The Reform movement – currently the largest denomination in Jewish life (unless you count “unaffiliated”) – today said that the next Israeli government must stop expansion of West Bank settlements. (The movement also called for an end to Hamas’s Gaza rocket fire, the release of Israeli captive Gilad Shalit and favored the $900 million in U.S. aid to rebuild the West Bank and Gaza.)

Rabbi David Saperstein of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center http://rac.org/index.cfm?”> CLICK HERE said in a statement, ““Israel must demonstrate its stated commitment to that goal by ending the expansion of settlements in accordance with prior commitments made to the United States government.”

This is nothing new for the Reform movement, having said something similar in 2004. However, it is likely to gain a lot of visibility now because the peace process has its highest level actors involved in the past eight years. Indeed, one can expect SOMETHING to happen with Hillary Clinton, George Mitchell and Dennis Ross involved.

That aside, this is an important issue that touches on several matters:

• the right of American Jews to criticize Israel and how they go about it;
• the reality that the last two Israeli prime ministers have agreed to take down settlements it defines as illegal, but have not done so;
• and the lack of action by the United States on this issue, despite the last two Secretary of States saying that settlements are a problem (not the problem).

As I’ve written in the past, Israel needs to take down those illegal settlements and the United States need to push it do so. There is heavy domestic political cost for any Israeli government, but much to gain as well.

However, I do not agree that current settlements cannot be expanded. It’s how they go about it that counts. They should be expanded for “natural growth,” but that is a term that has been inflated by Israeli governments. “Natural growth” does not call for adding hundreds of new homes to a settlement that might only have hundreds of homes. Nor does it call for the unilateral appropriation of large swaths of land used by Palestinian farmers.

The legal issues involved are complex – but not as deep as the emotional ones.

Bottom line: Israel needs to disband illegal settlements to strengthen the major settlement blocks it already has, such as in Gush Emunim and around Ariel. Those areas will stay Israeli in any future treaty (we can no longer call the agreements a “peace deal,” “peace” being something mythical, indefinable concept.)