#U.N. Resolution 242

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Israeli-Jewish Terrorists vs. “The Jews of the Jews”

Where have our national “leaders” been all these years? To judge by their statements concerning the current crisis in Israel-Palestine, they haven’t been following the news about Israeli-Jews’ treatment of Palestinians in the territories the former have illegally occupied for decades. Are mainstream politicians unfamiliar with international law, with President Carter’s concept of apartheid in…

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"What do Americans think of what Israel has done? What do Americans think of international law? Are they aware of such a thing? What about the U.N. Resolutions telling Israel to withdraw? 242? 338? Or do U.N. Resolutions only count against Iraq?"

-Joe Sacco, Palestine (1996)

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States seem intent on striking a trilateral deal that includes normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Saudi civil nuclear power monitored by the international community, and an American-Saudi defense treaty. So why is it taking so long? Well, a fourth party — the Palestinians — are not part of the negotiations, yet their well-being seems to loom over any deal.

I’ve been in the room when Israel negotiated high-stakes questions about its relationships and its future, as the secretary for the Israeli delegation of the Camp David negotiations from 1999 to 2001. From that vantage point, I can shed some light on the diplomatic legacies shaping the positions at play today — and the broad implications and deep freight of the issues reportedly on the table.

September can be celebrated as the “Middle East Peace Month,” marking 45 years since the 1978 Camp David Accords (on Sept. 17); 30 years since the first Oslo Accord (on Sept. 13); and three years since the Abraham Accords (on Sept. 15, 2020). These events — and others — create a legacy that is now shaping the coming major milestone: an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement.

The Israeli-Arab peace and normalization process formally began in 1978 with the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords that included a Framework for Peace in the Middle East. The next major contractual milestone was the Declaration of Principles (also known as “Oslo A”) which was signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993. The declaration provided for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as an interim self-government, as well as for further negotiations on the “outstanding issues” toward “final status.” Thereafter, dozens of agreements were signed among Israel, Jordan and the PLO, mostly until 1999, as well as with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco since 2020. 

In spite of episodes of conflict and bloodshed and long intermissions, these milestones add up to a 45-year continuum of Israeli-Arab peacemaking, which has been bound by an overarching logic and diplomatic principles that have been reiterated for decades. One example is U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 that establishes that Israel will withdraw from the whole (French version) or parts (English version) of the West Bank. It appears in all major agreements signed since 1978.  

For Israel and the United States — and particularly for Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Joe Biden — there is another unlikely benchmark. It is the so-called Trump Plan, which was negotiated between Israel and the U.S. and presented in January 2020 without Palestinians contribution or participation. The Trump Plan clearly favors long-standing Israeli positions such as that all Jewish settlements will remain under Israeli sovereignty, which is why Netanyahu called it “the deal of the century.” Nonetheless, the plan is premised on the principle of two states for two peoples, namely envisioning a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and acknowledging that the West Bank is “disputed territory” whose future must be agreed upon between Israel and the PLO. Furthermore, while the Palestinian state is envisioned to be of “limited sovereignty,” its area will be equivalent to 86% of the West Bank and all of Gaza and its capital, al-Quds, will be in the “area of Jerusalem” immediately adjacent to the current municipal borders.  

The unspoken challenge of the current negotiations over the Saudi deal is that Netanyahu is no longer willing to give Biden as much as he gave Trump. Meanwhile, Biden is bound by the legacies of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump — all of whom were explicit about having a Palestinian state in permanent status in the vast majority of Gaza and the West Bank. These legacies put pressure on Biden to do more for the two-state solution than his predecessors, Trump included. 

The Saudis, eager to secure their status in the Arab world, must be “triangulating” three other reference points: The first is the 1978 Israel-Egypt Framework for Peace in the Middle East, where President Anwar Sadat established U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 as the founding principle for future territorial arrangements and provided the framework for the Oslo Process that led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. The second is the Saudi peace plan, which shaped the peace initiative of the Arab League in Beirut in 2002 and then in Riyadh in 2007, which upheld the June 1967 Lines as reference point for future territorial arrangements. And the third is the success of the UAE in thwarting Netanyahu’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank in 2020 in exchange for the Abraham Accords.

In other words, how can Saudi Arabia walk back from its own plan or do less for the Palestinians than Egypt and the UAE?

These legacies create a four-point agenda for the currently unfolding negotiations: 

First, regarding the P.A.: The United States and Saudi Arabia are likely to want to reaffirm the existing Oslo Accords, to which Israel is a signatory. These agreements establish the P.A. as the interim self-government in the West Bank and Gaza ahead of permanent status. In this context, negotiators are probably discussing how to prevent the expansion of settlements across the West Bank, particularly in areas that will circumvent the contiguity of a future Palestinian state, as well as how to bolster the P.A.’s economic wellbeing and capacities of governance and security capabilities.  

Second, regarding future negotiations: The United States and Saudi Arabia are probably striving to reinstate the principle of “two states for two peoples,” which means that the future of the West Bank will be negotiated between Israel and the PLO and that the P.A. will eventually become a state albeit with limited powers. As mentioned, all U.S. presidents since Clinton and all Israeli prime ministers since Barak, including Netanyahu in his past tenures. reaffirmed that principle. 

The likely third point is territory. Americans and Saudis must be pressing for reiterating 242 as the baseline for future territorial arrangements. How can they demand anything less? Furthermore, it has been leaked that the parties are discussing some concrete territorial steps in the West Bank such as recategorizing lands under full Israeli control (“Area C”) as lands under Palestinian civil control (“Area B”), or placing Area B under full control of the P.A. (“Area A”). Any such change implies an Israeli recognition that the current sovereign arrangements the West Bank will be negotiated with the PLO. 

Finally, there is Jerusalem, and particularly the Temple Mount and the location of Saudi’s embassy to Israel. The Temple Mount — where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque stand on a platform that covers the historic site of Judaism’s holy temples — is the most contentious issue between Israel and the Palestinians. All past agreements established that its fate will be determined in negotiations. Even the Trump Plan, with Netanyahu’s endorsement, suggests that the Temple Mount will be subject to a special arrangement where the Waqf of Jordan (a Muslim religious society) will play a significant role.

When Sadat visited Israel in 1977, he insisted on praying at Al Aqsa, as did the ambassador of the UAE. This week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey expressed a similar expectation ahead of his visit to Israel. While Israel maintains that “a unified and undivided Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel,” the Israeli-Arab peace process has been founded on the principle that Jerusalem’s final status will be determined in negotiations. As Saudi Arabia sees itself as a guardian of Muslim holy sites, Al Aqsa must be on its mind. 

Ahead of their normalization agreement, Israel and Saudi Arabia are likely also discussing the location of their future embassies. On this point, the Saudi side can have its embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv, like all other embassies of Arab and Muslim countries, and its diplomatic mission to the P.A. in Ramallah, thereby signaling that the final status of Jerusalem is yet to be determined. But they may be considering a much bolder, more-for-more deal of establishing the Saudi embassy to Israel in Israeli west Jerusalem, thereby recognizing it as Israel’s capital, in exchange for having the Saudi embassy to the P.A. in Arab east Jerusalem. After all, seven European countries including the United Kingdom and France, in addition to the Vatican and Turkey, have their diplomatic missions to the P.A. within the municipal borders of Jerusalem. 

