To Whom the Political Rights

Eli Hertz reminds us:

The mandate implicitly denies Arab claims to national political rights in the area in favor of the Jews; the mandated territory was in effect reserved to the Jewish people for their self-determination and political development, in acknowledgment of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land. Lord Curzon, who was then the British Foreign Minister, made this reading of the mandate explicit. There remains simply the theory that the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have an inherent 'natural law' claim to the area."

And as I have repeated here many times:

The Mandate for Palestine, a legally binding document under international law, clearly differentiates between political rights - referring to Jewish self-determination as an emerging polity - and civil and religious rights, referring to guarantees of equal personal freedoms to non-Jewish residents as individuals and within select communities. Not once are Arabs as a people mentioned in the Mandate for Palestine. At no point in the entire document is there any granting of political rights to non-Jewish entities (i.e., Arabs).

_________
See Eugene V. Rostow, The Future of Palestine, Institute for National Strategic Studies, November 1993. Professor Rostow was Sterling Professor of Law and Public Affairs Emeritus at Yale University and served as the Dean of Yale Law School (1955-66); Distinguished Research Professor of Law and Diplomacy, National Defense University; Adjunct Fellow, American Enterprise Institute. In 1967, as U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, he became a key draftee of UN Resolution 242. See also his article: "Are Israel's Settlements Legal?" The New Republic, October 21, 1991.

^

The Truth from Tel Shiloh

Yesterday, MK Zehava Galon minimized the value of Tel Shiloh. 

Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On attacked the decision to fund Tel Shiloh. Netanyahu's "extreme right wing government is isolating Israel from the international community," she said.

A more neutral observer notes

The motivating force of practical Zionism since 1967 has been the attempt to turn the historical attachment to all parts of the Land of Israel, which nobody disputes, into a political right. To translate the desire to return to Shiloh, Beit El, Anatot and Hebron—the cradle of the nation — into a diplomatic right over which there can be no compromise because it is impossible to compromise on a right granted thousands of years ago. By means of that same right, claim those who hold it sacred, the Zionists came to the Jezreel Valley and Jerusalem, and afterward to Shiloh and Hebron.

And that is correct.  We are not isolating ourselves but instructing the world and our immediate neighbors that that sacred right is not a myth.  It is not fancifal or fake.  It is real.  It comes out of the ground we dig, and out of our minds and hearts.  It is who we are as Jews.  Isolated or not, that is the truth and truth is as sacred as our beliefs.

The Jewish people possess not only a right, but a heritage, a legacy.  It is religious, cultural, historical and legal.

Today, some two dozen Tel Shiloh guides underwent an intensive half-day seminar.

Some pictures:

And those were from just the 1st century Roman period until the late Byzantine and early Muslim periods, 5th to 7th centuries.  You can see an olive press (one of those weights is Second Temple period), walls, a possible stone-engraved relief, store rooms, plumbing and more.

Soon, we will be seeing more as a new excavation should begin mid-March in the area that may have contained the Tabernacle court.

__________

Follow up from yesterday:

Some government officials suggested that the decision was motivated by fear of worldwide condemnation. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova expressed concern that inclusion of the two sensitive sites would escalate tensions in the region, and U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry said the sites were “of historical and religious significance not only to Judaism but also to Islam and to Christianity as well.”

Hershkowitz submitted a letter to Hauser, Army Radio reported, demanding that Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs be added back to the list.

“Omitting Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs is like denying our elementary heritage,” he wrote in the letter, according to Army Radio. “They are the burial sites of our three fathers and four mothers. The state of Israel extracts its entire heritage from these sites.”

Army Radio quoted a Prime Minister’s Office statement as saying that “the projects slated for approval today are sites that require immediate and urgent renovation. Rachel’s Tomb is already undergoing extensive renovation anyway and no specific problems were identified at the Cave of the Patriarchs.”

^

New Set of Posters: Don't Strip Israel of...

My idea; Elder of Zion's graphic ingenuity.

For the male college campus dorm or frat house:

And let's go with another contribution from EOZ, all his own:

Is that Jeremy J Street?


Btw, see The Forward.

^

Jewish Graves Discovered in Lower Samaria - From 2000 Years Ago

This is a clip from Channel One TV news in Israel of a recently discovered burial area near Aboud from 2000 years ago:



^

Censorship? By Lefties? Old Story

Remember the collection, "The Seventh Day"?

A behind-the-scene story:-

Much less known is that while transcribing the tapes of the interviews, someone proposed they interview the religious youth who were combat veterans...an editorial team from "The Seventh Day," Amram and Giora Mozenson from Na'an, went to a meeting with a group of the students from the yeshiva. The interview went on for five hours. When the interviewers returned with their transcripts, Oz and Shapira were horrified.

Fifteen years later, in a meeting at the West Bank settlement of Ofra, Oz told the settlers what he felt when he read the transcripts...

..."It was a shocking encounter. The "Seventh Day" people went with the hope of finding allies against the sentiment that was sweeping the country after the military victory, the nationalistic drunkenness and the general worshiping, the orgies of victory. They came back from their meeting downcast and mourning. Not only because of the euphoria they found in the yeshiva, the ecstasy of the Western Wall, Anatot, Shiloh and Beit El, and the talk of victories and miracles and salvation and the days of the messiah - all foreign tongues to us."

But what "really hurt," said Oz, "was the utter apathy toward our moral crisis. There was enormous self-doubt after the victory, about our values, our ideals, our conscience, our worldview. All that prevented us from ignoring the significance of having become a nation occupying another ... the Six-Day War was a war between armies, not peoples. The people of Israel went into it with a national agreement, that it was going to defend its very existence. Nothing more than that ... that agreement was trod underfoot the day after the war, and the country filled with different tunes and new appetites and shofar blasting, and that was a shock to us, a source of suffering and moral dilemmas.

"And not only were the Merkaz Harav people speaking a different language, not one of them understood what pained us, what our moral problem was. Their utter indifference appeared to us to be thick, glib, vain and patronizing, physical, drunk with power, overflowing with messianic rhetoric that was ethno-centric, apocalyptic, and in one word, inhuman, and not Jewish. To them, the Arab people under our control were not even there, as if they were never born."

Six Merkaz Harav students, all in their twenties, gathered at Yohanan Fried's house in Jerusalem, in August 1967. Four of them, Fried, Issar Kolanski, Yitzhak Ben-Shahar, and Dov Begun, fought in the Jerusalem Brigade in the West Bank. Naftali Bar-Ilan and Yoel Bin-Nun were in the Paratroopers Brigade, which broke into the Old City and conquered it.

Fried, the first to speak, talked about a sermon delivered their yeshiva head, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, on the Independence Day that preceded the war. The rabbi said that he did not dance on the first independence day of the State of Israel. "he could not be happy because he felt was missing Hebron, Nablus, Jericho," Fried said, adding, "the emotional experience of the magic of Jerusalem and the magic of the Greater Land of Israel were the feeling of a person who felt he had lost limbs. My life was not emotionally complete."

