Israeli Settlements

Jerusalem

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:37:00 +0000

In an article he wrote wrote for Midstream in 2000, The Land of Israel and Jerusalem in 1900, Elliot A. Green corrects some misconceptions:

Standing out among the truths commonly disregarded concerning the Land of Israel and Jerusalem one hundred years ago, and of special importance at this time of Arab-Israeli negotiations, are:

1-- at the end of the nineteenth century, there was no "Palestine" on the ground, only in Western historical memory and in occasional usage by Western diplomats, scholars and travelers;

2--The population was religiously, ethnically, and linguistically diverse, although Muslim Arabs were a majority in the country at the time, albeit the country was not then a defined territory;

3--Jews were a majority of the population of Jerusalem and had been so at least since 1870 -- or earlier according to some estimates;

4--Jews were a majority of the inhabitants of the Old City in 1900;

5--Jews lived both inside and outside the Old City walls, inhabiting quarters which were to be occupied by Transjordan (later Jordan) in 1948, and were thus to form part of what could be called "Arab East Jerusalem" between 1948 and 1967.

Muslim Arabs traditionally saw the country as simply an undifferentiated part of Bilad ash-Sham, usually translated as Syria or Greater Syria. This vast expanse included not only Israel, but the Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan of today, roughly speaking. The country that Jews have traditionally called the Land of Israel, and that Christians called the Holy Land -- was not ordinarily or traditionally seen as a separate or distinct land by Muslim Arabs or the Ottoman state.

Read the whole thing.

Unfortunately, some misconceptions do not die easily.

Palestinian Arabs Descended From Philistines? Canaanites? Few Of Them Are Even Related To The Original Arab Invaders!

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:14:00 +0000

One of the issues surrounding the topic of Israeli settlements is the persistent impression that there was a stable, strong community of Palestinian Arabs that awaited Jews who were fleeing the Holocaust.

Actually, there have been Jewish communities there from the time of the Roman conquest, and Jews have been immigrating to Israel for centuries.

Likewise, there has been no solid, thriving Palestinian Arab community--just waiting to be displaced by Zionist Jews--In a post a few days ago, Zionists Kicked Palestinian Arabs Out Of Palestine? Why Do You Think Arabs Came In The First Place?, I wrote about how the Arab Palestinian population is not a permanent fixture in Israel--rather in 1948 many of the Arabs were recent immigrants who came to then-Palestine to take advantage of the improvements made by Jewish immigrants.

Another accusation made against the Israeli settlements is an offshoot of the previous idea that Palestinian Arabs in fact have strong ties to the land--strong, in fact, than Jews--by virtue of the fact that they are descendants of the Biblical Philistines and Canaanites, and at the very least their roots go back to the Arab invaders of then-Palestine in the 7th century.

One of the sources I quoted in Zionists Kicked Palestinian Arabs Out Of Palestine? Why Do You Think Arabs Came In The First Place?, is "Whose Palestine?" by Erich and Rael Jean Isaac. In their article they also examines the roots of the Palestinian Arabs themselves. They address the claim that Palestinian Arabs have a long lineage going back to the Philistines or original Canaanites.

Not so, write Erich and Rael Jean Isaac:

The Gilmours expand upon the PLO chestnut that the Arabs of Palestine are the true "immemorial" inhabitants of the land. They write: "Their ancestors are the Canaanites and Philistines who, unlike the Jews, were never deported. They remained in Palestine . . . and their descendants formed, and still form, the core of the indigenous population." But not only are the Palestinian Arabs not descendants of Canaanites, it is highly doubtful that more than a very few are even descended from those who settled the country as part of the Arab invasion of the 7th century. For over a thousand years following the Arab conquest, Palestine underwent a series of devastating invasions, followed by massacres of the existing population: Seljuk Turks and Fatimid reconquerors were followed by Crusaders who were followed by waves of Mongol tribes who were followed in turn by Tartars, Mamelukes, Turks, and incessant Bedouin raiders.

In the course of the 18th and 19th centuries Palestine was essentially repopulated by foreigners, some coming from great distances. Egyptians arrived in a number of waves, with an especially large one from 1832 to 1840. Sudanese pioneered successfully in the swampy marshlands. Entire tribes of Bedouin from as far away as Libya settled on the coastal plain. Abandoned villages in the Galilee were resettled by Lebanese Christians. Coastal towns attracted Armenians, Syrians, Turks. The French expansion in North Africa resulted in waves of refugees coming to Palestine; many of the followers of the Algerian resistance leader Abd el Kader went to the Galilee, where they founded a number of villages (Samakh, Deishum). Russian expansion into the Caucasus led to the emigration of many of its Muslim peoples (Circassians and Georgians) who were welcomed by the Ottoman empire; many of these made their way to Palestine, where they founded their own villages. Similarly, the Austrian advance into the Balkans led to the emigration of Bosnian Muslims to Palestine. Turkomans from Russian Central Asia and Kurds complete this roster of "Canaanites." Ironically, the only surviving "Canaanite" culture is that of the Jews, who everywhere still pray, and in Israel also speak, in a Canaanite language. [emphasis added]

Israelis will go head-to-head with Palestinian Arabs on roots to the land anytime.

Zionists Kicked Palestinian Arabs Out Of Palestine? Why Do You Think Arabs Came In The First Place? (Updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:54:00 +0000

Originally posted April 20, 2010

In an article, In a nutshell: Why eastern Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria are Jewish, Arlene Kushner writes:

Claims by Palestinian Arabs that they were an indigenous people, on the land for many generations, is also a misrepresentation. There is solid documentation for the fact that a substantial part of this group, identified only as part of the Arab nation, migrated into Palestine in the years shortly before the founding of Israel.

One source of documentation is The Late Great State Of Israel: How Enemies Within and Without Threaten the Jewish Nation's Survival , by Aaron Klein.

Below is an excerpt from pages 116-117 in the section A Different Kind Of Refugee. The key point Klein makes is that the unusual definition of refugee applied solely to Palestinian Arabs discards the requirement of "habitual residence" to a mere 2 years. This is in recognition of the large influx of Arabs into then-Palestine because of the improved conditions created by Jewish immigrants.

Klein quotes Mitchell Bard, who writes about the large influx of Arabs into then-Palestine in the years prior to 1948:

The Jewish population increased by 470,000 between World War I and World War II, while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000.¹³ In fact, the permanent Arab population increased 120 percent between 1922 and 1947.¹⁴

This rapid growth was a result of several factors. One was immigration from neighboring states — constituting 37 percent of the total immigration to pre-state Israel — by Arabs who wanted to take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews had made possible.¹⁵ The Arab population also grew because of the improved living conditions created by the Jews as they drained malarial swamps and brought improved sanitation and health care to the region. Thus, for example, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 201 per thousand in 1925 to 94 per thousand in 1945 and life expectancy rose from 37 years in 1926 to 49 in 1943.¹⁶

The Arab population increased the most in cities where large Jewish populations had created new economic opportunities. From 1922-1947, the non-Jewish population increased 290 percent in Haifa, 131 percent in Jerusalem and 158 percent in Jaffa. The growth in Arab towns was more modest: 42 percent in Nablus, 78 percent in Jenin and 37 percent in Bethlehem.¹⁷

For an example, Elder of Ziyon posts images newspaper articles on the influx of Arabs during the 1930's100,000 illegal Arab immigrants from 1928-1931 and 25,000 from Syria in 1934.

In an article, 1948, Israel, and the Palestinians, Efraim Karsh notes:

the decisive Jewish contribution to Mandate Palestine’s socioeconomic well-being. The British authorities acknowledged as much in a 1937 report by a commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel:

The general beneficent effect of Jewish immigration on Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.

Fred M. Gottheil, in The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931, goes through the available statistics on Arab immigration.

In Whose Palestine?--appearing in Commentary Magazine in 1986--Erich and Rael Jean Isaac, who critique Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial, also assess the evidence in favor of the case she makes for Arab immigration into then-Palestine:

...there is overwhelming evidence, some of which (for example, in the studies of Fred Gottheil) she uses in her book, of extensive in-migration from the predominantly Arab to the Jewish-settled areas. Scholars, Porath included, do not dispute this (Porath disagrees on the reason for the migration). Such dispute as there is concerns the amount of illicit Arab immigration. The projections do not address this question, but rather confirm the disproportionate growth of areas of Jewish settlement compared with mainly or purely Arab areas within Western Palestine.

