Oops: U.N. aid money went to Somali jihadists/West Bank Settlements Are Legal Under International Law/other news
(Below is a list of some newsletters that you can copy and paste into your browser if you care to see more, of today's news. I will be adding more websites to the newsletter list, as time permits MBS)
jihadwatch.org
Middle East Forum Alert
Daniel Pipes will appear twice on Fox News:
1. "The Mike Huckabee Show" sometime after 8 p.m. EST today, Saturday, Feb. 5, to discuss the leading Islamist organization in Egypt, the Muslim Brethren.
2, "Fox and Friends," 8::45 a.m. EST Sunday, Feb. 6, to discuss the prospects in Egypt.
You can see Mr. Pipes's writings on Egypt at
Friends
last week Walid reached about 20 million people and countless radio interviews
We have included three of them on this link.
Please share this link and encourage people to educate themselves by listening
to these interviews as well as exploring fully much of the media and articles on
our web site.
http://www.shoebat.com/audio/3syndicated2.php
On the Rusty Humphries interview at the moment we have the full show up and
Walid is on the last section around 85% into the broadcast. However Rusty is
worth listening too, he really gets it with regard to the issues.
Please also set your DVRs for the 700 club on Monday Feb 14th when Walid will
interview with Pat Robertson.
Keith Davies
Executive Director Walid Shoebat Foundation
http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/
If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page. Khaled Abu Toameh Hudson New York 04 February '11 Posted before Shabbat http://www.hudson-ny.org/1863/arab-world-political-establishment There are growing signs that radical Islamic groups are trying to hijack the pro-democracy uprising that is currently sweeping the Arab world. In Tunisia and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is already trying to exploit the popular uprisings to score political gains. If the pro-democracy, anti-government movements in these countries fail to distance themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt and Tunisia could easily fall into the hands of Iran's proxies. The fundamentalist Muslims in the two countries have until now kept a low profile, staying out of the spotlight as much as possible. But this does not mean that the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies are not working behind the scenes to help bring down secular Arab regimes. Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has said that uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt are the result of "the Islamic awakening" in Middle East countries, and a growing number of political analysts in the Arab world seem to share the same opinion. They point out that while the Islamists did not played a major role in bringing down the regime of President Zine al-Abideen Bin Ali -- with the exception of Al-Jazeera --- they are nonetheless poised to become part of the new political establishment in Tunisia. Thousands of Tunisians turned out to welcome Rashid Ghannouchi, the exiled leader of Ennahda – the country's Muslim Brotherhood equivalent. Hamas's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, was one of the first leaders to phone Ghannouchi to congratulate him on his return home. The phone call is seen in the context of Hamas's efforts to win political allies in the Arab world. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has given emerging opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei political backing in his decision not to meet newly-appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman. This means that although the Islamists have kept a low profile in the street demonstrations, they are deeply involved in the key political decisions that will determine the outcome of this popular uprising. The decision not to meet with Suleiman and negotiate an orderly transfer of power is a vote for the further radicalization of the current crisis. The well-meaning pro-democracy protesters in Cairo, Tunis, Amman and other Arab capitals have set in motion a process of political change, but the Islamist extremists hiding in the shadows are just biding their time, waiting for the moment when they can turn these developments to their own, more sinister, advantage. The US Administration would do well to send a forceful message to the Facebook and Twitter agitators throughout the Arab world to keep their revolution clean from Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hizbullah -- all of whom who are poised to create a new fundamentalist Middle East.  |
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Dr. Aaron Lerner IMRA Weekly Commentary 03 February '11 Is President Obama another Yeshayahu Leibowitz? Here's the story: Years ago I attended a local panel discussion in Raanana on the prospects for peace in the Middle East. The late Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz was one of the speakers. In the course of the discussion I cited the long history of conflict in our region, much of which has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, and asked Leibowitz what he thought the long-term prospects were for peace in the Middle East. Leibowitz replied that it was clear that peace, any peace, would not last forever, and that the most one could expect was peace for a few years, possibly decades. He added, though, that Israel must make every sacrifice and take every risk in order to get a state of peace, no matter how fleeting. No matter how fleeting. Is that President Obama's view about bringing democracy to Egypt? If it is then the warnings that Egypt's first democratic elections could very well be its last as the "Hamir al Thawra" , "the donkeys of the revolution", are cast aside and a radical Islamic regime takes control of Egypt may not be relevant to Mr. Obama. At this stage, with the Obama administration pushing for a quick resignation it isn't clear that the American goal is even to bring democracy. Instead of nation building we have pyromania. It could have been different. Mr. Obama could have dictated a "roadmap for the democratization of Egypt" with a timeline for various elements of legislation, freedom of the press and other elements that are the lifeblood of democracy in the fervent hope that this would not only facilitate free and open democratic elections but also insure that after a moment in the sunlight of democracy that Egypt isn't plunged into the darkness of a suppressive radical Islamic regime. The timeline could have required some headline making immediate steps so that Mubarak's opponents could claim success. Instead Washington only spoke vaguely, leaving the impression that the immediate departure of Mubarak may be more important at this stage to the White House than the orderly transformation of Egypt to the democratic state that Mr. Obama claims it can become.  |
Love of the Land 04 February '11 Yisrael Medad ( My Right Word) recently visited the BBC4's site for Editor Lindsey Hilsum's review of " The Promise". The comments that Yisrael left there unfortunately, seemed to not find favor and are nowhere to be found. What did he have to say? In writing "When the Jewish state was created, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee...", Ms. Hilsum is displaying not only ignorance but insidious and wilful distortion. Her sentence should have been composed so: "Upon the UN decision to seek territorial compromise by partitioning the Mandate, the Arabs refused to accept that recommendation, while the Jewish side did. The Arabs, first locally and then on May 15, 1948 from other Arab countries, engaged in an aggressive war of extinction, as they declared. Their attempts at ethnic cleansing failed and in the end, they themselves either left their towns and villages voluntarily, hoping to return after a surmised Arab victory, or in losing battles, were necessitated, as every other losing side, to re-adapt their living conditions.
