T. Belman. Now we understand just how invested in the two-state solution Europe is. That is not to say Israel should give in to the pressure. Instead Israel should make certain to eradicate all EU financed illegal Arab construction in Area C. Also Bennett must stay true to his commitment to not freeze settlement construction. In fact he should announce more construction and not back down from building in Atarot which is in northern Jerusalem
Weeks before Netanyahu’s July 2020 target for controversial move, British envoy to US surprised American counterparts with threat, said it would lead to others following suit
By TOI STAFF 1 Jan 2022,
The United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States warned the Trump administration in June 2020 that if Israel went forward with plans to annex large parts of the West Bank, London would officially recognize the State of Palestine, a new book has revealed.
The message was passed along by Karen Pierce in a meeting she held with then-US president Donald Trump’s Mideast peace envoy Avi Berkowitz and Iran special envoy Brian Hook on June 12, 2020, Israeli journalist Barak Ravid wrote in his book “Trump’s Peace.”
Berkowitz and Hook were dispatched to meet with Pierce by then-senior White House adviser Jared Kushner. While the Trump administration was being inundated by calls from world leaders warning the US against allowing then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go forward with plans to begin annexing parts of the West Bank on July 1, 2020, it was the response from the UK that went further and was most surprising to the Americans, the book claimed.
Ravid speculated that the UK recognizing Palestine would likely have led other countries in Europe such as France and Spain to do the same — a domino effect of legitimacy for the Palestinian Authority that Israel has long feared.
Netanyahu announced his plans to annex large parts of the West Bank at the start of 2020, ostensibly under the auspices of the Trump peace plan — though Ravid has reported that the administration was caught off guard by the move and strongly opposed it.
The book suggests that while Kushner was not supportive of the annexation move, the feeling in the administration at the time was that there was no way to stop Netanyahu from carrying it out.
A day before his meeting with Pierce, Berkowitz met with a group of senior German diplomats who expressed their utter opposition to the annexation plan. “I told them, go to the Palestinians and tell them that annexation is advancing. Ask them what they want us to try and get for them in exchange,” Berkowitz recalled in Ravid’s book.
Ramallah had severed its ties with Washington years earlier following Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
@Edgar G.
Of course not!
Israel has been doing it for 30 years now all by itself.
One third is too optimistic – why do you think they are letting the Arabs build in Area C, and why did Israel respond to the recent deadly terror attack in Homesh by destroying the “illegal” Jewish settlement?
It is like telling the terrorists to kill more Jews to get Israel to destroy the Jewish settlements!
Did you read my previous comment about the discriminatory anti-Jewish laws in Judea and Samaria?
They have been boiling the frog slowly and the frog is almost done cooking.
Edgar G:
Exactly. The Israelis can play the nice guy as much as they want, but the “rest of the world” should take note of the realities of the current (or future) situation.
Wikipedia
No there’s no agreement between … Reader as I read him is saying not one thing Israel can do. Is issue totally of leadership. He focuses alone on that. I agree. It’s a fundamental difference.
BTW, I’ve just found out that in Judea and Samaria the following laws are still operational (and all of them discriminate against the Jews):
1) the Ottoman law which permits only the Arabs to grab the state land by planting on it;
2) the British Mandate law;
3) the Jordanian law;
4) the Israeli law that allows the Arabs to keep using their land when it is in dispute but not the Jews who have to quit using it until the dispute is resolved (I assume in favor of the Arabs).
Congress has no say over when to veto. That’s for the president alone to decide.
@ TED-
All very nice, but the Gen Ass always has had a built in anti-Israel majority from day ONE.
The Isle of Man is not part of the UK.
@Ted
Whereas I agree with Edgar’s view that such a state would be illegal, illegitimate and contrary to accepted law and norms, who would enforce this reality upon the world should the US and the rest of the world decide to pursue an illegal legitimacy of this mythical state within Israel.