Arieh Avneri, in The Claim of Dispossession, published after Miss Peters's book, provides additional data in support of her thesis, with regard both to Arab in-migration and to Arab immigration. (It is noteworthy that Porath, who so vigorously disputes Miss Peters, is one of those thanked by Avneri for "valuable comments" on a manuscript that reaches the same conclusion as hers.) Avneri finds that between 1922 and 1947, in 35 regions of Western Palestine that became Israel, the Arab population increased by 134 percent. By contrast, in 13 regions where there was no Jewish settlement, the Arab population increased by only 98 percent. Avneri points out that even the 98-percent increase is deceptive, for it includes Arab Jerusalem whose population grew over a twenty-five-year period at a rate second only to that of Haifa (150 percent as compared with Haifa's 290 percent). Cities remote from Jewish development grew much more slowly: Nablus, 56 percent; Jenin, 78 percent; Hebron, 64 percent. (Gaza was an exception to these very low rates.)

The rural Arab population also grew in response to Jewish development. The growth was highest in the hinterland of Jaffa, which was the rural area of greatest Jewish concentration, but in the Haifa and Acre district Arab rural population also increased in response to the growing urban demand for vegetables and fruit. In contrast, the rural population in the districts of Jenin, Nablus, Hebron, and Gaza, all remote from Jewish settlements, grew at rates below the national average.

The geographer Avraham Brawer, in his book Eretz Yisrael, published in 1949, compares the population of Western Palestine with that of neighboring countries. He finds that even the purely Arab areas had a population density (96 per square kilometer) equal to that of Lebanon with its more favorable climatic conditions and large, culturally more advanced Christian population component, and double that of the settled areas of Syria and Cyprus, both of which enjoyed better climatic and soil conditions. In the areas of Jewish settlement, the population density was much higher: 136 per square kilometer. Brawer attributes the high population density in all of Western Palestine to the infusion of Jewish capital and the dramatic improvements in public health, which had no equal at the time in any Mediterranean country except France.

The bottom line is: the claim of an established Arab Palestinian land is a myth--the numbers of Arabs in the land fluctuated and rather than "Zionists" being responsible for forcing Palestinian Arabs out of the land, these very same Jews were the reason for many of these Arabs coming into then-Palestine.

UPDATE: Elder of Zion, whose original posts on this topic were very helpful, has another post: More data points on illegal Arab immigration.

He writes:

I had looked at this in the past, but today I discovered an intriguing new data point, from the Palestine Post, August 19, 1935, quoting the (then Manchester) Guardian of August 10.

The article is a synopsis of the British Treasury report dealing with Palestine. According to the article, Jewish immigration had vastly increased in the early 1930s, but then it adds this:

"The immigration, however, is not restricted to Jews. There has been a steady infiltration into Palestine of Arabs from Syria (the Hauran) and from Trans-Jordan. And it is notable that the illicit immigration of the non-Jews recorded in the report of the Government is more than double that recorded for the Jews."

Read the whole thing--including the images of the original articles.

Also see: Palestinian Arabs Descended From Philistines? Canaanites? Few Of Them Are Even Related To The Original Arab Invaders!

Check out resources:Arab Immigration Into Palestine Pre-1948

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Gilo--History And International Law Back Israel

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:05:00 +0000

Originally posted on November 23, 2009

In an article in the Jerusalem Post, Maurice Ostroff writes about the status of Gilo--where plans to build 900 houses have caused a new uproar and claims that Israel is once again expanding settlements.
However, as Ostroff points out, the emotional reaction ignores the facts--both historical and legal.
Historically:

THE REALITY is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land.

The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media. The plan was initiated a long time ago by the Israel Land Administration. Since Gilo is an integral part of the city, the approval was given by Jerusalem's Construction and Planning Committee and, as Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement released by his office, "Israeli law does not discriminate between Arabs and Jews, or between east and west of the city. The demand to cease construction just for Jews is illegal, as in the US and any other enlightened place in the world. The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in every part of the city for Jews and Arabs alike."
...In his video message to the November 8 Rabin Rally in Tel Aviv, US President Barack Obama urged Israel to pursue Rabin's legacy. It is therefore relevant to recall that Rabin had no intention of returning to the 1967 lines. In his last speech [view here] to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, Rabin said "The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines....First and foremost, united Jerusalem - which will include both Ma'aleh Adumim and Givat Ze'ev - as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths...."
No less supportive of Israel's right to build the houses is Internaational Law, which is often misquoted in an effort to condemn Israel:

AS THE Western Wall, Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, Pisgat Ze'ev, and Mount Scopus are all beyond the Green Line, it important to consider its significance realistically. The Green line is not an international border. It refers only to the 1949 Armistice lines established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Its name is derived from the green ink used to draw the line on the map. Nor is it fixed, as explained by Justice Stephen M. Schwebel, who spent 19 years as a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, including three years as President. He wrote "...modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are, in Secretary Rogers's words, "insubstantial alterations required for mutual security" or more substantial alterations - such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.." And in a footnote he added "It should be added that the armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them".
The Palestinians never had sovereignty over the West Bank nor east Jerusalem and Justice Schwebel concluded that since Jordan, the prior holder of these territories had seized that territory unlawfully in 1948, Israel which subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967, has better title to it. Jordan's illegal annexation of the West bank and east Jerusalem in 1948 was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan and Jordan now makes no claim to it.
In terms of international law, between 1948 and 1967 this territory was terra nullius, or "land belonging to no one" over which sovereignty may be acquired through occupation. The concept of terra nullius is well recognized in international law. For example it has been a major issue in Australian politics and Norway occupied parts of uninhabited Eastern Greenland in the 1920s on the grounds of terra nullius.
As east Jerusalem came into Israel's possession in the course of a defensive war, Israel was entitled to annex it and create a united Jerusalem. Consequently, the Jerusalem City Council has jurisdiction over building approvals for Jewish and Arab residence in any part of the city.
It is highly relevant that the Oslo Accords do not require any freeze of building activity and even the road map which was never formally ratified, speaks only of dismantling "outposts" erected since March 2001, a far cry from Gilo, that has been a residential suburb of Jerusalem since 1971.

Ostroff concludes:

In proposing solutions towards achieving two states, co-existing in peace and security, impractical slogans like 'evacuate the settlements' should be discarded because of their vagueness and replaced by a pragmatic call for territorial compromise taking the above realities into account.

But don't bet on the loaded terms 'settlement' and 'occupation' falling into disuse any time soon. Rhetoric has long served pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel apologists far too well--and far better than the historical record and accurate interpretations of International Law.
Besides, rhetoric beats the facts--hands down.
And both the Palestinian Arabs and their allies know this very well.

In 2005, Daniel Kurtzer Admitted There Was An Agreement On Settlements

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:59:00 +0000

Originally posted June 29, 2009

In an op-ed in The Washington Post on June 14th, Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel wrote in The Settlement Facts

Today, Israel maintains that three events -- namely, draft understandings discussed in 2003 between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U.S. deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley; President George W. Bush's April 14, 2004, letter to Sharon; and an April 14 letter from Sharon adviser Dov Weissglas to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- constitute a formal understanding in which the United States accepted continuing Israeli building within the "construction line" of settlements. The problem is that there was no such understanding. [emphasis added]

In regards to President Bush's letter, Kurtzer explains:

President Bush's 2004 letter conveyed U.S. support of an agreed outcome of negotiations in which Israel would retain "existing major Israeli population centers" in the West Bank "on the basis of mutually agreed changes . . . ." One of the key provisions of this letter was that U.S. support for Israel's retaining some settlements was predicated on there being an "agreed outcome" of negotiations. Despite Israel's contention that this letter allowed it to continue building in the large settlement blocs of Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion, the letter did not convey any U.S. support for or understanding of Israeli settlement activities in these or other areas in the run-up to a peace agreement. [emphasis added]

That is now. But back on March 25, 2005--in an interview with Israel Television Channel Ten while he was ambassador--Kurtzer said something different:

QUESTION: So President Bush is willing to leave settlement blocs in Israeli sovereignty in the future agreement just as Clinton was?

AMBASSADOR KURTZER: He said it clearly in the letter of last April - I can
say it again to the people of Israel. The President remains committed to
what he said in that letter: That in a negotiation on final status, the
outcome is going to mean that Israeli major population areas in our view
should remain within the State of Israel....

