My new article is up at The American Prospect:
The decision broke with a policy that Israel has held for 20 years: no new settlements will be established. Right-wing Israeli governments, in particular, have broadcast that policy as part of their international PR efforts. Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his most senior ministers granted official approval last week to three West Bank settlements. No big deal, say government spokesmen.
“This is only a technical matter,” Netanyahu’s staffers told U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, the Daily Ma’ariv reported on Sunday. There’s actually a measure of truth in that claim—but that dollop of truth is an indictment of 20 years of settlement policy.
The settlements of Rehelim, Brukhin, and Sansanah already exist. They are just three of the settlements erected over the last two decades with the government’s aid and abetment. The ministerial decision merely relabels a rogue operation as an official action. If hypocrisy is tribute that vice pays to virtue, this is the moment when vice stops coughing up the tribute. Or, in diplomatic terms, it is the moment when the client state decides that it no longer needs to pay any attention to the preferences of its patron in Washington. …
Read the rest here.