Love of the Land: Ya’alon Unloads on Obami

Ya’alon Unloads on Obami

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
19 April '10

The entire interview with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon should be read in full here. But a few of the Q&As are certainly of particular note. On the American administration’s amnesia:

Does the US not see in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal to accept Ehud Olmert’s generous offer in 2008 as a lack of willingness on the Palestinian side to come to an agreement?

Apparently not. From the dawn of Zionism there has not been a Palestinian leadership willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the national home of the Jewish people. This is the source of the problem, and not what is called the occupied territories since ’67. The opposition to Zionism began before we liberated Judea, Samaria and Gaza; before we established a state.

On the issue of settlements:

Israel’s critics say enlarging settlements helps Palestinian extremists and ruins any efforts to get the Palestinians to recognize our right to be here.

The prime minister said before the elections he was willing to accept the commitments of the previous government, among them the understanding between [George] Bush and [Ariel] Sharon, that no new settlements would be built in Judea and Samaria, and that construction in the settlements would be allowed [to enable] normal life, not exactly natural growth. That was the understanding, and construction continued through the Olmert and Sharon governments.

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Love of the Land: Ya’alon Unloads on Obami

Love of the Land: Israeli settlements are more than legitimate

Israeli settlements are more than legitimate

Eric Rozenman
Opinion/L.A.Times
11 December 09

President Obama asserts, seconded by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" in the West Bank. Both have praised the 10-month freeze on new residential building -- excluding eastern Jerusalem -- that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late last month.

Netanyahu now calls for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations or take the blame for lack of progress when the "one-time-only" freeze expires. Abbas' precondition -- adopted after Washington's pronouncements -- is that all Israeli construction, including in eastern Jerusalem, must cease permanently.

Too bad international diplomacy doesn't have a replay button. If it did, the parties could look back at history, which would show that Israeli settlements not only are legitimate under international law but positively encouraged.

The basic relevant provision, the League of Nations' 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, Article 6, encourages "close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public use." Most Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been built on land that was state land under the Ottomans, British, Jordanians and, after the 1967 Six-Day War, under the Israelis, or on property that has been privately purchased.

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Love of the Land: Israeli settlements are more than legitimate

Love of the Land: A classic Big Lie

A classic Big Lie

FresnoZionism.org
29 November 09

How many times have you heard something like this:

Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land are illegal and an obstacle to peace.

The statement is misleading or false in at least three ways:

First, there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian land’ unless you mean land owned by individual Palestinians, and most Israeli ’settlements’ in Judea and Samaria are built on state land or land purchased by Jews.

The original Palestine Mandate (and the Anglo-American Convention of 1924) specified only that there would be a ‘Jewish National Home’ within its borders; it did not specify that all of it would constitute this home. But it also did not specify that any particular part of it would be a Palestinian Arab state. One might add that in 1922, Britain split off the better part of the Palestine Mandate and gave it to the Hashemites to create an Arab state of Transjordan, which could well be considered a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab parts.

The 1947 General Assembly partition resolution did call for a division the land into Jewish and Arab states. But this was not accepted by the Arabs, and was not implemented as a result of the invasion by the Arab states in 1948. The Jordanian military aggression and annexation of this area was therefore illegal; in principle, it belonged to the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs.

The actual boundaries that define what the Jordanians decided to call “the West Bank”, which prior to 1950 was called “Judea and Samaria”, were entirely accidental, being the cease-fire lines of 1949. There is no treaty, Security Council resolution, or other basis in international law to say that the cease-fire lines define an Arab state. Indeed, the famous Security Council Resolution 242, as everyone knows, calls for

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Love of the Land: A classic Big Lie

Love of the Land: The Right of Jews to Live in the Land of Israel, .... If We Stand Up For Our Rights

The Right of Jews to Live in the Land of Israel, .... If We Stand Up For Our Rights

Moshe Arens

Haaretz

15 September 09

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors are exerting their best efforts in the search for ways to avoid a confrontation with the president of the United States, who has publicly called for a cessation of construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem. But there should be no doubt about it: The government of Israel and the U.S. president are on a collision course. That became clear when Barack Obama declared in his speech in Cairo that "this must stop," referring to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.

There are surely ways of postponing the collision, but in the final analysis, it is unavoidable, unless either the Israeli government accepts this diktat from the U.S. president, or Obama and his advisors recognize that Jews have a right to live and settle in Judea and Samaria. No amount of "creative ambiguity" is going to resolve this problem.

So how is Netanyahu going to handle this conundrum? He had experience dealing with president Bill Clinton on the Palestinian issue during his previous term as prime minister, and it is unlikely that he looks back on that experience with nostalgia.

In January 1997, giving in to pressure from the Clinton administration, he signed the Hebron agreement - which called for removing the Israel Defense Forces from most of Hebron and introducing a small international force into the area - with Yasser Arafat. Since then, Hamas has been predominant in Hebron, and the city has remained a powder keg of tension between Jews and Arabs. And it was only years later, after the IDF was reintroduced into the area during the second intifada, that an end came to continuous acts of Palestinian terror.

The year after the Hebron agreement, he agreed to meet Arafat at Wye Plantation under Clinton's auspices. Nothing came of that conference except that the American president was drawn toward Arafat and subsequently visited Gaza, where he declared that the American people supported the Palestinian people's aspirations. So much for impartial arbitration.

