Facts on the ground

For the book by Nadia Abu El Haj, see 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. The term was popularised in the 1970s in discussions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to refer to Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank, which were intended to establish permanent Israeli footholds in Palestinian territory.

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.

See also

• De facto
• Ex factis jus oritur
• Glossary of French words and expressions in English § Fait accompli
• Ground truth
• Realpolitik
• Revanchism
• Operation Uvda
• Status quo ante bellum

References

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.

Further reading

• 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.

External links

• The dictionary definition of facts on the ground at Wiktionary