On November 19, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution against Israel for the government’s decision to build in the settlements and east Jerusalem. The resolution was vetoed by the US, but European members of the Security Council, including France, the UK, Germany and Portugal, together with India and South Africa, adopted a joint declaration of condemnation for the building plan approved by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Catherine Ashton, head of EU diplomacy, also condemned the plan to build in the E1 zone, between northeast Jerusalem and west Ma’aleh Adumim.
These condemnations are based on two principles: settlements as an obstacle to peace per se, and the presence of settlements as an obstacle to the territorial contiguity of a potential Palestinian state. Regarding the first principle, the main counter argument focuses on the Palestinian will to negotiate borders.
The second principle – i.e., territorial contiguity – is often used in arguments against Israel, but is territorial contiguity really essential to the formation of a state?
GEOGRAPHICALLY, THERE are five kinds of states: contiguous, with a homogeneous territory (such as Germany and Brazil); prolonged, with an extended territory in latitude or longitude (like Chile or Mozambique); irregular (like Greece); perforated, with sovereign states within its territory (like Italy with San Marino and South Africa with Lesotho and Swaziland); and fragmented, with a discontinuous territory interrupted by seas or by other states.
Among fragmented states are Russia (with Kaliningrad in European territory), the US (with Alaska), Denmark, Philippines and Japan (with archipelagos), Malaysia and Oman.
Territorial discontinuity is problematic in terms of defense of the territory and communication among different areas. However, fragmentation is not always a negative characteristic since analysts stress that it may have positive effects in economical, political and social terms.
In economic terms, fragmentation implies a major integration with surrounding territories, with a consequent openness to bordering states, from which to remain independent precisely through markets and cooperation. In political terms, fragmentation implies a devolution of administrative powers to local authorities, in respect of the “subsidiarity principle,” according to which matters have to be dealt with by the competent level of governance nearest to the individual.
Finally, in social terms, fragmentation favors the development of separate social bodies, which functions to preserve local cultures and customs as well as encouraging the formation of a supra-communal common identity.
PALESTINE IS today fragmented, with the separation of the West Bank and Gaza, while territorial fragmentation due to the presence of Israeli settlements is not necessarily incompatible with economic development. Indeed, territorial discontinuity of areas under Israeli administration in the West Bank has not impeded the growth of economy and society.
Fragmentation might lead to an increasing integration of Palestine in the region, and might lead to the autonomous development of non-homogenous communities. Economic and cooperation agreements among Israel, Jordan and Egypt could be beneficial for Palestinians, who could host in their discontinuous territory industries and institutions bridging the three (or four) states.
Territorial division could give birth to a confederal state, apt to the preservation of loyalties and identities that focus, besides nation and religion, also on clans and families.
Existing fragmented states are not always comparable to Palestine for extension and resources, however, some of them are models of institutional, political, economic and cultural development of territorially “diffused” societies. Among these, there are Malaysia, Denmark and Oman.
THEREFORE, TERRITORIAL discontinuity is not inherently an obstacle to the formation of a state. In fact, such geographical peculiarity can even be an advantage. Small, fragmented and poor archipelago states have found a way to overcome their natural conditions with reference to economic development and power in the international community.
Discontinuity is not an obstacle to the creation of a prosperous Palestinian state, represented more by the absence of a political will to give birth to Palestine with our opposing Israel.
The writer is author of the report “How much does it cost to delegitimize Israel?” on public funding of Italian political NGOs.
“My own position is:”
We’ve heard the Good Doctor’s “position” before. Please, someone put him out of his misery.
@ CuriousAmerican:
If so, how did they survive malaria?
And how did their livestock survive?
There is, to this date, no known natural immunity — for man or beast.
No. (But her critics DID highly exaggerate their attacks.)
Her work was assaulted.
It was never discredited.
She spent seven years researching her book, and what she found turned her completely around, 180 degrees, from a being pro-Pali supporter (former advisor to the Carter Admin.) to a Zionist.
