Any peace deal will require the removal of settlements from a future Palestinian state.
The union was expected, with both parties favoring a further removal of settlements from the West Bank.
Etkes advocates the removal of settlements from the whole of Gaza and the West Bank, including settlements that straddle the Green Line.
He also said that the removal of settlements would provoke confrontations with settlers and their supporters but that the government was serious about the removals and would go ahead with them.
In a recommendation that supporters of Israel said strayed too far into politics, she also called for an end to new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and the removal of settlements in heavily populated Palestinian areas.
He and others said that Israel agreed to the road map and to move ahead with the removal of settlements and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 on the understanding that settlement growth could continue.
The revised plan allowed for the evacuation "in principle" of 21 settlements in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank but stipulated that Sharon would have to get renewed cabinet sanction for any actual removal of settlements and settlers.
The army's defiance of the law can be shocking, as when it waited nearly a year before heeding an order by the Supreme Court to take down a barrier that cut Palestinians off from their land in the West Bank.Moshe Hager Lau, who runs a mekhina, or pre-army academy, for religious cadets in the southern West Bank, strongly opposes the removal of settlements.
Whatever the government in power, the settlers' genius was in exploiting its weaknesses and co-opting sympathetic officials.The authors' anger falls mainly on the religious pioneers and their secular allies, especially Ariel Sharon, whose removal of settlements from Gaza in 2005 was, they argue, no more than a way to consolidate the hold on the West Bank.
If we are serious about two states (and some may not be), it is time to call not for a new freeze, but for a removal of settlements.