Clearly, any such Saudi deal would shake the current Israeli coalition, whose founding agreements call for applying Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank “when circumstances are right.” Such aspiration means canceling the Oslo Accords and dismantling the P.A. In other words, the Saudi-Israel-U.S. deal is as much about their relations as it is about the future of the two-state solution and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

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Obama Administration Set for One Last Strike at Israel

Obama Administration Set for One Last Strike at Israel

A week and a half ago President Obama gave the order for the U.S. to abstain on UN Security Council Resolution 2334, thereby—effectively—voting in favor and allowing the resolution to pass. As I noted, the resolution goes beyond “moral equivalency” by obfuscating Palestinian terror and incitement while branding Jewish life beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines a “flagrant violation under international…

[eretzyisrael]

To the European Union, almost anything Israel does to protect itself is “provocative” and “disproportionate.” For America to insist that Israel receive the “secure borders” promised to it in 1967 via U.N. Resolution 242 is, in the judgment of the European Union, over-reaching. And the fact that the Jewish people is indigenous to the disputed territories or that the Palestinian Arabs have no inherent international rights to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) has always escaped the European Union’s notice.

The European Union’s initial take on President Trump’s initiative was all too predictable. Their reversion to infantile—and hopelessly obsolete—truisms about the Middle East and its denizens should be no surprise. They are the architects of this mess known as the Middle East.

If America and Israel have the energy and creativity to adapt the Europeans’ deluded Middle East blueprints to today’s reality, a simple “thank you” from the Europeans would be nice. In the meantime, the European Union should turn inward to confront its own problems—which, by the way, include rampant anti-Semitism and related anti-Zionist passions across the continent.

Europe has little concern for Israel’s security, and is advancing tired positions on the Middle East and peace that are long past their sell-by date.

[opedguy]

Biden Pledges Support to Israel

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), May 22, 2021.--President Joe Biden, 78, told ABC News at a White House press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that there is no “shift” in his position of support for Israel.  Biden was asked whether he sees a shift in the Democrat Party’s position on Israel, questioning whether or not the U.S. should halt $735 million in arms sales to Israel. Biden was clear that there’s no change in his position toward Israel, letting the Jewish State defend itself against the Hamas rocket war started May 10.  Biden faced blistering criticism from his Party’s left wing, led by the squad, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressely (D-Mass.), all of whom back Hamas in their rocket war against Israel.  Biden told the Democrat Party that there was no “shift” in his support of the Jewish State, despite pressure inside his Party.     

        Biden started to find his stride as president realizing, in all likelihood, he’ll be a one-term president.  Biden admitted during the campaign he ran primarily because he was the only one in his Party capable of beating former President Donald Trump.  His left wing of the Party doesn’t remember that they weren’t elected president, it was Joe Biden that has a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  That fact infuriates the squad, looking for Biden to shift toward backing Hamas, a known terrorist group with close ties to Iran.  No one in the mainstream press asks where Hams gets all its rocket to fire into Israel.  Biden knows that Iran supplies arms-and-cash to Hamas to fight its proxy war against Israel. Yet to Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley their loyalty stands not with the U.S. but with oppressed Muslims in foreign lands, ignoring 73-years of history with Israel.      

       Biden met May 18 in Dearborn, Michigan with Tlaib to celebrate a Ford F-150 electric truck plant promising to be the wave of the future.  Tlaib complained about the decimation to the Gaza Strip, close to where he parents live in the West Bank.  Biden thanked Tlaib, a Congresswoma of Palestinian ancestry, for her passion but he let Netanyahu process his air war against Hamas, not calling for a cease fire until Israel finished its military operations.  Tlaib and other members of the squad demanded that Israel stop its bombing campaign, seeking legislation to stop Israel from receiving its multi-billion dollar defense budget.  At some point, the squad caught wind of the fact that Biden backed Netanyahu’s military operations against Hamas, looking to dominate the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.  Biden let Tlaib and the squad talk while Netanyahu prosecuted the war.    

         Hamas has already claimed victory after watching the Gaza Strip laid to waste by the Israeli Defense Services [IDF].  Biden worked behind the scenes with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to end the Gaza conflict, primarily because Hamas is an offshoot of the deadly Muslim Brotherhood.  El-Sisi battled former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi for the control of Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt June 30, 2012.  El-Sisi closed Egypt’s Rafah border crossing, fearing Hamas infiltration into Egypt, knowing they were out to topple El-Sisi’s government.  It’s beyond ironic that El-Sisi helped broker the ceasefire with Egypt, knowing his intolerance of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.  If the squad learned anything from the latest Hamas war against Israel, it was that Israel is a stalwart ally of the United States and that Biden aimed to preserve that fact.     

        Natanyahu thanked “my fried” Joe Biden for his support during the 10-day war with Hamas.  Biden’s patience before crafting a ceasefire with El-Sisi gave Netanayahu enough time to accomplish his goals, including destroying Hamas’ elaborate underground tunnel system and terrorist infrastructure spread over the Gaza Strip.  Netanyahu told Biden that the IDF has destroyed about 100 kilometers [62-miles] of underground tunnels designed to attack Israel.  Yet Hamas claimed victory over Israel after losing billions of dollars in infrastructure and 250 lives in the 10 days.  Netanyahu agreed to reconsider the Palestinians evictions in East Jerusalem, something ordered by an Israel court after a protracted real estate dispute.  Biden pledged that the U.S. is willing to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after the recent devastation.  Hamas launches rockets at Israel to win concessions in ceasefire agreements.     

        Biden told the press that he wanted to resume peace talks working toward a two-state solution but only if Palestinian factions recognized Israel’s right to exist.  U.N. officials worked on peace for years using U.N. Resolution 242 that Palestinians would recognize Israel’s right to exist in exchange for returning to the pre-1967 Six Day War borders.  Israel annexed Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s East Jerusalem and the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.  Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1979 in what’s known as the Camp David Accords, eventually handing back the Gaza Strip in 2005.  But Hamas never changed its 1987 charter founded by Shekh Ahmed Nassin to destroy Israel.  Biden won’t get any commitment from Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist.  With Ramallah-based Mahmoud Abbas no longer in charge of Palestinians, the U.S., U.N. and EU lost their peace partner. 

About the Author 

  John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.  Reply  Reply All  Forward

[jewishphilosophyplace]

Israeli Settlements & International Law (Nathaniel Berman)

This piece by Nathaniel Berman picks apart the argument commonly used by the Jewish right to justify the legality of the settlement project in the occupied West Bank. Professor Berman  is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. The article appeared just recently here at Tikkun. Berman’s website is here. I have put in bold what to me seems like the crux of his argument. The crux of the crux is the rejection of the principle of terra nullius, replaced by the “recognition of the political rights of non-state peoples, the [sovereign] beneficiary of the trust-like status of occupied territory, in the absence of a legitimate prior [nation-state] sovereign, must be “the people” of the territory” (the interpolations in brackets are my own).

The Settlement Legality Debate by Nathaniel Berman

May 11, 2017

Editor’s Note:  The Spring 2017 issue of Tikkun Magazine is entirely devoted to the 50th anniversary of the Six Days War and the beginning of the Occupation of the West Bank by Israel. It includes a wide range of Israeli and Palestinian voices as well as those from the Jewish and Palestinian Diaspora. If you don’t yet subscribe, do so now at http://ift.tt/19OwQwi. If you do subscribe,or are a member of the Network of Spiritual Progressives at the $50 or more level (http://ift.tt/1IHhQws) or you havdonated $50 or more this year,and have not yet gotten the new issue in the mail, Duke U. Press promises that it is in the mail already sodon’t worry, it’s coming and it’s powerful. If you “read it at the bookstore” and it is not at your local bookstore, please urge them to carry it–speak to the person in charge of ordering magazines and urge them to carry the magazine (they can contact Ingram book distributors which is now taken over by The News Group TNG.com which can be reached at  866-466-7231).