All she got wrong were some garbled footnotes in a massive tome. She had to do all the legwork herself (once the reality began to dawn on her, she realized she really couldn’t trust anybody else to do it) — and the enormity of the task may have overwhelmed her. Next edition of the book will doubtless correct any errors.
In any event, other authors before her had ALREADY made similar observations to the ones which are criticised.
Then why did they destroy it? — This is ‘love’?
And the world will answer:
— “Of course. Jews, money
— money, Jews.”
@ CuriousAmerican:
You make it sound as if the world’s view of the Jews lay strictly in Jewish hands.
The truth is, the world will believe about the Jews what it SUITS the world to believe about them, facts be damned (now as ever).
“Men prefer to believe what they prefer to be true.” Francis Bacon
There may well be a sound case against option “C” — but the one you offer is not that case.
You possess written histories of ANYTHING that go back as much as “ten thousand years,” Curio? (let alone, multiples of that?)
If so, I’d like to see them.
Yes, you got that right.
But history is NOT any guide where the Jews are concerned
— (just ask the eternally frustrated ghost of Arnold Toynbee).
The problem for the West and the Muslims is the stubborn refusal of the Zionists and Il Jews to give up what is theirs. The rest is “semantic” BS. People all over the world like to make things appear complicate to hide their true feelings or opinion. Ask the Chinese or Indians.
@ CuriousAmerican:
I choose “D” — absorption over time.
Permanent minority status in an Arab state? — this was supposed to be a good thing?
You know enough of the history, Curio, to know what the record of that arrangement was like for Jews.
“IT HAS LONG BEEN RECOGNIZED that being a minority is not necessarily a tragedy. All nations have their minorities. The tragedy is to be everywhere a minority. This was precisely the situation of the Jews before creation of the State of Israel.” [Benj. Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations (Warner Books, NY, 2000), p 166]
This is supposed to represent some kind of ‘equivalency’? — get real, Curio.
For one thing, the 1947 Partition vote was a General Assembly resolution; therefore non-obligatory.
Therefore, there was nothing there for ANYBODY to ‘obey.’ Gen.Ass. resolutions are strictly hortatory or advisory, nothing more. (Unless, of course, both parties were to simultaneously sign-on to such a resolution & thus, arguably, render it contractual. Never happened; instead they forced the issue — played “double-or-nothing,” and lost.)
Furthermore, nobody was (or is) “mad” at the Pali Arabs for not ‘obeying’ the Partition Resolution.
— “Mad” at them, rather, for calling in the whole Arab world to pile on, wolf-pack style, when the Pali-instigated civil war [Dec ’47 — May ’48] failed to do in the Jews. Calling in the neighboring Arab sovereignties made it international.
If they had, they’d have been — like its purveyors — ‘obeying’ a flagrantly ILLEGAL act.
“Frankly I do not see how the British Government reads into the original Mandate or [even] into the [Churchill] White Paper of 1922 any policy that would limit Jewish immigration… I was at Versailles, and I know that the British made no secret of the fact that they promised Palestine to the Jews. Why are they now reneging on their promise?” [FDR, Letter to SecState Cordell Hull, cited in Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (Alfred Knopf, NY, 1983), p. 134]
The 7 international members of the Permanent Mandates Commission [PMC, the League’s watchdog, oversight institution] who were present at the Geneva hearings throughout June of that year [French, Portuguese, Belgian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swiss & UK commissioners unanimously took note of the naked perfidy reflected in this White Paper, although the language of their rebuke was more bland in observing the violations.
The PMC’s subsequent Report 2 months later confirmed the Commission’s 4-member, majority opinion — declaring, with reference to the present document’s newest, most severe immigration & land purchase restrictions as well as the White Paper’s plans for a British handover to Arab rule, that “the policy set out in the White Paper is not in accordance with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power and the [League] Council, the Commission has placed on the Palestine Mandate” [i.e., to expedite the creation of a Jewish National Home].
It was an exquisitely delicate way of placing the ever-proper Brits on notice that what they were doing constituted not only a high-handed & shameful betrayal of the Mandate’s sacred trust but also a grossly & outrageously illegal one.
