That what Bush did was right and proper and could not be improved on. Well, Obama seems about to show you something different.

Excellent piece on the Obama difference and on the recent history of the settlements.

a couple of excerpts:

"Most of the outposts were established during two periods: 1997 to 1999, whose climax came when foreign minister Ariel Sharon, upon his return from the Wye summit, called on the settlers to take over the hilltops; and later, between 2001 and 2003. Those were the terrible years of Palestinian shooting attacks on the roads of the West Bank and murderous infiltrations of settlements to perpetrate acts of slaughter.

During those years, the area of the settlements themselves increased. The symbiosis between the army and the settlers in the West Bank was at its peak then. Many of the terror attacks elicited "a suitable Zionist response" with the army's encouragement: the establishment of a new outpost or the pushing back of the fence around an existing settlement.

The settlers' moves were supported by surveillance cameras, protected roads, guards and often by declarations of a "special security zone." To prevent infiltration, the area of the settlements was expanded and Palestinians fromneighboring villages were prevented from approaching them. However, in the same breath, the moves were exploited for long-term goals, taking over and building on lands that were in large part private.

Taking over the private property of someone who belongs to the neighboring people is a common phenomenon in the West Bank, even in recent years. We aren't talking here about things that happened back in 1948. It is possible, of course, to describe these moves as a necessary part of the life-and-death struggle between the two peoples, in the name of which nearly all means are justified.

One of the most obvious things learned from every visit is the extent to which things are done in a planned way, to this day. It is hard to miss the destroyed terraces in the settlement of Adam or the sight of the sewage flowing from Psagot, not far from the Binyamin regional council building, straight into the wadi that runs to the adjacent Palestinian town of El Bireh. But in those very same settlements live upstanding citizens, who would not cheat the grocer of 10 agorot and who would go out in the middle of the night to help a neighbor stuck on a dark road. In the outposts live scores of officers in the career army and the reserves, who serve in elite units and win citations for their courage. At the same time, according to the official state data, many of them have built their dream homes, a modest mobile home or a more luxurious villa, on land that has been stolen from someone else by force."

***

During the 16 years since the Oslo process began, the number of Israelis living east of the Green Line (pre-Six-Day War border) increased from 110,000 to about 300,000 (not including East Jerusalem). The number of building starts in the West Bank in 2008 was 40 percent greater than during the previous year. And this, it must be remembered, happened under prime minister Ehud Olmert, who sold Israelis a fabricated reality in which at any given moment, he was within a hair's breadth from a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians - an agreement in whose wake there would no longer be any need in the struggle for every hilltop."