Gautam Mukunda wrote: > But isn't that the point of building settlements? To try to make it > impossible for any future Israeli government to avoid annexing large > chunks of the West Bank? > > Brad DeLong > > Me: > Do you have evidence for that? I mean, do you have actual declarations by > Sharon or something equivalent that this is the case, or are you just > attributing malign motives to him? Sharon is committed to the settlements > because they're popular in Israel. They're popular in Israel because Israel > is a itty-bitty little country that is 8 miles across at the waist, and the > settlements can give them more space to live. The far right in Israel does > want to annex the West Bank, yes, but Sharon is not a member of the Israeli > far right.
Israel has another problem except for it's size. It's current immigration laws. In the long run there will simply not be enough room to place all the Jews (and their offspring) 'returning' to the promised land. The current economic crisis in Argentina f.i. has led to a large influx of Argentinian Jewish immigrants. So in the end Israel probably really needs the settlements. In this context I can imagine that the possibility of annexation is a real threat to Palestinians living there, especially seeing a steady increase in the number of settlements. Sonja
