In the Quest for lasting Middle East Peace how high on the Agenda should Settlements be? | Tom Friedmann

In the Quest for lasting Middle East Peace how high on the Agenda should Settlements be? | Tom Friedmann: "When it comes to Israel any assertion, if repeated often enough in the media, becomes fact soon enough and an unquestionable truth not long after that. Ask just about anyone and they will confidently tell you that Israeli settlements are the primary obstacle to peace. The alleged illegality of these small isolated Jewish communities dotted across the biblical regions of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is now a sanctified tenet of the doctrine of the prevailing orthodoxy on this subject. That a relatively minor matter of suburban planning around Jerusalem has apparently become the issue upon which world peace now stands or falls is as incredible as it is implausible."