The Settlements

Joe Klein dissects Krauthammer on the issue. As often, there is not even a scintilla of an understanding in Charles' column of how the other side might feel about an issue, and not a smidgen of an understanding of how the occupation has indeed wounded many. In this, Krauthammer writes overwhelmingly as a partisan in the dispute rather than as an honest broker. Which is fine for a columnist, of course, but not for a president of the United States. Money quote from Klein:

[Krauthammer] does not deal with the legality of these towns--he can't, of course, because they are illegal under the fourth Geneva Convention, which provides rules for occupying powers. He does not deal with the illegality, and inhumanity, of building roads for the exclusive use of settlers, roads which simply take Palestinian property, separating Palestinian farmers from their fields in some cases. He does not deal with the most basic question--the not-so-subtle effort by the settler movement and its far-right sponsors to create a Palestinian swiss cheese, rather than a governable state, on the West Bank, by riddling the area with Jewish settlements. He does not deal, although it is implicit in his xenophobic argument and in the rantings of the extremists over at the Commentary blog, with the reality that this Israeli behavior is anachronistic, a vestige of the post-1967 dream of a Greater Israel. He does not deal with the fact that the last two Likud/Kadima Prime Ministers, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, came to the realization that demographic reality requires a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza.