The settlement enterprise is toxic, not just to the Palestinians, but more damagingly and importantly to the Israelis themselves.
Just look at what they have produced. A group from within the younger generation of settlers, the people who call themselves Noar Hagvaot (the Youth of the Hills) openly attack Israeli soldiers who are there to protect them, often calling anyone who opposes them "Nazis".
Further, they have banded themselves into militia groups, acting like terrorists, burning mosques, cutting down olive groves and in some cases opening fire on innocent Palestinians.
And the settler leadership? They make like a fish and say and do nothing to prevent these terrorist outrages. In fact, they laud rabbis who have said that non-Jewish children can be killed "to prevent them growing up as terrorists".
But beyond the issue of 350,000 settlers, with full civil and political rights, who live among 3.5 million Palestinians who are denied similar rights by the occupation lies the question of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Israel cannot continue to be the national homeland of the Jews if it persists in holding on to the West Bank. Israel, for the sake of its own future, has to withdraw to lines that delineate between the two peoples.
Unfortunately, the settlers have been pawns in all of this, with successive Israeli governments abusing their messianic dreams with cheap housing and other perks.
If Israel wants to survive, it has to withdraw. And the sooner the better.