> Perhaps a more pertinent question to ask would be: do you consider the settlements (at more or less their current scale) as being helpful to Israel's security interests -- or unhelpful?

No, I think keeping a war going with your neighbors, not to mention occupying another people, is a pretty terrible long-term idea from a security perspective, even without looking at the moral dimension. At least in the long term.

I'll try and defend the other side for one second here; there are basically two reasons to have settlements in the West Bank:

1. Some people think we are "entitled" to that land for religious or other reasons.

I obviously don't subscribe to this view and think it's immoral nonsense. This is a minority view, but a minority that unfortunately has gained political power because, frankly, they're the only people still willing to work with Netanyahu.

2. There is a real argument that in the short term, the settlements do help Israel with security. E.g. when Israel decided to leave the Gaza strip, and uprooted all Jewish settlements there, they elected Hamas and almost immediately started firing rockets at Israel, not to mention long-term planning October 7th.

The argument settlers sometimes make is that they provide a defensive line, and that if there weren't settlements in the WB, Israel would just have another Gaza strip situation on its hands.

This has some merit, in the short term; though I think that if Israel really wants to, it can just use the army to protect against the WB even without settlers, and rogue citizens providing security is a terrible situation (leading to the terrible settler violence happening in the WB all these years, and especially over the last year).

In any case, this argument falls apart long-term. The only real long-term security is to make some form of peace with the Palestinians. Obviously there'll need to be security guarantees to Israel somehow, and similar guarantees to the Palestinians somehow, but that's the only real long term solution.

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Btw, when the WB and Gaza (and Sinai) were initially captured, there were far bigger reasons to hold on to them - Israel had just been attacked by Jordan and Egypt, and those territories provided buffer zones that were very necessary to help defend the country. Nowadays, of course, Israel has semi-peaceful relations with Egypt and Jordan, that has held for half a century - so that reason is no longer very relevant.

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> Not the whole reason, of course. But the occupation (and the settlements issue in particular) does seem to be an integral component of the "magic sauce" that's been keeping the conflict going for far too many more decades more than the international community should have ever allowed it to.

This is actually complicated and not the whole story, though you are somewhat right nowadays. I personally think the real, fundamental, problem is that the Palestinians still believe they are entitled to, and going to get, all of the land of Israel. That's the underlying reason that the peace accords failed, it's the underlying reason they continue to use violence to try and, in their minds, "drive the Jews back to where they came from", etc.

If they truly were willing to accept a two-state solution, they could have had one at multiple times throughout history. It's the reason the occupation is ongoing - because the only way practical way to stop it is through a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, but as long as they refuse to accept Israel's continued existence, such a settlement can't happen!

Of course, over the last 15 years, Israel has done plenty to go against any chance of having a peace, including deliberately hurting the Palestinians who did try to work towards a resolution. So while the underlying goals of most Palestinians is to blame here, Israel is also to blame for fostering those underlying goals.