Bin-Nun spoke of his feelings and his "anticipation of great things" during the waiting period before the war. He quoted Rabbi Kook senior, writing on the eve of World War One, "... burning sentences about the greatest of all wars, and how the greater the war, the more one should expect even greater things to follow it."

Begun: "Before the war I had the feeling that everything had to be mental, rational, orderly. After the war I don't know ... I wonder ... I feel that something is happening, something big is approaching. I don't depend on rationalism any more. I'm going ... with all of Israel, toward something, I don't know what, but I believe it's a good thing."

Fried: "There are three things we have witnessed, and speak about them as something either we or our parents lived through: the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the war we're talking about now. These three things were a clear sign that the Blessed One gave us two opportunities for every action in the direction of a great future. One is simple, intellectual, rational, perhaps in the hands of man. Maybe it's too brutal a sentence but the Holocaust was like some huge broom that accelerated the immigration to the Land, as if the Blessed One said to us, `Enough, children ... you played at what you want ... now I'll move you by force."

Kolanski: "We had the feeling of total lack of direction. Not only we weren't trained to be strong and victors ... we weren't trained to be a little bit taller."

Mozenson: "You mean that you didn't have the ability to grasp great things? Is that what you mean?"

Kolanski: "Right. We were embarrassed because none of us were used to grasping great things ... all the worshiping I do in my daily life, which occupies the center of my life, became in a certain way just a shadow of all the feeling I would have if the Temple were to exist and all of the Land of Israel were in our hands."

And now. let us reread what Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 1996 interiew:-

...This is not a foreign land for us. It is not Denmark or Holland. It is not a matter of coincidence that we are here. For thousands of years, Jews struggled to return to Israel. For thousands of years, they shed oceans of blood and tears because of their desire to return. Now we see a generation emerging in Israel who, with a wave of their hand, seek to break this bond. I see the Algerian analogy as a grave symptom of a profound loss of identity. It is difficult to believe. When I walk among the hills of Beit El or Judea, or in the environs of Jerusalem, am I treading on foreign soil?

Judea and Samaria are not Algeria. This is a misleading analogy. In historical terms, our entire existence here is inextricably linked to these parts of the country. In geographic and security terms, there is no sea separating us from these regions. They are not some overseas colony, some far-flung settlement in Cyprus or southern Turkey. They are here. This is why both in national and strategic terms, the comparison is absurd. However, it does reveal the heart of the problem. The fact is that we cannot simply pack up and leave this place. Where would we go? When will we see the end of the demand to retreat? At what point will the land stop being foreign?

If the supposed foreignness of these areas is the product of the obvious and well-known fact that a large Arab population lives in Judea and Samaria, then what about the Galilee and much of the Negev? There, too, there is a large Arab population. The idea that we are strangers in those parts of the country which are settled mainly by Arabs inevitably leads to a gradual return to the partition agreement, and from there to an abandonment of our basic right to any part of the country. Those who dream of closing ourselves off in a gilded seaside fortress, in some kind of luxury suburb on the Tel Aviv shore, are dreaming an impossible dream. This dream is reminiscent of the illusions prevalent among the Christians in Lebanon, who gave up most of the country to others in the hope that they would be left with something. In the end, they were left with nothing.

...Q: In your book A Place Among the Nations, there is a rather emotional section in which you recall yourself as a soldier stopping by Shiloh and Betar during an army training hike and feeling a sense of return, on behalf of all the generations. You quote Moshe Dayan: "We have returned to the mountain, to the cradle of our nation, to the inheritance of our ancestors ... we have returned to Hebron and Nablus, to Bethlehem and Anatot." Is it possible that the irony of history will mean that despite this, you will be the one to lead us to cut ourselves off once and for all from these places, from Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem and Anatot?
A: We are not cutting ourselves off from Hebron. We are redeploying there. What I have been working hard to achieve over the past few weeks is precisely to ensure that we protect the lives of the Jews in Hebron and maintain our holy sites in the city.

Nevertheless, the arrangement in Hebron is extremely difficult for me since I have a deep bond to these places. They speak to me. Every stone, every terrace, every tree and every hill raises memories, connects me to a very real historical experience of which I feel an inseparable part. I cannot understand why we tend to have great respect for the Arabs' bond to the land, which is relatively recent, while at the same time disparaging our own bond to the land, which goes back thousands of years.

...Hebron...is the oldest settlement in Jewish history. This is where our matriarchs and patriarchs are buried.

This is why I feel such a great burden of responsibility and am doing everything I can to secure our historical assets, without jeopardizing all the other aspects and national interests that it is my responsibility as prime minister to protect.

- - -

Even Weizmann Supported Historical Right and Less-Than-Strict Democracy

The following is extracted from a letter written by Chaim Weizmann on 26 January 1919 to Sir Arthur Wigram Money, Chief Administrator of Palestine 1918-1919, whose forward (*) appears in "The Home of Fadeless Splendour : Or The Diary of a Pilgrimage to Palestine", by George Napier, and relates to a topic I have discussed here ay my blog many times - the rights of the local non-Jewish population in the Mandate territory.

The strict application of a "democracy principle" by numbers was unfair because, as also Jabotinsky wrote, due to exile and dispersion and persecution, the Jewish population of the Land of Israel of course was not on par with those who had invade, conquered and occupied the country. To count heads even before the Zionist movement had a chance to open up the gates to immigration and then future economic development was harming Jewish historical rights.




Source: Weisgasl, Meyer & Reinharz, J. (eds.), The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol. IX - Series A, p. 105



==========


(*)

FOREWORD

(this has been "read" from a scanned copy so there are letters missing or wrong but I left it as it is at the site)

The author has chosen a title worthy of his subject, which he treats with loving care. The Holy Land is in truth " The Home of Fadeless Splendour," and of imperishable mt-mories for the followers of three of the religions of the world. In it their fore-fathers have in turn striven, triumphed, and failed.

Standing at the gateway of the Orient, it has been from time immemorial the scene of desperate stniggles for mastery by the nations of the East and West, culminating in Alh uby's la^«t great cnisade of 1917-1918. That crusade opened up for Palestine and its people a future such as poUtically it never had before — of lasting peace and freedom from aggression, guaranteed b\' the Allied Powers.

To myself, as first Chief Administrator, together with a band of loyal and able colleagues, selected for the most part from the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, fell the honour of assisting the country to recover from the loss and privation of four years of war, and of first applying to its people the principles of British freedom and justice, and of equal treatment for all races, classes, and creeds. Their generous and whole-hearted response was a convincing testimony of their ability — under wise and impartial guidance — to fulfil their rightful destiny in the world.

The uninformed visitor is, perhaps not unnaturall\-, inclined to make unfavourable comparisons between the somewhat squalid villageb and primitive cultivation of the Christian and Moslem peasants and the flourishing appearance and up-to-date methods of the Jewish colonies ; and he will probably form tlie erroneous conclusion that the Palestinian in general is an idle and thriftless cidtivator. He is, on the contrary, a cheerful and willing worker, when he has anything to work for.

It must be remembered that these Jewish colonies, carefully located on specially selected sites, have had the advantage of powerful financial and political backing from European sources [creeping antisemitism there], and the assistance of expert agricultural advisers. The same backing also served to protect the colonists to some extent from the exactions of the Turkish tax-gatherer.

