Al-Jazeera's "Illegal Settlements" Poster

Here is Al-Jazeera's summing up poster on "Fifty Years of Illegal Settlements in Palestine":

How they push our population to 750,000 is difficult even for me to confirm but if they want us to be more, fine.  It just proves, again, that the "demographic threat" all use as a scare tactic doesn't exist.

I do want to remind all, since UNSC 242 is right up at the top there, that

it does not mention a "Palestinian people" 

it does not mention a "state of Palestine".  

Not all territories needed to be evacuated. 

The only related problem needing a solution is "the refugee" one.  

And there were Jewish refugees, too.

It's approach that there is an "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" should have been applied to Jordan in 1949 (in addition to the many other cases and since it was/is not, it cannot be applied only to Israel).

And let us not ignore that only Israeli armed forces need been withdrawn ("Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces"). Civilians, especially Jews who have a right by virtue of the 1922 League of Nations decision to "close settlement on the land" surely need not remove themselves.

Oh, and there is no "Palestinian-Israel Conflict" That's a perversion of what was the "Arab-Israel Conflict" which itself is a perversion.

There is an "Arab Conflict with Israel and Zionism".

^

Professor Erekat, Where'd "Israel" Go?

I read this in an Al-Jazeera piece entitled, "Why there can never be a two-state solution"

...in the US-based Journal of Palestine Studies, lawyer and Georgetown University professor Noura Erekat wrote that Israel has used Resolution 242 to justify the seizure of Palestinian land."When Israel declared its establishment in May 1948, it denied that Arab Palestinians had a similar right to statehood as the Jews because the Arab countries had rejected the Partition Plan," Erekat wrote, referencing UN Resolution 181.

The professor 

further claims there that

Israel has used UN Security Council Resolution 242 to retroactively legitimate [its] colonial takings

There are two ways to counter her arguments besides discounting her use of "colonial".

There is the easy way which is to point to the website of Jadaliyya where Ms. Erekat serves as co-editor. I signed up to receive its newsletter but I had to note I reside in "palestine" (yes, with a small P) which is not a country nor a state but a region.

Why?

Well, Israel isn't listed:

Not nice. 

And she complains about Israel, which is a real state?  I hope I'm updated.

The second way, as she lectures in law, is to be a bit more serious.

In rejecting UNGA 181, the Arabs rejected the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine.  They also declared war against the nascent state of Israel and hostilities began on November 30.  In doing so, the violated UN resolutions.  What did they expect would result from all this?  That they would win even if they lost?

As for Israel's Declaration of Independence, it reads it a relevant section:

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

As for 242, it does not mention a "Palestinian people" nor a "state of Palestine".  Not all territories needed to be evacuated. The only related problem needing  solution is "the refugee" one.  And there were Jewish refugees, too.

Poor George Mason University (where she teaches).

^

The Mufti's January 9 Speech and UN Resolution 242

I agree with Yoram Ettinger:

...both Israeli and U.S. leaders ignore the real root of the conflict. The heart of the conflict is the denial of a non-Muslim entity's existence – namely, Israel – on land that, in the eyes of many Muslims, is "holy land" that belongs to them, and not any issue with Israel’s size or borders.

On Jan. 9, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, stressed that all Israeli territory was Muslim "holy land," had been since 637 C.E., and would be forever...On March 27, 2010, Abbas declared: "Jerusalem and all its surrounding areas are holy lands promised by Allah. We must do everything we can to save them from the Jewish threat."

This principle of "holy land" is permanent, and is stronger than any leader or passing policy, and it applies to any land that was ever under Islamic control. It is an inseparable part of the legacy of Muhammad and Islamic law...Their loyalty to the "holy land" obligates Muslims to "holy war" and the restoration of sovereignty in the Philippines, Thailand, parts of China, Kashmir, Chechnya, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere.

...Recognition of foreign sovereignty over Muslim "holy land" amounts to humiliation, betrayal and servitude for Arabs and Muslims...

Continuing the policy of negotiating "land for peace" plays into the hands of our enemies and dooms us to repeat past mistakes. It ignores the roots of Arab hostility, raises Arab expectations and exacerbates violence and terrorism in the region.

In this connection, let's deal with a closely related issue.

Is Israel obliged to withdraw completely and totally to the 1967 boundaries as per 242?

Here's from the Text of Shultz Letter to Israel's Prime Minister, from March 10, 1988

I set forth below the statement of understanding which I am convinced is necessary to achieve the prompt opening of negotiations on a comprehensive peace...The agreed objective is a comprehensive peace providing for the security of all the states in the region and for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people...negotiations will be based on United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, in all their parts...

...negotiations will be based on all the provisions and principles of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. Final status talks will start before the transitional period begins. The transitional period will begin three months after the conclusion of the transitional agreement and will last for three years. The United States will participate in both negotiations and will promote their rapid conclusion. In particular, the United States will submit a draft agreement for the parties' consideration at the outset of the negotiations on transitional arrangements.

Two weeks before the opening of negotiations, an international conference will be held...All participants in the conference must accept United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and renounce violence and terrorism...