Moreover, in writing "For Jews, it was the promised land. For Palestinians, it was the 'nakba' - the catastrophe" only highlights a basic problem: was this a "national homeland" for the local Arabs? Why did they not even have an Arabic name for their country but needed a Roman name? Why was it not even a recognizable administrative unit within the Ottoman Empire but rather three (or more at times)? Why does Ms. Hilsom not remind us that in 1922, the eastern section of "Palestine" was lopped off the Mandate territory for a Jewish national home and awarded to a Saudi Arabian, Abdullah the Hashemite? Good points, yes?   |
Sarah Honing Another Tack 03 February '11 http://www.sarahhonig.com/?p=782 Some spins can positively perplex. The same Al Jazeera revelations which threw the cardboard regime of PA figurehead Mahmoud Abbas into a total tizzy, instilled boundless joy in the hearts of Israel's indomitable Left. Leaks attributing to Abbas a hypothetical inclination to perhaps consider a morsel of a crumb of compromise have served to seriously undermine Ramallah's Fatah honchos on their own turf, paint them as traitors to the cause of eliminating Israel and elicit from them a panicky flurry of vehement denials. This, in the eyes of our diehard proponents of an accord with the same said Abbas, is a highly encouraging development. This, aver they, proves yet again that Abbas is a promising and reliable interlocutor, that he is an earnest, well-intentioned peace partner, willing to relinquish scraps of territory to intransigent Israel. We could interject at this point and note that Abbas can hardly be said to be ceding what he doesn't possess and that it's Israel which possesses what Abbas is so ecstatically extolled for magnanimously "giving up," should Israel acquiesce to mass suicide. But we won't pettily harp on fundamentals. Instead, let's follow the Abbas fan club's circuitous calculations to their logical end. As a prelude, we need be mindful that the ever-optimistic peaceniks in our camp brag incessantly about their IQ. Supposedly smarter than the average commoner who persists in pointing out pesky downsides, our self-appointed problem-solvers adroitly sweep bothersome incidentals out of the way and boil down our existential challenges to easy-as- pie arithmetic. They can put two and two together like nobody's business and after obligatory brow-wrinkling, figure out the following: 2 + 2 = 2 + 6/3 = (5 – 3) + √36/4 – 1 = 10/2 – (5 – 2) + √36/4 – 1 = 2 + 2 Translated to our tangible predicaments, it works out something like this: The deal Abbas was maybe mulling over was impossible for Israel as well as undoable for Abbas, ergo what Israel cannot remotely afford isn't enough for Abbas, which means that Israel must grab what Abbas seemed to offer, but considering that he couldn't quite offer what he seemed to offer, Israel should pay Abbas more so he'd look good to his in-house detractors, who then wouldn't snap his head off for offering too much, because he'd appear to be gaining so much more, while Israel could pretend to receive the proceeds of Abbas's ostensible generosity, which would impress foreign kibitzers and be touted as an unprecedented breakthrough to numbed Israeli plebeians, while not making Abbas's reduced pseudo-generosity seem over-generous to Arabs, although select hyper-intelligent leftwing Israelis would know that it betokens Abbas's greater goodwill, which regrettably cannot be delivered because Abbas cannot sway his population even if said deal constitutes an out-of-the-question impossibility for Israel, because even that doesn't begin to be enough for Abbas… Thus, many tortuous convolutions later, we're right back where we started: 2+2 = 2+2. THE SEARCH for creative solutions would inescapably land us back on that precarious June 4, 1967 square one. Jerusalem would revert to its divided, dangerous and dead-end condition of yore. Our holiest sites would become inaccessible. We'd be beamed back to when Kfar Saba and Petah Tikva were unsafe border towns. We'd nostalgically recall the Six Day War when all that hit Kikar Masaryk in the heart of Tel Aviv were shells from a Jordanian World War II-vintage Long Tom cannon. Contemporary improved projectiles obviously include ballistic missiles. But aside from bloodcurdling firepower upgrades, the bottom line stays identical, proving essentially that 2+2 indeed equals 2+2. To get our mediocre heads around all the above we'd have to rise to the peacenik moral-high ground, whose atmosphere of rarefied sophistication reputedly highlights subtle differentiations. By bedecking with the banner of peace all territorial giveaways which facilitate our ultimate extinction, we'd derive much cerebral satisfaction from our sacrifices. This is the compelling calculation which guided the superior intellects who lured us to Oslo, Camp David, Taba, Annapolis and other venues of equally useless mediation. Their assumption throughout was that our purported peace partners and the international community would be wowed by the greatest folly ever squeezed from any sovereign state and would bestow upon us an exemplary conduct commendation. It's here, though, that the sums don't quite add up. Nevertheless, our indefatigable mathematicians can be counted upon not to own up to any slipups. The last thing they'd admit is that their equation lacks the unabated Arab-hatred factor. Assiduously refusing to recognize it, they couldn't concede that Abbas, like Yasser Arafat before him, might not relish going down in history as the one who agreed to formally end hostilities while the Jewish state still tauntingly exists. That, of