The Palestinian, on the other hand. li\ing for centuries un the blight of Turkish rule, had little incentive to work i progress when the result of his labour would benefit chiefly individuals to whom the collection of the agricultural ti (actually 125 per cent.) was farmed out by the local governm^ He soon reacted, however, to the improved conditions and p pects, opened up to him under Briti^h Administration, of secu for hfe and property, impartial justice, and an equitable a.- ment and collection of taxes. His speedy recovery, indeed, f the lethargy of centuries was Uttle short of marvellous, and w tribute to his inherent sterhng qualities.

Although it cannot truthfully be described at the present (except in certain favoured localities, as "a land flowing with and honey", the mainstay of the country is agriculture; what the farmer and peasant chiefly need are assitance in the form of agricultural loans, to enable them to improve t stock and mithods of cultivation, expert advice, and especi political stability.

The burning political qucbtion of the day, which overshad all others in the eyes of all classes and creeds, is the 7ic question, and the interpretation plac( d by the Mandatory P( on the Balfour declaration — as it is called. It is not too muc
state that on a just and wise solution of this problem depends whole future peace and prospc rity of Palestine, as also the finar commitments of the Mandatory Power.

The Home of Fadeless Splendour will npjx-al to a large \aried cla^s of reader as a true and faithful picture of the Land, its past history, and its present condition. It not naturally passes Hghtly over the operations of " The Last (sade," but a perusal of it will recdl to soldiers all over the Em many of the scenes of their triumph, and will also convey to th in fuller detail than they were able to acquire during brief v] of inspection, the story of places and sites long familiar to tl from sacred and secular history.

The religious pilgrim and the tourist will find a fund accurate and interesting information about most of the H Places they will wish to visit, in a form not of the guide-book, rather as it appeared to another interested and enthusia pilgrim in Palestine. To myself the pages of the book call b memories oi the closing and perhaps most enthrallmg phast my military' career : friends of many nations, classes and cree^ a band of colleagues second to none, to whom work for the g( of the country and its people was in truth a labour of love ; and, astly, memory-pictures of many scenes of " fadeless splendour " the view from the Mount of Ohves of the Holy City at sunrise, ind of the Dead Sea at sunset with the Mountains of Moab in the )ackground ; the Plain of Esdralon from Nazareth ; the Sea of Galilee from the western plateau ; the Bay of Acre from Carmel . . memories and scenes that \vill ever remain enshrined in my leart.

Llvington Hall, A. V. MONEY.
Ipswich.
July 15 1921

In Digging We Trust

This is not an ancient mosque.

Neither is it a church of antiquity.

It is the excavation site of an ancient quarry in Jerusalem which archaeologists have uncovered and believe King Herod extracted stones for the construction of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago.




Picture credit: Assaf Peretz

NBC reports:

...archaeologists believe the 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) quarry was part of a much larger network of quarries used by Herod...the size of the stones [three yards (meters) long, two yards (meters) across, and two yards (meters) high] indicates they could have been used in the construction of the Temple compound...

The two-week excavation, which was conducted before construction begins on an apartment complex at the site, also uncovered pottery, coins and what appear to be tools used in the quarry dating to the first century B.C.

"Finding a large quarry related to the largest building project ever undertaken in Jerusalem ... that's more than just another discovery," said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the excavation. "It's an additional block that slowly reveals the picture of construction in ancient Jerusalem.

INN adds:

...[an] estimated 10,000 laborers produced the stones by creating detachment channels with the use of a one-pound chisel. “After the channels were formed, the stones were severed from the bedrock using hammers and chisels...

Historical rights are based on historical truths which represent the reality that was and assures the Jews their future rights in and to this Land.

We just have to keep digging.

I've Read Jabotinsky

Many people are upset over Chaim Gans' mini-article, a response to Moshe Arens, and one point in particular where he wrote:

During his testimony to the Peel Commission, Jabotinsky rationalized the necessity for a Jewish homeland on both banks of the Jordan River not by citing historic rights, but by the need to rescue Europe's Jews from extermination (while taking into account the population density that would have resulted in the late 1930s in relation to the number of Jews in Europe).

The Jews' historic right justified their choice of the Land of Israel as the place to realize their self-determination. But that right has never justified Jewish sovereignty over all the Land of Israel.

The article is entitled "They should read Jabotinsky".

Well, I have. I have a copy of Jabo's Peel Commission testimony.

It reads there, quite plainly:

"The idea is that Palestine on both sides of the Jordan should hold the Arabs, their progeny, and many millions of Jews."

Jabo went on and stated quite plainly:

"What I do not deny is that in that process the Arabs of Palestine will necessarily become a minority in the country. I do deny that that is a hardship...One fraction, one branch of that race, and not a big one, will have to live in someone else's state..." .

And note: Arabs of Palestine, not "Palestinian Arabs".

And, of course, that testimony given in February 1937 was dominated by Jabo's "catastrophic" approach, that the antisemtisim of Europe demanded a quick and immediate solution which meant moving hundreds of thousands if not millions of Jews to Eretz-Yisrael fast. The time concept was one of Hitler and the oncoming tragedy of which Jabo, more than any other Zionist leader, was convinced would happen to the Jews in Exile.

His argument before the Commission was much more pragmatic than ideological. But to write that, a la Jabotinsky,:

The Jews' historic right...has never justified Jewish sovereignty over all the Land of Israel.

is nonsensical. What Jabo said was that, in addition to our historic right, one that all the world recognized and which the Balfour Declaration clearly alluded to as Jabo stressed in his words before the Commission when he pointed out the full context of the letter Balfour sent to Lord Rothschild, quoting the introduction which sometimes is skipped over:

Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

Jabo noted that those aspirations were well known, the text of the Declaration undergoing several drafts and alterations. It meant, basically, the reconstitution of the Jewish national home, where Jews would gain a "certain amount of self-government in its internal and external affair" and they would possess "a Jewish majority" in the land which extended "on both sides of the Jordan River".

Jabo didn't have to argue on the basis of "historic rights" because that was a given, having been recognized some two decades earlier. He was past that in 1937 for he was arguing in an attempt to thwart partition on the one hand and, on the other hand, to move many more Jews than, until then, the British Mandatory administration had presumed it was possible, or desirable given the Arab violence, to permit to enter the country even from its "economic capacity", that infamous phrase Hope-Simpson had coined in 1930 as part of the Passfield Commission.

Jabo always had a streak of impossible pragmatism in him. That was his liberal legacy. For example, in 1930 he wrote:

I dream of a great pan-Arab gathering containing representatives of a long belt of lands stretching from Agadir to Bassora; and the Jewish delegate, facing that gathering, openly and honestly claims the whole of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan for his own people's home and state, to settle and govern. In my dream, this is what he says,"This land is less than one hundredth of the immensity of space which God has given you, and my people are homeless; and in my heart I have always called this land mine. I must have it or die; I am ready to fight for it: but perhaps fighting is not necessary; perhaps, O Sons of Father Ibrahim, Ishmael will uphold the claim of Israel, not because compelled to nor because deceived, but simply because it is right that God's earth should be re-distributed so that a homeless nation may re-occupy its ancient kingdom." And the great gathering's answer in my dream is in the affirmative.

