be clear: Settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israel's security.
Many settlements actually increase the security burden on the Israeli Defense Forces.
And leaders of the settler movement are motivated by ideological imperatives that entirely ignore
legitimate Palestinian aspirations.
Among the most troubling illustrations of this point has been the proliferation of settler
outposts that are illegal under Israel’s own laws.
They’re often located on private Palestinian land and strategically placed in locations
that make two states impossible.
There are over 100 of these outposts.
And since 2011, nearly one-third of them have been or are being legalized, despite pledges
by past Israeli governments to dismantle many of them.
Now leaders of the settler movement have advanced unprecedented new legislation
that would legalize most of those outposts.
For the first time, it would apply Israeli domestic law to the West Bank rather than
military law, which is a major step towards the process of annexation.
When the law passed the first reading in the Israeli parliament, in the Knesset, one of
the chief proponents said proudly – and I quote – “Today, the Israeli Knesset
moved from heading towards establishing a Palestinian state towards Israeli sovereignty
in Judea and Samaria.”
Even the Israeli attorney general has said that the draft law is unconstitutional and
a violation of international law.
Now, you may hear from advocates that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace because
the settlers who don’t want to leave can just stay in Palestine, like the Arab Israelis
who live in Israel.
But that misses a critical point, my friends.
The Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel, subject to Israel’s law.
Does anyone here really believe that the settlers will agree
to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine?
Likewise, some supporters of the settlements argue that the settlers could just stay
in their settlements and remain as Israeli citizens in their separate enclaves
in the middle of Palestine, protected by the IDF.
Well, there are over 80 settlements east of the separation barrier, many located in places
that would make a continuous – a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
Does anyone seriously think that if they just stay where they are
you could still have a viable Palestinian state?
Now, some have asked, “Why can’t we build in the blocs
which everyone knows will eventually be part of Israel?”
Well, the reason building there or anywhere else in the West Bank now results in such pushback
is that the decision of what constitutes a bloc is being made unilaterally by the Israeli
Government, without consultation, without the consent of the Palestinians,
and without granting the Palestinians a reciprocal right to build in what will be,
by most accounts, part of Palestine.
Bottom line – without agreement or mutuality, the unilateral choices become a major point
of contention, and that is part of why we are here where we are.
You may hear that these remote settlements aren’t a problem because they only take
up a very small percentage of the land.
Well, again and again we have made it clear, it’s not just a question of the overall
amount of land available in the West Bank.
It’s whether the land can be connected or it’s broken up into small parcels, like
a Swiss cheese, that could never constitute a real state.
The more outposts that are built, the more the settlements expand, the less possible
it is to create a contiguous state.
So in the end, a settlement is not just the land that it’s on, it’s also what the
location does to the movement of people, what it does to the ability of a road to connect
people, one community to another, what it does to the sense of statehood
that is chipped away with each new construction.
No one thinking seriously about peace can ignore the reality of what the settlements
pose to that peace.