Why have Israeli leaders been so unwilling or so unable to deal with the settlements issue?
It has to do with the fact that before 1948, before Israeli independence, settlement was a crucial means toward achieving the Zionist project, a means so central that it was transformed into a value. Initially, settlement served the purpose of returning Jews not only to their homeland but to the physical life of agriculture, a central goal of the Labor Zionist movement. Settlement extended the territorial reach of Zionists within Mandatory Palestinian, and therefore improved the Jews’ position leading up to Partition. Settlements served as the base of the nascent then-underground Jewish army. For all these reasons, settlement became a Zionist value. After 1948, it became a value that had outlived its usefulness. In 1967, when Israel conquered the Golan and the West Bank and Gaza and Sinai, this now-anachronistic value was still there. When people acted according to that value, it was very difficult for leaders to oppose it because it had a kind of secular sanctity in Israeli society. I
