Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and called a tenuous halt to the most bloody struggle since Israel’s military re occupation of the entire West Bank in 2002. The main focus of destruction is the Gaza Strip, where the promise of Israel’s evacuation of settlements in 2005 degenerated into the latest round of warfare.

As this Report goes to press, expectations are growing that the Iraq Study Group, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, will recommend restarting Israeli Palestinian negotiations and new contacts with Iran and Syria to help rescue the U.S. from the Iraq quagmire and repair other broken policies in the Middle East.