A stout wind was blowing across the high ground in the West Bank as we watched a group of teenagers attempt to give birth to another Israeli settlement.  They had a few pieces of particle board, studs, a finishing hammer and nails that didn’t look long enough to hold a shack together in this wind.  These are the kids often referred to as the ‘hilltop youth.’  Dedicated young Jews who call the West Bank Judea and Sumaria and believe that God promised the land to them and therefore they are obligated to claim every inch of it. This, despite the fact that the international community considers them part of the problem and their own government considers their actions illegal.

They got two sides of the shack propped up. Young settlers made a futile effort to hold them steady in the wind. Without a ladder, one of the settlers climbed on the shoulders of another and thumped haphazardly with the finishing hammer at nails trying to get the structure solid enough that it would stand on its own. Watching this, my crew and I wondered how long it would be until someone got hurt. It wasn’t long.  A big gust of wind toppled the shack on the settlers and one TV crew.  No one was hurt badly and the settlers went back to work. Realizing they could not build with hammers, nails and wood in this weather, they started stacking rocks to build a structure. That very basic act speaks volumes to the determination of the people involved in the settler movement.

The hilltoppers had coordinated an effort to scramble to the top of 11 mountains from the North to the South of the West Bank and start building settlements on the high ground.  The effort was timed to coincide with the diplomatic blitz the US is executing in Israel. US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell is here, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor James Jones and Presidential Advisor Dennis Ross are all in Israel or coming soon. They have two issues to address: The Iranian Nuclear threat and freezing the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Since all of the construction takes place in the West Bank, it all takes place on land that the Palestinians want or need for a future state.  More construction, means more obstacles in front of the establishment of a Palestinian homeland and a peace deal.  Even Israel’s hard line Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not in favor of new land grabs and new settlements.  He and his government are arguing in favor of continued construction but only on land already designated as a legal settlement.  The hilltoppers don’t care about legal or illegal.  They believe they are doing the work of God and therefore they don’t answer to the Prime Minister and certainly not the US.  As far as a permanent solution or where the Palestinians will go once Jews have settled all the high ground, a dedicated settler will usually tell you that God will solve that problem.

So, the border police and soldiers showed up and ran the hilltoppers off the mountain.  As soon as the military jeeps disappeared down the road, the teenagers climbed back up the hills and started stacking rocks again.

On the next hilltop over, I could see Neve Erez. It’s an ‘illegal’ settlement outpost. It looks just like a trailer park.  There is a paved road in the center of it.  Power lines, from Israel’s national power grid run to the center of the outpost and provide comfortable living to those residents Israel considers illegal.  Neve Erez started as a pile of rocks just like the kids were making on the hill where I was standing.  Off in the distance I could see Maale Michmash. This is a settlement considered ‘legal’ by Israel. It looks like a large American subdivision or a little town. It also started as bunch of rocks and shacks, piled up by young people determined to put as many Jews as possible on land Palestinians want for a state.  There are now more than 300,000 of them living in the West Bank with numbers increasing.  To understand how large an obstacle that is to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the most widely accepted solution to the conflict, you need to realize that many settlements legal and illegal will need to be evacuated before Palestine becomes realistic.  Then you need to remember how painful the evacuation of the Gaza strip settlements was for Israel.  There were only 7500 settlers there.