I believe there is full understanding between the Prime Minister and the
President and between the Prime Minister's office and his advisors and the
President's office and the President's advisors. Our discussions with the
Prime Minister, with Dov Weissglas, Shalom Turgeman, with all of the
officials who are associated with the Prime Minister's office have been very
clear and quite specific and that is what allowed us last April to reach a
very specific understanding that was then incorporated in a letter that the
President signed and was able to make public. So, I do not believe there are
any misunderstandings between us.

QUESTION: So, when Dov Weissglas says it is about Maale Adumim, about Ariel,
about all the big settlement blocs, it is okay, you stand behind this thing
he said.

AMBASSADOR KURTZER: The Government of Israel is going to make its
statements, the American government will make its statements. When we reach
understandings as we do have understandings, these are incorporated in
documents such as this letter. That letter remains the President's policy,
unquestionably.

... I think it is critically important, particularly now, the Prime Minister
is about to go to Washington again, to understand that the United States and
Israel do not have misunderstandings with respect to U.S. commitments. Those
commitments are very, very firm with respect to these Israeli major
population centers, our expectation that Israel is not going to be going
back to the 1967 lines. This is the President's policy. This President has
been very determined in having consistent and sure policy throughout his
time in office. That is the reality, that is the truth.

Steve Rosen writes in Obama Mideast Monitor about the background to the conflicting op-eds by Elliott Abramsand Daniel Kurtzer. Rosen notes that Kurtzer--

confirmed to Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post in April 2008, that he had opposed accepting an April 2004 letter from Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, reconfirming U.S.-Israeli understandings that restrictions on the growth of settlements would be made "within the agreed principles of settlement activities," which would include "a better definition of the construction line of settlements" on the West Bank. Weissglas also confirmed that a U.S.-Israeli team would "jointly define the construction line of each of the settlements." Kessler reported, "Daniel Kurtzer, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he argued at the time against accepting the Weissglas letter. 'I thought it was a really bad idea,' he said. 'It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave them a blank check.' But the White House did accept the Weissglas letter. In the end, Kurtzer said the White House never followed up with the plan to define construction lines. 'Washington lost interest in it when it became clear it would not be easy to do,' he said.So these dueling op-eds by Kurtzer and Abrams are a continuation of a policy war withing the Bush Administration, a war that Kurtzer lost at the time but is trying to win now. [emphasis added]

The Obama administration really should heed the advice of the Washington Post this morning, and stop pushing on the issue of the settlements. At the very least, it will allow the administration to stop contradicting itself.

When Palestinian Jews Were Under Muslim Rule

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:28:00 +0000

Originally posted May 15, 2007

In a post from December, 2005, Chardal writes about Life Under Muslim Rule in general, and has a section focusing on what life was like in then-Palestine for Jews.

THE HOLY LAND UNDER MUSLIM RULE

Since the Arabian invasion of Palestine in the seventh century, Jews and Christians were allowed to remain alive, between attacks, to be a source of funds obtained by special taxes and extortions, and to serve as helpless scapegoats for the Muslim masses. This policy continued under successive waves of other Muslim non-Arab conquerors of the Holy Land, as well.

The lawful humiliation of the non-Muslim was a fact of life. The degree of harshness of the persecution depended on the whim of the particular ruler.

Arab dominion over non-Muslims was reminiscent of the nation of Amalek of biblical infamy:

"Amalek represents that principle which judges the dignity of men and nations solely in terms of visible power and domination. It is willing to condone any act as long as it results in successful conquest. It will tolerate only that which it fears or that which it can safely despise" (Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, Collected Writings II, p.414).
From the beginning of Muslim Turkish rule in 1516, Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, the side of Satan (David Landes, "Palestine Before the Zionists." Commentary, February 1976). Sultan Murad III decreed death for all Jews of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, but later commuted the sentence (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

In 1586, the famous Ramban Synagogue of the Old City of Jerusalem was seized by the Muslim authorities. This had been the last synagogue in Jerusalem remaining in Jewish hands (Ben Gurion, Israel, Tel Aviv, 1971).

One single Jew survived the Muslim massacre in the holy city of Safad in 1660 (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

In 1775, Muslim mob violence against the Jews of Hebron was incited by the infamous blood libel (Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, New York, 1973).

The Albanian born Mamluk "Arab", called "the Butcher", terrorized the land with his sadistic exploits through the late 1700's (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

To be permitted to pray by the Wailing Wall, the Jews paid a high annual rent to the Arab whose property adjoined it. They paid protection money to Muslim officials, already paid by the Turkish Government, for fear of desecration of the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and of Rachel's Tomb (David Landes, Palestine Before the Zionists, 1976).

In the 1830's, during the brief Egyptian reign over Palestine, the Jews found themselves caught between the ravages of the Egyptian soldiers and the multi-ethnic Muslim rebels who fought them:

"Forty thousand fellahin rushed on Jerusalem... The mob entered, and looted the city for five or six days. The Jews were the worst sufferers, their homes were sacked and their women were violated" (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).
News of the Damascus blood libel of 1840 brought heightened waves of persecution and murder of Jews throughout Palestine (Moshe Ma'oz, ed., Studies in Palestine During the Ottoman Period, Jerusalem, 1975).

In 1914, after returning from his heinous mass slaughter of the Armenian people, Turkish commander Baha-ud Did threatened to do the same to the Jews if he ever got the chance. Fierce persecutions ensued. Use of the Hebrew language was banned. Entire Jewish families were thrown in prison. Jewish males were forced into labor battalions. Farm carts and animals were confiscated just before harvest time. The entire Jewish population of Jaffa was expelled on Passover, 1915. Resistors were hanged. Thousands wandered helplessly on the roads, starving (Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return, New York, 1978).

During the last few years of Muslim rulership over Palestine, torture for a Jew was the norm upon arrest. By the time the British routed the Turkish Ottomans from Palestine in 1917, the entire country, including the new Jewish settlements, had been plundered.

The documented Muslim excesses committed during the corrupt Turkish rule over Palestine from 1516 to 1917, are too hideous and numerous to record (See Joan Peters; From Time Immemorial p.190 et seq.).

Something to keep in mind when Palestinian apologists hearken back to the good old days when Jews ~~got along with~~ were subservient to Muslims.

Who Is In Breach Of International Law: Israel--Or The US?

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Originally posted June 28, 2009

Caroline Glick makes a compelling case that not only is Israel not in breach of signed agreements--or international law--on the issue of settlements, the US is breach of both international and domestic law.

On the issue of Israeli settlements and international law, Glick makes a number of points:

Israel has never signed an agreement whereby a Jewish community can be characterized as "illegal," and therefore has no legal obligation to forbid their expansion
Both former prime minister Ariel Sharon's chief of staff Dov Weisglass and former president George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser for the Middle East Elliott Abrams have gone on record that when Sharon agreed to limit the building of Jewish communities in the West Bank--not including Jerusalem--in accordance with the Road Map, he did so based on explicit understandings with the Bush administration.
The approval of the Road Map was a cabinet decision--not an international agreement. Therefore, the Israeli government has no legal obligation to advance it, and can legally abrogate Israel's acceptance of the Road Map by calling for another vote.
The Road Map does not have the force of international law: Glick writes "Although it was adopted by the Security Council, it was not adopted as an internationally binding document under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Consequently, Israel has no international legal obligation to end Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria or Jerusalem."
As a signatory to the 1976 International Convention for Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits all forms of discrimination against people on the basis of religion and nationality, Israel cannot discriminate specifically against Jews who wish to build homes on legally controlled lands in Judea and Samaria. The convention is a binding treaty, which trumps the Road Map, which is non-binding.
In response to the claim that Jewish communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines are illegal because of the Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its population to the occupied territory--there has long been a dispute among legal authorities if this applies to the West Bank. Even assuming that it is applicable, Prof. Avi Bell from Bar-Ilan University Law School explains that "The Fourth Geneva Convention does not purport to limit in any way what individual Jews may or may not do on their legally held property or where they may or may not choose to live."

On the other hand, Caroline Glick demonstrates how the policy of the Obama administration towards the Palestinian Arabs is itself in violation of both international and domestic US law.

The key is the UN Security Council binding Resolution 1373, passed by authority of Chapter VII. It commits all UN member states:

to "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts."
to "deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts or provide safe haven" to those that do.