Even in this, it is clear that Jabo notes the historic aspect of the Jewish right to be in its homeland. And he concludes:

I very much doubt whether this dream of mine has any chance of ever coming true. I am afraid we shall get Palestine only by fighting. But at least it is a clean and honest dream, as honest and clean as the other and more likely expedient – fighting.

And in another article, from 1923, we read and hear the echo of today's assault of Israel:

Yet if homeless Jewry demands Palestine for itself it is "immoral" because it does not suit the native population. Such morality may be accepted among cannibals, but not in a civilised world. The soil does not belong to those who possess land in excess but to those who do not possess any. It is an act of simple justice to alienate part of their land from those nations who are numbered among the great landowners of the world, in order to provide a place of refuge for a homeless, wandering people. And if such a big landowning nation resists which is perfectly natural – it must be made to comply by compulsion. Justice that is enforced does not cease to be justice...

...All sorts of catchwords are used against Zionism; people invoke Democracy, majority rule national self-determination. Which means, that the Arabs being at present the majority in Palestine, have the right of self-determination, and may therefore insist that Palestine must remain an Arab country. Democracy and self-determination are sacred principles, but sacred principles like the Name of the Lord must not be used in vain – to bolster up a swindle, to conceal injustice. The principle of self-determination does not mean that if someone has seized a stretch of land it must remain in his possession for all time, and that he who was forcibly ejected from his land must always remain homeless...And now when the whole of the civilised world has recognised that Jews have a right to return to Palestine, which means that the Jews are, in principle, also "citizens" and "inhabitants" of Palestine, only they were driven out, and their return must be a lengthy process, it is wrong to contend that meanwhile the local population has the right to refuse to allow them to come back and to that "Democracy”.

But let's extensively quote again from Jabotinsky on historic rights 1905:

...the general attachment of many of our intelligentsia to the land of Israel is very nebulous, for this yearning for the ancient homeland seems to them to be simply some kind of roseate dream which, when necessary, can also be evaded. We ourselves, of course, are to blame for all this. Thus, why the Holy Land is the cornerstone of our redemption and why it alone could serve this purpose, are the least considered questions in Zionist literature. The time has come for those of us who recognize quite clearly that Zionism must on no account be separated from the land of Israel to formulate our convictions clearly and speak out loud. We do not deny that those who wish to erase the inscription 'Zion' from our banner and inscribe beneath it the slogan, 'wherever your eyes lead you', use well-considered and logical reasons, maintaining that we have held fast to the land of Israel for dubious reasons such as emotion, mood and 'historical romanticism.' The time has come to explain that the link between Zionism and Zion is not merely a question of a strong and eradicable instinct but also a justified and significant outcome of purely positive considerations.

...a movement cannot be a popular movement in the fullest sense of the word unless its basic concept is a plain unadorned formulation of the will of the people. Should the vision of the movement be even one minute fraction less in substance than that desired by the people, then the movement will rapidly find, itself faced with the choice between having the ground cut away from under its feet (although temporarily it enjoyed a considerable superficial success), or be compelled to yield to primary forces and change its direction...There are only three ways of detecting the pure, unadulterated will of the people. The first way is through the processes of history which reflect the true will of the people since these processes are modified by it...A second way of detecting the popular will is through the insight of a genius of a particular generation...There is, however, a third way for detecting the genuine will of the people. It is not as reliable as the first two ways, but on the other hand it is more easily reached. The method consists of a profound study of a people's history.

The past runs along steel rails which perforce continue on into the future: if a certain movement "goes off the rails" it will overturn and be smashed. Each new trend in the life of the people must stem directly from its entire past. If, in the course of the variegated events which make up a people's history, the same primary motives are maintained, then even a new trend must ipso facto expose these very motives, otherwise the new movement will not stand on a firm basis. If we delve deeper into the past, we will be able to discern and expose these underlying motives which are the primary motives of the people. And the deeper we investigate, the more surely we will we grasp the substance of these motives. Then, when we are as familiar as we possibly can be with the principal signs of the people's will which are frequently revealed in the varied and curious events of a people's history, will it be clearly proved whether the program of the new Movement is suitable, that is whether it continues the course set by the previous historical process or whether it tends to deviate from the way which the past has predetermined for it and swerves from this course. And after we have analyzed the difference between the organic, underlying motives and those imposed by the pressure of exterior and transitory events, only then can we determine with some degree of accuracy if the secondary motives will sooner or later be eliminated by history, since they have no roots in the people's will. It is an expression of these primary motives that the Movement program must be formulated if it to fulfill the people's will and triumph.

and he continues:

...The Jews are dispersed in small groups dotted here and there, engulfed by masses of non-Jews. These have a hostile attitude and express it forcibly; their hostility finds expression in some charge or other, whether it is clearly expressed or kept under the surface, whether it is justified or not. They are in a stronger position and they emphasize this by repressive measures. The Jews suffer in silence but adamantly hold their ground, denying these charges for the hostility does not decrease, only taking on another guise. And thus, this is what happens, monotonously and regularly throughout the generations until finally it seems as if the various groups have fused into one presenting a single unit: a concentrated mass of people being furiously attacked from all sides by countless enemies claiming something or other; the group closes its ranks and does not yield, apparently preferring to suffer endless torture as long as it can hold on to this something and not surrender it to the enemy. What then is this something which is so precious to this group of people? How can you define this something for which they are prepared to suffer continuous torment? If the history of the exile is concerned with self-defense of a group of people, what is this sacred heritage it protects so stubbornly, the devotion to which apparently is the prime motive for the entire history of this people without a land?

There is a stock answer to this question: the sacred heritage is their religion. The Jewish people fought and suffered for the sake of the Torah; non-Jews demanded that they abandon their Torah but they did not yield. The history of the exile is the history of our struggle for our religious faith.

...Every nation which lives a normal national life is settled within a clearly defined homeland serving to protect its national personality. Israel, having lost both its homeland and its national organization, still maintained its desire for national existence and clung with all its might to the only thing which was likely to keep it distinct from other nations and at the same time serve as a cementing factor within its own ranks - religion, a religion riddled with inhibitions and interpretations. As a result of the instinct for national self-preservation the nation sensed that as long as the children of Israel, in addition to believing in their God and praying in their synagogues, were also to set themselves apart from other peoples in almost all other spheres of life then this national distinctiveness would remain intact and safe from the influences of other nations. We must stand on firm ground, they said. Therefore when religion replaced our land, our first action was to make it firm and solid, but we petrified our religion and set it hard in order that it be a protective armor for our national distinctiveness.

All this criticism is not intended to minimize the value of Judaism. On the contrary, for a religion to replace the national homeland and its national functions for hundred of years, it really must be a great religion, a religion abounding in eternal verities. Nevertheless the Torah has not fulfilled the role of the national heritage during the exile, but has been its guardian...

...We have now reached the main point at issue. What is this Jewish national distinctiveness?...The essence of the national distinctiveness which we instinctively envisage whenever we utter the word 'Jew' with pride and not with shame, was not created in exile but before the exile, that is in the Land of Israel.

