Facts are Facts

Andrea Levin, Executive Director of CAMERA in Boston, had a letter published in the Boston Globe on August 5 in response to a factually erroneous letter printed several days earlier.

In part, it read:-

As to Garrett's claim that even Israel's own Supreme Court deems Jewish settlements illegal, he's wrong. The opposite is true. The Elon Moreh case of 1979, the key relevant court decision, set the parameters for establishment of legal settlements. It ruled, for example, that no private Arab land could be taken for settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, but rather, state land was to be used.

To my mind, CAMERA would have been on stronger ground on the question of "settlement legality" had Andrea Levin pointed out that one of the fundamental legal rights granted Jews within the territory of the reconstituted Jewish National Home, which from 1922 onwards included all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, was that of "close settlement".

The language of Article 6 is quite clear on this matter, reading that the Mandate Power "shall encourage...close settlement by Jews, on the land, including State lands and waste lands".