Her position - that Australia can best support the negotiations by taking no position on such a basic issue of international law - is at variance not only with that of the overwhelming majority of the UN, which in November called for an end to ''all Israeli settlement activity in all of the occupied territories'', but also with some of Israel's closest allies. The policy position of the Canadian government, for example, is explicit: ''Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The settlements also constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.''

Even US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been criticised for a pro-Israeli bias while brokering Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, has stated that ''the position of the United States of America on the settlements is that we consider now and have always considered the settlements to be illegitimate''.

Such universal opposition to Israel's settlement enterprise is not just a matter of legal technicality. The purpose of the settlements, as Ariel Sharon declared in 1973, is to ''make a pastrami sandwich'' of the Palestinians by building strips of settlements throughout the West Bank ''so that in 25 years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart''.

Today 40 per cent of the West Bank is reserved for the exclusive use of its settler population, as Palestinian movement, agriculture and commerce are stifled by a web of checkpoints, ''security barriers'' and the Israeli-only bypass roads that link the settlements. According to the World Health Organisation, a community requires a per capita minimum of 100 litres of water a day to meet its health and hygiene needs. The daily allocation for West Bank settlers is 300 litres, while their Palestinian neighbours are forced to survive on as little as 20 litres a day.

Thus for the Palestinians, every act of civil engineering associated with the settlements becomes an act of war: laying down water pipes causes water shortages, new houses cause overcrowding as Palestinian lands are confiscated to accommodate settlement growth, new roads separate people from their farms, schools and jobs. Even the settlements' sewage affects downhill Palestinian communities. According to the Israeli non-government organisation B'Tselem, 5.5 million cubic metres of untreated settlement waste is dumped directly into Palestinian streams and valleys each year.