Before we came to the Land of Israel, we never existed as a nation. The Jewish nation was formed in Israel from the scatterings of other peoples. On the soil of Israel we grew up as a nation...All that was Jewish was given to us by the land of Israel, everything else is not Jewish. The Jewish nation and the land of Israel are one. It was there that we were born as a nation and there we matured. And when the tempest raged and cast us out of the land of Israel, we ceased to grow, just as an uprooted tree cannot grow. Our entire lives have been totally dedicated to guarding that uniqueness of ours which was produced in Israel. And here we arrive at the fact that this national distinctiveness created in the land of Israel is the perfect formulation of the primary motive throughout the exile through which we can recognize the will of the people. Therefore, in reaching the conclusion which perforce follows from what has been stated before, only the Jewish national Movement for the land of Israel will be a genuine Movement of the people, setting itself the objective of assuring the undisturbed development of our national distinctiveness in the land of Israel.

However, the undisturbed development of our Israeli distinctiveness will only be possible on that land in that natural environment where that distinctiveness was once created. Another climate, different vegetation, other mountains will necessarily deform the body and the soul which were created by the climate, vegetation and mountains of the land of Israel; for the indigenous body and soul of our race are products of a number of natural factors combined and to graft a particular racial distinctiveness on to an alien environment, means shedding the old-form and taking on a new and alien appearance. There will be those who say: maybe the new form is better. Maybe! But this is not what matters. We can lead the people only in a straight direction, the direction along which its primary will propels it. And when we examined the primary will of the Jewish nation without a country, we discovered that its prime motive has always been the guarding of that Jewish national distinctiveness which is nothing else but that pure Israeli essence, and thus we reach the conclusion that the only way of the Jewish national Movement is, if it is to be a genuine Movement of the people, one which guarantees the maintenance of this Israeli distinctiveness. And because we cannot conceive of any development of this Israeli distinctiveness outside the borders of the land of Israel, the direction of the people's Movement must lead to the land of Israel. Otherwise the Movement will meet with failure if it does not conform to the people's will.

...I do not know if I have convinced anyone, but I am sure that I have succeeded in proving one thing: that our faith in Israel is neither blind, nor semi-mystical but the outcome of an impartial investigation into the nature of our history and our Movement. After all this I am ready to confess that in spite of everything I truly have faith. The more I consider the matter, the stronger is my faith, and for me it is no longer simply faith alone but something else. Do you not believe that the month of Nissan will be followed by the month of Iyar? You know that this is true. For me it is indisputable that the conjunction of major processes which no power can stop, the Jewish people will gather together once more in its ancestral homeland and my son or grandson will cast his vote for our own government. If we really have faith then we must get down to the work.

If anyone after reading all this can conclude that Jewish historical rights provided no justification for Jabotinsky to demand sovereignty over all the Land of Israel, then he cannot read.

The Jews of YESHA of Yesteryear

In my LATimes op-ed last week, I wrote this:

Some have questioned why Jews should be allowed to resettle areas in which they didn't live in the years preceding the 1967 war, areas that were almost empty of Jews before 1948 as well. But why didn't Jews live in the area at that time? Quite simple: They had been the victims of a three-decades-long ethnic cleansing project...In 1929, Hebron's centuries-old Jewish population was expelled as a result of an Arab pogrom that killed almost 70 Jews. Jews that year removed themselves from Gaza, Nablus and Jenin. The return of my family to Shiloh -- and of other Jews to more than 150 other communities over the Green Line since 1967 -- is not solely a throwback to claimed biblical rights. Nor is it solely to assert our right to return to areas that were Jewish-populated in the 20th century until Arab violence drove them away.

During this past week I got to thinking that there are probably people who simply don't believe what I wrote.

Well, here's a chart from the 1931 British census of the Mandate, taken from the Palestine Royal Commission Report of July 1937:

If you add up the number of Jews in Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, the sum is 856. If you add Tulkarm, it becomes 1522 but I am not sure if that area was solely an Arab district but rather included kibbutzim in the area that would be considered in Israel today. In 1921, the sum total was 799, again without Tulkarm which was 23.

And if you go here, you can count the number of Jews in the area of Judea, Samaria and Gaza yourself and understand why I am suspect of Tulkarm. I add up the figures 3540 Gaza (which probably includes kibbutzim the the western Negev as well as Kfar Azza and 300 in Hebron (Bethelehem isn't listed so this would include the Gush Etzion kibbutzim which, of course, increased by 1948). So, perhaps there were just under 1000 (the numbers for the other districts previously populated by Jews is "negligible").

Which proves my two points:

a) the claim by Jews today to return to Judea and Samaria is not based solely on an ancient "Biblical right" but a demographic reality of the 20th century.

and

b) the reason more Jews weren't in those areas was a campaign of Arab ethnic cleansing by pogrom and riot and rape and rapine.

I almost rest my case.

One more element. In the back of the Report, I found a map of "Jewish-owned Land", marked in yellow.

Here's the big picture:



and here's the area of Judea, Samaria and Gaza:



you will, of course notice, that land-purchases had been made. And there were another 10 years left to the Mandate and additional purchases were made.

Jews were and belong in YESHA: Judea, Samaria and Judea.

P.S.

I had just clicked on this to upload and then I thought I'd take a look at the LATimes and if any letters were published.

Lo and behold, I read these:

Are settlements over the line?

Re “On rocky ground: Israel’s settlements in occupied territory violate the rights of Palestinians, and international law says they must go,” Opinion, June 28, and

Yisrael Medad's article on Jewish settlements would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Through specious logic and linguistic sleight of hand, he has attempted to make the Palestinians guilty of ethnic cleansing and denying the Jews the right of return. Does he really think we're that gullible?

Paul McDermott, Los Angeles

[Last year, Paul was horrified: "Paul McDermott — United States (11/20/2008 2:52:38 PM) - As a former archaeologist I am horrified by the work done by Elad in the King David National Park. From what I have read this group is serving only the goal of advancing Jewish nationalism in Palestine and not historical truth. and five years ago, Paul McDermott, Teacher, Los Angeles, CA signed on to an anti-Iraq war petition]
::
An inspired choice to let Medad be the spokesman for the pro-settler position.

Out of his own mouth, he proves that the settlements are purely an Israeli land grab with no modern legal justification at all.

I love the principle that "every Jew is entitled to live wherever he pleases." By that logic, no country in the world has the right to use immigration controls to restrict the inflow of Jewish immigrants. So if all the Mexicans who wish to immigrate to the U.S. just converted to Judaism ... well, that's an immigration problem solved.

Heck, the Mexicans are "revenants" too.

Erica Hahn, Monrovia
[an "Erica Hahn, member of Arbeiterring, Huntington Beach" signed on to a Women in Black petition in 2006 and was a pro-Pal. talkbacker, #67,here and #59 here]
::
Bravo, Sarah Leah Whitman.

She has, in a few concise paragraphs, clearly summarized the situation in Israel/Palestine and suggested what should be an obvious solution to the problem: Move the settlers back to Israel, thereby protecting their rights without violating the rights of the Palestinians.