In light of the stipulations of UN Resolution 1373, a number of actions of the Obama administration become questionable according to international law:

In 1995, the US State Department put Hamas on its list of terrorist groups--and the actions taken by the Obama administration thus put the US in breach of both international and US law. Since the US has or is in the process of transferring $300 million to Gaza through USAID, which based on past experience has ended up in the hands of Hamas--the transfer of these funds constitute indirect assistance to Hamas and are prohibited by Resolution 1373 and US law.
The US pressure on Israel to open passages between it and Gaza and limit travel restrictions--putting Israel at risk of facilitating the movement of Hamas terrorists and thereby supporting them is also a breach of Resolution 1373, which states that all states must "prevent the movement of terrorists or terrorist groups by effective border controls."
The US is pressuring Israel to allow cement to be imported into Gaza to rebuild the Hamas infrastructure and transfer money into Hamas-controlled banks while the Obama administration has pledged $900 million to rebuild Gaza. In addition, Dan Diker reported in a study published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad has admitted that the US-financed PA continues to pay the salaries of Hamas terrorists. All of this is in violation of Resolution 1373 which requires all states to "ensure that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetuation of terrorist acts or in supporting terrorist acts is brought to justice."
Obama's apparent attempt to facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian government including Hamas legitimizes that terrorist group and would both aid a designated terrorist organization and help provide it with a safe haven, in violation of Resolution 1373
By meeting with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is suspected of providing material support to Hizbullah--a designated terrorist organization, Obama was arguably illegally providing indirect assistance to Hizbullah, which is in breach of Resolution 1373 and US law.
US military assistance to the Lebanese military, which has been shown to be influenced by Hizbullah is also possibly in breach of Resolution 1373 and US law.
Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook wrote in The Jerusalem Post last month that the US is financing the construction of a Palestinian computer center--which is named for Fatah terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 bus bombing on Israel's coastal highway in which 37 civilians, including 12 children and US citizen Gail Rubin, were murdered--yet the 2008 US Foreign Operations Bill bars US assistance to the Palestinians from being used "for the purpose of recognizing or otherwise honoring individuals who commit or have committed acts of terrorism."

Glick concludes:

Obama, the former law professor, never tires of invoking international law. And yet, when one considers his policies toward Israel on the one hand, and his policies toward illegal terrorist organizations on the other, it is clear that Obama's respect for international law is mere rhetoric. True champions of law in both Israel and the US should demand an end to his administration's contempt for the US's actual - rather than imaginary - legal obligations.

Read the whole thing.

It is time to hold Obama accountable for his claims about international law.

The Israeli Settlements: Whose Land Is It Anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:52:00 +0000

Originally posted on June 24, 2009

According to the Washington Post, it all seems very cut and dried:

Thirty years ago, the State Department legal adviser issued an opinion in response to an inquiry from Congress: The establishment of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories "is inconsistent with international law."

The opinion cited Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power "shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." Israel has insisted that the Geneva Convention does not apply to settlers and broadly contests assertions of the settlements' illegality.

Despite the passage of time, the legal opinion, issued during the Carter administration, has never been revoked or revised...

..."As far as I know, I don't think it has ever been rescinded or challenged by any legal officer of the United States government," said Herbert J. Hansel, the former legal adviser who wrote the opinion. "Ronald Reagan expressed his opinion. But whatever you think of him, he was obviously not a lawyer. It still stands as the only definitive opinion of the U.S. government from a legal standpoint."

Unfortunately, the article is incomplete insofar as it fails to provide the other side of the argument. While the article mentions in passing that Israel does not believe the Geneva Convention is applicable to the issue of the settlements, at no point does the article address the basic question: "why not?"

The complete text of Hansell's opinion is available online [PDF; see paragraph 84]. Among the sources he refers to is Julius Stone--the author of 27 books on jurisprudence and international law who was Challis Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law at the University of Sydney from 1942 to 1972. Hansell quotes from Stone's book, Israel and Palestine: An Assault on the Law of Nations, in the context of the limitations placed upon the occupying power, particularly that

the Occupant’s acts will not have legal effect, although they may in fact be unchallengeable until the territory is liberated. He is not entitled to treat the country as his own territory or its inhabitants as his own subjects...

However, in that very same book Stone himself writes that the attempt to claim Israel's settlements illegal is a "subversion. . . of basic international law principles."

Stone addressed this issue in another book, International Law and The Arab-Israel Conflict. An extract of the bookis available online [PDF].

Stone describes there Israel's rights vis-a-vis the West Bank:

International law, therefore, gives a triple underpinning to Israel's claim that she is under no obligation to hand back automatically the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan or anyone else. In the first place, these lands never legally belonged to Jordan [because its grabbing the land in 1948 was never recognized]. Second, even if they had, Israel's own present control is lawful [because Israel fought a defensive war], and she is entitled to negotiate the extent and the terms of her withdrawal. Third, international law would not in such circumstances require the automatic handing back of territory even to an aggressor who was the former sovereign. It requires the extent and conditions of the handing back to be negotiated between the parties.

The crux of Hansell's argument is

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 12 August 1949, 6 UST 3516, provides, in paragraph 6:

’The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own
civilian population into the territory it occupies’.
Paragraph 6 appears to apply by its terms to any transfer by an occupying power of parts of its civilian population, whatever the objective and whether involuntary or voluntary.

Hansell also addresses the fact that Egypt's and Jordan's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank had no legal standing:

It has been suggested that the principles of belligerent occupation, including Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention, may not apply in the West Bank and Gaza because Jordan and Egypt were not the respective legitimate sovereigns of these territories. However, those principles appear applicable whether or not Jordan and Egypt possessed legitimate sovereign rights in respect of those territories. Protecting the reversionary interest of an ousted sovereign is not their sole or essential purpose; the paramount purposes are protecting the civilian population of an occupied territory and reserving permanent territorial changes, if
any, until settlement of the conflict.

Stone does in fact differ with Hansell on the relevance of Jordan's illegal control of the West Bank and put forward the argument that the language of Article 2 specifically states that the Convention applies--

“to cases of … occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, by another such Party”.

The implication is that the Convention would not apply where the "High Contracting Party" has no actual claim to the territory.

While Hansell dismisses the argument, claiming the intent is focus on the civilian population, Stone also examines the context of the Geneva Convention:

It is clear that in the drafting history, Article 49 as a whole was directed against the heinous practice of the Nazi regime during the Nazi occupation of Europe in World War II, of forcibly transporting populations of which it wished to rid itself, into or out of occupied territories for the purpose of liquidating them with minimum disturbance of its metropolitan territory, or to provide slave labour or for other inhumane purposes.

[whereas]...Israel's position in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is merely that of an occupying power...

Hansell does note this argument and claims there is no reason to limit the Convention to mass population transfers.

However, there is an issue that Hansell does not address--he sidesteps the issue of who has title to the conquered territory. Is Hansell seriously suggesting that the land should automatically be returned to the country that took it illegally? Every limitation that he cites as applying to Israel as an occupying power should apply equally to Jordan--and more.

Stone quotes What Weight to Conquest? by Professor Stephen Schwebel--an American jurist and expert on international law who served at various positions in the U.S. Department of State, Legal Adviser Office and was a member of the UN International Law Commission. He was elected to the International Court of Justice in and was re-elected twice, and served as the President of the Court. Schwebel writes that the UN Charter--

makes necessary a vital distinction “between aggressive conquest and defensive conquest, between the taking of territory legally held and the taking of territory illegally held”:

“Those distinctions may be summarized as follows:

a) A state acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defence may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defence.

b) As a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that state may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self-defence.

c) Where the prior holder of the territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.”

Again, Hansell never addresses this key issue of who has the better title to the territory--and today, as per the Peace Treaty of 1994, Jordan has already relinquished any claim of sovereignty over the West Bank--which is why Israel has also argued that the change in the situation necessitates a reevaluation.

The point is not that these are all of the arguments that can be marshaled on either side.

The point is that the issues are complex--and they are not being fully addressed.

What Makes An Israeli Settlement Illegal?

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:45:00 +0000

Originally posted May 28, 2009

It's time to explain it clearly.

Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, Minister of Science and head of the Jewish Home party said, “Yes, we must keep the law. But if you look at the outposts, you’ll see that their classification as illegal was made by Talia Sasson [admittedly left-wing author of a report on the outposts for Ariel Sharon’s government in 2005 – ed.], who is not exactly an objective source. Often, the only reason for an outpost’s classification as illegal is not because of the residents themselves, but because of a technical government problem, and there is truly no legal problem at all.”

Interior Minister Eli Yishai: “There must be equal enforcement of the law, but I don’t believe it is right at this time to dismantle outposts. Not every one can do what he wants.”