This is the ultimate threat that Israel faces from the globalists masquerading as Israel’s allies with Obama’s third term in the White House. This is why an interactive approach with the true American allies of Israel, in the form of the American people, should always be pursued by employing an open dialogue with them as Bibi sought to do. The Americans and Israelis have a strong bond that is fundamentally at the level of their two peoples, and not reliant upon common geopolitical outlooks of their leaderships alone. In his recent interview, I recall him stating that Ben-Gurion did not know how to gain support of America and that it was a black box to him. This critique of BG was, I believe, his reference to his own success in this endeavor with his interactive dialogues with the American people over the past thirty years to cultivate a discourse between himself and the American people, not thru diplomatic negotiations and meetings between heads of state alone, but rather through direct interaction between the Israeli PM and the American public. Some Leftists such as Lapid have seen to describe this process as divisive and non-bipartisan in nature, but that is an illegitimate straw man argument, as Bibi always worked with both sides of the aisle til the Dems move away from Israel and Bibi refused to follow their lead, though Lapid followed it.
The American public are the source and stem of Israels support within the US and they are far less supportive of a Pal State than the political elites and the Bureaucratic state of civil servants in Washington, the State Dept etc. Maintaining an open dialogue between the Israeli PM and the American public and providing explanations of how Israel’s position is both just and reasonable, allows the American public to make an informed decision of how and when to hold their political elites, in both parties, in check to work the will of their respective public, who do value Israel as a Jewish State.
The flaw in this plan is what makes this current regime in Washington so dangerous, specifically to Isreal and the American public both, as these Radicals are liberated from their voter shackles as they appointed themselves over the public’s choice. How that situation will resolve itself will result in a greater understanding whether the American public’s input is relevant to their leaderships’ decisions. Should we accept that things are to return to normal and the American leadership are actually elected by American citizens, the direct connection of support and recognition of the American people could be used to help influence the US towards a pro-Israel policy in spite of the Washington elites who have a desire to carve Israel in two, literally.
If, however, the machine politics is the future reality, it paints a very dark future for Israel with few cards to save her from this desired future of the political elites in Washington.
Hence, another reason we really need to succeed in pursuing election integrity and transparency in America.
@dreuveni-
As I mentioned earlier about NATO, the EU MUST have unanimous consent amongst its members. There are numerous instances, one or two very recently I recall reading, where just ONE member state refused, and the matter had to be dropped..
I just can not see any unanimity of the EU regarding setting up an army that would likely fight against Israel. Netanyahu has done a lot of handshaking and back patting in Europe and Israel has made some very staunch EU friends who see their own situation reflected in Israel’s struggle for existence.
Regarding “help from Joe”, He would have very stiff opposition in Congress, as has just recently happened, which defeated a potentially Israel damaging move.
And these things don’t happen overnight, they take years. and Biden will not be re elected, the Repubs are playing their cards very well and, although nothing is certain, they like a shoo in to be voted in.
Apart from mishandling the Pandemic, the Afghanistan fiasco and lack of law and order will cripple the Dems at the voting booth. Not to mention the emerging publicity of the massive, beyond anything imaginable, FRAUD of their election.
@READER-
The US has not yet done the dirty. And a state of “palestine” does not have the needed requirements to be dubbed a state. This was established already quite a few years ago. It has no, and never will have a “defined territory”. They may call it a state, but a state but a state it won’t be. Does anyone with any sense believe that Israel can be forced to “donate” a third of it’s area to a group of terrorists who want to slaughter every last one of them.
Israel would NEVER do this, and cannot be forced to.
@Reader
Yeah, no way Nato goes to Israel. They can’t agree on what time of day it is. The most unifying object for NATO was how much they all hated Trump. Beyond that, they are really a focusing force towards pushing Russia toward China.
– New Korean Drama streaming on Kocowa with subtitles, “Moonshine” ep. 1, 21:16.
@dreuveni
Exactly.
It will become solely a question of borders which the UN desires to push back to pre-1967 status.