So how is it going to be handled this time? From news reports, it seems that Netanyahu intends to keep Obama at bay for a limited period of time while he placates his own supporters with a permit to "complete buildings in Judea and Samaria that have already begun," and then declare a moratorium on further construction there for a period of nine months. On receiving this news in Washington, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, probably told the president the old joke about the Jew who asked for a year's stay of execution from the Polish count by promising him that during that time, he would teach the count's dog to talk.

Is this going to work? Obama has decided to take his position on Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria public, and though many things will surely happen during the next nine months, he is not likely to retract his position during that period. In other words, even if Washington were to accept Netanyahu's compromise position, the confrontation will not have been avoided.

That being the case, Netanyahu must consider whether it is not wiser to face Washington on a matter of principle - the right of Jews to live and settle in the Land of Israel - rather than engage in a war of attrition over a compromise formula. Anybody with experience representing Israel in the United States will tell him that there, you are better off fighting for a principle than trying to justify a compromise deal.

Over the years, Israeli governments have had differences of opinions with various administrations in Washington - though it is true that not since President Eisenhower demanded that the IDF retreat from Sinai and Gaza after the Suez Campaign, 50 years ago, have these differences been taken so public by the U.S. president. We obviously prefer to be in total agreement with our ally across the sea, but we know that is not always possible. We also prefer to handle the differences of opinion between us with discretion.

But in either case, we know that we can ride out the disagreements. Israel's alliance with the United States is based not only on common ideals and values, but also on mutual interests, and even a recognition of mutual benefits, despite the vast asymmetry in size between the two countries. When it comes to our most basic rights - the right of Jews to live in the Land of Israel - the United States will defer to Israel. That is, if we stand up for our rights.

Love of the Land: The Right of Jews to Live in the Land of Israel, .... If We Stand Up For Our Rights

Love of the Land: Israel Can And Must Act In Her Own Best Interests.

Israel Can And Must Act In Her Own Best Interests.

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero – “Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.” Horace.

Ted Belman
Israpundit
12 September 09

As I read Ettinger’s excellent piece, I was reminded of other historical facts having to do with limiting Jewish settlement, emigration or immigration. Even before the British Mandate, Britain was actively limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. Stalin also prevented Jewish emigration. The Mandate didn’t change much. Britain continued to limit immigration and so so did Russia/USSR right up to its downfall. Remember the “Let my people go” campaign in the seventies.

Haj Amin el Husseini, the grand Mufti of Jerusalem and confidant of Hitler, led a full scale Arab revolt against the Jews between 1936 and 1939 causing much Jewish bloodshed. In response the Peel Commission was set up and recommended limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. Just what the Arabs wanted. In fact, the Peel Commission even recommended the abolition of the Mandate and recommended two states. Ben Gurion fought hard to maintain Jewish immigration and even supported partition while most of the Zionist movement did not. To his chagrin, friends of Zionism in England including Churchill, Lloyd George persuaded the British Parliament to vote against partition.

In 1938, Ben Gurion commented on Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” and said “They handed Czechoslovakia over. Why shouldn’t they do the same with us?”

Shortly thereafter Ben Gurion made his case to Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, who suggested, that the Arab and Muslim world could rise up and threaten the British Empire and therefore to prevent this, Britain had to make sure that the Jews in Palestine remained a minority. In other words Britain was against the creation of a Jewish state.

During the war, the world conspired to prevent Jews from escaping Europe to Palestine. Britain, even after the war, actively attempted to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. Remember the DP Camps in Cypress and Exodus.

It was due to Jewish resistance after the war that the British turned the matter over to the UN which ultimately voted for the partition that the British Parliament had turned down.. Ben Gurion preferred half a loaf to no loaf and so declared the State of Israel.

The Law of Return was quickly passed welcoming all “Jews” to come to Israel. All you needed to be eligible was one Jewish grandparent.

After the Six Day War in ‘67 the World attempted to prevent Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria even though Jews had the legal right to do so stemming from the British Mandate. Neither Res 242 nor the Oslo Accords made mention of restricting such settlement, so the international community tried to brand the settlements as illegal pursuant to the Geneva Convention. Many legal scholars beg to differ with this and argue convincingly that the Convention doesn’t make settlements illegal.

Prior to the Roadmap, in response to atrocities the Arabs committed with their suicide bombers, Senator Mitchell rewarded them by recommending a settlement freeze just like the Peel Commission did. This freeze was incorporated into the Roadmap which came into existence in 2003.

Another refrain that developed particularly after the Roadmap, was that no one, meaning Israel, should do anything, meaning settle the land, to prejudge the outcome. Of course the Arabs could do anything they wanted to prejudge the outcome and the US cooperated with them. A case in point is opening her Consulate in Jerusalem to serve the Arabs while at the same time refusing to open her Embassy in Jerusalem to serve the Israelis. The US also supports illegal Arab construction and condemns Jewish construction, legal or otherwise.

The demand in the Roadmap that Palestine be “viable” and “contiguous” also prejudges the outcome as does the demand that Jerusalem be divided.

And now Obama is demanding a settlement freeze. Fortunately he doesn’t have the support in the US or in Israel to bring it about.

As Ettinger points out, Israel can and must resist the pressure and act in her own best interests.

Love of the Land: Israel Can And Must Act In Her Own Best Interests.