At the 2009 AIPAC meeting Vice President Joe Biden suggested Israel should stop building settlements, remove settlement outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement. This is a familiar refrain.
September 16, 1998 Boston Globe
If Israel wants peace, it will need to stop settlements, end land seizures, and offer the Palestinians a larger percent of the occupied territory...
February 6, 1999 Seattle Post Intelligencer
Israel stood alone at the UN General Assembly yesterday, defiantly defending its settlement policies...
April 30, 2000 Jerusalem Post
Peace Now called on Prime Minister Ehud Barak to clamp down on settlement construction and implement the building freeze he imposed in Judea...
May 23, 2001 Christian Science Monitor
"The pressure to stop [or] pause in settlement expansion must come from within the Israeli body politic."
April 29, 2002 Chicago Tribune
Israel is under international pressure, including from the United States, to stop settlement growth
June 4, 2003 The Times UK "Stop settlements now, Bush tells Israel"
“Israel has got responsibilities,” Mr Bush said on the eve of today’s historic Middle East peace summit. “Israel must deal with the settlements.
May 26, 2005 USA Today
Bush said Israel should "stop settlement expansion" and help "improve the daily lives of Palestinians" by easing checkpoints.
Four years and two Israeli wars later, Vice President Joe Biden's charge echoes hollow. It's hard to believe Israel wants peace.
Update 5-20-11: President Obama offered theater for the masses with his call for Israel to give back settlements. He also bound U.S. security to the Middle East, a place where America has a long history of tampering with foreign governments.
Update 6-25-19: President Trump's son-in'law Jared Kushner offered an economic plan for Israel/Palestine which proposes a transportation corridor. Prior peace plans failed due to Israeli settlement expansion.
Update 12-13-21: Former President Trump said Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu never wanted peace. Trump gave Netanyahu a peace plan most favorable to Israel.
Update 10-14-22: Israel continues building settlements and economic peace remains elusive.
Update 3-1-23: A former U.S. Ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush said:
"the retroactive authorisation of the nine so-called outposts earlier this month, alongside plans to build thousands of new homes in larger West Bank settlements, is a further blow to a deal between Israel and the Palestinians."
Update 11-8-23: Information Clearinghouse shared a piece from 2010 on Bibi Netanyahu. It shares his perspective on settlements. Israel continues to obliterate Gaza. The Israel-Hamas war is a month old after Hamas' horrific terrorist attack on Israeli settlements kill thousands and took over 240 hostages.
Update 7-5-24: The AP reported:
Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades. Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley
Update 12-15-24: A story on the fall of Syria shed light on the failure of "stop building settlements" exhortations.
Israel’s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office. The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel (and the US) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce so-called “peace for peace” by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted Israel’s land claims.