This is why the PA is building-building-building over THE WHOLE of Judea and Samaria and will, no doubt, demand removing the “illegal” Jewish settlements, and the Government of Israel is helping them by freezing-freezing-freezing the Jewish settlements and not supplying them with water and electricity.
This will be passed into law (not for Jews, I believe):
https://stgdesktopcore.jpost.com/israel-news/article-691347
As far as the “world community” is concerned, the settlements will at that point be situated on the territory of an Arab state (unless the “settlers” want to remain as dhimmi inside that state – and how long will they last there?)
@Reader That’s what I have been talking about. There needs to be discussion of what Israel could do to resist in a practical way.
@Edgar How’s this. Israel could demand for Northern Ireland the same Observer Status in the UN that the Palestinian Authority has been illegally granted. Incidentally, the kind of amoral realpolitik i am advocating is already being practiced. Another example: Israel recognized Morrocan authority over the Western Sahara in order to secure the Abraham Accords.
Oh, here’s another. The Isle of Man wants independence from the UK.
@Edgar Thank you, Edgar. Another tactic might be to threaten to weigh in on the antagonist’s side in sensitive diplomatic disputes, much the way Turkey has always threatened dire consequences for Israel voting to condemn the Armenian genocide. Here’s something I found:
https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-53724381
(If this were happening during the Falklands War, Israel could threaten to side with Argentina. It shouldn’t matter who has a legitimate claim. Any achilles heel should be seized upon. What might be some others?)
So, despite the fact that the Protestant Unionists of Northern Ireland support Israel, Israel could denounce British colonialism in Northern Ireland and support statehood for them.
@Edgar G.
Yes, they have.
All that is required to make it a full-fledged state is the US not vetoing the vote to make it a member state of the UN (it is already a state but without the full status).
Legality needs to be enforced and illegality – punished.
Who is going to do it?
The 190 foxes in the UN chicken coop?
Please recall what the British did when they had the Mandate IN SPITE of the objections from the League of Nations.
All they want (including “our best friend”) is to complete what they didn’t finish in WWII.
Was the Holocaust legal?
The bizarre part of it is that the Government of Israel seems to be in cahoots with them (again, do a factual timeline instead of remembering with fondness the wonderful words the politicians pronounced in their magical voices to calm down and mislead their subjects).
@TED-
Well, the (landlocked) “2SS” supposedly being on Jewish Land, and in the possession of Israel, makes it impossible for any “state” to be superimposed on Israeli sovereign territory..
And, in the event that such an impossibility happened, it would have to be supported completely by the International Community, to every last dollar…And exponentially more than it costs them now. How long could that go on….??
The Arab countries would promise -but peter out as always.
@STEPHEN1
I suppose you are referring to “perfidious Albion” a great, true, French “bon mot”. I’ve heard it (read it) many times, Just looked it up, and it dates at least back to the 1200s. Likely beyond. The French have always had an endemic distrust of England, even when they were allies in desperate wars together.
@SEBASTIEN-
I don’t know who gave you the thumb down, but he is mashugga…… a bad case.. Everything you’ve said is accurate and 100% what I feel. There are also other ways. The EU, Israel’s biggest customer, will try to retaliate by suspending or reducing orders, but for how long can that go on. The individual countries will not easily find substitutes, and their “show of force” can only be very temporary, damaging and costly to them. (They will have made unbreakable contracts with Israel),
Your suggestion re the gas supply, not yet on stream holds excellent potential for turning the screw.
Fortunately for Israel, Netanyahu cemented potential markets other than the traditional ones, and India-for example- is proving a very reliable ally and customer..
@READER-
Well they actually haven’t yet made it. That situation has been static for the past 10 or more years. Instead they’ve been loading the PA with money to build illegal prefabs in Area C and damned Israel has done nothing about it. I posted time and again that Israel should demolish them and sent the parts back to the EU F.O.B.
THAT would say more than any words of government. Israel should, do this and say NOTHING about it.
Besides, as I pointed out a few minutes ago. Israel is in POSSESSION.
NATO would not act, because their strict agreement states that they must ALL be in concert. One dissenting state would cancel any intention of the others. And if any of the others take unilateral steps, they are causing the embroglio and I’d bet their political enemies would raise a huge stink, and then side with Israel..
They would NEVER go to the extent of military action, and if they try economical pressure, Israel has many outlets for it’s products.
We just need a steadfast government, which we presently don’t have. It is trying AGAIN, all the preciously tried and failed old crap.
The so called western elites have been telling us for a century, that we cannot even have a country of our own. They have done their best to achieve that by getting the Arabs to do their dirty work for them, thank goodness with litte success.
If, however, these elites do manage to make Palestine a state and member of the UN, the pressure will increase substantially. It will then become a case of possession rather than legalities. I rather doubt that NATO will get involved, but I do think the EU would try their hand at setting up an EU-Army and trying to throw the Jews into the dead sea. Finally, there is still the Iranian option that they are trying with all their might to turn into reality while pretending that that is not the case. However, with a little help from Joe “come on man” Biden, nothing is impossible.
@Edgar G.
I hate to say that but they already made it and legality has nothing to do with it.
In the next war, Israel will be fighting a “Palestinian” state with, possibly, the NATO, etc. defending it.
It is only the Jews who have been discussing this issue among themselves for decades (preaching to the converted) – how the land is ours and not theirs instead of establishing facts on the ground (which is what the Arabs and their helpers have been doing very successfully).
It looks like the Jews are concerned with every other issue except with their own survival as a people in their own land, unfortunately.
It makes us look bad – it looks like we don’t really care because we keep making compromises and caving in but the Arabs have acquired the image of deeply religious freedom fighters for their own land against the “Zionist colonialist apartheid”.
A major point should be that Israel is already “in possession”.
@READER-
I don’t see how the UN could LEGALLY make such an artificial state, on an area over which The Jewish People already has had Sovereignty since San Remo in 1920 and certainly since 1922 from the League of Nations British Mandate. accepted unanimously by ALL 51 of the League, PLUS unanimous endorsement by President Wilson (unofficially) and then unanimously by both Houses of Congress and signed into irrevocable US Law.
The UN members know but ignore, and must be told publicly, FORCIBLY that the Land is already Sovereign to the Jewish People. So that the PEOPLE of those countries will know.
Israel should long ago have stopped talking “annexation” and iterated and re-iterated, “sovereignty”.
@Ted Belman
So, what is the point of discussing sovereignty and annexation when the state of Philastyn already exists “based on pre-1967 borders” which means, when fully implemented, the destruction of the Jewish state?
The only solution to this is the immediate huge aliyah exceeding the Mizrachi and the Soviet ones.
The only answer to facts on the ground is establishing your own facts on the ground faster than the others do.
I really hope that the Government of Israel acquires some seykhel, some spine, and some fear of another Holocaust and starts doing the right things ASAP.
@Ted Belman
I don’t see how Israel can declare sovereignty/Israeli law anywhere in Judea and Samaria when “our best friend” is convinced that Judea and Samaria belong to the “Palestinians” (the idea of buying the land from the Arabs is not even entertained), and that all the Jewish settlements are illegal and must be dismantled, and the Government of Israel basically agrees with this, aside from its occasional “misbehavior” (probably designed to lull the public into complacency).
https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/publications/PF24_Kurtzer_Israelisettlements_web_0.pdf
Wikipedia:
The only thing that prevented them from being recognized as a full member state was the veto by the US. So recognition by the UK would not change that but if the US decided not to veto then Palestine would be admitted into the UN as a state.
Yes, we can extend Israeli law through out Area C. No need for annexation.
But that has nothing to do with the Jordan/Israel peace treaty,.
Its been that way since the ceasefire agreement in 1949. At that time a law was passed, (known as Ben Gurion’s law) which enabled Israel to extend sovereignty to any lands from the Mandate. So in ’49 Israel just extended their laws to all extra land acquired beyond the Res 181 borders. Nobody said otherwise.
The Foreign Office has always been biased against Israel. Given the British upper class tradition of sending its boys off to single sex boarding schools where ‘certain behaviour’ and the consequent imprinting is simply part of the culture, this is unsurprising. And since traditional Jewish culture, on the other hand, has never been in the least sympathetic to crimes against nature, unlike that of Muslims, the result is all too apparent in UK/Arab diplomacy.
After all, a wild affair with the exotically robed, tawny-skinned Abdul al-Rashid is infinitely more exciting to your average privately educated Briton than being b*ggered by a traditionally attired Hasidic Jew named Izzy Schimmelfarb.
So the UK said “Boo!”
Who cares?
Have they forgotten that they no longer have the Mandate?
Or that they are a failed empire?
BTW, the Jewish settlement construction was frozen 30 years ago (except for the building within the existing settlements).
Israel officially agreed then that no new Jews were going to enter and settle in Judea and Samaria.
All this talk about promising not to freeze settlements is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
@Edgar G You see this is what I was talking about. Instead of just writing about what we want, we should be strategizing on what means we can use to threaten our frenemies into submission, especially economic means. Economic Warfare. Israel is scheduled to provide the UK with natural gas in 2022, for example. We should be discussing how Israel can punish the UK and other diplomatic frenemies by strangling them economically or in the services that Israel provides in security, for example. found this:
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/052421-uks-energean-delays-first-israeli-gas-to-mid-2022-on-new-covid-19-restrictions
I am trying to initiate an important tactical discussion that I don’t see taking place.
And, yes, it goes without saying that all EU subsidies of Arab projects in Israel must be outlawed and all EU personnel involved in such transactions deported and barred from re-entry. All EU or British funded illegal Arab settlements must be immediately dismantled though this government will have to fall first and replaced with one without Raam in it.
There is in international law no legal need for Israel to annex the West Bank. According to the Israel-Jordan peace- and border treaty og 1994, the whole West Bank is located within Israel’s internationally recognized state border. The question is not about terrirorial sovereignty, but about the application in the area of Israeli law, a question which is solely up to Israel to decide.
Remaining PERFIDIOUS!
They must get their advice from the BBC.
“Equal”? An illusion perpetuated ad nauseam.
The British were kicked out (the End of an empire) by “this small people” (Charles de Gaul).
“Israel: Ennemi numéro UN”!(fr.)
Beside which,
The Jewish belief that all men are created by God in his image which means that we are all created equal.
This idea is a threat to the legitimacy of European societies & the elites who rule.
If All people are created equal at birth,than there should be no born upper men & none born to a lower station.
those born to rule & those born to toil.
The end game must be coming near if the Western European Elites(EU)are finally speaking the truth about their degenerate ideas concerning world domination!
Israel & the Jews are just one theater of operations in their war against the rest
of the world.A war,by the dying Old World Order dressed up in new clothes & calling themselves the New World Order.
In this the British have been way ahead of the pack for at least the last 100 years in their attempts to destroy the Jews & Israel.
The Arabs they have scratched together over the years to front for them are merely bandits doing the thuggery for the European Elites.
Perhaps readers might evaluate Israel’s situation if the UK did that and others followed. How difficult would it make for us to avoid the TSS.
The Foreign Office has always been biased against Israel.
Given the British upper class tradition of sending its boys off to single sex boarding schools where ‘certain behaviour’ and the consequent imprinting is simply part of the culture, this is unsurprising. And since traditional Jewish culture, unlike that commonly practised by Muslims as a result of never seeing an unveiled woman, has never been in the least sympathetic to crimes against nature, the result is all too apparent in UK/Arab diplomacy.
After all, a wild affair with the exotically robed, tawny-skinned Abdul al-Rashid is infinitely more exciting to your average privately educated Briton than being b*ggered by a traditionally attired Hasidic Jew named Izzy Schimmelfarb.