Judy Neunuebel, Santa Barbara
[if you search her, seems she's an official of Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East and a talkbacker at some "Third Way" initiative, #4 and signed a "Jewish Voice for Peace" petition, #21]
::
In his commentary, Medad seems to use "nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born" to justify the settlers' taking of property in the West Bank for their own use.

This attitude seems incredibly arrogant and dismissive of the rights of the Palestinians with homes or other property in the West Bank. Medad needs to consider the rights of the Palestinians. In fact, having lived there over that same period of time, wouldn't Palestinians have at least the same rights to the land as the Israelis?

It seems as if Medad is offering a very poor rationalization for taking something that does not belong to him.

William T. Parker, San Diego
::
Medad claims that preventing Jews from living in the occupied territories would smack of racism.

Well, how about Israeli policies that keep Palestinians from living in most of Israel, whether they're stateless residents of the West Bank and Gaza or non-Jewish citizens of Israel itself?

Steve Roddy, San Francisco
[a University professor, he's a pro-boycott person, #122 and he's #146 here
::
Thank you for publishing these courageous Op-Ed articles. I was thrilled to see a newspaper allowing both sides of the story to be told.

Hana Gheith, Oak Lawn, Ill.
::
No doubt some may hurl epithets at Whitson for drawing attention to the fact that the Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

But, like many American Jews, I agree: The settlements are not only illegal but the primary obstacle to peace.

Medad, on the other hand, has some strange ideas about law and history. He seems to think that a law or proclamation can't be superseded, or that a set of "principles" carries the force of law and justifies the violation of another people's fundamental rights.

I agree that Jews should be allowed to settle in the West Bank. In fact, the Palestinian Authority has made clear that, with the resolution of property claims and compensation as appropriate, Jews would be welcome -- under Palestinian sovereignty.

If Jews could be citizens in a Palestinian state -- much like Christian and Muslim Arabs can be citizens in Israel -- would Medad accept it? Or would he be afraid that the Palestinians would treat their Jewish citizens like Israel treats its Arabs?

Mark Kaswan, Sherman Oaks
[he's a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science who is a Jew who won't be celebrating Israel's Independence and he also moderated the “Co-existence, Co-resistance and Co-operation” educational program on May 15, 2004 entitled “The Past, Present and Future of Israel/Palestine.” He defended Rashid Khalidi over here and signed on a support petition, he's 18657, for Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve.
::
Ultimately, there will be a two-state solution, but there will have to be some negotiation about territory. The Green Line is simply where fighting stopped.

A Palestinian state may have to accommodate some Jewish minority living in its territory, as Israel has an Arab minority living in its.

The ability to negotiate around such distributions of populations may prove the real test of whether peace in the region is possible.

Elliott Oring, Long Beach

I guess I should be honored that so many professional pro-Pal. activists felt the need to respond.

I just can't believe that no similar pro-Israel letters were not sent.

Let's Hear It for the American Congress

Eli Hertz reminds us of:

The United States Congressional Record
1922 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
National Home for THE JEWISH PEOPLE JUNE 30, 1922
HOUSE RESOLUTION 360 - UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED

"Palestine of today, the land we now know as Palestine, was peopled by the Jews from the dawn of history until the Roman era. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They were driven from it by force by the relentless Roman military machine and for centuries prevented from returning. At different periods various alien people succeeded them but the Jewish race had left an indelible impress upon the land.

Today it is a Jewish country. Every name, every landmark, every monument and every trace of whatever civilization remaining there is still Jewish. And it has ever since remained a hope, a longing, as expressed in their prayers for these nearly 2,000 years. No other people has ever claimed Palestine as their national home. No other people has ever shown an aptitude or indicated a genuine desire to make it their homeland. The land has been ruled by foreigners. Only since the beginning of the modern Zionist effort may it be said that a creative, cultural, and economic force has entered Palestine. The Jewish Nation was forced from its natural home. It did not go because it wanted to.

A perusal of Jewish history, a reading of Josephus, will convince the most skeptical that the grandest fight that was ever put up against an enemy was put up by the Jew. He never thought of leaving Palestine. But he was driven out. But did he, when driven out, give up his hope of getting back? Jewish history and Jewish literature give the answer to the question. The Jew even has a fast day devoted to the day of destruction of the Jewish homeland.

Never throughout history did they give up hope of returning there. I am told that 90 per cent of the Jews today are praying for the return of the Jewish people to its own home. The best minds among them believe in the necessity of reestablishing their Jewish land. To my mind there is something prophetic in the fact that during the ages no other nation has taken over Palestine and held it in the sense of a homeland; and there is something providential in the fact that for 1,800 years it has remained in desolation as if waiting for the return of the people."

UPDATE: And this from Dr. Andrew Bostom,

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional Record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about “Turkish and Arab agitators… preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against…the Jews” of Palestine. During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current—epitomized by Hajj Amin el-Husseini—promulgated the forcible restoration of Shari’a-mandated dhimmitude for Jews via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, i.e., in 1918, Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish co-worker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I.A. Abbady, “This was and will remain an Arab land…the Zionists will be massacred to the last man…Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.”

(Kippah Tip: Pam G.)

Okay, Let's Forget The Bible

A good few of the people who comment here and are opposed to my outlook seem to get very upset over the issue of historical rights.

Besides not knowing the facts of the chronology, they automatically dismiss the Biblical account. This, despite the many recent archeological finds that consistently conform the outlines and, in many instances, the details, of the history as related in the Bible.

I am not sure whether it's a religious itch that gets them going, as if you must believe in God to believe in the Bible or whther, out of a desire to eliminate all connection between the Jews and out historical national homel; and, they have the need to negate the narrative out of an ideological position (as if the Arab narrative is also subjected to the same rigorous testing and doubt - which, of course, it isn't, but that's another story).

Anyway, I was on a trip yesterday with fellow workers and we were at Shiloh.

I took advantage to walk away from the Tel itself - too Biblical.

I have already displayed here photographs of the various basilica whose remains we have discovered. They are the churches constructed during the period of 350-600 CE more or less, the early Christian period in the Land of Israel. At Shiloh, we have three and they all came about because they knew that this was the iste of Shiloh.

So, I decided to show you a family crypt from the Second Temple period, probably the 1st century BCE or perhaps even a bit later.





The formation of the gravesite is exactly as found in other burial sites of the same period in the area. A cave within a cave, made up of places where the last remains were stored away as there wan't the custom of burying in the ground at that time.

This is the historical record. Jews lived at Shiloh centuries before the Arabs and you don't necessarily need the Bible.

Oh-Oh, The Two Again

The Jerusalem Post reports:

While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is refusing to explicitly endorse a two-state solution to resolve the Palestinian conflict, participants at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference will this week be urging their elected representatives to press President Barack Obama for precisely that...

In this year's lobbying effort, to take place on Tuesday, the AIPAC thousands will be asking their congressmen to sign on to a letter addressed to Obama that explicitly posits the need for a "viable Palestinian state."

