By Ted Belman (First published in American Thinker)
When Israel announced construction plans for 300 units in Judea and Samaria, Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, was quick to declare them illegal and an obstacle to peace,
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“We reiterate that the EU considers that settlement activities in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, undermine trust between the parties and constitute an obstacle to peace,”
France made a similar statement. The U.S was a little more circumspect. Whereas last year it was far less restrained and kept calling proposed housing units as “obstacles to peace.”
At the same time they ignore the real obstacles to peace.
The primary obstacle to peace is and always has been Arab rejection of the Jewish state of Israel as a Jewish state, even though there are many officially Muslim states, or even Jews themselves, even before there was a state, as evidenced by the many massacres of them.
After Israel’s Declaration of Independence in May 1948, the surrounding Arab countries attacked Israel with the intent of destroying it in the crib. This invasion ended with the Armistice Agreement of 1949, but not before the Jordanians destroyed Jewish Jerusalem.
Colonel Abdullah el Tell, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, in his Memoirs:
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“The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion. . . . I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews. . . . I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction. . . . Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it. . . . As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud—a cloud of death and agony. . . .” The Jordanian commander who led the operation is reported to have told his superiors: “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
In 1967, the Arabs once again attacked Israel with the intention of destroying it, only to be driven back and totally defeated in a matter of six days. It was then that Israel ended the 19-year Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. The lands liberated by Israel were originally promised to the Jews in the Palestine Mandate and affirmed by the United Nations and by the United States. It is these lands that Obama is demanding that Israel give to the Arabs, thereby returning Israel to the indefensible 1949 cease-fire lines that invited the 1967 assault, commenced by Egypt’s closing the Strait of Tiran – a cassus belli.
A few months after the 1967 War, or Six Day War ended, the UNSC passed Resolution 242 which legitimated Israel’s retention of the disputed territories until such time as it had “secure and recognized borders.” This resolution – drafted with care — did not require Israel to cede all the land, and recognized that the final settlement would be obtained through negotiations. Israel accepted this resolution; the Arabs rejected it. In the Khartoum Conference in 1968 they set a policy of “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.” This policy remains in place today without amendment.
Although President Lyndon Baines Johnson accepted this resolution in its proper legal interpretation, President Richard M. Nixon did not. Instead he embraced the Saudi Arabian interpretation that all lands had to be returned and had the Rogers Plan drawn up to that effect despite Israel’s objections. The Rogers Plan never gained traction. And Res 242 remained as legally intended.
During the seventies, when Israel began building some settlements for defensive purposes, President Jimmy Carter called them “illegal.” Then-candidate Ronald Reagan said although they were legal, they were an “obstacle to peace”. He also repeated this claim as President and when he ran for reelection. And so this phrase was born.
President George Walker Bush, however, in his letter of ’04 to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted that the settlement blocs’ would remain in Israel, and also accepted settlement construction that went up — but not out — thus permitted infilling.
“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”.
Although President Barack Obama claims that his policies are not a departure from American policy over the years, he has, in fact, totally changed the policy: While it is true that he continues to insist on a negotiated settlement, he has greatly limited the scope of such negotiations by demanding that negotiations take place based on the ’49 armistice cease-fire lines. The fact that he said that there should be mutually agreed swaps is misguided: the Palestinian Authority will simply not agree to any swaps, leaving Israel with the ’49 armistice lines as borders. Such borders would leave most of Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Western Wall outside of Israel. By demanding such negotiations, he is flying in the face of the legal meaning of Res 242.
While President Obama did not call the settlements “illegal,” he did call them “illegitimate” – to all appearances, a “distinction without a difference.”
President Obama has rejected the Bush letter as not binding on the U.S. and has rejected the understanding between all previous administrations and Israel that would allow infilling in the settlements. He demanded a full construction freeze which resulted in very strained relations with Israel. He finally decided that demanding such a freeze was, itself, an obstacle to peace so he dropped the freeze demand, but still can’t refrain from criticizing Israel over any new housing starts, Recently, the State Department said on reading the announcement of new housing construction, the U.S. was “deeply concerned” and “unilateral actions work against efforts to resume direct negotiations and contradict the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties.”
Elliot Abrams, in a recent CFR article, argues otherwise, namely, that the settlements are not obstacles to peace. Referring to the GW Bush negotiations,
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“So we reached that understanding with the Israelis: build up and in, not out. That way whatever the chances of a peace deal were, construction in the settlements would not reduce them.”
“But this was a reminder that the [Obama] Administration appears to have learned nothing [from the freeze controversy] and still does not understand the difference between expanding a settlement physically and expanding the population of a settlement by building in already-built-up areas.”
So what are the real obstacles to peace?
In general, they still include the long standing Arab policy from the Khartoum Conference of 1968 of no peace, no recognition and no negotiations. The Arabs have repeated this policy with both words and deeds. The Palestinian Authority [PA] rejected the two-state solution when generous offers were made to them by Prime Minister Barak in 2001 and Prime Minister Olmert in 2008 and for the last three years has refused even to negotiate. The PA has also continually refused to accept UN Resolution 242, which entitles Israel to defensible borders, to retain some land, and which was the very foundation of the Oslo Accords.
