Despite “Natural Growth” Claims, Migrants Continue to Drive Settlement Growth

Amy Teibel has an excellent piece out for the AP exposing the lie behind “natural growth” of settlements:

Israelis moving to the West Bank accounted for more than a third of settler population growth in recent years, undercutting Israel’s argument that it is continuing settlement construction only to accommodate growing families already living there.

The so-called “natural growth” rationale for building on land the Palestinians claim for a future state has vaulted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into an unusually vocal and public clash with the Obama administration, which has come out strong against continued settlement expansion.

On the merits, the case for a “natural growth” exemption is extremely weak anyway, but it does need to be understood that this isn’t a good faith debate about natural growth. The idea is to open up a reasonable-sounding loophole in order to allow for unabated settlement growth. Peace Now has a useful list of the top four loopholes settlers seek to exploit and why none of them should be allowed.