Facts on the ground

Facts on the ground is a diplomatic and geopolitical term that means the situation in reality as opposed to in the abstract.^[1]^{[failed verification]} The term was popularised in the 1970s in discussions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict^[2] to refer to Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank, which were intended to establish permanent Israeli footholds in Palestinian territory.^[3]

Rashid Khalidi wrote in 2010:

One reason Israel continues to build settlements is that, according to the so-called Clinton parameters laid down in 2000, a final Israeli–Palestinian agreement would grant sovereignty over Jewish-occupied areas to Israel, and Palestinian-inhabited areas to the new Palestinian state. Indeed, well over a decade of failed negotiations have only led to an acceleration of Israel's land grab in the Holy City. Israeli planners have spent this time pushing settlers into heavily Arab-inhabited areas of the city, such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and Abu Dis, in order to create fresh "facts on the ground"—a tactic used by the Zionist movement for over a century in order to obtain control over more and more of Palestine.^[4]

Footnotes

Bibliography

Berridge, G. R.; Lloyd, Lorna (2012). The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy (3rd ed.). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781137017611. ISBN 978-1-137-01761-1.
Khalidi, Rashid (15 April 2010). "Bad Faith in the Holy City". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 18 April 2010.
Ober, Josiah (2006). "Solon and the Horoi: Facts on the Ground in Ancient Athens". In Blok, Josine; Lardinois, André P. M. H. (eds.). Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. pp. 441–456. doi:10.1163/9789047408895_020. ISBN 978-90-04-14954-0.
Rosen, David (Fall 2007). "Searching for 'Facts' on the Ground". The Current. Archived from the original on 15 February 2008.

Gorenberg, Gershom (2006). The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977. New York: Times Books. ISBN 978-1-4668-0054-0.