course, is why even Ehud Olmert's egregiously outlandish offer was a nonstarter for Abbas. All negotiations are pretty much bound to flop. Abbas cannot pull his own public toward accommodation. It's not a matter of conciliatory forces overcoming fanatics. Since 1920, the Arab street is consistently controlled by an inexorable self-destruct mechanism coercing it to follow the most extreme available option. Perceived moderates are cravenly defensive and are neutralized to no small measure by their own machinations. They themselves fan the flames of zealotry. Rather than dispute radical narratives, they echo them as means to winning popularity. It all boils down to a contest between run-of-the-mill hard-liners and even more unyielding hard-liners. No truly painful concessions are even remotely contemplated in Ramallah. No body of opinion dares depart from entrenched revilement of the "Zionist entity." All libel and demonize Israel. To the extent that variant views exist, they are only cosmetic and superficial. The debate is make-believe, not about substance but about which anti-Israel tactics are preferable. Entirely missing from the Palestinian scene is a peace camp, one which need not embrace Israel – as some Israelis do the Palestinians – but a party which thoroughly reevaluates the regression, damage and suffering that Palestinian-instigated violence had over the generations inflicted upon Palestinian society itself. Such sobering reassessment is primarily the Palestinian interest – for their own sake and not for the love of us. Sadly, however, it appears that the taboo on sincere reconciliation with Israel – as a Jewish state with a moral right to continue existing in this region – is too powerful for any aspiring Palestinian politician to break. Not a word is heard across the Green Line about genuine unequivocal acceptance of Israel. At most there is reluctant readiness for a limited truce as long as Israel basically capitulates to every last Arab precondition. By omitting this from their computations, dovish number-jugglers do worse than go in circles. They falsify the results. In effect, they tell us that 2+2=22. We can only hope that regular folks won't be befuddled by too many square roots, fractions and figures which whirl on the fantastical peace merry-go-round. You don't need to be genius to work out that 2+2 = 2+2 and that 2+2 isn't 22. Our straightforward common sense leads us to extend two fingers from one hand, next to two from the other and then we count a total of – golly gee – four!  |
P. David Hornik frontpagemag.com 03 February '11 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/03/short-lived-unity-in-israel-2/ Earlier this week Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly allowed about 800 Egyptian troops to deploy around Sharm el-Sheikh at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Some reports said Bedouin in the area—as part of the unrest now roiling Egypt—were challenging the Egyptian authorities there and needed to be quelled. The demilitarization of Sinai—from which Egypt attacked Israel in the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars—is a central plank of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. It was maintained for three decades—until now. That is not to say Sinai's demilitarization has made life easy for Israel. Particularly since the latter's disengagement from Gaza in 2005, Sinai has been a smuggling route where missiles and other weaponry originating in Iran make their way to Hamas in Gaza. More recently it has also been a route where illegal African migrants—smuggled, like the weapons, by gangs of Sinai Bedouin—make their way into Israel, creating serious social and crime problems in some of its cities. Still, to most Israelis these have seemed prices worth paying in return for the Israeli-Egyptian peace—or lack of military hostilities—that has prevailed since the peace treaty was signed. This week's remilitarization of Sinai—even if at a small, symbolic level, and done to help the Mubarak regime preserve control at a moment of crisis—rouses specters for Israelis already rattled by fears of that regime's dissolution. Indeed, Aluf Benn, an Israeli columnist who drew some attention this week for calling Barack Obama "the president who lost Egypt," sees the remilitarization as irreversible: The Egyptians view the restrictions to their sovereignty in Sinai that were established in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty as a painful blow to their national pride. Now they have taken advantage of the situation and redeployed their army in the demilitarized peninsula. No future government in Cairo will return this force to the other side of Suez. That is not to say Benn is critical of Netanyahu's move: whereas "the ideologue in [him]," he claims, "would certainly have advocated holding steadfast to the letter of the treaty…Netanyahu the statesman opted to sideline the demilitarization arrangements, fearing what would happen if angry masses took over the Straits of Tiran and were in a position to threaten Israel's freedom of navigation to [its southern port of] Eilat." From that point, though, Benn—a left-of-center columnist whose earlier criticism of Obama seemed notable for reflecting Israeli unity on the Egyptian crisis—does manage to mount a curious challenge to Netanyahu. For if the latter's "predictions come true," he writes, "and Egypt becomes a new Iran…should [Israel] go back to the strategic situation that prevailed before the peace agreement? Should it prepare for confrontation on all fronts…? Or should it make peace in the east and the north and concentrate