The two state solution is not a solution by definition--and a settlement is not illegal by definition either.

Just How Big A Problem Are The Settlements?

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:41:00 +0000

Originally posted March 14, 2008

IMRA has the text of an article in the Jerusalem Post that seems to be inaccessible now--a problem systematic of the US policy the article is about. The article is about an upcoming evaluation of how Israel and the Palestinian Arabs have been implementing the Road Map, and the skewed approach the US applies in their comparative evaluation. Along the way, the article notes:

The micro problem with this approach is that there is no symmetry between
settlements and terrorism, on either the moral or strategic levels. It is a
moral travesty that building homes is compared to murdering innocents. But
even if settlement expansion can be seen as problematic, it makes little
sense to treat all settlements equally, as if there were no difference
between expanding existing towns that are contiguous with Israel and inside
the security barrier, and settlements situated amidst the Palestinian
population.

While the US seems to pretend that there is no line between "good" and "bad"
settlements, a clear distinction should be made between settlements that are
entirely consistent with a two-state solution and those designed to block
such an eventuality.

But all this is trivial compared to the macro problem, which is that the US
makes no distinction between the respective distances Israel and the
Palestinians are from making the two-state approach work, and instead looks
for ways to criticize both sides no matter what, in an attempt to appear
"evenhanded."

Not enough has been done to challenge the accepted logic that the 'settlements' are the hurdle to negotiating a realistic peace--especially considering the lack of comments from Abbas in Arabic that would indicate he was really in this to make peace.

Arlene Kushner On Legal vs. Illegal Settlements

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:48:00 +0000

Originally posted May 28, 2009

The following excerpt is reposted with permission from Arlene Kushner's mail list ("First Things First", May 27, 2009).

Email akushner@netvision.net.il to subscribe.
Also check out her website: Arlene From Israel.

The whole business of legal vs. illegal settlements is both complicated and political. Most settlements have had some interaction with some government departments or agencies. They've hooked up water lines, or electric lines, or paved a road, or whatever. There is sanction somewhere along the way. And sometimes that sanction is considerable. But if final papers are not in place, then the settlement can be called "illegal" or "unauthorized."

The region comprised of Judea and Samaria is not governed by Israeli civil law -- civil law was never extended to this area as it was to the Golan and to eastern Jerusalem. (Note: this is not a case of annexing it, but extending the law of Israel to apply.) The region is administered separately under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, and it is the office of the Defense Minister that must sign off on a settlement. Thus Barak's involvement here.

There are instances in which "illegal" settlements have been later declared legal, and there is hope that this might happen now in a handful of instances at least. That can particularly be the case when so-called outposts are really outlying neighborhoods of recognized settlements.

But it can happen in other instances as well. And actually it was explained to me by a lawyer some time ago that many settlements considered authorized today moved through a process this way.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are some charges being made -- by far left groups such as Peace Now and Yesh G'vul -- that some of the settlements are on private Palestinian land. While these charges are not necessarily accurate, where this might be a problem, shifting of the settlement to other land, rather than demolishing it, is a possible resolution.

~~~~~~~~~~

Several political issues complicate this whole matter. The Obama administration is saying that we have certain obligations with regard to settlements stemming from the Road Map for Peace. Introduced by the US, with Quartet sponsorship, in the spring of 2003, it presented a phased plan, with a timeline, for achieving a two-state solution.

You can see the full text here;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2989783.stm

In the proposed first phase, it says the Government of Israel must "immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001" and "freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."

We may not like it. We may hate it. But it says it.

~~~~~~~~~~

But -- wait! -- it's not nearly as simple as Obama would have it.

First there is the question of whether it still applies, as it was envisioned as resulting in a Palestinian state by 2005. Has a post-2005 situation superseded this document?

Unfortunately, our new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has made it more difficult to make this case, as he declared early on that we should scrap Annapolis and go back to the Road Map. It was clear why he did this: Annapolis was trying to jump past the phased program and get to the end result of a Palestinian state at the beginning. Lieberman was undoubtedly reasoning that under the Road Map the PA had obligations it would not honor and thus we'd not get to that end result.

~~~~~~~~~~

Then there is the very important issue of reciprocity (which Netanyahu has made much of) and the need for the Palestinian Authority to simultaneously fulfill its obligations. We cannot be the only party that "walks the walk."

According to this same Road Map, the Palestinians must "declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere."

Never mind that Fatah is not exactly clean itself, what about Hamas terrorism, with rockets and mortars still launched (170 since the end of our war in Gaza)? What action will the PA take with regard to this? This is a joke. The PA, which has this obligation, cannot do it.

And there's more: "All official Palestinian institutions [must] end incitement against Israel." This is an even bigger joke than the terrorism issue. Anyone who has seen an analysis of the textbooks produced and utilized by the PA understands what a huge joke it really is.

See my article, "Texts of Hate," for some mind-blowing examples of what PA school kids are taught.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30231

To comply with this requirement, the PA would have to publish a whole set of adjusted texts. And there's no thought of doing so. Not a glimmer of a suggestion that they must do so.

But WE have to stop building in the settlements? The Road Map calls for "reciprocal steps by the two parties."

It seems to me a very public campaign has to be launched focusing on the inequities of what is demanded of us and of the PA. Most of the world knows about the settlements as an "impediment to peace." Time they knew that there can't be peace when the Palestinian kids are taught to hate us, but that the PA, which is bound to do so under the Road Map, is taking no action in this regard. The PA is always yapping about how we don't want peace because we keep building. Where is the voice of our government saying that clearly the PA doesn't want peace if its youngsters are taught Jihad and Palestine from the river to the sea?

~~~~~~~~~~

And this is not the end to the problems surrounding the demands made of us.

The Sharon government of 2003 did not simply accept the Road Map as is. A set of "14 reservations" was attached and given to the Bush government. It was only after the US government committed to "fully and seriously address[ing]" the issues raised by Israel that the Israeli Cabinet voted to accept the Road Map. Unfortunately, this was naive, for a commitment to address the issues is not a promise that they will ultimately be incorporated into arrangements.

But the government of Israel is on record as having reservations. Some of those reservations:

"...during the process, and as a condition to its continuance. calm will be maintained. The Palestinians will dismantle the existing security organizations and implement security reforms during the course of which new organizations will be formed and act to combat terror, violence and incitement (incitement must cease immediately and the Palestinian Authority must educate for peace). (emphasis added)

"In the first phase of the plan and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will complete the dismantling of terrorist organizations (Hamas. Islamic Jihad. the Popular Front, the Democratic Front Al-Aqsa Brigades and other apparatuses) and their infrastructure... (emphasis added)

"...declared references must be made to Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and to the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel."

Additionally, PM Sharon is on record as having objected to the call for a freeze on settlements. It was "impossible," he said to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"Our finest youth live there. They are already the third generation, contributing to the state and serving in elite army units. They return home and get married, so then they can't build a house and have children?

"What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?"

(You can find this quote here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3020335.stm)