  The Settlement Legality Debate:  FAQ 

Nathaniel Berman

Brown University

  I. Why Now?

The resurgence of debates about legality, particularly the legality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has become an unexpected feature of public discussion of Israel/Palestine over the past decade.  This resurgence has been primarily the work of two kinds of forces.  On the one hand, pro-settler advocates have been asserting that the pervasive international view of the illegality of the settlements is simply wrong.  Such advocates range from a  2012 Israeli government “Report on the Status of Building in the Region of Judea and Samaria” (the “Levy Commission Report”), to articles published in the right-wing press, to activists relentlessly advancing such views in social media.   On the other hand, the illegality of the settlements has been vigorously asserted by those active in international campaigns critical of Israel, especially the BDS movement.  This article will primarily focus on the pro-settler use of the legality argument, evaluating its soundness and considering the contextual significance of its resurgence.

The revival of the legality debate is surprising because it seems, at first glance, at odds with current global developments.  To be sure, there was a period, roughly between 1990 and 2003, when international debate about the use of force was pervaded with legal argumentation.  In retrospect, it is astonishing how much of the debate about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990 and the US-led military response in January, 1991, was framed in terms of legal argument.  The decade that ensued was something of a golden era for public international lawyers.  The conviction that the end of the Cold War meant that the international law governing the use of force could “finally” be implemented, that the Security Council could “finally” play the role for which it was intended, became quite widespread.   Even as such hopes became tarnished as the decade continued – most egregiously by the international failure to stop the 1993 Rwanda genocide – international legal discourse remained a key shaper of world opinion about the use of force.  Every intervention – or lack thereof – was accompanied by fierce debate about its legality.  The 1999 NATO invasion of Kosovo, despite – or perhaps precisely because of – its questionable legality, produced volumes of creative legal discussion.

That period now seems long past, though it may not be possible to identify the precise moment of its demise.  Kosovo played a role, as did the decision of the US not to seek Security Council approval for the invasion of Afghanistan.  Nevertheless, both of these actions could be plausibly (if not uncontroversially) justified under longstanding doctrines (humanitarian intervention in the former case, self-defense in the latter).  But it was the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent, if grudging, acquiescence to it by much of the world, that signaled that international norms about the use of force had lost their power to shape international policy.  With the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, both of the erstwhile “superpowers” had firmly demonstrated their contempt for such international norms.  To be sure, many condemned that invasion in terms of its blatant illegality, but such terms seemed out of touch with the new discursive character of international debate.

In the Israel/Palestine conflict, legal debate has long played a central, if intermittent, role.  While I cannot rehearse the entire history here, suffice it to say that the conflict has been decisively shaped by the debate over, and adoption of, such international instruments as the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, the 1947 Partition Resolution, the 1967 Security Council Resolution 242, and so on.  But there have been periods when questions of legality seemed more or less irrelevant to ongoing political developments.

In my view, it was the 1993 Oslo agreements and their aftermath that largely encouraged the most recent (if temporary) sidelining of the core legal issues of the conflict, such as the legitimacy of the State of Israel, the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, legality of the settlements, and so on.  The twin recognitions of Israeli statehood and Palestinian peoplehood by Rabin and Arafat in 1993 promised to set aside zero-sum debates over rival, totalizing legal claims.   In their stead, Oslo seemed (however briefly) to augur a focus on pragmatic adjustment of interests, the establishment of complementary Palestinian and Israeli societies, and the gradual oblivion of incommensurable claims over the land and its history.

The death of Oslo had both its sudden and gradual dimensions, with causes far too complex to discuss here.  The second intifada sealed its demise – even though some of its formal structures persisted, and indeed continue to persist.  Yet, this demise was not initially accompanied by a revival of the centrality of the legal debate.  This was partly due to the accompanying violence: it seemed that neither legal principles nor pragmatic interests would henceforth be relevant, but only brute force.

However, as ever in this conflict, brute force has not decided matters, and zero-sum ideological battle has again become the order of the day: on one side, the de-legitimation of Israel as such; on the other side, the de-legitimation of any Palestinian claims to the land.  Or, to use common shorthand:  the advocates of a “one-state solution,” whether that state be Israel or Palestine, have seemed to be gaining the upper hand in shaping international debate, employing legal argumentation to advance irreconcilable claims.

II.  What is the Law?

I turn to an overview of the legal issues relevant to the settlements, beginning with the basics.  A full legal discussion would take an entire volume (or more); I have striven here to deal with the most central questions.

Israel is a State (in the international law, not the American, sense – i.e., an independent country).  Its statehood has been recognized by most other States, and, most importantly, by its status as a Member State of the U.N.  If any other State were to use force against its “territorial integrity or political independence …, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,” it would be violating Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, one of the most sacred norms of post-World War II international law.  At a formal legal level, such issues as the “legitimacy” of Zionism, Jewish historical claims to the land, and so on, are simply irrelevant to the legal status of the State of Israel.

The Palestinians, for their part, have been recognized as a “people” with the right to “self-determination” by the U.N., most States, and the International Court of Justice [the “ICJ”, a.k.a, the “World Court”].  Under General Assembly Resolution 2625 (1970), most of whose norms are considered by international legal authority as binding, the right to self-determination can be implemented in one of three ways:  “the establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free association or integration with an independent State, or the emergence into any other political status determined by a people.”   As a “people,” the Palestinians thus possess the right, as yet unimplemented, to choose one of these three options.  There is a strong international preference that the right to self-determination be implemented through independent statehood, as expressed in state practice during decolonization and in General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960), the predecessor to 2625 and the seminal document in the ripening of self-determination into a general international legal right.

The territorial dimension of Israeli statehood and Palestinian self-determination requires discussion of at least two additional legal issues.  The first concerns the status of the “Green Line,” the border defining Israel under the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbors, particularly Egypt and Jordan.  The Agreements explicitly declared that they were not decisive as to the parties’ legal claims, including territorial claims.  Nonetheless, the years after 1949 saw a growing international recognition, at least de facto, of the Green Line as the border of the State of Israel.  The precise moment when this de facto recognition acquired legal stature may be hard to pinpoint, though it seems to have largely occurred.  Thus, in its 2004 decision on the Israeli security wall, the ICJ implicitly assumed the de jure status of the Green Line – particularly in its proclamation that the Geneva Conventions’ provisions for occupied territories apply to “Palestinian territories … east of the Green Line,” implicitly declaring them inapplicable to territories west of the Green Line because they lay within the sovereign territory of Israel.

This statement by the ICJ brings us to the legal term, “occupation.”  Recent pro-settler advocates insistently deny that this term can be applied to the West Bank.  They contend that “occupation” only applies when territory is wrested by one sovereign State from another sovereign State.  The West Bank has not had an internationally recognized sovereign since the long defunct Ottoman Empire. The British, who succeeded the Ottomans in ruling Palestine, were merely a “Mandatory Power,” a kind of trustee, administering the territory on behalf of the League of Nations.  Jordan, which conquered the West Bank in the 1948 war, was widely condemned for its subsequent annexation – an annexation recognized formally only by Britain and perhaps, at an informal or de facto level, by the U.S.  The annexation was initially condemned as illegal by the Arab League, which nearly expelled Jordan over the issue.

