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Canadian Jewish News: "Settlement freeze essential for peace: Peace Now leader"

By DAVID LAZARUS, Staff Reporter

MONTREAL -- "Every brick" added to existing or new settlements in the "occupied territories" is a "message to Palestinians that Israel is not serious about peace," says the head of Peace Now's Settlement Watch.
At the same time, Hagit Ofran voiced optimism that U.S President Barack Obama's administration will successfully exert much-needed pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to put a true freeze on West Bank settlements, which now have a total population of 300,000.

"In 1993, there were 116,000" people living in those communities, Ofran, Settlement Watch's director of two years, said last week at an informal office lunch meeting organized by Canadian Friends of Peace Now.

Ofran, the granddaughter of the famed late Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, visited Montreal on the way back to Israel from Washington, D.C., where she attended the inaugural J Street conference.

Ofran said that Israel officially put a freeze on settlements in 2003, but a freeze hasn't happened "on the ground."

While Israeli government officials maintain that the freeze allows only for the "natural growth" or "vertical" expansion of settlements, hundreds of people moving en masse to a settlement at one time isn't "natural" growth, Ofran maintained.

"Obama needs the Arab world to change the dynamics," Ofran said. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, she said, will have no credibility with his people if a freeze does not truly take hold, which she argued is essential for peace talks to move forward.

"All the excuses are gone," Ofran said. Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "know all the tricks," and won't be daunted, she said.

The fear by settlers that a real freeze will be enforced soon is also the reason why work to finish settlement expansions that have already started is proceeding at a record clip, Ofran said, because such construction isn't covered by the freeze.

Writing recently on the Huffington Post website, Ofran described the current situation as a "passive freeze": there's a freeze on approving plans for new construction, but no freeze on construction for plans that have already been approved.

"The settlers are taking advantage of their government's passivity," Ofran wrote.

In Montreal, she said: "Whatever is being built now is because the government is allowing illegal construction or turning a blind eye to it."

Nevertheless, the chances for peace seem to have changed for the better, Ofran believes.

The era is over, she added, in which former U.S. president George Bush basically allowed Israel to do whatever it wanted, and the peace camp in Israel became marginalized and ignored by journalists.

"For eight years, the peace camp was marginalized, Ofran said.

While the opposition Kadima party under leader Tzipi Livni also leans to the right, Ofran said, at least Livni is in favour of a two-state solution.

"The debate has at least come back," Ofran said.

"I believe the potential is there. It will not be easy, but we believe there may be, even with the current government, to get to a final status agreement."

While in Montreal Ofran also spoke to the public at an event at the Unitarian Church.

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18007&Itemid=86