Unfortunately, bewilderingly, this objection, this perception that a freeze is impossible, was not written into the reservations.

~~~~~~~~~~

And one last factor in helping you understand the complexities of this situation:

In April of 2004, PM Sharon met with President Bush and they exchanged letters in the context of the Road Map and the forthcoming "Disengagement." President Bush's letter contained the phrase:

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949..."

This was broadly understood as an acknowledgement by the US that in any final agreement with the Palestinians we would retain major settlement blocs. Dore Gold, head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, called it a "significant shift in US policy."

Netanyahu is currently using this to make the case that it had become informal US policy to acknowledge that we will be retaining settlement blocs in any event, and that there is thus no reason for the US to demand that we be restricted in building within those settlements. (Gold, by the way, is a Netanyahu advisor.)

From what I've read, this letter of Bush's is a stumbling block to Obama's demands, a frustration to him as he seeks to move on pressuring us.

Email akushner@netvision.net.il to subscribe to the mail list.
Also check out her website: Arlene From Israel.

Halkin On Settlements And Stereotypes

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:39:00 +0000

Originally posted on December 13, 2007

The December issue of Commentary Magazine features an article by Hillel Halkin on "What the Settlements Have Achieved". Actually, the article is a review and critique of the book Lords of the Land by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.

Halkin finds the book to be more than just biased--it creates a sterotype by taking the image created by Gush Emunim and applies it to all settlers:

But even as biased history, Lords of the Land does not begin to cover its subject. The story it tells is not that of Jewish settlement in the West Bank but that of Gush Emunim, the "Bloc of the Faithful," a militant settlers' organization founded in the early 1970's that combined religious fervor with political activism and a readiness to brave physical danger. It was Gush Emunim and its ideological heirs, with their Zionist messianism, that established dozens of small settlements and hilltop outposts deep in the West Bank and that have been frequently in conflict with their Palestinian neighbors and with Israeli governments felt by them to be insufficiently supportive. The stereotype of the West Bank settler as a belligerently bearded Jew with a knit skullcap on his head, a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other, is a caricaturized version of the Gush Emunim ideal, and Zertal and Eldar have done all they can to perpetuate it.

And yet such settlers account for barely 10 percent of the more than 400,000 Israelis living today beyond the "green line," the pre-June 1967 Israeli-Jordanian border. Roughly half of the total reside in urban neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Most of the remainder are in middle-sized towns that are close to the old border and/or within an easy commute of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. An increasingly large proportion of them consists of non- or even anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews who have moved to such rapidly developing locations as Betar Illit and Kiryat Sefer; another sizable element, found in places like Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim, is composed mostly of secular Israelis; and a much smaller group inhabits moshavim and kibbutzim, collective farming settlements, in the Jordan Valley.

Few of these 350,000 Israelis have moved to the occupied territories for ideological reasons or have ever been embroiled with local Palestinians or government authorities. Most chose to live where they do because they have purchased affordable housing in well-planned and pleasant communities not far from their places of work. And none of them is dealt with in Zertal and Eldar's book. As far as Lords of the Land is concerned, West Bank settlement and Gush Emunim are one and the same.

Halkin writes that there were 2 distinct goals motivating the settlements in the West Bank. One was the belief in 'Eretz Yisrael HaShleima"--which Halkin translates as "Undivided land of Israel," noting that the more common translation "Greater land of Israel" carries with it the false connotation of a desire to expand far beyond Israel's borders. The other goal was to redraw the 1967 borders in such a way as to make Israel more secure. Halkin writes that the 2 motivations, because they commonly ran side by side, were often confused with one another--yet the fact remains that the 2 goals were distinct.

The failure to distinguish those whose goal was the complete and undivided land of Israel from those who saw themselves as working towards secure and defensible borders is on a par with the failure to understand the difference between what the world claims are occupied territories and what is actually disputed land.

You should get a copy of the December issue of Commentary Magazine and read the entire article.

What New Settlement?

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:17:00 +0000

What is it about a bunch of houses that elicits such a knee-jerk response?
HonestReporting notes that some of the media is mistakenly implying that Israel is building new settlements.

Karl Marx on the Treatment of the Jewish Majority in Jerusalem

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:53:00 +0000

Emet m'Tsiyon writes:

Karl Marx, often considered the arch-socialist, the enemy of capital, the scourge of filthy lucre, wanted to make a living like most other folk. For this purpose, Marx wrote a column every few weeks for the New York Daily Tribune, edited by the famous Horace Greeley. This gave our nemesis of capitalism a chance to make a few Yankee greenbacks, while spreading his own opinions.

Marx' column of 15 April 1854 discussed the background to the Crimean War, first of all the rivalries of Christian powers focussed on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher through their own national churches. He also discussed the social situation in Jerusalem, such as how Muslims treated non-Muslims in general and how Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem treated the Jews in Jerusalem, who were already a majority in the city in Marx's time, not only according to Marx but to his French contemporary, Gerardy Santine, and to more recent authorities, such as Tudor Parfitt.

Read the whole thing.

A Jewish Majority in Jerusalem in 1853, wrote Contemporary French Diplomat

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:48:00 +0000

Emet m'Tsiyon examines the sources and context of Cesar Famin--a French diplomat, historian, and man of letters who

had a very good understanding of the status of the non-Muslim in Muslim society in general and in Ottoman society in particular. He is in basic agreement on this matter with recent authors such as Bat Ye'or, Rafael Israeli, David Bukay, Moshe Sharon, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, etc.

A Modern Canterbury to Judea and Samaria Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:12:00 +0000

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is upset:

Unless there is a way of representing the settlements as legitimate self-defence I remain very disturbed about that, along with many.

Looks like the archbishop is in luck: My Right Word is on the case, with a concise list of arguments on why the Israeli settlements are legal.

The Niggers Of Palestine

noreply@blogger.com (Daled Amos) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:16:00 +0000

Originally posted October 21, 2007

Like the miserable dog without an owner he is kicked by one because he crosses his path, and cuffed by another because he cries out--to seek redress he is afraid, lest it bring worse upon him; he thinks it better to endure than to live in the expectation of his complaint being revenged upon him. Brought up form infancy to look upon his civil disabilities everywhere as a mark of degradation, he heart becomes the cradle of fear and suspicion--he finds he is trusted by none--and thee he lives himself without confidence in any
British Counsel Young, describing life for Jews under Muslim rule in Palestine in 1839, quoted by Joan Peters in 'From Time Immemorial', p. 187

In one chapter in her book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, Joan Peters writes about the countless attacks and massacres suffered by the Jewish community in 'Palestine' at the hands of the Muslims over the centuries before the reestablishment of the state of Israel. At one point, Peters writes:

The Jews under siege were as defenseless as their counterparts in the Arabic-speaking Muslim "Arab" world and as powerless as perhaps the black slaves called "Niggers" by the Southern whites--they too "knew what was good for them," and any attempt at redress for their grievances would only result in more extreme persecution. Both had to "keep their place." [p. 183]

This reminded me of Condoleezza's comment comparing Palestinian Arabs with African Americans in the old South. Before addressing Rice's comparison, here are some of the events that Peters mentions in her book that form the basis for her comparison:

1491: Bohemian pilgrim writes about Jerusalem that "There are not many Christians but there are many Jews, and these the Moslems persecute in various ways. Christians and Jews go about in Jerusalem in clothes considered fit only for wandering beggars....in spite of all the troubles and sorrows inflicted on them by the Moslems, they refuse to leave the Land." [p. 176]

1576: Ottoman Sultan Murad III enacts legislation to uproot and deport 1,000 of Safed's Jews to Cyprus to boost the economy. [p. 178]

1586: Last remaining synagogue in Jerusalem is expropriated. [p. 178]

Early 17th century: A pair of Christian visitors to Safed describe life for Jews that "life here is the poorest and most miserable that one can imagine...[and] pay for the very air they breathe" [p. 178]

1660: Jewish community in Safed is massacred. [p. 178]

1742: A rabbi is allowed to settle in Tiberias and his arrival "brought back the Jewish community of Tiberias, which had been virtually purged of Jews for seventy years" [p. 179]

1775: Blood libel is spread against Jews in Hebron, resulting in mob violence. [p. 179]

1783: Rise of El Djezzar ("the butcher"). He increases--by 25,000 piastres--the required taxes. He is known for torture, mutilations, and had an executioner travel with him. [p. 179-180]

1799: Safed's Jewish Quarter "was completely sacked by the Turks" [p. 179]

1801: Djezzar sends troops to destroy crops in Nazareth while in Ramleh "during the three days of pillage, the local Latin Christians were either murdered, or lost all their property and fled" [p. 180]

1830's: During Egyptian reign of Palestine, Pasha Mehmet Ali "oppressed the inhabitants of these countries more severly even than those of his own pashalic [district] in order to fill his coffers." [p. 182]

1830's "One book reported the game 'Burn the Jew,' a Christian-Arab children's pastime at Lent in Jaffa. [p. 1888]