In 1968, Yehuda Blum, an Israeli international legal scholar and diplomat, offered what was perhaps the first, and most influential, legal argument for an Israeli claim to the West Bank: the theory of the “missing reversioner.”  Under this theory, the full set of international rules governing “belligerent occupation” did not apply due to the absence of a legitimate prior sovereign to which the territory could “revert.”  Blum, however, did not go so far as to deny that the term “belligerent occupation” applied.  Rather, the “missing reversioner” meant that only those rules “intended to safeguard the humanitarian rights of the population” applied, and not those “protecting the reversionary rights of the legitimate sovereign.”  Current proponents of the Israeli claim, however, have assertively taken the step from which Blum refrained: the denial of the very existence of an “occupation.”[1]

In any case, the relevance of the “missing reversioner” to the international law of occupation has been soundly rejected by the International Court of Justice in its 2004 decision (as well as by almost all other authorities), as I have noted above.  The ICJ based its rejection on the purpose of the relevant provisions of the Geneva Conventions, the travaux preparatoires (records of discussions among the parties to the Conventions), subsequent confirmation by the views of the parties to the Conventions, and many Security Council resolutions – the standard methods used to determine the meaning of a treaty’s provisions.  Moreover, as I show below, the Court’s declaration that all the Geneva Conventions provisions governing belligerent occupation apply to the West Bank is amply supported by the overall policies underlying those provisions, as well as other legal developments, above all the right of self-determination.

(I note that I do not have the space here to discuss the legality of the occupation as such, but only that of the legality of settlements in any occupied territory.  A plausible argument could be made that the inception of the occupation was legal in 1967 as an exercise of the right of self-defense, but that, as Aeyal Gross has recently shown, the question remains as to whether it has become illegal due to the manner in which it has been conducted.[2])

The core argument for the illegality of the settlements is based on one of the primary goals of the rules governing belligerent occupation: the obligation of the occupier not to change the character of the occupied territory beyond that which is required by strict military necessity. This goal underlies the basic rule about occupation codified in Article 43 of the Hague Regulations of 1907:  the requirement that the occupying State “take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.”  This policy also informs the prohibitions on forcing the inhabitants to swear allegiance to the occupying State (art. 45) and on the confiscation of private property (art. 46), as well as the rules about public property:   “The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct” (art. 55).  Articles 46 and 55 leave no land upon which an occupier could build any civilian settlement, let alone one of a permanent character.

To be sure, the 1907 Hague Regulations seem to assume the existence of a sovereign “reversioner” and to see the role of the occupying State as a kind of trustee for that sovereign until the negotiation of a peace treaty.  The “missing reversioner” theory would declare all provisions informed by this assumption to be inapplicable to the West Bank.  And, indeed, one might very well ask: for whom is the occupying State a trustee in the absence of a legitimate sovereign, for whom is it obligated to observe the rules of usufruct in relation to public property, on behalf of whom is it forbidden to impose its own legal framework – and, in general, whose rights is it supposed to safeguard?

The answer under current international law is clear: the beneficiary of all these rules is the population, or rather, “the people” of the occupied territory.  Recall that even Blum affirmed that, in the absence of a legitimate prior sovereign, those rules designed to safeguard the “humanitarian rights of the population” are applicable to the West Bank, thus acknowledging that the absence of a “reversioner” did not entail the absence of a beneficiary of at least some of the rights granted by the law of occupation.  To be sure, Blum distinguished between such “humanitarian rights” and political claims – the latter, under his theory, inapplicable by virtue of the absence of a legitimate prior sovereign.  And Blum’s position would have been plausible in 1907.

But Blum’s distinction is no longer valid under current international law, due to the right of self-determination, recognizing the political rights of “peoples” not yet organized into a sovereign State, and the infusion of international law generally with the values it embodies. Under this recognition of the political rights of non-state peoples, the beneficiary of the trust-like status of occupied territory, in the absence of a legitimate prior sovereign, must be “the people” of the territory.  It is on its behalf that the occupying State must govern the territory, refrain from unnecessary legal changes, safeguard public property, and so on.

The pro-settler (and indeed pro-annexation) argument – that the absence of a legitimate prior sovereign makes the territory available for appropriation by the occupier – thus completely ignores the gradual emergence into international law of the right of political self-determination.  While the self-determination of peoples may have only fully ripened into a general international legal right after 1960, the principle informed much of the post-World War I redrawing of the boundaries of Europe.  Woodrow Wilson gave it one of its earliest and most eloquent formulations in his 1918 “Four Principles” speech, when he declared that “peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game” – a principle which runs directly counter to the “missing reversioner” theory.

Indeed, the concept of pre-20th century international law that the right of self-determination directly rejects is the close ancestor of the “missing reversioner” theory: that of “terra nullius,” land that belongs to no one and therefore available for appropriation.  This notion had a long and ignoble career in the history of imperialism, whose phases were sketched by ICJ Judge Ammoun in the 1975Western Sahara Case: 

(1) Roman antiquity, when any territory which was not Roman was nullius.

(2) The epoch of the great discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during which any territory not belonging to a Christian  sovereign was nullius.

(3) The nineteenth century, during which any territory which did not belong to a so-called civilized State was nullius.

The ICJ thoroughly rejected the notion of terra nullius in the Western Sahara Case, declaring that “territories inhabited by tribes or peoples having a social and political organization” cannot be regarded legally as terrae nullius.  Since all “tribes” and “peoples” have “social and political organization,” the Court effectively declared that only uninhabited territory could possibly be nullius.  The “acquisition of sovereignty” over any inhabited territory, therefore, cannot be “effected unilaterally through ‘occupation’” but, rather only through “agreements concluded with local rulers,” whether or not such local rulers were the representatives of States.

I now turn to the key legal rule specifically governing settlements, Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention:  “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The meaning of this provision has been fiercely contested in the West Bank context.  Pro-settler advocates argue that it refers only to forcible transfers of population, and relate it to the mass Nazi deportations to concentration camps.  This interpretation treats the two terms, “deport” and “transfer” as synonymous.  The authoritative 1958 commentary on the Geneva Conventions by the International Committee of the Red Cross [“ICRC”], however, gives a very different reading:

It is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.

In the words of the ICJ in 2004, the provision prohibits “not only deportations or forced transfers of population such as those carried out during the Second World War, but also any measures taken by an occupying Power in order to organize or encourage transfers of parts of its own population into the occupied territory.”  This interpretation, endorsed by the ICRC, the ICJ, and most international lawyers, is consistent with the overall policy framework of the law of occupation, which is that the occupying State must refrain from taking steps to change the character of the occupied territory – and attempts to alter its demographic character through settlements, and a fortiori any unilateral steps toward annexation, run directly counter to that policy.

III.  What about San Remo?

One of the most surprising features of recent pro-settler legal argumentation is its preoccupation with three, nearly century-old, texts culminating in the establishment of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine:  the Balfour Declaration (1917), the San Remo Resolution (1920), and the Mandate for Palestine (1922).  These documents are of variable legal significance.  The British Balfour Declaration, which “view[ed] with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” was a unilateral declaration of policy by a State engaged at that time in a military struggle for the control of Palestine.  Standing alone, it had no international legal significance.  The San Remo Resolution was an agreement between four States (Britain, France, Italy, and Japan), declaring their intention to accept certain terms to be incorporated in the Mandates for Palestine, Syria (apparently including Lebanon), and Mesopotamia (soon to be called Iraq).  The four States agreed that the Mandate for Palestine would be granted to Britain which would be “responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] Declaration.”  Again, the Resolution was a statement of policy by four States, but had no independent legal significance.  Finally, the Mandate for Palestine, a binding international treaty between Britain and the League of Nations, adopted the Balfour Declaration in its preamble and provided for a number of detailed provisions for its implementation.  Of these texts, only the Mandate, an international treaty, was legally binding – making the current emphasis by pro-settler advocates on the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo Resolution rather inexplicable from a legal point of view.

