They aren’t “settlements” any more or less than the town you live in is a “settlement.” They are just communities and homes for Israel’s families and citizens.
Israelis are getting damned tired of living in a “war zone,” as you put it. Quite probably, it seems to me anyway, or at least possibly one of these days (maybe after the terrorists fire another 2000 missile- bombs into Israeli homes, schools, hospitals, and pizza parlors,... or perhaps sooner than that?), Israel will eventually lose patience and get rid of the problem (like any other country would have done long ago, frankly).
Then, Israelis won’t have to live in a “war zone” any longer (but maybe France will really recall its ambassador? Mon dieu! Horrors!).
Until then, as long as the Israeli government continues to exercise such (amazing) restraint for the “causes” of “saving Arab civilian lives in areas occupied by the enemy” and “trying to get along with the neighbors,” Israelis are stuck living either in homes in their “war zone” or they live out on the street or in holes in the ground or in caves in their “war zone.” They choose to live in homes.
Over in Britain, there’s a firm belief that the two state solution would’ve brought peace to Palestine and Israel years ago and so every new settlement in “occupied” land is viewed as Israel shooting itself in the foot in the long run.
Over here, if you ask the Islamists what they want to happen (it’s not difficult), they are quite candid: the sooner Israel starts flattening Palestine the better. They don’t care about the Palestinians any more than they care about the Jews.
There’s no bigger cheer goes up than when some Palestinian kid throws a rock at the IDF and gets a bullet in his face as a “proportionate” response. Because that’s the kind of propaganda they’re after.
They love it even more when the news here shows a Palestinian school flattened... “because those evil little kindergarteners didn’t do enough to stop Hamas gunmen putting a rocket launcher on the roof.”
And what you need to understand is that as soon as anything like that can hit the news over here, the anti-Zionist media deliberately juxtaposes the reporting of that specific kind of event with a “Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, in a really posh part of Israel, here’s some moaning minny complaining about how they got a cracked windscreen when a Palestinian threw a rock at their brand new Range Rover (yes that IS how it’s reported).
The Islamists WANT Israel to be seen as the bad guy. They WANT Israel to ignore international law. So of course they stick rockets on school rooftops. Nothing works better for them than flattening some SUV on the Israeli side and then seeing a school flattened in retaliation. Every Israeli retaliation is a media own goal.
I don’t think the ramifications of this has computed across the Atlantic yet (and that amazes me - I always thought Americans were far more media-savvy than us Brits). Did you guys not see how the regimes of Egypt and Libya were toppled pretty much by the power of social media? THAT’S WHERE THE REAL FRONT IS ON THIS WAR!
Some of us friends of Israel now think Israel would be far better off knowing how the game’s being played, and changing their plays.
Israel would be far better off letting the Palestinians have their own state and THEN using the international laws of self-defence against an aggressive state, to defend blowing Palestine off the map. Give the Palestinians their state and stand up in the UN and cite every custom, law and precedent going to say “Here’s what you wanted. But if one more shell lands on our side of the border that’s it, we’re going to flatten you.”
And if Hamas call their bluff there’s not one country in the UN will take their side, just as nobody stood up for Saddam when he attacked Kuwait.
But the only way that’ll work is if Palestine fires first. It HAS to be seen to fire the first shot. He who fires first, loses the PR war.
And you cannot get round that anymore.