1834: Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha levies conscription and when those in Eastern Palestine cross the Jordan to join in a revolt, "forty thousand fallahim rushed on Jerusalem...the mob entered, and looted the city for five or six days. The Jews were the worst sufferers, their homes ewere sacked and their women violated." [p. 183]

1834: Jews in Hebron are massacred by "Egyptian soldiers who came to put down a local Muslim rebellion" [p. 183]

1834: In Safed, the Jewish community is "brutally attacked by Muslim and Druzes" [p. 183]

1834: In Safed, Muhammed Damoor 'prophesies' that on the 15th of June "the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels"--this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. [p. 185-6]

1837: Safed is hit by an earthquake which results in another attack by the Muslims on the Jews. [p. 183]

1840: Blood libel in Damascus has repercussions in Palestine. [p. 183]

1840: British Foreign Secretary Palmerston writes that "reports from Sidon, Tyre, Acre and Caiffa [Haifa] complain of bigotry and outrages toward Christians: Confirmed by what is observed here in Jerusalem towards Christians and Jews." [p. 189]

1847: Charge of ritual murder is brought against the Jewish community in Jerusalem. [p. 190]

1847: Jewish visitor to Palestine writes about the Jewish community "They do not have any protection and are at the mercy of policemen and the pashas who treat them as they wish...they pay various taxes every now and then...their property is not at their disposal and they dare not complain about an injury for fear of the Arabs' revenge. Their lives are precarious and subject to daily danger of death" [p. 190-1]

1848 Hebron plundered. [p. 191]

1848-1878: Reports from the British Consulate in Jerusalem document scores of anti-Jewish violence. Example--"July, 1851: It is my duty to report to YOur Excellency that the Jws in Hebron have been greatly alarmed by threats of the Moslems there at the commencement of Ramadan..."

1858: Muslim in Hebron is confronted with his theft and vandalism of Jews and responds that "his right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions at any time without giving account" [p. 173]

Rice's comments are found in an article in Haaretz, which currently seems to turn up as a blank page [update:view article here], but which is quoted by Israel Matzav:

When Condoleezza Rice talks about the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, she sees in her mind's eye the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, which culminated in the period of her Alabama childhood.

Rice is very aware of political sensitivity, and avoids making such comparisons in public speeches and interviews, where she keeps to the official list of talking points. But in private, she talks about the segregated buses of her childhood.

One can guess that the settlements, the checkpoints and the separation fences created by Israel on the West Bank bring back unpleasant memories of Jim Crow racial separation in the South.Her empathy for the suffering of the Palestinians under occupation goes beyond the strict interests of the administration in promoting the status of the United States in the Middle East and has the touch of her personal experience.

...Now, Rice is comparing Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayad, to Martin Luther King. [emphasis added by Israel Matzav]

Why Rice would want to degrade the memory by comparing him to someone like Abbas I do not know, but to compare Palestinian Arabs with the situation of African Americans in the US--even in the 1960's? Rice, who has erroneously claimed that Palestinian Arabs controlled Gaza and the West Bank prior to 1967, obviously is ignorant of other aspects of the lives of Palestinian Arabs as well--

As Efraim Karsh recounts:

The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.

In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440).By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

All this, as I have noted, took place against the backdrop of Israel's hands-off policy in the political and administrative spheres [emphasis added].

In the aftermath of the intifada and terrorist attacks by which Palestinian Arabs have brought about their current situation--in addition to the Muslim members of the Israeli Knesset (whose membership is not revoked after meeting terrorists), the rights of Palestinian Arabs are protected by the Israeli Supreme Court. Here are some of its recent rulings:

Israel high court orders partial re-routing of West Bank security barrier

Israel high court overturns blanket Palestinian student entry ban

Israel high court allows Palestinians injured by IDF to sue for compensation

Israel orders full review of security barrier after high court ruling

Israeli police evacuate illegal West Bank settlement after high court ruling

Of course, if Condoleezza Rice is really interested in the struggle for the equal rights of unprotected minorities,she can always talk to her friends:

The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued into the early 1900s^[84], and by some accounts continues to this day. As recently as the 1950s, Saudi Arabia had an estimated 450,000 slaves, 20% of the population.^[85] ^[86]

The situation is not black and white, but it might help if the person leading delicate negotiations between Israel and Palestinian Arabs--leading to a state adjacent to Israel--at least had some grasp of the history of the area.

Condoleezza Rice is clearly not that person.

Obama, Biden, and Clinton: Can't Anyone Get The Facts About Israel Straight?

noreply@blogger.com (The Yishuv) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 21:25:00 +0000

The history of the Middle East in general--and Israel in particular--is a long one. No one expects members of the Obama administration to know all of it forwards and backwards. However, there are basic historical and geographic facts that underly the policy decisions that the Obama administration makes.

And that is why the mistakes that Obama, Biden and Clinton make so disturbing.

President Obama

In a May 12, 2008 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg:

I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea. [emphasis added]

In his Cairo speech:

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. [emphasis added]

The fact is that Jewish communities have never ceased to exist in "Palestine"--even after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, there were Jewish communities in the land. Obama could have verified that fact with a simple check of Wikipedia.
-----

Biden, during debate with Palin, October 3, 2008

Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Kathryn Jean Lopez quotes a foreign policy insider:

Joe Biden threw out a lot of bunk on foreign policy tonight, too bad Gov Palin didn’t have the foreign policy wonkishness to call him on it. Most ridiculous and downright strange was his contention that the Bush administration let Hezbollah into Lebanon, and then when “we threw them out” – whatever that means, he and Obama said NATO should go in but nobody took them up on it and now Hezbollah was all over Lebanon and that’s a problem. What?

Well, Hezbollah’s been there since the early 1980’s of course, blossoming throughout the 1990’s to become now over a third of the population of Lebanon with 2 cabinet members, a host of parliamentarians, and schools, clinics, and basically an entirely separate governance infrastructure in all of southern Lebanon and elsewhere. I suppose the throwing out of Hezbollah was the dismal and failed Israeli campaign of 2006 which dislodged nothing? Or was it Israeli’s occupation of Southern Lebanon from 1982 – 1999? Don’t remember an Obama position on NATO replacing Israeli occupation then. As for NATO going in after the 2006 debacle, well, I’m the one who rounded up 8,000 French and Italians and a few thousand other Euros to go into Southern Lebanon along with an assortment of others in August 2006 and while working that issue for about 40 straight days I don’t remember a peep from Biden or Obama about NATO – which wouldn’t be budged despite our intense pressure in Mons. So, we went straight to Rome and Paris. Que sera, sera.

In any case, he was all bluff and bluster and too bad she didn’t have time during debate prep to get his very mixed record on foreign policy stuff, he’s as good as he is bad at foreign policy and that is just a comment on his mastery, not on his policy positions…which have been more bad than good.

More recently, Biden claimed while in Israel:

The demographic realities make it difficult for Israel to be a Jewish homeland and a democratic country," said Biden in his speech to foreign dignitaries, Israeli officials and students at Tel Aviv University. "The status quo is not sustainable."

Paul Morland, who is writing his Ph.D. on demography, sets the record straight in an op-ed in Haaretz:

Demography has been used in Israel for decades by both left and right to advance and justify policies in the territories and regarding borders. Early advocates of a withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, for example, cited, in addition to moral arguments, the fear that Arabs would eventually outnumber Jews in the land under Israeli control...

Whatever the rights and wrongs of these proposals, they should be argued on their merits and not on the basis of false assumptions and fears. Hence, it is important that the public at least have some idea of what the demographic reality actually is. There may be disputes about numbers in the territories, but within Israel itself the facts are clear, and they deserve to be more widely known.

In the early days of the state, the Arab minority underwent a "demographic transition," something that often occurs when traditional societies confront modernity. Health care and living standards improved rapidly, life expectancy rose and infant mortality fell, but, initially, family size remained large. As a result, Israel's Arab population expanded fast, and maintained or even increased its proportion of the population, despite the massive Jewish immigration to the state. In the 1960s, Israeli Muslim women were still having on average nine children.

However, after the first stage of demographic transition - a falling death rate, a persistently high birthrate and thus rapid population growth - invariably comes a second stage, in which birthrates fall. This is now happening within Israeli Arab society, and has been for some time. The average Israeli Arab woman is now having fewer than half the children she had in the 1960s, while the Jewish birthrate has recently stabilized and even risen. This is seen in the number of children actually born each year. In 2001, there were around 95,000 Jewish births in Israel and 41,000 Arab births. Just seven years later, in 2008, Jewish births had risen to over 117,000, but Arab births had declined to less than 40,000. In a period that constitutes barely a quarter of a generation, Arab births had fallen from around 30 percent of the total to around 25 percent. This has been a steady trend and, should it continue, it will only be a very short time before Jewish and Arab births each year are broadly proportionate to the overall balance of Jews and Arabs in the population as whole - that is, 4:1, or 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

This is not a new discovery, but is one of the more recent articles about a subject that has been well documented.

Considering the implications of Palestinian demography for US aid to the Palestinian Authority, the issue is important for the US just as it is for Israel.