its force against a new enemy in the south?" By "the east and the north" Benn means, of course, the West Bank Palestinians and Syria respectively. In other words, for him, the right response to the crumbling of one "peace" would be—to "make" two more. Despite the facts that: decades of attempts at forging Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian peace have led nowhere at best and to severe terrorism in Israel at worst; and the present situation in Egypt reveals the fragility of any such "peace" in a fundamentally unstable Middle East. Benn insists, though, that peace treaties are not an expression of leftist messianism, as argued by the right wing. Diplomacy is an alternative to force…. If an Islamic republic takes hold in Egypt, Netanyahu will face a reverse situation and will be forced to decide whether to withdraw from the West Bank and the Golan Heights in an effort to stabilize the eastern front and concentrate a deterrent force on the southern front. It makes perfect arithmetical sense, at least: if you find yourself facing three enemies, why not "stabilize" two of them and have only one? Except that Benn thereby ignores all the painful lessons Israelis have learned about the depth and intransigence of Arab-Muslim rejection and hatred—not to mention the radical strategic precariousness of giving up the West Bank and the Golan; and puts the onus on Netanyahu—that is, on Israel—to make friends, as if the Palestinians and Syria exist only to be courted by Israel and will wilt as soon as it makes a move. And so the Israeli "right-left" divide endures.  |
| David Suissa Suissa's Olam 02 February '11 http://suissablog.blogspot.com/2011/02/israel-never-looked-so-good.html My column this week in the Huffington Post and the Jewish Journal:
They all warned us. The geniuses at Peace Now. The brilliant diplomats. The think tanks. Even the Arab dictators warned us. For decades now, they have been warning us that if you want "peace in the Middle East," just fix the Palestinian problem. A recent variation on this theme has been: Just get the Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to "freeze" their construction, and then, finally, Palestinian leaders might come to the table and peace might break out. And what would happen if peace would break out between Jews and Palestinians? Would all those furious Arabs now demonstrating on the streets of Cairo and across the Middle East feel any better? Would they feel less oppressed? What bloody nonsense. Has there ever been a greater abuse of the English language in international diplomacy than calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the "Middle East peace process?" As if there were only two countries in the Middle East. Even if you absolutely believe in the imperative of creating a Palestinian state, you can't tell me that the single-minded and global obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the enormous ills in the rest of the Middle East hasn't been idiotic, if not criminally negligent. While tens of millions of Arabs have been suffering for decades from brutal oppression, while gays have been tortured and writers jailed and women humiliated and dissidents killed, the world -- yes, the world -- has obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As if Palestinians -- the same coddled victims on whom the world has spent billions and who have rejected one peace offer after another -- were the only victims in the Middle East. As if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has anything to do with the 1,000-year-old bloody conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or the desire of brutal Arab dictators to stay in power, or the desire of Islamist radicals to bring back the Caliphate, or the economic despair of millions, or simply the absence of free speech or basic human rights throughout the Arab world. While self-righteous Israel bashers have scrutinized every flaw in Israel's democracy -- some waxing hysterical that the Jewish democratic experiment in the world's nastiest neighborhood has turned into an embarrassment -- they kept their big mouths shut about the oppression of millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East. They cried foul if Israeli Arabs -- who have infinitely more rights and freedoms than any Arabs in the Middle East -- had their rights compromised in any way. But if a poet was jailed in Jordan or a gay man was tortured in Egypt or a woman was stoned in Syria, all we heard was screaming silence. Think of the ridiculous amount of media ink and diplomatic attention that has been poured onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict over the years, while much of the Arab world was suffering and smoldering, and tell me this is not criminal negligence. Do you ever recall seeing a U.N. resolution or an international conference in support of Middle Eastern Arabs not named Palestinians? Of course, now that the Arab volcano has finally erupted, all those chronic Israel bashers have suddenly discovered a new cause: Freedom for the poor oppressed Arabs of the Middle East! Imagine if those Israel bashers, during all the years they put Israel under their critical and hypocritical microscope, had taken Israel's imperfect democratic experiment and said to the Arab world: Why don't you try to emulate the Jews? Why don't you give equal rights to your women and gays, just like Israel does? Why don't you give your people the same freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to vote that Israel gives its people? And offer them the economic opportunities they would get in Israel? Why don't you treat