Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy

Want to join the debate? Check out the Intelligence Squared website to hear about future live events and podcasts: __________________________ “Israel is Destroying Itself With its Settlement Policy: If Settlement Expansion Continues Israel Will Have No Future“ Filmed at the Royal Geographical Society on 15th January 2013. Patriacide. Nationcide. Whatever you want to call it, that is what Israel is doing with its settlement policy: it is killing itself. If ever greater numbers of Jewish settlers are installed on land regarded by Palestinians as the basis for a state of their own, the possibility of a two-state solution grows ever more remote. Yet the single state alternative, involving annexation of the West Bank, would result in a country where Arabs vastly outnumber Jews and then you won’t have a one-state or a two-state solution: you’ll have a no-state solution. For those who love Israel and wish to preserve a democratic Jewish homeland, as much as for those who hate it, the settlements must stop. That’s what many left-wing Israelis and their friends say. But defenders of the settlements see things very differently. The two-state solution has long been a dead letter in their view: why stop building settlements in the name of a peace plan that is frankly unattainable? Whatever the eventual solution -- it could even be a West Bank jointly governed by Jordan and Israel -- there is no good reason why both Israelis and Palestinians shouldn’t both expand their settlements in the interim before an eventual peace deal.