In any case, even the Mandate has lost all current legal relevance.  The Mandate and its precursor texts were written in a radically different time, before a vast array of radical factual and legal changes in the international and regional situation.  Above all, these texts were adopted before the establishment of the internationally recognized State of Israel.  The establishment of the State did more than fulfill the goal of the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”: it over-fulfilled it – since the vague term “national home,” a term with no precise legal meaning in 1917 or any prior or subsequent time, was chosen precisely to avoid promising Jewish statehood.  A comparison of the Palestine Mandate with all other post-World War I treaties make this clear: when the intention was to guarantee independent statehood to peoples, the texts said so explicitly.

  One could quibble further about the language of the Balfour Declaration (for example, it seems to promise only that the “national home for the Jewish people” will be somewhere “in Palestine,” rather than providing for the constitution of Palestine as a whole as a Jewish national home).  However, the establishment of the State of Israel, with its over-fulfillment of the “national home” policy, suffices to render the related provisions of the Mandate obsolete.  Under a long-established rule governing international treaties, “rebus sic stantibus,” a “fundamental change of circumstances” that alters the basic conditions under which treaty provisions were adopted nullifies their binding character.

  Two other provisions are often mentioned by pro-settler advocates.  The first is the provision in the Mandate calling for Britain to “encourage … close settlement by Jews on the land.”  Again, with the lapse of all the “national home” provisions by operation of rebus sic stantibus, this provision, too, is obsolete.  Indeed, the establishment of an internationally recognized State of Israel renders the obligation of a foreign Mandatory Power to “encourage … close settlement” a bit absurd.

  The second provision is Article 80 of the U.N. Charter.  Article 80 is part of Chapter XII of the Charter, providing for the establishment of an International Trusteeship System to replace the League of Nations Mandates.  Article 80 provides that “nothing in” Chapter XII “shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments.” Pro-settler advocates, drawing on an article written by Eugene Rostow in 1978, view this provision as maintaining all the provisions of the Palestine Mandate in relation to any part of the territory that has not been “allocated” – a term they use to mean territory not yet granted to an internationally recognized sovereign.

  This argument fails on at least two grounds.  First, the operation of rebus sic stantibus, rendering obsolete the Mandate’s Jewish national home provisions, is not a result of Chapter XII, and thus the restrictions of Article 80 are simply not pertinent.  Second, the ripening of self-determination into an international legal right has not only changed the legal situation (reinforcing the rebus sic stantibus argument) but also signifies that the territory cannot be considered “unallocated” simply because there is no recognized sovereignty over it.  In any case, all such arguments have been implicitly rejected by the ICJ, almost all international lawyers, and the international community of States.

  IV.  What about Resolution 242?

  Another old debate which pro-settler advocates have resurrected concerns the meaning of Security Council Resolution 242, adopted in November, 1967.  Among other things, the resolution calls for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied” during the Six Day War.  Pro-settler advocates argue that the absence of a definite article before the word “territories” signifies that the resolution did not require Israel to withdraw from all the territories occupied during the war and that this provision could be fulfilled by withdrawal from any of the occupied territories – for example, by the withdrawal from Sinai under the 1979 Camp David Accords.  Such arguments often involve comparison of the French and English texts, fine points of English and French grammar, and statements by various people involved in drafting the resolution. The pro-settler advocates also argue that the resolution thus legitimates Israeli settlements.

  These arguments are rather baffling.  Even if the grammatical point is correct (which is by no means certain), the resolution must be interpreted in light of general international legal rules about occupied territory.   Under these rules, territory occupied during war cannot be unilaterally annexed.  This prohibition is, indeed, stated in Resolution 242 itself, whose second preambular paragraph “Emphasiz[es] the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war…”.  Even if the pro-settler interpretation of “territories” is correct, the resolution would simply be stating that in a negotiated resolution of the conflict, the parties would be free to consent to changes to the pre-war boundaries.  This reading renders compatible the second preambular paragraph and the (controversial) interpretation of the word “territories.”  I also note that the resolution makes no mention of settlements at all.

  In any case, the resolution must be interpreted in light of later legal developments, above all, by the near-universal recognition of the Palestinians as a “people” with a right to self-determination.  The resolution makes no mention of Palestinians, who appear only as anonymous “refugees.”

  IV.  What about Howard Grief?

  One of the frustrating features of the pro-settler legality arguments is their seeming indifference to the basic rules governing the determination of the state of international law.  They repeatedly point to the existence of a small number of legal writers who have argued for the legality of the settlements, ignoring the thousands who have held the contrary view, as well as the authoritative decision-makers who have also so held (almost all States, the U.N., the ICJ, the ICRC, etc.).  They argue for the superiority of the arguments of their chosen writers and contend that, at the very least, the issue is “disputed” and that illegality cannot be viewed as conclusively established.

  The pro-settlement legal writers cited are a heterogeneous group – they include some recognized international lawyers, as well as legal scholars in other fields who dabbled to some extent in international law; the careers of some included official Israeli government positions.  One of the latter prominently mentioned by pro-settler advocates is Howard Grief, an otherwise obscure Canadian-born lawyer who advised a cabinet minister during the Shamir government, who seems to be responsible for their obsession with the San Remo Resolution.  Almost all are individuals clearly identified with the right-wing or even far-right of the political spectrum – including Howard Grief, whose petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to declare the illegality of the Oslo Accords was summarily dismissed as “a political position.”

  Whatever the variable credentials of this group, ad hominem arguments are beside the point.  International law is not a natural science in which something may be objectively true even if the vast majority of authorities fail to recognize it as such.  Nor is it a moral inquiry in which (at least according to some moral theories) a value may be superior to others despite majority thinking.  Nor is it concerned with a religious inquiry into the divine intent of a holy scripture.  On the contrary, international law defines itself as concerned with consent of States, consensus or near-consensus of scholars, and authoritative institutional interpretations of texts. According to the widely accepted categorization (codified, among other places, in the Statute of the International Court of Justice), the sources of international law are:  1) treaties ratified by states; 2) “customary international law” – widespread State practices that “ripen” into legal rules by virtue of their acceptance as such by most States (the latter known by the Latin phrase, “opinio juris”); and 3) “general principles of law” – principles of the domestic law of States that are so widespread they become transformed into international legal rules.

  Moreover, since many of the disagreements here concern the interpretation of treaties, we should note that the principle governing the formation of customary international law – which may be summarized in the formula, “practice + opinio juris” – reappears in only slightly different form in relation to the interpretation of potentially ambiguous legal texts.  As stated in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:

  There shall be taken into account, together with the context:

(a) any subsequent agreement between the parties regarding the interpretation of the treaty or the application of its provisions;

(b) any subsequent practice in the application of the treaty which establishes the agreement of the parties regarding its interpretation;

(c) any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties.

  The contention of the wrongness of the overwhelming consensus about the illegality of settlements – shared by States, Courts, and the vast majority of international lawyers – thus misunderstands the nature of international law.  One may, of course, oppose international law in whole or in part.  But to treat it as though it had a timeless truth, which a lone observer or small group of observers could discover independently of such a consensus is simply a misunderstanding.

  V. The Debate as a Tragic Symptom … and One Last Canard

  As I noted at the outset, my general view is that this strange resurgence of the legal debate is a symptom of a growing loss of faith in a possible resolution of the conflict within a framework that would give at least partial expression to each of the competing nationalist aspirations.  But it also reflects an even more disturbing phenomenon.  As many observers have pointed out for years, the two-state solution – which still seems to many, including me, to provide the only framework that could plausibly bring about a peaceful and just resolution of the conflict – is belied by a “one-state reality” for which it serves as an alibi.  Moreover, as the occupation looks ever-increasingly permanent, the legal category begins to look increasingly detached from reality, because permanence is the very condition the legal rules intend to obviate.  And, yet, for all the reasons pointed out above, once “occupation” becomes obsolete, the alternative is not legitimate Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, as the pro-settler advocates claim. Rather, it can only be replaced by terms like “colonialism” and “apartheid,” historical categories that describe systems of governance in which settlers and the majority population are governed by two legal systems, and in which only the former have citizenship and civil and political rights.  In the context of a “one-state reality,” the campaign against the applicability of the legal descriptor “occupation” is thus chilling indeed.