your Jewish citizens the same way Israel treats its Arab citizens? Why don't you study how Israel has struggled to balance religion with democracy -- a very difficult but not insurmountable task? Why don't you teach your people that Jews are not the sons of dogs, but a noble, ancient people with a 3,000-year connection to the land of Israel? Yes, imagine if Israel bashers had spent a fraction of their energy fighting the lies of Arab dictators and defending the rights of millions of oppressed Arabs. Imagine if President Obama had taken 1 percent of the time he has harped on Jewish settlements to defend the democratic rights of Egyptian Arabs -- which he is suddenly doing now that the volcano has erupted. Maybe it's just easier to beat up on a free and open society like Israel. Well, now that the cesspool of human oppression in the Arab world has been opened for all to see, how bad is Israel's democracy looking? Don't you wish the Arab world had a modicum of Israel's civil society? And that it was as stable and reliable and free and open as Israel? You can preach to me all you want about the great Jewish tradition of self-criticism -- which I believe in -- but right now, when I see poor Arab souls being killed for protesting on the street, and the looming threat that one Egyptian Pharaoh may be replaced by an even more oppressive one, I've never felt more proud of being a supporter of the Jewish state.  |
Commentary/ Contentions 03 February '11 http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/evelyn-gordon/388684 Amnon Rubinstein, a former Knesset member and minister from Israel's left-wing Meretz Party, made an important point in today's Jerusalem Post. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt took the West by surprise, he wrote, because Westerners know almost nothing about what goes on in undemocratic societies. And this ignorance stems largely from the fact that the bodies it relies on to provide information — the media and nongovernmental organizations — devote most of their energy to the low-hanging fruit, exposing real or imagined failings by democracies, instead of focusing on dictatorships, where getting information is much harder. The openly pro-Palestinian reporter Amira Hass provided an excellent example in Monday's Haaretz. At a Ramallah store where everyone was watching Al Jazeera, an employee asked if she had caught what a Tunisian protester just said: that "the Palestinians' situation is better than that of the Tunisians, that they [the Palestinians] have food." I told him this was the same impression members of Egyptian solidarity delegations had upon visiting the Gaza Strip after Operation Cast Lead [Israel's 2009 war with Hamas]. They were amazed at the abundance of food, especially fruits and vegetables, they were able to find in Gaza. And I heard that not from the Israeli Civil Administration spokesmen but from Egyptians and Palestinians. But nobody would know this from media or NGO reports. Can anyone remember reading a news story about food shortages in Egypt or Tunisia in recent years? Yet hundreds of articles have been published about alleged humanitarian distress in Gaza, including many that claimed Israel's blockade was causing starvation. Indeed, the UN has run an annual humanitarian-aid appeal for the West Bank and Gaza since 2003; this year, it's seeking $567 million, making it the organization's fifth-largest "emergency campaign." Can anyone remember the last UN appeal for aid to Egypt or Tunisia? The same goes for NGOs. On Amnesty International's website, the "features" page has nothing about either Egypt or Tunisia. Yet Israel merits two condemnatory features (the only country so honored), including the top-billed story — which, naturally, alleges food shortages in Gaza due to Israel's blockade. Then there's the UN Human Rights Council — which, as Rubinstein noted, actually praised the human-rights situation in both Egypt and Tunisia, even as it issued 27 separate resolutions slamming Israel. Thus most Westerners were utterly clueless about the economic distress and oppression that fueled the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Indeed, based on the available information, the reasonable assumption would have been that Gaza, not Egypt or Tunisia, was the place most likely to explode. Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein decried his own organization in 2009 for betraying its "original mission to pry open closed societies" — to shed light precisely on those dark corners where information isn't easily available — in favor of a focus on open societies, especially Israel. That, as I've argued repeatedly, leaves the world's most oppressed people voiceless. But it turns out the obsessive media/NGO focus on Israel also has another price: depriving the West of the information it needs to make sound judgments and set wise policy. |
(And the "anti-Zionists" continue to bleat and bellow about the settlements which are completely legal, yet they NEVER mention justice for the 900,000 Jews thrown out of Arab lands. It kind of gives the idea that they only want justice for non-Jews, don't it? I will repost that info in the next few days. MBS)
http://www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=2896
West Bank Settlements Are Legal Under International Law By Ted Belman
The Independent just published an article which said Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal. The "Secret Memo" it referred to was the one written by Theodore Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's legal adviser at the time and today one of the world's leading international jurists.