Well, let's pull out some arguments on behalf of Jewish residential rights throughout the area of the historic Jewish national homeland between the sea and the river:

1)

Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity
by the Late Eugene W. Rostow

This article appeared in The New Republic on April 23, 1990

The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created. The Mandate for Palestine differs in one important respect from the other League of Nations mandates, which were trusts for the benefit of the indigenous population. The Palestine Mandate, recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country," is dedicated to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonjewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The Mandate qualifies the Jewish right of settlement and political development in Palestine in only one respect. Article 25 gave Great Britain and the League Council discretion to "postpone" or "withhold" the Jewish people's right of settlement in the TransJordanian province of Palestine-now the Kingdom of Jordan-if they decided that local conditions made such action desirable.

With the divided support of the council, the British took that step in 1922. The Mandate does not, however, permit even a temporary suspension of the Jewish right of settlement in the parts of the Mandate west of the Jordan River.

The Armistice Lines of 1949, which are part of the West Bank boundary, represent nothing but the position of the contending armies when the final cease-fire was achieved in the War of Independence. And the Armistice Agreements specifically provide, except in the case of Lebanon, that the demarcation lines can be changed by agreement when the parties move from armistice to peace. Resolution 242 is based on that provision of the Armistice Agreements and states certain criteria that would justify changes in the demarcation lines when the parties make peace. Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British government resigned as the mandatory power. This is incorrect. A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed. The authority responsible for the trust appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its purpose.

Thus in the case of the Mandate for German South West Africa, the International Court of justice found the South African government to be derelict in its duties as the mandatory power, and it was deemed to have resigned. Decades of struggle and diplomacy then resulted in the creation of the new state of Namibia, which has just come into being. In Palestine the British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international community. But its rules apply still to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an independent state.

Jordan attempted to annex the West Bank in 1951, but that annexation was never generally recognized, even by the Arab states, and now Jordan has abandoned all its claims to the territory. The State Department has never denied that under the Mandate "the Jewish people" have the right to settle in the area. Instead, it said that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the protection of civilians in wartime. Where the territory of one contracting party is occupied by another contracting party, the Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviets before and during the Second World War-the mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor, or colonization, for example. Article 49 provides that the occupying power "shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

But the Jewish settlers in the West Bank are volunteers. They have not been "deported" or "transferred" by the government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population the Geneva Convention was designed to prevent. Furthermore, the Convention applies only to acts by one signatory "carried out on the territory of another." The West Bank is not the territory of a signatory power, but an unallocated part of the British Mandate. It is hard, therefore, to see how even the most literal-minded reading of the Convention could make it apply to Jewish settlement in territories of the British Mandate west of the Jordan River. Even if the Convention could be construed to prevent settlements during the period of occupation, however, it could do no more than suspend, not terminate, the rights conferred by the Mandate. Those rights can be ended only by the establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the territories into an old one.

As claimants to the territory, the Israelis have denied that they are required to comply with the Geneva Convention but announced that they will do so as a matter of grace. The Israeli courts apply the Convention routinely, sometimes deciding against the Israeli government. Assuming for the moment the general applicability of the Convention, it could well be considered a violation if the Israelis deported convicts to the area or encouraged the settlement of people who had no right to live there (Americans, for example). But how can the Convention be deemed to apply to Jews who have a right to settle in the territories under international law: a legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed "to alter in any manner" rights conferred by existing international instruments" like the Mandate?

The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there. Another principle of international law may affect the problem of the Jewish settlements. Under international law, an occupying power is supposed to apply the prevailing law of the occupied territory at the municipal level unless it interferes with the necessities of security or administration or is "repugnant to elementary conceptions of justice." From 1949 to 1967, when Jordan was the military occupant of the West Bank, it applied its own laws to prevent any Jews from living in the territory. To suggest that Israel as occupant is required to enforce such Jordanian laws-a necessary implication of applying the Convention-is simply absurd. When the Allies occupied Germany after the Second World War, the abrogation of the Nuremberg Laws was among their first acts. The general expectation of international law is that military occupations last a short time, and are succeeded by a state of peace established by treaty or otherwise. In the case of the West Bank, the territory was occupied by Jordan between 1949 and 1967, and has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 rule that the Arab states and Israel must make peace, and that when "a just and lasting peace" is reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war. The Resolutions leave it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.

The controversy about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is not, therefore, about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights. Is the United States prepared to use all its influence in Israel to award the whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new Arab state, and force Israel back to its 1967 borders? Throughout Israel's occupation, the Arab countries, helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories, so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the West Bank is "Arab" territory could be made more plausible. Some in Israel favor the settlements for the obverse reason: to reinforce Israel's claim for the fulfillment of the Mandate and of Resolution 242 in a peace treaty that would at least divide the territory. For the international community, the issue is much deeper and more difficult: whether the purposes of the Mandate can be considered satisfied if the Jews finally receive only the parts of Palestine behind the Armistice Lines-less than 17.5 percent of the land promised them after the First World War. The extraordinary recent changes in the international environment have brought with them new diplomatic opportunities for the United States and its allies, not least in the Middle East.

Soviet military aid apparently is no longer available to the Arabs for the purpose of making another war against Israel. The intifada has failed, and the Arabs' bargaining position is weakening. It now may be possible to take long steps toward peace. But to do so, the participants in the Middle East negotiations- the United States, Israel, Egypt, and the PLO- will have to look beyond the territories.

====================

2)

Are the settlements legal? Resolved
By Eugene W. Rostow,

The New Republic, October 21, 1991

Assuming the Middle East conference actually does take place, its official task will be to achieve peace between Israel and its Levantine neighbors in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War in 1967, sets out criteria for peace-making by the parties; Resolution 338, passed after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, makes resolution 242 legally binding and orders the parties to carry out its terms forthwith. Unfortunately, confusion reigns, even in high places, about what those resolutions require.

For twenty-four years Arab states have pretended that the two resolutions are "ambiguous" and can be interpreted to suit their desires. And some European, Soviet and even American officials have cynically allowed Arab spokesman to delude themselves and their people--to say nothing of Western public opinion--about what the resolutions mean. It is common even for American journalists to write that Resolution 242 is "deliberately ambiguous," as though the parties are equally free to rely on their own reading of its key provisions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until "a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces "from territories" it occupied during the Six-Day War--not from "the" territories nor from "all" the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from "all" the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the "fragile" and "vulnerable" Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called "secure and recognized" boundaries, agreed to by the parties. In negotiating such agreements, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.

Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which provided (except in the case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation Lines separating the military forces were "not to be construed in any sense" as political or territorial boundaries, and that "no provision" of the Armistice Agreements "Shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions" of the parties "in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem." In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai, which had never been part of the British Mandate.

For security it depended on patrolled demilitarization and the huge area of the desert rather than on territorial change. As a result, more than 90 percent of the territories Israel occupied in 1967 are now under Arab sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that some Israelis take the view that such a transfer fulfills the territorial requirements of Resolution 242, no matter how narrowly they are construed.

Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with the principles it sets out. It was, however, negotiated with full realization that the problem of establishing "a secure and recognized" boundary between Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace-making process. The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate. An independent Jordan or a Jordan linked in an economic union with Israel is desirable from the point of view of everybody's security and prosperity. And a predominantly Jewish Israel is one of the fundamental goals of Israeli policy. It should be possible to reconcile these goals by negotiation, especially if the idea of an economic union is accepted.

The Arabs of the West Bank could constitute the population of an autonomous province of Jordan or of Israel, depending on the course of the negotations. Provisions for a shift of populations or, better still, for individual self-determination are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere. All these approaches were explored in 1967 and 1968.

One should note, however, that Syria cannot be allowed to take over Jordan and the West Bank, as it tried to do in 1970.

The heated question of Israel's settlements in the West Bank during the occupation period should be viewed in this perspective. The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole of the Mandated territory. It was provided that local conditions might require Great Britain to "postpone" or "withhold" Jewish settlement in what is now Jordan. This was done in 1922. But the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter,

"the Palestine article," which provides that "nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments...."

Some governments have taken the view that under the Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the rights of civilians under military occupation, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal, on the ground that the Convention prohibits an occupying power from flooding the occupied territory with its own citizens. President Carter supported this view, but President Reagan reversed him, specifically saying that the settlements are legal but that further settlements should be deferred since they pose a psychological obstacle to the peace process.

In any case, the issue of the legality of the settlements should not come up in the proposed conference, the purpose of which is to end the military occupation by making peace. When the occupation ends, the Geneva Convention becomes irrelevant. If there is to be any division of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan, the Jewish right of settlement recognized by the Mandate will have to be taken into account in the process of making peace.

This reading of Resolution 242 has always been the keystone of American policy.In launching a major peace initiative on September 1, 1982, President Reagan said, "I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years ago: in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."

Yet some Bush administration statements and actions on the Arab-Israeli question, and especially Secretary of State James Baker's disastrous speech of May 22, 1989, betray a strong impulse to escape from the resolutions as they were negotiated, debated, and adopted, and award to the Arabs all the territories between the 1967 lines and the Jordan river, including East Jerusalem. The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be "foreign" territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan, and Jordan's attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally recognized and has now been abandoned. The two parcels of land are parts of the Mandate that have not yet been allocated to Jordan, to Israel, or to any other state, and are a legitimate subject for discussion.

The American position in the coming negotiations should return to the fundamentals of policy and principle that have shaped American policy towards the Middle East for three-quarters of a century. Above all, rising above irritation and pique, it should stand as firmly for fidelity to law in dealing with the Arab-Israeli dispute as President Bush did during the Gulf war. Fidelity to law is the essence of peace, and the only practical rule for making a just and lasting peace.

A Bit of History

Assaf Wohl replies to Arab-Israeli leader who claimed that land’s past belongs to Arabs in History lesson for Khatib

While speaking at an Islamic Movement ceremony to mark the “Nakba,” you, Mr. Khatib, said: “I emphasize this to the members of the Jewish people. We, the Palestinians, are here. We are the past, present, and future of this land.” And as I consider myself to be a member of the Jewish people, which you addressed, allow me to respond to your words.

Someone should have brought you up to date on this matter, Mr. Khatib. You may be able to sell your dubious merchandize in Gaza or on Tel Aviv’s Shenkin Street, but not to someone who studied history for more than 15 minutes. Or perhaps this was some kind of sense of humor, when you happened to speak at the location of two magnificent communities from the Second Temple era, Kfar Kana (today it’s Qana) and Zippori, while calling on me to recognize your right to this land...

...You should visit your brothers in Egypt. I am certain that they would be delighted to present to you the Merneptah Stele (also known as the Israel Stele,) which dates back to 1208 B.C. and commemorates Egyptian ruler’s Merneptah’s war against the tribes of Israel he encountered in Canaan. Do you understand, Mr. Khatib? More than 3,000 years ago, there were Israelites at Canaan. And it isn’t me who’s claiming it, but rather, an Israel-hater called Merneptah.

But why go so far? At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the capital of the sovereign State of Israel, you can take a look at the Tel Dan Stele and read about the “House of David.” Very surprisingly, this inscription was not found in Lithuania or in Poland, but rather, in the Galilee; and in this inscription too, the king of Aram boasts of victories over Judea and Israel. Look around Mr. Khatib, can you spot any Arameans around here?

Not far from there, in the very same Jerusalem, you can find the Shiloach inscription, made by the slaves of Judean King Hezekiah...it’s written in the Hebrew language. There you go, Hezekiah and I are linked through culture, religion, and language, despite the 2,700 years separating us...And even if you turn the entire Temple Mount into dust, you won’t be able to find even one inscription written in Arabic that dates back to the period before 638 A.D. – the year of the Muslim conquest of the land of Israel.

...Stop bringing disasters upon your public...Did you reach any achievements whatsoever with that holy fury of yours?

My Letter is in the Jerusalem Post

A bit edited from the original but it's finally in:-

You can't 'occupy' your own home

Sir, - I suspect that Amnon Rubinstein has allowed personal political ideology to overcome principles of jurisprudence and rational thought. In writing "Settling Jews outside of Israel proper is... illegal in international law and defective morally," while basing himself on the Fourth Geneva Convention, claiming that document "prohibits such settlements," he is misrepresenting facts ("The folly at Givat Ze'ev," March 25).

Firstly, that convention, like any contractual obligation, applies to those who are signatories, defined as the "High Contracting Parties." As there was no "Palestine" when the convention was produced, Israel cannot be considered as occupying its territories.

Secondly, David Ben-Gurion, in a Knesset statement on December 3, 1949, declared that the UN resolution of November 29, 1947 - the Partition Plan - no longer had any moral force and was null and void.

Taken together with the reality that the official representative bodies of the Arab community of the British Mandate refused to acknowledge the plan, the area administered currently by Israel since 1967 - what Rubinstein refers to as "occupied" - is, in essence, still part of what the League of Nations Supreme Council defined on July 24, 1922 as the area to be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people.

A state institution representing the Jewish people - Israel - cannot be an "occupier" in its own country.

Moreover, Jews moving to places such as Givat Ze'ev and Shiloh are fulfilling the principle established in the League of Nations decision which guaranteed them the "right to immigration to and close settlement on the land" (paragraph 6). Therefore, even if Israel is not actively encouraging such acts, individual Jews surely maintain those rights up to this day.

Thirdly, since Jews lived in, owned and tilled property in those "territories" for hundreds of years prior to the wars of aggression in which Arabs, local and foreign, sought to eliminate the State of Israel in 1947-49 and 1967, they are only returning home.

Certainly Jews must protect the civil liberties of the non-Jewish population (note: the term "Arab" appears nowhere in the text of the Mandate decision because the international community and its law did not recognize any specific Arab ethnic or national right to the area of the Mandate). But that does not affect Jewish rights as stated above.

YISRAEL MEDAD
Shiloh

The Way They Think

After three thousand years living around the world, suddenly you remembered your homeland!

You said your family came to Palestine because of the spread of Nazism, to escape the Holocaust.

Why should we Palestinians have to pay the price of others' crimes? If the Nazis killed your grandmother's family, why do you kill us in return?

I don't mean you personally of course, but the Israeli state.

Source