  One last, unpleasant canard must be mentioned here.  Pro-settler advocates contend that those who think all settlements must be evacuated are calling for the West Bank to be “judenrein,” thus associating opponents of settlements with Nazis.  This is wrong, indeed obscene, on so many grounds, and in so many ways, that another essay would be required to express them all.  Since my focus here is on international law, I limit myself to one point only.  The settlement project may not be honestly described as the effort by individual Jews to rent or purchase homes and whose rights to do so should be protected by something like anti-discrimination law.  The settlement project involves the collective movement of portions of the civilian population of a State into territory under military occupation by that State.  The project was initiated and remains directed by governmental and non-governmental leaders whose declared intention was, and is, to facilitate the eventual imposition of Israeli sovereignty over the territory in whole or in part.  The project was largely (though not exclusively) initiated, and remains largely led, by those guided by a nationalist-messianist ideology, which views the retention of the land by the State of Israel and/or the Jewish people to be mandated by divine will.  The project is maintained with the backing of the full might of the Israeli military and by massive governmental expenditure on housing and infrastructure.  In short:  the core legal issues do not concern housing discrimination or private property – and even less the moral evaluation of individual settlers.  If some settlers are violent and racist extremists, and many simply indifferent to the human reality of Palestinians as individuals and as a people, others are ordinary families drawn to the West Bank by governmental economic incentives, some are apolitical spiritual exemplars, and there are even a few, like the late Rabbi Menachem Froman, who are genuine peace-seekers.  The legal issues concern the actions of a State bound by international rules governing territory occupied during armed conflict, rules that prohibit moves toward the unilateral imposition of sovereignty on such territory and subordination of its population, of which the settlement project is the most flagrant form.

    [1] One should also note that subsequent writings by Blum, published after Oslo, suggest that he no longer maintains the relevance of the theory he advanced in 1968.

[2] Aeyal Gross, The Writing on the Wall: Rethinking the International Law of Occupation (Cambridge, 2017).

http://ift.tt/2ptQACD

[twaisanen211-blog]

Blog Prompt #8

In the book Palestine there are some pages where people are questioning why there are so many journalists and why the keep coming but not doing anything to help them. On pages 161-162 Palestinians are telling him about some of the torture that goes on and are asking why there are so many journalists. They ask why the U.N. resolutions are not being with held and how Americans care more about animals than them. I believe Sacco included this in the book because he wants to show you what they think and how life is like for them. On pages 242-243 the mother Sacco is talking to is asking him what good is it to talk to him? Sacco doesn’t know how to reply but says that the policies are unjust. The mother says she wants actions to get their land and humanity back, not just words. I believe Sacco included this into the book because he is showing how sometimes people are being interviewed by lots of people but nothing is being done. The people there don’t want to keep talking to reporters or journalists until something useful can actually be accomplished. The mother also shows Sacco the scar on her son’s head after he was hit on the head by an Israeli soldier. Sacco is seeing first hand how bad things are and makes him wish that he could do more to make a difference. Overall, I believe these two sections helped show what the people are dealing with and what they want.

[newsrustcom]

Trump’s Move Departs From U.N. Resolutions on Jerusalem

As Israel’s strongest ally at the United Nations, the United States often has used its veto power to block Security Council resolutions critical of Israel. But there have been exceptions, including for resolutions concerning the status of Jerusalem.

Here are some notable examples of resolutions that the United States supported or did not block with a veto:

Resolution 242, Nov. 22, 1967: Israel…

[nothingman]

TeleSur | – –

On Saturday Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet Pope Francis to inaugurate Palestine’s first embassy to the Holy See ahead of Paris peace talks.

On Saturday Palestine will open its first embassy in the Vatican, a diplomatically significant development in the midst of ongoing threats by President-elect Donald Trump to illegally move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and an international peace conference on Israel and Palestine which begins on Sunday in Paris.

Palestine’s ambassador to the Vatican, Issa Kassissieh, said the embassy was “a significant achievement for the Palestinian people,” adding that Argentine-born Pope Francis had made an important “moral, legal and political stand through recognizing the state of Palestine along the pre-1967 borders.”

Palestine has formal diplomatic missions to over 90 countries and has had official diplomatic relations with the Vatican since 2000.

Palestinian Authority President Abbas will also press the Pope about his concerns regarding U.S. threats to move their embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem, a move which would not only break international law but threaten to entirely scuttle Palestinian Authority hopes for a two-state settlement.

Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki said Abbas is “hoping that the Pope will participate in sending a strong message” to Trump about the dangers of the proposed move.

Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman- a Zionist extremist who has said Jewish supporters of Palestine are worse than Nazi concentration camp guards- has publicly said that the U.S. embassy will move to Jerusalem.

Saturday’s inauguration comes as over 70 countries gather in Paris on Sunday for the opening of the first major international peace talks on Israel-Palestine since 2014, when U.S. sponsored negotiations ended in the face of the Israeli government’s continued construction of illegal settlements.

Abbas told a French paper earlier this week that the Paris talks “may be the last chance for implementing” the two-state solution mapped out in 1967 U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 and the 1993 Olso accords.

The Paris talks begin just weeks after a historic U.N. Security Council vote which unanimously condemned Israel’s flagrant violation of international law in ongoing settlement construction on Palestinian territory.

Despite official hopes that the talks might revive the two-state solution- which would see a contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital alongside Israel’s 1967 borders- many Palestinians have declared it long dead, given Israel’s continual refusal to abide by international law and multiple previous peace deals.

Via TeleSur

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Euronews: ” New Palestinian embassy opened in the Vatican”

via Informed Comment

[jacobsvoice]

Does Sovereignty Matter?

At the moment, the inflammatory issue of the extension of Israeli sovereignty over settlements in Biblical Judea and Samaria is on hold. With both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu engaged in struggles over their political futures they have little time for distractions. But this may be a good time to assess the widely touted importance of sovereignty.

The underlying issue is the right of Jews to inhabit their Biblical homeland. Undeniably, it is for the government of Israel, not settlers, to determine the boundaries of the Jewish state. But there is a competing claim: Jews cannot be considered “occupiers” of their own homeland. Their historical and religious claims are underscored by international agreements stretching back to the Balfour Declaration (1917), calling for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

The boundaries of “Palestine” were defined following World War I. The League of Nations Mandate granted Jews the right of “close settlement” throughout “Palestine,” geographically defined as the land east and west of the Jordan River. But Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill gifted the land east of the river to Hashemite Sheik Abdullah, who established the Kingdom of Jordan.

After the Six-Day War in 1967 U.N. Resolution 242 provided that following “a just and lasting peace” between Israel and its Arab neighbors Israel would be required to withdraw its military forces from “territories” – not from “the territories” or “all the territories” west of the Jordan River. The right of the Jewish people to “close settlement” west of the River (including Biblical Judea and Samaria) has never been rescinded. But the core question – how much of their Biblical homeland will be theirs - remains unanswered.

A decade ago Israeli historian Gadi Taub authored The Settlers, a brief but challenging analysis of “the struggle over the meaning of Zionism.” It is outdated in some respects: no longer are rabbis the undisputed leaders of the settlement movement (despised by Taub), which has transitioned from its pioneering religious phase (with Rabbi Moshe Levinger in Hebron leading the way) to secular suburbia.

