UNILATERALISM WORKS:

Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank (STEVEN ERLANGER, 4/19/05, NY Times)

They're building away here in Israel's largest settlement, with Palestinian workers laboring on new apartment houses overlooking the red-brown hills of the West Bank.

Israel's intentions to keep building next to this suburb about three miles from Jerusalem have set off a small furor with the Bush administration, which is putting pressure on Israel to keep a commitment to freeze settlement growth.

But the construction and planning at Maale Adumim and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull 9,000 Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip this summer are only parts of a far larger and more complex transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian landscape, and of Mr. Sharon's policies themselves.

In effect, Israel under Mr. Sharon is unilaterally moving to define its future borders with a Palestinian state - with the scheduled withdrawal from Gaza and from four small settlements in the northern West Bank, with the "thickening" of settlements near Jerusalem and the Israeli border, and with a new route for the Israeli separation barrier approved by the cabinet on Feb. 20.

Palestinians are furious that Israel is moving without waiting for negotiations. But the likely impact of the provisional new border on Palestinian life is, perhaps surprisingly, smaller than generally assumed, and it would leave about a quarter of Israeli settlers on the Palestinian side.

Amazing that folks still can't grasp that all the progress in the Middle East has been a function of Israel and the U.S. not negotiating anymore and imposing a settlement on a state of Palestine.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 19, 2005 11:00 AM