Palestinian representation will be within the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The Palestinian issue will be addressed in the negotiations between the Jordanian-Palestinian and Israeli delegations.

Sincerely yours,
GEORGE P. SHULTZ

However, the letter to King Hussein had this added:

...the President...believes as well, however, that Resolution 242 does permit changes in the boundaries which existed prior to June 1967, but only where such changes are agreed between the parties.

King's Counsel: A Memoir of War, Espionage and Diplomacy in the Middle East by Jack O'Connell, WW Norton NY, 2011, p. 148

And here's a further clarification:

...Secretary of State George Shultz was even more explicit about what this meant during a September 16, 1988 address: “Israel will never negotiate from or return to the 1967 borders.”

The United State position changed more as evident from the Letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon, April 14, 2004

...As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations wiith a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any fin agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

So, on the opne hand a theological-ideological position and on the other, a proper acknowledgement of Arab aggression in 1967 as well as a recognition not only of diplomatic flexiibility but of the Jewish people's rights to their historic homeland in its borders.

When The UN Would Betray Its Own 'Land for Peace' Formula

The reasoning for that is in the op-ed of Efraim Karsh and Asad Romirowsky, Land for War.

Excerpts:-

...in putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization's longstanding solution to the Arab Israeli-conflict—U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—with unpredictable results...242 established the principle of "land for peace" as the cornerstone of future peace agreements between Israel and the Arabs, to be reached in negotiations...

...the resolution reflected acceptance by the Security Council of the existential threat posed by the 1949 armistice line, memorably described by Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban as "Auschwitz borders." The Security Council expected negotiations between Israel and the Arabs to produce a more defensible frontier for Israel, one consistent with, in the words of the resolution's other key formulation, the right of every state in the region "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries."

...Israel has persistently striven to make peace with its Arab neighbors. It withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, constituting more than 90% of the territories occupied in 1967...As for the Palestinians, their rejection of resolution 242 was absolute. In 1967, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rejected the U.N. proposal as a plot...When the Carter administration informed Arafat of its readiness to inaugurate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, should he accept resolution 242, the PLO chairman categorically turned the offer down. "This is a lousy deal," he told an intermediary. "We want Palestine. We don't want bits of Palestine."

It was not until 1988, more than two decades after the resolution's passage, that the Palestine National Congress grudgingly accepted resolution 242...Salah Khalaf (better known by his nom de guerre of Abu Iyad), declared that "the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine is but a step toward the whole of Palestine." Two years later, he reiterated this view at a public rally in Amman, pledging to liberate Palestine "inch by inch from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." Arafat remained committed to the PLO's phased strategy even after signing the 1993 Oslo Accords.

...The Palestinians have consistently misrepresented the resolution as calling for Israel's complete withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines, while claiming that its stipulation for "a just settlement of the refugee problem" meant endorsement of the Palestinian "right of return"—the standard Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction through demographic subversion. When Israel offered at the American-convened July 2000 peace summit in Camp David to cede virtually the entire territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state and made concessions with respect to Jerusalem, Arafat responded with a campaign of terror unmatched in the history of the Jewish state.

...Were the U.N. General Assembly to fall for the Palestinian ploy, it will not only reward decades of duplicity, intransigence, and violence and betray its own formula of "land for peace," but will be introducing a new and dangerous stage in the century-long feud between Arabs and Jews: that of "land for war."

I still say let the Arabs who desire to be "Palestinians" set up their state in Jordan and if that works out, then we can renegotiate.

Of course, since "territorial compromise" is the overriding principle, what territories are they to compromise on, after maintaining a campaign of terror between 1949 - 1967?

^

Jeff Halper is Such An ...

As Arlene Kushner shows:-

Clear & to the point

Sir, - Facts are facts, and Jeff Halper has his wrong in "Whose road map?" (November 7).

Says Halper: "President Bush (in his letter to Ariel Sharon) fatally but knowingly undermined UN Resolution 242, the very basis of the two-state solution since 1967... by nullifying the requirement that Israel return to the Green Line... so that a viable Palestinian state might emerge."

To begin with, Resolution 242 does not require Israel to return to the Green Line (essentially the 1949 armistice line). The resolution, with which its drafters struggled long and hard, calls for Israel to withdraw from "territories occupied in the recent conflict." It deliberately avoids reference to "the territories" or "all territories" because it was not the intention of the drafters that this would be required. For the other sense of the resolution is that every state in the area has the "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries," and it was broadly recognized that the Green Line would not provide Israel with secure borders.

But it is with regard to what 242 does not say that Halper - by speaking of the requirement that Israel withdraw "so that a viable Palestinian state might emerge" - most seriously errs.

Resolution 242 addresses only the relationship between Israel and surrounding Arab states. There is no reference to either a "Palestinian people" or a "Palestinian state" - nor to direct negotiations. Such negotiations were anathema to the Arab states, which had declared three "Noes" - no recognition of Israel, no peace, no negotiations.

If there is no reference to the Palestinian people, to a Palestinian state, or to negotiations, clearly it cannot be said that this document envisioned a "two-state solution."

ARLENE KUSHNER
Jerusalem