An Interesting Book Review Dealing with the Israeli Palestinian Situation

"Olmert & Israel: The Change" by Amos Elon, The New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 2 · February 14, 2008. This is a review of:

Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007
by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden
Nation Books, 531 pp., $29.95

Israeli Society at an Impasse
by Sylvain Cypel Walled:
Other Press, 574 pp., $17.95 (paper)

This review expresses, as I read it, some hope that Olmert and Abbas may do better than their predecessors in bringing peace to their region. It also suggests the difficulties experienced by the Palestinians, especially in the Gaza strip. Excerpt from the review:

Before the Annapolis conference, Olmert pledged to freeze new settlement construction. But this promise has been rendered meaningless since, as Haaretz has reported, the Israeli government continues to expand a dozen existing settlements in the West Bank. Another settlement project, "the biggest ever since 1967," at Atarot, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, was announced by the Israeli housing ministry in December. New construction is also taking place at Har Choma, also known as Jebel Abu Neim, a new suburb of greater Jerusalem designed for 15,000 housing units that is located ten minutes from the city but is just outside the 1967 demarcation line; an additional three hundred units are now being added. When I visited the sales office in December, I was told that five-room penthouses will be available for a third of what they cost half a mile down the road in Jerusalem proper.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Zertal and Eldar describe how the new Jewish neighborhoods are "invading the heart of Hebron," and encircling the main Palestinian towns of Nablus and Ramallah, the present seat of the Palestinian government, creating a human and urban mix so volatile that any attempt to draw a border through it in order to separate the two peoples will entail bitter struggles and agony.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the settlers' community grew by 5.45 percent during the first half of 2007.