Any possibility of policy reversal, however, was to be overtaken by world events: Review of the matter had, in fact, been calendared by the PMC for 8 Sept. But German tanks, planes & troops crossed the Polish frontier on 1 Sept, Britain (and France) declared war on Germany on 3 September, and the flaccid & long-moribund League finally gave up the ghost. . . . The progression of events was such that, “after the outbreak of war, the League Council no longer met. Thus the White Paper was not ratified and it did not, strictly speaking, acquire international sanction. But after 1 Sept 1939, no one bothered any longer about legal niceties.” [Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, NY, 1972), p. 529]
The MacDonald White Paper was left, effectively, to set itself in stone, and Britain proceeded to “execute the White Paper policy as if Palestine had been a British possession — and the White Paper, an Act of Parliament.” [Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (Bantam, NY, 1973; 3d Edition, Steimatzky, NY, 1985), p. 75].
For European Jewry, it was a Death Warrant.
And Jewish disobedience to the White Paper, you think to compare to Pali ‘disobedience’ of UNGA 181?
Sobriety, Curio.
After the Exodus, it took the returned Israelites roughly a thousand yrs to absorb the Philistines.
“The eternal people does not fear the long road.”
CuriousAmerican Said:
after the arabs pay the jews that left
@ CuriousAmerican:
Very doubtful.
Apples & Oranges. You’re applying a Western paradigm to the Mideast. Shoe won’t fit.
Familiar tune. Wrong lyrics.
Sometimes the perceived weakness of an enemy TEMPTS people “to do desperate things.”
@ CuriousAmerican:
Are you?
Of course it aint.
It’s misnamed.
What it is, is a pressure process, intended to jew-down the Jews.
How ‘cooperative’ the Jews have been — and whether they’ve been ‘too cooperative’ or ‘not cooperative enough’ — depends on whom you ask.
comment to the american, in moderation
CuriousAmerican Said:
the game that YOU have to admit, american, is your popping in on certain threads beating the same old DEAD HORSE!
where have we heard before this shhhhstuff before? (sarc/off)
CuriousAmerican Said:
the problem is , american, that as it is sadly apparent, this ‘hot potato’ called judea and samaria is being bounced around by any and all who are in a leadership position…
were israel to have TRUE LEADERSHIP, it would not need to do neither a nor b as you so propose.
they would simply be provide transportation to sinai or jordan and once they’re off the bus, have a good life ahmed!
if YOU and your ilk wish to pay ahmed, go for it!
israel should not and must not pay a penny for any of these potential terrorists.
CuriousAmerican Said:
…and who tango foxtrot are you exactly?
CuriousAmerican Said:
american! please tell me what is so unjust about kicking a few hundred thousand musloids out?
after all , you and your ilk have been VERY SILENT while six million were KILLED…c’mon american you guys are GOOD at this… remmember the st louis?… you should have no difficulty in making polite trivial conversation at some cocktail party and commenting how terrible the situation is….
CuriousAmerican Said:
when someone LOVES the land…”paying them to leave” is not only futile, but downright insulting!
as the late rabbi kahane said: ‘the arab does not care for the running water and indoor toilet that the jews brought him and how they turned the desert into a garden, because BEFORE IT WAS HIS [the arab’s] DESERT, AND NOW IT IS THE JEW’S GARDEN!”
well, american, i am not going to dwellerize your entire posts but suffice it to say that somwhere you DO seem to understand that this is a clash of civilizations and you seem even to understand that there is no political solution…
the answer is simple american,
THEY MUST GO
Technically, the problems with the Palestinians stem, at least from the Arab point of view, from Israel’s refusal to take them back.
From Israel’s point of view, the refusal of the Arab states to assimilate them.
Had the Palestinians not been so isolated and hopeless, they may have been less violent.
This same sort of hopelessness drove many East-European Jews to revolutionary violence in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Despair drives people to do desperate things. It is a human trait.
