“It’s Not the Promised Land; It’s Our Land”

These are the words of Izdat Said Qadoos, a Palestinian who lives near Har Bracha, an illegal settlement in the West Bank financed by a Tennessee non-profit institution. These names appear in a long New York Times article published yesterday, the same day that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama argued over how to restart negotiations so that the two countries located between Jordan and the Mediterranean can finally coexist with peace and security. The great New York daily, owned by a Jewish family and unmistakably committed to Israel, tells us of the greatest irony in the whole story with the following sentence: “As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.”

This is not a matter of small, meaningless sums of money. Forty groups, nearly all of them far-right evangelical Christian groups with a fervent belief in interpreting the Bible literally, have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible funds, not only for construction in the occupied territories, but also to buy paramilitary equipment to be used in self-defense. And worst of all is that this type of tax exemption is prohibited in Israel itself, specifically because these charitable donations are given to settlements that are illegal not only under international law (they all are), but even under Israeli law. The newspaper reports expressions of frustration on the part of Israeli police at the foreign aid that the most defiant illegal colonies receive.

According to the Times, the U.S. president, who turned the freezing of settlement construction into a precondition for negotiations, has at his disposal — at least in theory — the means to cut off the aid that fundamentalist Christian groups send to extremist Jewish squatters. However, this is not the matter that Netanyahu and Obama took up in their conversation yesterday, making up for their missed appointment last month, when the violent assault on the Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza caused the Israeli prime minister to cancel his trip to Washington. The Middle East puzzle has many pieces, but in the end, they will only come together — if they ever do — through a comprehensive peace plan with detailed borders and an exchange of territory. This is what Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the parliamentary committee on defense and foreign affairs. “Israel must pull that bull by the horns and present a clear initiative that discusses drawing a border in Israel in a way that settlement blocs along the border will remain in our hands and have a solid Jewish majority for generations, but in a way that will enable the establishment of an independent and demilitarized Palestinian state.” Before the meeting, Minister Barak met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The pieces are on the board again, as they were before Vice President Joe Biden was insulted in Jerusalem and Obama left to dine with his family instead of meeting with Netanyahu in the White House around four months ago — a short eternity. Political timeframes are static but slippery in the Near East, the home of ancient religions; things always return to their starting point, but in the meantime there is frenetic activity on a large scale, which is fodder for diplomats and journalists. Will the Israelis and Palestinians ever give us some good news?