The Independent shows its true colors by the title to the article which in no way can be construed as the conclusion of the Memo. Meron thought the settlements were contrary to the Geneva Convention. Evidently Meron still thinks he was right.
Last year, the New York Times published an article by leftist Gershon Gorenberg titled Israel's Tragedy Foretold. In castigating Israel for the settlements, he relied on the same memo.
In my response, The Real Tragedy in Israel, I noted,
"Mr. Meron's conclusion has been thoroughly discredited by legal scholars over the years and Mr. Gorenberg's thesis which rests upon it must suffer the same fate."
relying on the arguments of Professor Talia Einhorn, Adjunct Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University, and the late Eugene W. Rostow, Dean of Yale Law School, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs between 1966 and 1969. and concluded,
"Thus the "occupation" was and is legal, having been authorized by the Security Council and the settlements are legal pursuant to the trust created by the British Mandate. In accordance with Israel's rights, The Oslo Accords did not restrict further settlement."
The Independent article concludes otherwise,
The argument that the settlements are illegal, stated in successive UN resolutions, and by the International Court of Justice advisory opinion condemning the separation barrier in 2004, is reinforced by such an authoritative source. It strengthens the political case in any "final status" negotiations on borders with the Palestinians for genuinely equitable land swaps of Israeli territory to a future Palestinian state if Israel is to retain settlement blocks.
Whether the settlements are legal or illegal is a matter of law for a court with Jurisdiction to decide. No such court exists. The ICJ is not seized of the matter now will it be. What the UN resolutions say can in no way determine what is or is not lawful. Its resolutions have no force of law. Nor does an advisory opinion of the ILC.
Finally it is still valid international law that land acquired in a defensive war may be kept by the victim of aggression. After the Second Lebanese War, the NY Sun published an article, Naked Aggression by Mr. Kontorovich (teaches international law as an assistant professor at George Mason University School of Law, and currently as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.)
Because self-defense is an "inherent right" under the U.N. Charter, many international law scholars maintain that territory taken in a defensive war can be kept — this further serves the goal of deterring aggression.
He also adds,
"Still, the norm against acquisition of territory through force is so strong that many claim it even applies to land taken in a defensive war."
They may claim what they want but look at reality. Borders are often changed as a result of war. A most recent example is the recent Balkan Wars which created many new countries or countries to be with changed borders.
To the credit of Mark Regev, the Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman, he said yesterday: "We do not accept that the West Bank is occupied in the classic sense." He added that it was not sovereign Jordanian territory before 1967 and it had not enjoyed legal status since the British mandate, which had the remit, underpinned by the League of Nations, of establishing a Jewish national home.
He is in effect saying the Palestine Mandate set aside all of Palestine including Judea and Samaria for "close settlement of the Jewish people" and the Geneva Convention can in way way interfere with such rights.
It is for these reasons that Israel considers the land "disputed land" rather than "occupied lands".
To Independent's credit it also noted
"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon secured a promise in 2004 from President George Bush that large Israeli "population centres" in the West Bank could remain in Israel in any such negotiations. In a subsequent letter to the Palestinians, the President promised that final borders had to be subject to agreement by negotiation."
Thus final borders will be determined by negotiations and not law or, failing agreement, by possession. Ted Belman also writes for Israpundit.com
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| Israeli Settlements and International Law | | | | |
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| Israeli Settlements and International Law
May 2001 The Historical Context Jewish settlement in West Bank and Gaza Strip territory has existed from time immemorial and was expressly recognised as legitimate in the Mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations, which provided for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Jewish people's ancient homeland. Indeed, Article 6 of the Mandate provided as follows: "The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands not required for public use". Some Jewish settlements, such as in Hebron, existed throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule, while settlements such as Neve Ya'acov, north of Jerusalem, the Gush Etzion bloc in Judea and Samaria, the communities north of the Dead Sea and Kfar Darom in the Gaza region, were established under British Mandatory administration prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. To be sure, many Israeli settlements have been established on sites which were home to Jewish communities in previous generations, in an expression of the Jewish people's deep historic and religious connection with the land. For more than a thousand years, the only administration which has prohibited Jewish settlement was the Jordanian occupation administration, which during the nineteen years of its rule (1948-1967) declared the sale of land to Jews a capital offense. The right of Jews to establish homes in these areas, and the legal titles to the land which had been acquired, could not be legally invalidated by the Jordanian or Egyptian occupation which resulted from their armed invasion of Israel in 1948, and such rights and titles remain valid to this day.