I am going to make an unheard of statement: The Palestinians are pawns and may be the least guilty in this tragedy.
They are stuck between two warring parties, the Jews and the Muslim nations, neither of whom want them.
CuriousAmerican Said:
If you say so I must be on the right track. One must distinguish between what they would like to see and what they believe is actually, or might be happening.
You have done a lot of writing but none of it is related to what has been going on. Much of what I have said has already been floated and trial ballooned by politicians in govt. what I am talking about doesn’t need any agreement in the short-term. Israel is already facilitating the trappings of a pal state, abbas has already been talking confederation with Jordan, Israel is allowing qatar to invest in gaza. Egypt has been involved in gaza all along so it is natural they maintain a relationship, what sort i did not say and what egypt gets i did not say. the facts are speaking for themselves. Do you think the recent gaza “war” ending is a coincidence, that qatar involvement is a coincidence after requesting to invest in gaza from Israel.what about gaza offshore gas? that qatar and abdullah were the first to pa after their “state” was declared, that in the 80’s a confed with jordan was floated subject to “statehood” first, You should connect the dots and see that it might be going on when you remove what you or I want to go on. It appears to me that most of Israel has decided to give a,b and most of c to the arabs but not in any overt immediate agreement.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Isnt this your real obssession?
What is hopeless about Israels position when compared with that of all her neighbors? the gulf monarchies can see that Israel is less a threat than persia and even the pals. all the neighbors have had problems with the pals as much as have Israel. They all have economic problems.
A plan based on paying Arabs to leave and to pacify the ones who stay? Might work for a year or two – they will take the money and then come back after the hudna with greater force, numbers and effort to wipe out Israel and turn it into some form of ugly Islamic rule where Jews would once again be annihilated and/or relegated to dhimmi status.
The solution would be easier if we had strong global leadership that recognizes the superiority of Western values over Islamist, dictatorial and Communist values. We have no such leadership today, especially in the Obama administration, and Israel does not seem prepared for the hard choices because they think such unilateral actions will further alienate them.
However, I believe that if Israel did come out with a definitive statement of exact borders based on security, historical and legal precedents, etc., then the world would have no choice but to accept. This would settle once and for all the issue of borders.
Then there is the issue of people within those borders and that is a thornier problem. Throughout the world, refugees have been integrated and their customs, languages and religions respected within the dominant ruling class. In Canada, for instance, Muslims, Jews and many others live at peace and harmony under what has been essentially a Christian-dominated country.
There is no reason why Muslims who choose to stay in Israel cannot live under the laws of a democratic country as free, fair and open as Israel. They certainly know that they’d be much better off in Israel than in any Muslim-dominated dictatorial regime. And if they choose to go, sure, give them a one-way ticket.
I think that terrorism and insurrection must be dealt with swiftly and forcefully and without regard to liberal bleeding heart values. Once Muslims in Israel realize that they are equal up to the point where they become violent and hateful, then it will be manageable.
So those who want to stay will be Israeli, and choose to live peacefully under Israeli rule. If not, then they can leave with some resettlement funds with a no return policy. This plan will only be made real and possible once Israel decides where the border is drawn and how it will manage the outcomes of that hard decision.
What is going on here is a clash of completely different peoples. Such wars will go on for centuries.
Spain was willing to wage a 781 year war to ride itself of Muslims – (and from their point of view, of Jews who had collaborated with the Muslims.)
Centuries of Turkish tyranny did not break the Greek. He rose up around 1800, and eventurally threw out the Greek.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia erased Poland. Two hundred years later, Poland resurrected.
After WW1, the Treaty of Sevres cut up Turkey into pieces with the Euros controlling most of Turkey. Ataturk had a different idea, and by 1922, he forced the Europeans out even though Europeans had won WWI. They did not want another major war.
The wars between Ireland and England are over 800 years. Eventually, the British will have to leave, The Irish will not tolerate a foreign presence on their land. Demographics will force the unification, now. The Ulster British tried to suppress the Irish vote; the Irish fought, and the British had to concede the vote. Everyone thinks the IRA disarmed, but once the vote was granted to them, the end of British rule is only a matter of demographic time. The Irish fought for as long as was necessary to get the vote which will free them. The Ulster British lost.
