WASHINGTON - June 23 - US President Barack Obama emphasized in his Cairo speech the importance of getting rid of Israeli settlements as an essential building block to a two-state solution. However, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjanmin Netanyahu warms up to the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state, and has stated that he "has no plans to start building new" settlements, Netanyahu has said "natural growth" within the settlements is an inevitability of keeping the existing sites.

Daniel Kurtzer wrote in the Ha'aretz that the term 'natural growth' has been historically recognized as a "concept[...]being abused as a justification for expanding settlements. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that every administration since 1967 has articulated - that settlements jeopardize the possibility of achieving peace and thus settlement activity should stop."

Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah wrote in The Huffington Post that the "West Bank settler population has increased...to almost 500,000 including East Jerusalem. The vast majority of that was under the rubric of natural growth, and there are vast expanses of land annexed to settlement municipalities awaiting construction."

Even if Netanyahu's right-wing coalition agrees to a total moratorium on settlement building, more than half of the occupied West Bank is already annexed. "Netanyahu's 'vision' offered absolutely no advance on the 1976 Allon Plan for annexation of most of the occupied West Bank, or [former Prime Minister] Menachem Begin's Camp David 'autonomy' proposals. The goal remains the same: to control maximum land with minimum Palestinians." Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah wrote in The Electronic Intifada.

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