International Humanitarian Law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
International humanitarian law prohibits the forcible transfer of segments of the population of a state to the territory of another state which it has occupied as a result of the resort to armed force. This principle, which is reflected in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, was drafted immediately following the Second World War. As International Red Cross' authoritative commentary to the Convention confirms, the principle was intended to protect the local population from displacement, including endangering its separate existence as a race, as occurred with respect to the forced population transfers in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary before and during the war. This is clearly not the case with regard to the West Bank and Gaza. The attempt to present Israeli settlements as a violation of this principle is clearly untenable. As Professor Eugene Rostow, former Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs has written: "the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there" (AJIL, 1990, vol. 84, p.72). The provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding forced population transfer to occupied sovereign territory cannot be viewed as prohibiting the voluntary return of individuals to the towns and villages from which they, or their ancestors, had been ousted. Nor does it prohibit the movement of individuals to land which was not under the legitimate sovereignty of any state and which is not subject to private ownership. In this regard, Israeli settlements have been established only after an exhaustive investigation process, under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel, designed to ensure that no communities are established on private Arab land. It should be emphasised that the movement of individuals to the territory is entirely voluntary, while the settlements themselves are not intended to displace Arab inhabitants, nor do they do so in practice. Repeated charges regarding the illegality of Israeli settlements must therefore be regarded as politically motivated, without foundation in international law. Similarly, as Israeli settlements cannot be considered illegal, they cannot constitute a "grave violation" of the Geneva Convention, and hence any claim that they constitute a "war crime" is without any legal basis. Such political charges cannot justify in any way Palestinian acts of terrorism and violence against innocent Israelis. Politically, the West Bank and Gaza Strip is best regarded as territory over which there are competing claims which should be resolved in peace process negotiations. Israel has valid claims to title in this territory based not only on its historic and religious connection to the land, and its recognized security needs, but also on the fact that the territory was not under the sovereignty of any state and came under Israeli control in a war of self-defense, imposed upon Israel. At the same time, Israel recognizes that the Palestinians also entertain legitimate claims to the area. Indeed, the very fact that the parties have agreed to conduct negotiations on settlements indicated that they envisage a compromise on this issue.
Israeli-Palestinian Agreements
The agreements reached between Israel and the Palestinians contain no prohibition whatsoever on the building or expansion of settlements. On the contrary, it is specifically provided that the issue of settlements is reserved for permanent status negotiations, which are to take place in the concluding stage of the peace talks. Indeed, the parties expressly agreed that the Palestinian Authority has no jurisdiction or control over settlements or Israelis, pending the conclusion of a permanent status agreement. It has been charged that the prohibition on unilateral steps which alter the "status" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is contained in the Interim Agreement and in subsequent agreements between the parties, implies a ban on settlement activity. This position is disingenuous. The building of homes has no effect on the status of the area. The prohibition on unilateral measures was agreed upon in order to ensure that neither side take steps to change the legal status of this territory (such as by annexation or unilateral declaration of statehood), pending the outcome of permanent status negotiations. Were this prohibition to be applied to building, it would lead to the ridiculous interpretation that neither side is permitted to build homes to accommodate for the needs of their respective communities. It is important to note, that in the spirit of compromise and in an attempt to take constructive confidence building measures in the peace process, successive Israeli governments have expressly recognized the need for territorial compromise in West Bank and Gaza Strip territory and have voluntary adopted a freeze on the building of new settlements. In this regard, the present National Unity Government, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has officially declared that it will not build any new settlements, while remaining committed to the basic needs of the existing settlement communities (Government of Israel, Policy Guidelines, March 2001).
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http://zionism-israel.com/issues/are_settlements_legal.html
Are Israeli settlements legal?
| | Israeli settlements in the West Bank are legal both under international law and the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Claims to the contrary are mere attempts to distort the law for political purposes. Yet whatever the status of the settlements, their existence should never be used to justify terrorism.
The Palestinians often claim that settlement activity is illegal and call on Israel to dismantle every settlement. In effect, they are demanding that every Jew leave the West Bank, a form of ethnic cleansing. By contrast, within Israel, Arabs and Jews live side-by-side; indeed, Israeli Arabs, who account for approximately 20% of Israel's population, are citizens of Israel with equal rights.
The Palestinian call to remove all Jewish presence from the disputed territories is not only discriminatory and morally reprehensible; it has no basis either in law or in the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.
