Only a month after peace talks resumed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, they face their first crisis. Palestinians are demanding that Israel extend the self-imposed freeze on the construction on settlements in the West Bank; failure to do so would mean Palestinian withdrawal from the talks.
For the Israelis who seek borders that look like the Biblical version of their country, that is fine. For the rest of Israel, Palestinians and millions more people throughout the Middle East, such a move would be a disaster.
It is estimated that about 500,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements scattered across territory that Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. About five times as many Palestinians — some 2.5 million people — live on the same land. The settlements are an attempt to cope with an expanding Jewish population in Israel as well as fulfill the dream of re-creating a Jewish state whose size and borders look like that of Biblical Israel.