The British won Quebec in 1763. DeGualle undid that in 1967. Quebec is now 80%+ Francophone.
The Crusades went on for centuries; but in the end lost.
Even in the Western Hemisphere, white rule only succeeded in the temperate countries (The USA, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile) where the Indian populations were comparitively small and easily overwhelmed.
In Mexico, Venezuela (Chavez), Peru, Ecuador (Correa), Bolivia (Morales), etc. the Indian stock is re-asserting itself and taking over. Whites are losing power.
In such conflicts, the wars will wage on for centuries, with the land almost always returning to the
native stocks.
The Jews say they are native, but they were outside the land for 2000 years. The Arabs, pre-Islamic Semites, and the non-dispersed Canaanites (who survived David, and married into the non-Jewish peoples) are just as native as the Jews.
Even in the USA, the Southwest is heavily Latino. The White Republics (USA, Canada, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay) only had initial victories because of low Indian populations in their geographic areas which were easy to overwhelm.
The Blacks eventually retook South Africa.
There is no negotiable solution to this.
B (paid relocation) or C (genocice).
History is against any other soution.
I recommend B. Paid relocation.
Israel’s predicament in unique in history. If history is any guide, it will fail. The Arabs have to be paid to relocate if Israel is to survive.
For tens of thousands of years:
1) White have never long prospered out of temperate climates. Blacks have never prospered out of tropical climates.
Asians have never long prospered out of the East.
And even in the East, The Koreans and Japanese (Northern Asians) are genetically halfway between Chinese and Whites.
There is an apocryphal Jewish book, Jubilees, which speaks about the world being divided in three zones.
Whites to the cooler areas. Blacks to the warm south. Semites/Asians in-between.
It is amazing how history has upheld that judgement.
Even in India, the Southern Indians are black and have DNA from AFrica. Northern Indians are almost white and have DNA which traces to Europe. Even in Chila. SOutheast Asia has African DNA. Northeast Asia has DNA which is closer to European.
Israel’s position is hopeless unless she pays the Arabs to leave or Jesus returns.
This is intellectual silliness.
The Arabs will never agree to any solution which gives Israel any land beyond 1949 borders.
Even if a new crew takes over in Jordan, it will be more Islamic, and more anti-Israel.
There is no solution here.
You are foolish to think the Arabs will accept any solution which brings peace to Israel. They have kept the refugees in camps for four generations now. What is another four generations to them. Some nations like Lebanon, cannot assimilate the refugees even if they wanted to, without starting a Civil War.
In 1947, before the UN Partition vote, the Arabs offered the Jews a minority status in a Palestinian state. Did the Jews accept it? The Arabs were even willing to give the Jews a vote, which is more than the Judean and Samarian Arabs have.
You get mad at the Arabs for not obeying the 1947 Partition vote. Did the Jews obey the 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration?
The Arabs are as determined as you. They waged a 200 year war against the Crusaders – is that what you want?
They will do NOTHING TO MAKE ISRAEL’S LIFE EASIER.
The minimum solution the “Palestinians” would accept is far more than Israel would ever give. They will no more surrender their right of return that Israel gracefully obeyed the White Paper of 1939, which limited the Jewish right of return.
Egypt will not take Gaza. Why should Egypt bother? It costs Egypt nothing to let Israel suffer the expense of policing Gaza.
Either
A) Enfranchise the Arabs in Judea and Samaria if you want to annex your patrimony
B) Pay the Judean and Samaria Arabs to relocate to South America, since no Muslim state will accept them
-or-
C) Get ready to kill over a hundred thousand of them. They will not flee so willingly as they did in 1948. Either mass killing/bloody ethnic cleansing/or something close to genocide of the Arabs.
I know C is probably the preferred solution on this board. But if C is chosen, Israel will become a total Pariah state on the order of Apartheid South Africa. Even the USA will abandon Israel.
