....But neither actually addressed the central issue that Netanyahu raised: why it is legitimate for the Palestinians to ask for a Jew-free state?

When pressed, defenders of the Palestinian position characterize the demand as no settlers rather than the uglier-sounding no Jews. The claim is hard to take at face value, as the Palestinians have never objected to Israeli Arabs settling across the Green Line, as they have in significant numbers. But, granting its sincerity, what does international law say about the demand to remove settlers as part of a solution to a territorial conflict? To answer this question, as part of a larger research study on settlements, I examined the fate of settlers in every occupation since the adoption of the Geneva Conventions—eight major situations in total. The results highlight how extraordinary the Palestinian demand is.

There is simply no support in international practice for the expulsion of settlers from occupied territories. In the many situations involving settlers around the world, the international community has never supported expulsion, and consistently backed plans allowing the settlers to remain in a new state.

Settlement activity is the rule rather than the exception in situations of belligerent occupation around the world. In places like Western Sahara and northern Cyprus, the settlers now make up a majority of the population. In most other places, they account for a much higher percentage of the territory’s population than Jews would in a potential Palestinian state. In all these cases, the arrival of the settlers was accompanied with the familiar claims of seizure of land and property, and serious human rights abuses. Unlike the Israeli situation, it was also accompanied with a large-scale expulsion of the prior inhabitants from the territory.