Last Sunday the Israeli Cabinet took two important decisions: it pledged to dismantle 24 of the 105 "illegal outposts" established in the West Bank since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, and it announced that the West Bank wall would run eastwards of the settlement town of Maaleh Adumim, which lies 8 kilometres east of occupied East Jerusalem, and divide Bethlehem by putting the Rachel's Tomb area on the Israeli side of the barrier. Thus, Israel "gave" on the outposts with the left hand but "took" all of East Jerusalem with the right hand.

Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon also said that Israel would not begin to discuss negotiations on the West Bank until the Palestinian National Authority disbanded and disarmed resistance groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. This means, in reality, never, because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is in no position to carry out this Israeli demand.

Nevertheless, during his visit to the Palestinian territories and Israel, an inattentive UN Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke of "positive developments [which] give us a chance to reenergise the [peace] process". He, as chief representative of the world organisation, remains deaf, blind and dumb as far as developments on the ground in the West Bank are concerned. The only initiative he has taken to counter the Israeli landgrab in the occupied territories is to establish a register for damage claims stemming from the construction of the West Bank wall/fence complex, in accordance with last summer's ruling of the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

The Israeli Cabinet decided to announce it will quit less than a quarter of these outposts only after the US government warned that failure to keep its pledge to remove all outposts established in the West Bank over the past four years could damage US-Israeli relations and have consequences for US aid to Israel. Washington's warning came as the Cabinet considered a report by Talia Sasson, a former state prosecutor, on these outposts, which made clear that 105 outposts had received government aid in "blatant violation of the law". She revealed that the 24 outposts built since March 2001 (which concern the Bush administration) are not any different from the 81 which were established before that date. She said: "They are all illegal. It is important to emphasise that it's not merely to evacuate the outposts but to cease the entire procedure of budgeting and transferring state funds to the outposts."

Sasson showed how various ministries and governmental bodies helped establish the outposts by bringing in mobile homes, connecting water and electricity, and providing financial assistance and military protection. Sasson implicated the defence minister's adviser on settlement affairs, Ron Shechner, who is clearly closely connected with the colonisation drive, and the housing ministry, which spent a large proportion of its budget on construction in the occupied territories, particularly on creating outposts. She criticised the so-called Civil Administration for hooking up the outposts to infrastructure and the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) for allocating these outposts land belonging to Palestinians.

According to Yaov Stern and Gideon Alon, writing in the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz, on March 11, the current housing minister, Isaac Herzog, fired the head of the Rural Construction Administration, Sarah Aharon, and blamed former minister Effi Eitam who claimed that "all the illegal outposts he approved were done with the prime minister's knowledge". Another Haaretz commentator, Akiva Eldar, wrote on March 9 that an unnamed senior official source said that "the Sasson report exposes an `organised criminal conspiracy' in which illegal outposts were established with taxpayer money that was never earmarked for that construction, with ministers, directors general, senior officials and officers of the army all involved". The source also implicated in the affair former state attorneys general because they did not take action to halt this illegal activity.

All this latter-day fuss and bother - including the Sasson report itself - is nothing more than a smokescreen thrown up to hide what Israel is doing in the occupied West Bank in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, customary international law and its own laws. The government, as per usual for delaying action, set up a committee to deliver a proposal for dealing with the outposts within 90 days. Meanwhile, Israel continues to provide assistance and services to these outposts which are strategically placed between existing settlement blocs, according to well-laid governmental and WZO plans and not random structures set up by wildcat settlers.

But the "legal" settlement issue cannot be avoided. In addition to the Sasson report on illegal outposts, a second report has been commissioned from Baruch Spiegel on the status of legal settlements. These two reports were mandated by an agreement reached in April 2004 between Sharon and US President George Bush, according to which the US agreed to accept Sharon's disengagement plan and Israel's retention of large settlement blocs along the Green Line, in exchange for a freeze on settlement expansion and removal of illegal outposts. As usual, Israel reneged on this deal and, until now, the Bush administration has kept mum.

The Spiegel report has not been completed yet and Haaretz reports (in an article by Uzi Benziman published on March 13) that there are indications that he is procrastinating.

Illegal Jewish settlement activity in Palestine has been going on since Zionist colonists arrived at the end of the 19th century. Amongst the first colonies to be established was Petah Tikvah, which ultimately consumed the Arab farmland and villages in the Tel Aviv vicinity. The Zionists/Israelis devised a strategy of creeping landgrab, always arguing that they were proceeding in order to ensure security. Thus, military outposts became civilian outposts which became settlements which became townships.

Israel's 1948 war of establishment was also a well-planned and carefully executed landgrab combined with ethnic cleansing meant to secure Palestine and clear it of Palestinians so that Israelis could become the majority population in 78 per cent of the country. Since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the landgrab has continued and accelerated and is, at present, at its height, with settlements, outposts, the wall/fence and a complex road network carrying out the long-term Zionist/Israeli project of taking over the whole of Palestine and converting it into "Eretz Israel".

As His Majesty King Abdullah warned following the Sharm El Sheikh summit, there will be no land left for a Palestinian state if Israel is allowed to carry on with this strategy.

Illegal outposts are only the tip of the iceberg. The entire settlement and wall/road building enterprise must stop now if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is to be resolved. The world must not, as the saying goes, miss the wood for the saplings.