Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in London yesterday to talk about the threat posed by Iran with Gordon Brown. Settlement building – illegal under international law which prohibits the transfer of civilians to land under military occupation – was an afterthought, if the media are to be believed. On Radio 4’s the World at One a former Israeli ambassador talked down the problem of settlers in the West Bank, describing it as – and I’m paraphrasing now – a “minor issue.” I’m clearly no expert but I beg to differ.

Settlements are one of the top complaints of any Palestinian you care to speak to in the West Bank. They cling to every hilltop and choke the towns and villages…their well-watered lush green gardens stand out a mile in this arid land – sucking up precious water resources from the aquifers which often they have been positioned above. Cynics – and there are a lot of them in Palestine – suspect this is a deliberate preparation for the inevitable land grab that would accompany any kind of peace agreement.

I met and interacted with some fairly extreme settlers during my time in the Holy Land last year, and wrote about it here, here and here, so I won’t repeat myself today.

But I have written something else about it now over at the duckrabbit blog.

(settler graffiti, Hebron. JDL = Jewish Defense League, radical Zionist group)