By David K. Shipler 

First published by Moment Magazine 

           This isan awkward time to attach conditions to the generous military aid that theUnited States provides to Israel. But it should be considered, not only to curbcivilian casualties in Gaza, as some Democratic senators wish, but also to curbJewish settlements in the West Bank, which have long poisoned prospects for Israeli-Palestinianreconciliation.

           With the exception of the Trump WhiteHouse, which supported settlements, Republican and Democratic administrationshave declared Israel’s settlement policy an obstacle to peace. Yet the U.S. hasnever used the leverage of the purse to restrain the practice. Since the Osloaccords of 1993, the numberof Israeli residents on the West Bank has soared from 110,000 to more than500,000, the number of settlements from 128 to about 300, now scatteredthroughout Palestinian areas.

American officials have done littlemore than complain and wring their hands as Israelis have populated territory thatmight have formed a Palestinian state, constructing government-subsidizeddevelopments whose town houses, schools, synagogues, orchards, factories, andswimming pools have an aura of permanence that belies the term “settlements.” Theyare satellite cities and sweeping suburbs. They have created such a crazy-quiltof jurisdictions that piecing together territory for Palestinian sovereigntywould now require the departure of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews.

Moreover, a thuggish minority of Israelisettlers have tormented their Palestinian neighbors through home invasions and vandalism,destruction of olive groves, and even murder with impunity. They arereligio-nationalist zealots operating in a free-wheeling environment ofself-righteous extremism. This is not new, just more widespread andunrestrained. It has been going on for at least 40 years, recently escalatingto a level attracting international attention as settlers tryto terrify Palestinians into fleeing—with some success. At least 11 Arab communitieshave been emptied so far this year, according to the West Bank ProtectionConsortium, a monitoring group of non-governmental organizations funded by ten Europeancountries.

The problem may seem purelypolitical and humanitarian, but it has military consequences for Israel. Whathappens on the West Bank resonates in Gaza, where Hamas ruled and armed itselffor the gruesome slaughters and kidnappings of October 7. The Palestinian prisonerswhose release Hamas is obtaining in exchange for hostages are virtually all WestBank residents, arrested by Israeli forces there and often held without chargeor trial. By remote control, Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank seemto have contributed to radicalization in Gaza, at least to some degree.

Furthermore, the more settlers, themore targets of Palestinian violence, and the more military assets are neededin the West Bank to protect them. Army resources are drawn from elsewhere,including the border with Gaza, whose high-tech monitoring proved no match forthe thousands of Hamas fighters who pierced the security fence in some 30places and ran freely for hours killing Israelis before Israeli troops arrived.

So, if strings were tied to U.S.aid, they should lead to West Bank settlements as well as to Palestinians’suffering under Israel’s fierce military tactics. Reining in settlements might meetless political opposition at this moment of struggle.

Israel’s immense retaliatoryassault on the Gaza Strip has been unprecedented, but so was the sadistic,intimate terrorism perpetrated by Hamas. Virtually all Israelis have lost theirsense of sanctuary, even in the private depths of their own houses. Some250,000 Israelis have fled their towns and kibbutzim near the northern andsouthern borders. The callup of reservists is sapping Israel’s economy. Unsurprisingly,the hard-right government is bent on obliterating the military and politicalcapacity of Hamas, whose Islamist-nationalist covenant calls for obliteratingthe Jewish state.

Into this contest of mutualobliteration step 26 senators, led by Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, whoare implicitlytying strings to aid, including the $14.3 billion requested by PresidentBiden, by urging Israel to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza and crack down onvigilante settlers in the West Bank. “We continue to support additionalassistance to Israel in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attacks,” they saidin a statement, “but we are all in agreement that this assistance must beconsistent with our interests and values and used in a manner that adheres tointernational humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, and U.S. law. Weneed to find a better path toward helping Israel achieve legitimate militaryand security objectives. U.S. assistance has never come in the form of a blankcheck – regardless of the recipient.”

This looks like a shot across thebow.

But Israel is good at ducking. Periodically,as American administrations extracted promises to “freeze” settlements whilepeace talks were underway, Israel’s governments evaded the pledge by merelyexpanding existing settlements rather than building new ones. Authorities havewinked as small groups of Israelis have put house trailers illegally on WestBank hilltops as embryonic settlements, unauthorized at first and then oftenlegitimized.

That’s how it all began, in fact.Shortly after the West Bank city of Hebron was captured in the 1967 war,several nationalist Jews led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger checked into the ParkHotel in the city’s center, owned by Fahd Kawasmeh, the future pro-P.L.O.mayor.

Hebron, believed to be the burialplace of the prophet Abraham, had been home to a small community of devout Jewsfor centuries, a presence interrupted by Arab attacks in 1929 and 1936.  Now, in the flush of the 1967 victory, Levinger’sgroup was determined to reconnect those roots. The Labor government, facing inflammatorytensions with the Palestinian population, tried to get the Jews to leave, butthey refused until offered a site on the city’s outskirts.

There, a makeshift encampment grewinto a substantial suburb of apartment buildings with the biblical name KiryatArba. It is a centerpiece of the settlement movement’s dogmatic extremists.Later, Levinger, his American-born wife, and his followers also establishedresidence in central Hebron, which remains a hotbed of Arab-Jewish friction.

Gradually over the decades, theamalgam of religious and nationalist drives have moved closer and closer to thecenter of power. No settlers were in the Cabinet of Prime Minister MenachemBegin, despite his passionate pursuit of Jewish settlement in Judea andSamaria, the biblical names the Israeli right uses for the West Bank. Today,two hard-right settlers have key positions: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrichand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Smotrich urges discriminationagainst Arabs and permanent Israeli control of the West Bank. Ben-Gvir, anadmirer of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s call for stripping citizenship from Arabresidents of Israel, supports their segregation in public spaces.  

The extremes don’t represent thewhole, however. Most Israeli settlers are probably drawn more by subsidies andlifestyle than by religio-nationalist zealotry. Many might leave willingly ifgiven adequate financial incentives, which Washington could provide as a carrotif a peace plan were possible.

On the other hand, there’s thestick.  

  Israelhas been America’s largestaid recipient, at more than $260 billion total, plus additional funds forthe Iron Dome and other weapons systems. Technically, American aid isn’t useddirectly to build the settlements’ roads, wells, electrical grids, or housing.But money is fungible, and it’s worth asking what impact, over the years, theU.S. might have had by deducting, say, two dollars of economic or militaryassistance for every one dollar Israel spent on settlements. An unlikelyscenario, to be sure, given Washington’s intense pro-Israel politics.

Yet it’s due for consideration. Theaim would not be to cut aid, of course, but to influence Israeli behavior. Giventhe hard ideology of most Israeli governments in recent decades, pitted againstthe acute need for assistance, that would have been a tough choice in Jerusalem.Even today, with the country’s booming economy making it less dependent, itwould be a wakeup call. With the Gaza war and West Bank clashes raging, the settlementproblem has grown visible enough to invite the U.S. to squeeze Israel with sometough love.