But the core issue remains. Do settlements undermine Palestinian statehood, or are Palestinians – who have rejected every offer of statehood – responsible for their own statelessness? Are settlements expressive of Jewish memory (and, for some settlers, religious passion), or have they come to satisfy the yearning of Israelis for affordable housing with an easy commute to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – or both?

For the founding generation of post-Six Day War settlers there was no doubt that the return to Hebron, after the destruction of its centuries-old community during the Arab riots of 1929, and to Gush Etzion, which suffered a similar fate in the struggle for independence two decades later, was justifiable for Jewish historical and religious reasons. Hebron, burial site of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, where King David reigned before relocating his throne to Jerusalem, was a Jewish holy city rivaled only by Jerusalem. Gush Etzion was a 20th century, predominantly secular, Zionist settlement. But their Jewish communities were linked by fidelity to the Biblical mandate to settle the Land of Israel.

When Prime Minister Menachem Begin was asked by The New York Times, which long opposed Jewish statehood anywhere lest it compromise the loyalty of American Jews (including Times publishers) to the United States, whether he intended to annex the West Bank, he sharply responded: “You annex foreign territories, not your own country.”

Settlements are now home to 450,000 Israelis and continued demographic growth is likely. Taub’s conviction that settlement “is the issue over which Israel’s moral foundations and its identity ... are contested,” and his insistence that settlements mark the negation of Zionism, have lost any claim to reality. His hostility to post-1967 “Zionism of Land” ignores history. Zionism without land would be nothing more than a fantasy. The return of Jews to Judea and Samaria is no less legitimate than their residence in Tel Aviv.

If, in the end, Zionism of Land is flawed, as Taub believes, there is no justification for a Jewish state, which – like any state - requires land for survival. If settlements are “the issue over which Israel’s moral foundations and its identity . . .  are contested,” as Taub claims, those foundations and identity are strengthened by continued settlement growth.

Palestinians certainly should have their national home in Palestine – east of the Jordan River. (When Taub’s book was published in 2010 nearly half of Jordan’s population was Palestinian.) Under the current Trump sovereignty plan, increasingly unlikely to be implemented given his fading prospect for re-election, Palestinians living west of the Jordan River would remain in place (as citizens of Jordan if its government was willing) while Israeli sovereignty would extend to Jewish settlements. The extension of sovereignty is nothing more than the recognition of reality.

It is highly unlikely that Israel – whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu remains Prime Minister – would relinquish its claim to Judea and Samaria. There are too many Jewish residents, too deeply embedded, for any possibility of their removal. Israel’s unyielding attachment to its ancient Jewish homeland is the affirmation, not the negation, of Zionism.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Print to Fit, The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896-2016, chosen for Mosaic by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer as a Best Book for 2019.

[oyiabrown]

US House passes motion repudiating UN resolution on Israel

US House passes motion repudiating UN resolution on Israel

WASHINGTON — The US House of Representatives passed a scathing rebuke Thursday night to a United Nations Security Council resolution the Obama administration allowed through last month that condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. House Resolution 11 declared the UN motion a “one-sided” effort that is an obstacle to peace, placing disproportionate blame on Israel for the continuation of the…

[opedguy]

Palestinian Violence Erupts in East Jerusalem

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), May 9, 2021.--Rock-throwing Palestinian youth pelted Israeli police at Temple Mount housing Islam’s third holiest Sunni shrine, Al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinians protested Israeli plans to evict Palestinians in East Jerusalem over homes Israeli settlers claims for settlements in historic Samaria and Judea, lands mentioned in the Old Testament.  But whatever claims Israeli settlers, or more accurately, ultra-orthodox political parties, staking claims to what was known as Trans-Jordan, territory ceded to Jordan after the Nov. 1, 1922 end of the Ottoman Empire.  When allied nations signed the Treaty of Sevres Aug. 10, 1920, only two years after the end of WW I, Trans-Jordan was re-configured allowing Jordan to control the West Bank of the Jordan River, extending into East Jerusalem.  Jordan’s control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem lasted until the 1967 Six-Day-War, where Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem as buffer zones.

Palestinians were named by the late Yasser Arafat in 1964 when he formed the Palestine Liberation Organization, designed with only one intent to return Arab control of Trans-Jordan and the British Mandate of Palestine.  From the Treaty of Sevres, the U.K. took possession of Ottoman-controlled so called British Mandate of Palestine that included what’s known today as Israel.  British controlled post-Ottoman territory from 1920 to 1948, surrendering the territory to Zionists living in the region but fighting, in the wake of the Nazi WW II Holocaust, for a Jewish State.  Israel won its war of liberation against widespread Arab opposition in 1949.  After First Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared Israel a state May 14, 1948, Arabs battled Israel in the war of Independence until July 20, 1949.  For the next 25 years, Arabs collectively worked behind the scenes to destroy the Jewish state.

Arafat worked secretly with other Arab states, especially Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, since he formed the PLO May 28, 1964. Arafat coordinated the Six-Day-War, assured of victory by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt and chief of the Arab world’s most powerful military.  PLO, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon started the war June 5, 1967, ending June 10, 1967, with the destruction of Egypt’s military and five other Arab states.  Arafat continued to fight until his death Nov. 11, 2004, going along with U.S.-brokered peace deals but, in the end, still working to destroy Israel.  Without the Six-Day-War, Sunni Arabs living in the Holy Land would have kept Trans-Jordan [West Bank] or East Jerusalem in their control.  Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip wouldn’t be dealing with Israel settlements had the 1967 Six-Day-War not occurred.

All of Arafat’s peace proposals included allowing Sunni Arabs to return to the former British Mandate of Palestine, what’s known, without spoils of the 1967 War, as Israel proper.  Returning to land inside Israel was always a non-starter, believing Israel legitimately annexed territory in the 1967 War.  All subsequent U.N. proposals, including U.N. Resolution 242, offered Israel peace in exchange to returning to the pre-1967 borders.  That demand was always made by Arafat, refusing to compromise with Israel.  After the Six-Day-War, Israel administered Jordan’s Arab East Jerusalem, including Temple Mount with Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank, Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Syria’s Golan Heights.  Israel returned the Gaza Strip to Palestinians Sept. 22, 2005 but retained partial control of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, where periodic land disputes take place with Palestinians and Syria.

When former President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital Dec. 6, 2017, it causes riots for months on the Israeli border with Gaza.  While Israel signed peace treaties the United Arab Emirates [UAE] and Bahrain, many thought Saudi Arabia would follow.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Nov. 23, 2020, they were hopeful a formal peace treaty would follow.  “Saudi Arabia rejects Israel’s plans and measures to evict dozens of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and impose Israeli sovereignty over them,” said Saudi’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Saudi Arabia has maintained secret trading and diplomatic relations for years with Israel.  Israel’s Mossad Security Service provides intel to Bin Salman over radical Sunni elements like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State [IS] that threatens the Riyadh government.

No one in the Arab World takes Israel’s side publicly when it comes to Israel’s decisions on the Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights.  Gulf Arab states pay lip service to the Palestinian cause but don’t do anything to rock the boat with Israel.  Managing East Jerusalem including the Temple Mount hasn’t been easy for Israel since taking over the responsibility in 1967.  Palestinians lost control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank when six Arab state lost the 1967 Six-Day-War.  U.N. officials have condemned Israel for the last 50 years, demanding that Israel end its occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Arabs living in the Holy Land didn’t complain much for 600 years of Ottoman Turkey rule.  When the British took over in 1920 there were more complaints but nothing like Palestinian gripes under Israeli rule.  Israel needs to show more sensitivity,

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma. 

