A History of Settlements

This message comes from Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. The Israeli government just approved a new settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut it in half. The plan is illegal under international law and has been widely condemned. To get a sense of why settlements continue to be such a big issue for Palestinians and Israelis, we wanted to bring you this episode about their history as part of our series, The Cycle. There's a highway that runs from Tel Aviv to the northern suburbs, I guess, of Jerusalem. It's called Highway 443. Much of it runs through the West Bank. And along some parts of it are walls with painted murals on them. Concrete and brick walls, 20 feet high barriers, and fencing with razor wire on top that separate the highway from the occupied Palestinian territory surrounding it. It probably has some security justification. The highway makes the trip between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem faster for Israeli citizens, including settlers who live in enclaves in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who are given different colored license plates, are not able to drive on most of the highway. To access one part of it, they have to cross a military checkpoint and have a special permit. Most do not. So there is a kind of out of sight, out of mind mentality that we can superimpose this Israeli reality on this territory with minimal contact or even thinking about Palestinians. For Palestinians, it's the exact opposite. In order to have that kind of seamless contiguity, you have to disrupt Palestinian society. The International Court of Justice says Israel's presence in Palestinian occupied territories is illegal and should end. I think now the international consensus among international human rights groups is that this is a reality of apartheid. This is Khaled Al Kindi. He's a former senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, where he directed the program on Palestine and Palestinian Israeli affairs. Even though we're talking about 700,000 or so settlers compared to 3,100,000 Palestinians, they are the marginal community in the West Bank because everything has been set up to serve the settler minority. Since the Hamas led attack on 10/07/2023 and Israel's invasion of Gaza, there's also been escalating violence in the occupied West Bank, the bigger of the two Palestinian territories Israel occupies. It's sandwiched between Israel and Jordan and includes East Jerusalem. A Palestinian man was shot dead after a group of armed settlers stormed the village of Geit, setting homes aflame. At the center of the violence is the issue of settlements. You might be picturing a few tents on a dusty plain, and there are some like that. But many of the settlements resemble an American …