Map of Israeli settlements in Palestine

Map of Israeli Settlements and Restrictions of Palestinian control in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, late 2002.

This page has a version of a map from the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) www.fmep.org , used with permission, showing the Israeli settlements and areas of Palestinian control in what should be the land of the Palestinian Nation, now the Occupied Territories. This has colours changed to make it more visible on CRT and LCD computer monitors. I have also replaced some of the text to make it more readable.

October 2008: I haven't updated this page in years, but the basic problem remains: the Israeli government (backed by a majority of the Israeli people, since it is a democracy) continues to slice and dice Palestinian territory, build the invasive security wall, and establish still more Jewish settlements in Palestinian land.

A far better source of information on this is gush-shalom.org - Israelis who strongly oppose the occupation. .

Also:

An article by Ed O'Loughlin (The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald 28/27 June 2003) on settlements in the occupied territories, the beliefs of some of the settlers and the violence against Palestinians by some of the settlers (which is terrorism plain and simple, but not usually refered to as such): eo-2003-06-28/ .

This week Mr Wiseman's settlement was being guarded by a group
of Israeli soldiers. Lounging off duty in an abandoned settler caravan,
the soldiers talked about hair-raising patrols through hostile Arab
villages, with bullets pinging off their armoured jeeps. They did not
care much for their mission.

"Some day there has to be a peace deal and all these settlements are
going to have to come down," one said. "Frankly, what we are doing
here is useless. We shouldn't be here, and neither should they."
A map which accompanies this article in the Sydney Morning Herald site:

This is a version of the map which appears in March 2002 - Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories: A Guide. which is available at http://www.fmep.org/reports/ . Please contact FMEP if you wish to use this image. It is copyright Jan de Jong. It is not my map - I only changed the colours.

Robin Whittle rw@firstpr.com.au 12 February 2003

Map of Israeli settlements in Palestine - occupied territories

Map of Israeli settlements in Palestine - occupied territories

The opinions below are my own. They are free and come with a money-back guarantee. For a vastly more informed body of maps, reports and opinions on this subject, please refer to: the Foundation for Middle East Peace http://www.fmep.org

In all the years this conflict has been going on, until September 2002, I had never seen a map of the settlements, which have grown with Israeli government backing in recent years to be the most undeniable and formidable indicator that successive Israeli governments, seemingly of any party, despite what I understand is the majority view of the Israeli population, has no intention whatsoever of giving Palestinians full access to even the fraction of their land which remains after the establishment of Israel.

I first saw a version of this map in The Age in the September 2002.

Why isn't this map shown on every newspaper and television report concerning the plight of the Palestinians and the violence on both sides?

It says so much. One can see at a glance that the Israeli government is intent on corralling Palestinians into dozens of generally tiny, separate, islands within the land which is properly theirs, according to long-standing UN plans and resolutions, utterly denying them a convenient, efficient, cohesive life in any social, political and economic sense.

I do not support the violence on either side of this conflict. But think I can understand some of the desperation on the Palestinian side - that despite full knowledge of the entire world, the United Nations and all other concerned peoples and countries have been unwilling (because collectively, at least with US backing, the UN surely has the ability) to protect them against the efforts of the countries of Israel, and its backer the United States of America, in their quest for a decent life and a country of their own.

This would be bad enough if the oppressive countries were run by tyrants. Then it would be possible to blame an individual or a clique, and to think that the errant regime would pass, and that the actions of the governments were at odds with the wishes of the people. But Israel and the USA are fully functioning democracies. In the USA at least, the system makes it awkward to register to vote and awkward to vote (elections are on week-days and I understand the booths harder to access than in Australia), but these are democracies, and the governments only do what they do because more than 50% of the voting population allows it.

The USA, whilst ostensibly restraining Israel, provides the financial, technological and political support which Israel needs for its current oppression of the Palestinians.

Israel and the USA are democracies.

They have not been restrained from killing and oppressing the Palestinian people by anyone - but they should be, by the highest moral authority in the political field: the United Nations.

Maybe I have some vague, diluted idea of the frustrations Palestinians feel which make it so easy to find young people willing to die in their murderous suicide bombings.

Maybe I have some vague notion of how Israelis feel to be subject to random killings in their daily lives.

While I think that the UN certainly should work with military force, where possible, to depose vicious dictators such as Saddam Hussein, or the similarly murderous, utterly corrupt, Stalinist regime of North Korea and likewise Burma, I think it is useless or worse to proceed on any of these fronts while nothing is done to stop the democracy of Israel from its extraordinary campaign of killing, starvation and oppression of the Palestinian people. This map shows that successive Israeli governments have no interest in giving Palestinians even a fraction of their land, or land in any cohesive arrangement - which must be one of the foundations of giving them the life they need to be secure and to live properly, in peace.

I know that some Palestinians and other people want to destroy Israel, and that some Israelis consider Palestinians to be little more than vermin. The actions of a subset of either population does not justify the destruction of either people, or the corralling and deliberate destruction of hope which Israeli government actions and settlement building are clearly intended to achieve. It seems that the small fraction of Palestinians who are intent on destroying Israel deliberately terrorise the Israeli population in order to provoke greater electoral support for the most war-like politicians. Conservative voting Israelis should get wise to this and vote for a government which is committed to dismantling all the settlements and treating the Palestinians with the respect and care they need in order to be happy, secure, good neighbours. Anything less is guaranteed to prolong the war against Israel, and provide a fertile ground all the world over for vicious arseholes to recruit people for terrorism.

Maybe Israel has to reduce its goals, or even reduce its population. So-be-it. I don't see any reason to think that just one of two peoples should be guaranteed everything they desire in this small disputed land. Israel and the future Palestine state need to share land, water and other resources equitably in order for both peoples to live in peace and security. Already, Israel has the central and largest part of what was formerly Palestine.

This is a grave injustice - perpetrated by two wealthy democracies on a people who have been deprived of work, livelihoods, land, water, agricultural resouces, their own state, security and pretty much everything they need to live happily, including their hopes for the future. Meanwhile, Australia sucks up to the US, and the UN fails to protect the Palestinians, whilst being railroaded by the USA into attacking another Islamic country - Iraq - under the guise of destroying weapons of mass destruction and deposing a mass-murdering dictator. But oil and strategic influence is what drives the US, along with wanting to kick ass in the absence of being able to find Osama bin Laden. It would be so much better if the Israelis were forced, by the UN and the USA, into treating the Palestinians properly and, with the efforts of many other countries, fully supporting the emancipation and establishment of all they need to life in safey, freedoma and prosperity. Then by all means, save the people of other nations from their tyrants, such as Saddam Hussein.

A pox on religion, I say. Its not the only problem, but it is at the core of most of this intolerance, selfishness and violence.

I wish people would think for themselves.

Likewise, a pox on racism and American mass-media self-feeding ignorance and unworldliness.

- Robin

Back to the First Principles site for many happier things.

Update history:

2003 February 12: Page with maps and my comments created.
2003 June 28: Added story by Ed O'Louglin and the map from the Sydney Morning Herald.