-----

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a speech before AIPAC

When a Hamas-controlled municipality glorifies violence and renames a square after a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis, it insults the families on both sides who have lost loves ones over the years in this conflict.

Elder of Ziyon corrects Clinton's error:

In a very, very narrow sense, she is right. El Bireh, the suburb of Ramallah that named a public square after Dalal Mughrabi, has a Hamas-majority city council. (So does Nablus and many other West Bank towns.)

But the naming of the square was purely a Fatah initiative and a Fatah celebration. Mughrabi was a Fatah terrorist. The entire episode was a damning indictment of Fatah - the party whose leader happens to be so-called "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas has nothing to do with it.

Which means that the US government is knowingly misinterpreting and downplaying the glorification of terrorism by Fatah.

The allies of the Obama administration are not doing any better.

Arlen Specter, Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania

What are the facts? It has been reported that there are 1,600 new settlements in East Jerusalem in violation of Israeli commitments.

Jennifer Rubin corrects Specter's error:

To the contrary, the apartment complex is not a “settlement,” nor is this part of an Israeli commitment. The Israeli government never pledged to forgo building in its eternal and undivided capital.

-----

Joe Klein, member of the Council of Foreign Relations and contributor to Time Magazine:

in the center of Hebron, the largest West Bank city and home to 500,000 Palestinians, there exists a colony of 400 Jewish extremist settlers--few of them native Israelis. They claim, correctly, that Hebron was a Jewish city 3000 years ago (as, of course, Arabs can claim evidence of their presence throughout the current land of Israel as least as long-standing...and, more to the point, a much stronger evidence of their presence, and the absence of Jews, far more recently).

Noah Pollak corrects Klein's errors:

There are not 500,000 Palestinians living in Hebron — there are about 163,000, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Klein is confusing the Hebron governorate with the city of Hebron. The Hebron governorate comprises around half the southern territory of the West Bank. This is like confusing the region of southern California with the city of Los Angeles.

But the best Kleinism is the block-quoted text above, in which he says that the Arabs have been in Hebron at least as long as the Jews. He apparently isn’t aware of the Arab conquests. You see, the Arabs originally came from Arabia, and after the death of Mohammad in the 7th century, they emerged from the Arabian peninsula and swept across the Middle East and North Africa, even into Spain, spreading Islam and Arabic in what today Joe Klein would call an illegal preemptive war to spread colonialism and empire.

If the members of the Obama administration cannot get the basic facts and history of the area right, why should Israel trust the policies that come out of that administration--let alone promises to preserve the security of Israel in that volatile region.

Technorati Tag: Obama and Biden and Hillary Clinton.

The Real Reason Obama Will Never Hit It Off With Netanyahu

noreply@blogger.com (The Yishuv) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:30:00 +0000

From the National Review feature: Krauthammer's Take:

On Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week:

We have already had a year delay in talks because of Obama interjecting the settlement issue in the first place.

Remember, for 17 years the Palestinians and Israelis negotiated, ever since Oslo, directly in the absence of a freeze in settlements. Palestinians never demanded it as a precondition.

In comes Obama, and he demands a freeze of settlements.
The Israelis say, why should we make preemptive concessions in advance? Palestinians haven't made any. And the Palestinians answer and say, "Well, if the Americans are demanding a settlement freeze, we are going to demand it as well. And in fact, we won't even speak with the Israelis until there is a settlement freeze."

This is absurd. That's why we have had a year of the Palestinians essentially in a boycott of these negotiations.

So, then, Netanyahu works out a fig leaf, a compromise in which he agrees to a ten-month moratorium outside of Jerusalem for a freeze. And then all of a sudden Obama re-imposes a new condition now of a freeze in Jerusalem, which no Israeli government will ever accept.

Jerusalem is the Israeli capital. Everybody understands that in a [final peace] settlement, these neighborhoods of east Jerusalem -- the ones that we are speaking about and where the construction is occurring, as well as the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem -- are going to be in the Jewish state under any understanding or settlement.

For example, in the Clinton parameters of the negotiations a decade ago [at Camp David], they would be incorporated into Israel.

So, no Israeli is going to accept a preemptive concession that Jews can't live in this area of east Jerusalem. So unless Obama changes position, talks again are at a standstill because of a blunder on the part of this administration.

Everybody wants negotiations. This inadvertently undermines them.
On how Israel was treated by President Obama during the Netanyahu visit:

There's a striking oddity here. This is a president who bows deeply to the king of Saudi Arabia, who's in a photo-op with the dictator of Venezuela, and will not allow the press in when he has a meeting with the prime minister of the only democracy in the Middle East and the strongest American ally in the Middle East.

It is odd, indeed.

On that latter point--on Obama's inability to get along with Netanyahu--Legal Insurrection nails it:

If Only Netanyahu Were An Unsavory Third World Dictator

Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post:

Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator,needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length.
Wrong. Unsavory Third World dictators are not treated this poorly by Obama:

Technorati Tag: Obama and Netanyahu.

Loudest Critics Of Biden Incident In Israel Don't Deal With Facts--But Know Exaclty What They're Doing

noreply@blogger.com (The Yishuv) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:31:00 +0000

The details surrounding the Biden episode and its repercussions are coming fast and furious--and as usual, there is a distinctive one-sidedness to the way they are being portrayed.

In How Obama created the Biden incident, Charles Krauthammer puts the gaffe--surrounding the announcement by Israel's Interior Ministry about housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem--in perspective:

But it was no more than a gaffe. It was certainly not a policy change, let alone a betrayal. The neighborhood is in Jerusalem, and the 2009 Netanyahu-Obama agreement was for a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements excluding Jerusalem.

Nor was the offense intentional. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu did not know about this move -- step four in a seven-step approval process for construction that, at best, will not even start for two to three years. [Hat tip: Soccer Dad]

Israeli ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor notes that those making demands on Israel do not even know where Ramat Shlomo, the center of the controversy, is located:

Let's get the facts straight. Ramat Shlomo is not in "east" Jerusalem as often reported, but in the north of Jerusalem. It is not a new settlement, but an existing, established neighbourhood. The planning application has already taken years and will take at least another three for the first brick to be laid.

Most cool-headed analysts agree that Jerusalem suburbs such as Ramat Shlomo will be considered part of Israel under any negotiated two-state solution.

Think about that for a second: not only was the announcement about something that would not even take place for the foreseeable future, and that the announcement itself does not contradict the 10-month freeze that Netanyahu had agreed to--the yelling by critics about Israel building in East Jerusalem is not even in East Jerusalem, and is in an area that many agree will belong to Israel anyway in any peace agreement.

Obama is not alone in pouncing upon this as an opportunity to make unilateral demands on Israel, now the Quartet as a whole is jumping in:

The so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators called on Israel to freeze all settlement activities and denounced Israel's aim to build new housing in East Jerusalem Friday.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon read a joint statement by the members — Russia, the United States, the U.N. and the European Union — following a meeting of the group in Moscow, which welcomed the prospect of "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinians.

"The Quartet believes these negotiations should lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties within 24 months, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors," the statement said.

But yet again, there is no sense of proportion--let alone history--to be found in the response of either the Obama administration nor the Quartet. Again, Krauthammer:

In these long and bloody 63 years, the Palestinians have not once accepted an Israeli offer of permanent peace, or ever countered with anything short of terms that would destroy Israel. They insist instead on a "peace process" -- now in its 17th post-Oslo year and still offering no credible Palestinian pledge of ultimate coexistence with a Jewish state -- the point of which is to extract preemptive Israeli concessions, such as a ban on Jewish construction in parts of Jerusalem conquered by Jordan in 1948, before negotiations for a real peace have even begun.

But these are details that will only slow down, not expedite any peace process. The fastest route to an 'agreement' is to put pressure on Israel, since of the two sides they are the only ones with competence to follow through on any agreement.

But Krauthammer digs deeper into Obama's own motivation for creating the current situation:

So why this astonishing one-sidedness? Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while beating up on allies -- therefore Israel shouldn't take it personally (according to Robert Kagan)? Because Obama wants to bring down the current Israeli coalition government (according to Jeffrey Goldberg)?

Or is it because Obama fancies himself the historic redeemer whose irresistible charisma will heal the breach between Christianity and Islam or, if you will, between the post-imperial West and the Muslim world -- and has little patience for this pesky Jewish state that brazenly insists on its right to exist, and even more brazenly on permitting Jews to live in its ancient, historical and now present capital?

Obama is intent on forcing through a peace "agreement" which, like Obamacare in the US, will have far-reaching and dangerous consequences upon those it is forced upon.

As for the Quartet as a whole, appeasement is not beneath them either.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Obama and The Quartet.