[israel-jewish-news]

U.N. General Assembly Votes on Yerushalayim Resolution

New Post has been published on http://hamodia.com/2017/12/21/general-assembly-yerushalayim-resolution/

U.N. General Assembly Votes on Yerushalayim Resolution

The United Nations headquarters in New York.

Rarely have the United States and Israel stood so starkly in confrontation with the majority of the 194 members of the United Nations General Assembly as it did on Thursday, as a vote approached on a resolution rejecting President Donald Trump’s recognition of Yerushalayim as Israel’s capital.

Yemen’s ambassador to the U.N. Feridun Sinirliolu introduced the resolution, saying:

“We express our regret that the U.S. president used his veto at the Security Council to reject the motion,” and warned that Washington’s policy “will fan the fires of extremism.”

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley warned from the podium that how nations vote will have consequences. “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very right of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.

“We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations,” she said. “And we will remember when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”

The vote, she added, “will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N. and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N., and this vote will be remembered.”

Diplomatic sources said that apart from the United States and Israel, several countries are expected to oppose the vote: Honduras, Guatemala, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Togo, Nauru and southern Sudan.

Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Rwanda, Paraguay, Panama, the Philippines, Tuvalu, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Georgia are expected to abstain.

Bahrain voiced a more pragmatic view ahead of the vote, saying that Tehran should be the U.N.’s focus, not Yerushalayim. Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa tweeted that “it’s not helpful to pick a fight with the U.S. over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of the Theo-Fascist Islamic Republic.”

The following text will be voted on after 34 countries who have requested to speak address the session:

The General Assembly,

Reaffirming its relevant resolutions, including resolution A/RES/72/15 of 30 November 2017 on Jerusalem,

Reaffirming the relevant resolutions of the Security Council, including resolutions 242 (1967), 252 (1968), 267 (1969), 298 (1971), 338 (1973), 446 (1979), 465 (1980), 476 (1980), 478 (1980), and 2334 (2016),

Guided by the purpose and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and reaffirming inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,

Bearing in mind the specific status of the Holy City of Jerusalem and, in particular, the need for the protection and preservation of the unique spiritual, religious and cultural dimensions of the City, as foreseen in the relevant United Nations resolutions,

Stressing that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant United Nations resolutions,

Expressing in this regard its deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem,

Affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard, calls upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem, pursuant to resolution 478 (1980) of the Security Council;

Demands that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions;

Reiterates its call for the reversal of the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution and for the intensification and acceleration of international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of the relevant United Nations resolutions, the Madrid terms of reference, including the principle of land for peace, the Arab Peace Initiative and the Quartet Roadmap and an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967;

Decides to adjourn the tenth emergency special session temporarily and to authorize the President of the General Assembly at its most recent session to resume its meeting upon request from Member States.

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What will Trump's declaration on Jerusalem mean to Palestinians?

http://bit.ly/2iGFWCo

When President Donald Trump on Dec. 5 recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he not only effectively endorsed Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which Palestinians have also long claimed as their own – he also radically altered the direction of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Since 1993, successive American administrations have insisted that direct, U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and Palestine could end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their aim: a “two-state solution,” in which a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem exists harmoniously alongside Israel.

This was always a bit far-fetched. Now, because Trump has taken Jerusalem – one of the central tenets of the two-state solution – off the table, it’s basically impossible.

Yet while the decision has been globally condemned and protested in Palestine, it may just allow for more just and creative visions for peace to take hold in the future. As an American scholar of Palestinian descent who has written a book on Palestinian history and the Israel-Palestine conflict, I take the longer view here.

To be sure, Israel will likely use Trump’s announcement to consolidate its hold on East Jerusalem, leading to further marginalization and discrimination against Palestinians there. And violence may well increase in the short term. But as the U.S. and the international community realize that the era of the two-state plan is over, other solutions may start to take shape.

Jerusalem and the two-state solution

To understand why Jerusalem is so divisive, it’s important to understand the city’s meaning in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel captured much of historic Palestine, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It also occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem, whose old city houses holy sites like the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Aqsa Mosque. These places are sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

Shortly thereafter, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw from “from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

The international consensus is that this decision applies to virtually all of these occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. Israel, however, contends the U.N. resolution requires only a partial withdrawal – and only in the context of a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians.

In the 50 years since the Six Day War, Israel has been consolidating its hold on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, building Jewish settlements on the land it seized. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset unilaterally declared all of Jerusalem – including East Jerusalem and several nearby Palestinian towns – as the capital of Israel.

To try to make this declaration a reality, Israel has moved an estimated 208,000 Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem over the past 50 years, in violation of international law. It has also been quietly removing Palestinian residents from East Jerusalem. Since 1967, the residency permits of nearly 15,000 Palestinians living in the city have been revoked.

Palestinians still living under Israeli occupation also suffer regular human rights violations. As documented by Amnesty International and other international organizations, Palestinians are detained without trial, denied access to water, deprived of adequate schooling and displaced through home demolitions.

Palestinians in Jerusalem also complain that they are cut off from friends and family in the West Bank by a wall that snakes deep into the occupied territories, isolating Jerusalem in the process.

Israelis, for their part, insist that the separation wall exists for security reasons. They point to a string of suicide bombings carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups inside Israel from 1994 to 2005. These bombings dropped dramatically once the wall was built.

Many in Israel’s current right-wing government also reject the notion that what they’re doing is even occupation. Recently, when the BBC asked Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely about Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights, she replied, “I deny the idea of occupation. This is Judea and Samaria.” In calling the West Bank by its biblical name, Hotovely was rhetorically erasing any Palestinian claims to that land.

The same is true for East Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that “united Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital,” eliminating Palestine from the equation.

But the status of East Jerusalem under international law hasn’t changed: For the U.N. and its member countries, the city is still illegally occupied. That’s why not a single country has recognized Israel’s claim or moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – until Trump announced the U.S.‘s intention to do so this week.

Two-state solution no more

Ample research suggests that the power differential between a militarily strong Israeli state and the stateless Palestinian people gave Israel very little incentive to recognize a Palestinian claims to begin with.

The rightward political and social shift in Israel likewise diminishes the chances that an Israeli government would be willing or able to acknowledge any Palestinian rights to the contested lands.

Given this imbalance, many Palestinians have long seen a two-state solution as a nonstarter.

Still, American analysts and politicians – including, most recently, former Secretary of State John Kerry – have clung to the idea. To broker this elusive deal, successive American mediators have pressured Palestinians to give up ever more territory.

Aaron David Miller, an American negotiator who worked with multiple U.S. administrations on the Arab-Israeli conflict, has even described America as “Israel’s lawyer” in peace talks.

For me, then, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is simply the acknowledgment of this fact.OR 'reality?’ The president has now stated publicly what previous U.S. administrations – both Democrat and Republican – have been reluctant to admit: that the U.S. is unwilling to pressure an ally like Israel hard enough to achieve peace.

Rather than insist, as his predecessors have done, that a two-state peace deal is just around the corner, Trump has essentially pronounced its death. That is a relief for Israel and a blow to Palestinians – if not a terribly surprising one.

Now that the two-state solution is over, perhaps the region can start looking at alternative visions for a genuine peace that actually represents the rights and claims of all people living on this land.

Maha Nassar is a 2017-2018 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project.

[oyiabrown]

An indulgent, damaging MidEast "peace" conference

An indulgent, damaging MidEast “peace” conference

It’s deja vu all over again. Another peace conference is being held in Paris (starting January 15, 2016) to stress and reaffirm international support for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It will be attended by foreign ministers of 70 countries but not by an Israeli or Palestinian representative. French President Francois Hollande had already on June 3, 2016 hosted a…