Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

"By the end of 2005, not one Jew will remain in the Gaza Strip," declared Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon three days before the June 6 cabinet endorsement of his plan to evacuate all 7,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip and less than 1,000 from four settlements in the northern West Bank.

In the early decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States supported the rule of law as a tool for resolution of the conflict. We championed many landmark United Nations resolutions defining the issues and obligations of the parties. Until the early 1980's we supported the view that the Fourth Geneva Convention outlawed Israeli settlements. In recent decades, however, we have held that settlements--and more recently the separation barrier--are "political" issues that can only be resolved through negotiations.

On July 9, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's construction of the separation barrier now snaking its way through the West Bank and around East Jerusalem is illegal and that those portions located in the occupied territories must be dismantled, with compensation paid to Palestinian landowners whose interests have been damaged by its construction. The Court's decision emphatically challenges the Israeli rationale for locating most of the barrier in the West Bank instead of in its own territory.

Both President George Bush and challenger John Kerry have made their peace with Israel's separation barrier along the route approved by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Not so Israel's High Court, which declared more effective, if qualified, opposition, in a June 30 decision calling for changes in the trajectory of Israel's West Bank separation barrier along a 30 km segment northwest of Jerusalem.

The settler population in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip grew faster (5.3 percent) than any region in Israel (1.8 percent) during 2003 to 231,800.

In recent discussions, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has acknowledged not doing enough to make good on commitments to the Bush administration to dismantle scores of settlement "outposts" established during his tenure.