Let me note that I found nothing surprising and as any reader who read me arguments on the SDMB several years ago on this issue knows, the Territories are a mess, the very concept of clear land title (which as anyone who has read the works of De Soto knows that lack of clear title is typical, in emerging markets, and indeed clear title is somewhat unusual in the world. But leaving that aside, there is a clear issue of coercion in terms of any sale contract from an occupied party to the occupier, above all when there is a situation of economic collapse.

So looking at the situation from a market liberal (not a bloody idiot whinging lefty moron) the issue of private land and whether that said land has theoretically been sold to Israeli parties is a key problem. Certainly the claims by the apologist camp with respect to "Arabs sold it to them/us and they just want to keep it secret" ring hollow. Let me be clear, I would not say that in general Israeli parties are deliberatly exploiting the situ in a cynical manner - I am sure that most settlers think they are truly genuinely taking over free lands.

However, anyone who has operated in an environment of "forced sale" or constraints knows that theoretically free sales in a constrained environement are at once not at all free in a real market sense, as any analysis of 'market nationalisations' even when there were exit periods with sles to nationals demonstrates. The problem s the naive blindness that Americans - who are often painfully naive and blind in these areas - show in terms of framing their support to these policies. That iinterested Israeli partis promote this is pure self interest, which I merely take as human nature, but that others lap up particular self interest as objective is mere idiocy.