Forget about Holocaust reparations after C. All monies will be re-directed to survivors of the Israeli onslaught.
I recommend B(pay to relocate), for which I am excoriated as weak on this board.
B is the only solution.
I know many of you chomp at the bit for C, but it will backfire.
There is no just solution to any of this. NO JUST SOLUTION!
I cannot ask Jews to give up their patrimony; but neither can I ask the Arabs many of whom have been on the land for centuries (Joan Peters highly exaggerated her claims) to give up their claims.
Someone is going to be hurt. You have to realize that many of the Arabs love the land as much as you.
Pay them to leave!
Tel Belman is right on one point: THERE IS NO DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION.
Enfranchisement, or paid relocation, or genocidal ethnic cleansing.
Oh! And by the way, if you chose C, there will not be a place on the planet safe for Jews. I hope I am wrong, but there are nutty Muslims spread out all over the globe. There will be retribution. Vicious, animalistic, and cruel.
And the sympathy Jews may get now when Jewish schoolkids are shot in France will disappear, if such savagery is in response to an ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in Judea and Samaira. The world will say the Jews are not better. Let’s wash our hands of both of them.
The world will start to morally equate the Jews with the Muslims, and call both of you nuts and detestable.
B is the only solution.
Think about it.
There is no diplomatic solution. There is only a financial, or a genocidal solution.
What appears to me to be developing is an interim state or autonomous zone in A & B for PA linked or confederated with Jordan. No link to gaza which will become a “ward” of egypt. A confederation, or supervision of an autonomy with Jordan will allow PA to demand less land, avoid contiguity issue, refugee issues, etc and is already exampled by WAKF at the Mount. Many issues can be sidestepped by Jordanian handling issues under their treaty with Israel. In time final borders in Area C and status would be negotiated based on observed stability over time. Sovereignty over land can be avoided until later as PA will call themselves a state and Israel can operate with it as an autonomous zone under Israeli sovereignty.
It pretty much is an obstacle, in this case.
Would Israel tolerate discontinuity?
My own position is:
Israel is determined to annex the area, so …
A) Annex it and give the Arabs in Judea and Samaria full citizenship
-or-
B) Pay these Arabs to move to South America, since the Arab states refuse to accept them.
However, that being said, this is a game. Admit it.
Israel accepts any position which allows them total control of the land, even if that control is acquired in bytes at a time.
Meanwhile, Israel’s concessions are weighed in its favor.
This is an accurate description of what is going on. Though I disagree with its anti-Israel spin.
20 years of the Peace Process
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PtGmkgVOcTQ#!
The difference is that the video condemns Israel for the “Expansion Process.”
There has been no Peace Process. The Arabs refuse to allow Israel’s right to exist; while Israel increases settlements (I am not saying this is wrong, but it shows that NO ONE is interested in the peace process.)
I am more realistic. If Israel wants the land, then A (enfranchise) or B (pay to leave).
So I am not condemning Israel.
But, like it or not, if one ignores the spin, the facts are accurate. There is no peace process.
In any event, this article is another example. Any process which enable Israel to acquire more land (or if you prefer: take its patrimony) is favored. Concessions are chiefly cosmetic.
Israel controls B&C, with the Arabs reduced to reservations in area A. On paper it looks like a concession. In reality, Israel now has the PA policing the Palestinians for Israel’s security – albeit poorly.
The Peace Prccess is what it is; but it ain’t a preace process, that is for sure.
Another great video, dealing with a related topic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyTJZ3JzgKs
Admit it. Israel cannot get the world to approve its claim to the land, nor get the Arabs to take the Judea and Samarian Arabs, so it stalls, delays, waits, … and at every possible instance, builds a house to make retreat impossible.
This may or may not be right (Most here would say it is not enough).
But it is not a Peace Process; that is for sure.
I am not even criticizing. I am observing.
One could say it was sly manipulation to work against the machinations of a hostile world.
But it is manipulation, not a Peace Process.