The various agreements reached between Israel and the Palestinians since 1993 contain no prohibitions on the building or expansion of settlements. On the contrary, they specifically provide that the issue of settlements is reserved for permanent status negotiations, which are to take place in the concluding stage of the peace talks. The parties expressly agreed that the Palestinian Authority has no jurisdiction or control over settlements or Israelis, pending the conclusion of a permanent status agreement.
It has been charged that the provision contained in the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement prohibiting unilateral steps that alter the status of the West Bank implies a ban on settlement activity. This position is disingenuous. The prohibition on unilateral measures was designed to ensure that neither side take steps that would change the legal status of this territory (such as by annexation or a unilateral declaration of statehood), pending the outcome of permanent status talks. The building of homes has no effect on the final permanent status of the area as a whole. Were this prohibition to be applied to building, it would lead to the unreasonable interpretation that neither side is permitted to build houses to accommodate the needs of their respective communities.
As the Israeli claim to these territories is legally valid, it is just as legitimate for Israelis to build their communities as it is for the Palestinians to build theirs. Yet in the spirit of compromise, successive Israeli governments have indicated their willingness to negotiate the issue and have adopted a voluntary freeze on the building of new settlements as a confidence-building measure.
Furthermore, Israel had established its settlements in the West Bank in accordance with international law. Attempts have been made to claim that the settlements violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbids a state from deporting or transferring "parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." However, this allegation has no validity in law as Israeli citizens were neither deported nor transferred to the territories.
Although Israel has voluntarily taken upon itself the obligation to uphold the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel maintains that the Convention (which deals with occupied territories) was not applicable to the disputed territory. As there had been no internationally recognized legal sovereign in either the West Bank or Gaza prior to the 1967 Six Day War, they cannot be considered to have become "occupied territory" when control passed into the hands of Israel.
Yet even if the Fourth Geneva Convention were to apply to the territories, Article 49 would not be relevant to the issue of Jewish settlements. The Convention was drafted immediately following the Second World War, against the background of the massive forced population transfers that occurred during that period. As the International Red Cross' authoritative commentary to the Convention confirms, Article 49 (entitled "Deportations, Transfers, Evacuations") was intended to prevent the forcible transfer of civilians, thereby protecting the local population from displacement. Israel has not forcibly transferred its citizens to the territory and the Convention does not place any prohibition on individuals voluntarily choosing their place of residence. Moreover, the settlements are not intended to displace Arab inhabitants, nor do they do so in practice. According to independent surveys, the built-up areas of the settlements (not including roads or unpopulated adjacent tracts) take up about 3% of the total territory of the West Bank.
Israel's use of land for settlements conforms to all rules and norms of international law. Privately owned lands are not requisitioned for the establishment of settlements. In addition, all settlement activity comes under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel (sitting as the High Court of Justice) and every aggrieved inhabitant of the territories, including Palestinian residents, can appeal directly to this Court
The Fourth Geneva Convention was certainly not intended to prevent individuals from living on their ancestral lands or on property that had been illegally taken from them. Many present-day Israeli settlements have been established on sites that were home to Jewish communities in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) in previous generations, in an expression of the Jewish people's deep historic and religious connection with the land. Many of the most ancient and holy Jewish sites, including the Cave of the Patriarchs (the burial site of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and Rachel's Tomb, are located in these areas. Jewish communities, such as in Hebron (where Jews lived until they were massacred in 1929), existed throughout the centuries. Other communities, such as the Gush Etzion bloc in Judea, were founded before 1948 under the internationally endorsed British Mandate.
The right of Jews to settle in all parts of the Land of Israel was first recognized by the international community in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. The purpose of the Mandate was to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in the Jewish people's ancient homeland. Indeed, Article 6 of the Mandate provided for "close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands not required for public use."
For more than a thousand years, the only time that Jewish settlement was prohibited in the West Bank was under the Jordanian occupation (1948-1967) that resulted from an armed invasion. During this period of Jordanian rule, which was not internationally recognized, Jordan eliminated the Jewish presence in the West Bank (as Egypt did in the Gaza Strip) and declared that the sale of land to Jews was a capital offense. It is untenable that this outrage could invalidate the right of Jews to establish homes in these areas, and accordingly, the legal titles to land that had already been acquired remain valid to this day.
In conclusion, the oft-repeated claim regarding the illegality' of Israeli settlements has no legal or factual basis under either international law or the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Such charges can only be regarded as politically motivated. Most importantly, any political claim - including the one regarding settlements - should never be used to justify terrorist attacks on innocent civilians.
These texts are taken from material published by the Israel Ministry of Foreign affairs. with additional comments and hyperlinked materials. They were apparently published in connection with the Annapolis peace conference of 2007, but they have extensive applicability beyond it. They explain fundamentals of Israeli policy as well as the meaning of Zionism and history of the conflict. |
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. ~Herm Albright~
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