Although the Oslo Accords required the PA to cease incitement and violence, it daily continues incitement to violence in mosques, schools and throughout its media [see www.PMW.org ]. Rather than rejecting terrorism, they praise it. Rather than educating their people for peace, they educate them for violence, euphemistically referred to as “resistance.” Rather than envisaging a two-state solution they remove Israel from their maps.
The problem is: nobody calls them on it. It is the failure to do so that is yet another obstacle to peace.
Still another is the mainstream media — including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Guardian and the BBC among others — all of whom deliberately suppress easily verifiable facts not complimentary to the PA, but publish uncorroborated facts detrimental to Israel.
As Yoram Ettinger recently noted:
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“a current study of Abu Mazen’s and Salam Fayyad’s school text books – conducted by veterans of Israel’s Intelligence community – reaffirms that the $4 billion US foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority has been counter-productive. It has not inclined Palestinians towards peaceful coexistence, and it has not moderated Palestinian terrorism. In fact, since the 1994 inception of foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorism has escalated, Palestinian non-compliance has become pervasive and support of peace among Palestinians has ebbed.”
Continuing financial support to the PA, therefore, is a further huge obstacle to peace. Funding them — and the convicted terrorists the PA presently funds who are now in Israeli jails, some with up to five life-sentences — makes it possible for the PA to be intransigent and to avoid compromises.
The fact that the United Nations singles out Israel for condemnation while ignoring Palestinian terror, is certainly an obstacle to peace. The UN is aided and abetted in doing so by the EU and the Obama administration.
The PA continues to insist on the alleged “right of return” for the Arab refugees to Israel itself rather than the new Palestine, refuses an end of conflict agreement and refuses to recognize Israel as the state for the Jewish people. Their unwillingness to cede on all of these matters or even to compromise on them is also an extremely large obstacle to peace.
The PA therefore has no incentive to make peace: as it is never criticized, never penalized, has no economic necessity, and it is wined and dined in the capitals of the world, why should it make peace?
You’re of course assuming that the “sick man of Europe” would have gotten no sicker absent the GreatWar. And that may be so.
But it seems doubtful.
And with the Zionists’ approaches to both the Sublime Porte and the Kaiser continuing apace (as they had been during Herzl’s day) — as well as the pioneering of the Land continuing unabated, as had been underway for the previous 35-something years — it’s quite possible that the Third Jewish Commonwealth could’ve seen daylight well before the 40’s.
The possibility of losing a barren, busted-down, piece of malarial real estate — and replacing it with a sovereign Jewish ally in the same place — could have been made to present a most appealing prospect to the Ottomans; don’t you suppose?
The issue is not the legality or illegality of the Jewish settlement communities, but of the whimpering cowardice and failure of successive governments elected by the voters of Israel ignore the leaders of the goyim — including America’s presidents — and simply take control of the ancient homeland of the Jewish nation by settling it first, and arguing about it later.
All American presidents say one thing when they are running for office and ignore their promises once they are safely in power.
But as you can plainly see, Jewish prime ministers of Israel act no differently. America, at least until recently, has been sufficiently rich and powerful for people here to ignore the politicians and just concentrate on their private lives. Or at least we had that advantage until the country started borrowing about50 cents on every dollar the government spends — threatening national bankruptcy and chaos. Israel, in contrast lives in an almost perpetual state of sometimes imagined but mostly real perils.
It ought to be easier for you people to get rid of your latest Judenrat than it is for us over here to clean up the Augean stables of liberalist/leftist and badly planned socialism.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
There you go again
(to coin a phrase).
Certainly, as long as one is already primed to take that view — as you always are, Yamit — it’s easy enough to jump to such a conclusion. However, my own observation with respect to this specific matter (as I’ve indicated many times before on this site) is more in line with Arnold’s, above: Reagan was sincere enough when he said, as candidate, that he saw no “obstacle to peace” in the Y/S presence of Jewish communities.
— and quite a bit more than whisperings too.
There’s no pressure from Foggy Bottom on a mere candidate.
Not so sure about that one, Bill.
More likely that there would indeed have been an Israel, and much sooner than 1948.
@ dweller:
He is entirely too consistent with this substitution thing for it to be inadvertent or unconscious, Ted. The guy knows precisely what he’s doing.
I have always believed he knew what he was doing.
@ dweller:
In other-words he lied as a candidate and his true self and policies became apparent only after he was elected. A true politician in every way!
Catherine Ashton has never ever had a good word to say about Israel and I consider her a thorny antisemite
One day she will be replaced and maybe we shall get lucky for once.
Once again the Pallys have missed an opportunity and brought us closer to another round of hostility which they can never win
I disagree that the terms “illegal” and “Illitigitimacy” are mostly interchangeable. Illegal status can be challenged and determined in a court of law – at least in a society where a judicial system funcions. But “illigitimate”. That’s a horse of a different color. An illigitmate child in Jewish law cannot marry,and, one would imagine, not be able to inherit- they are a person without standing. Farrakhan, Jackson and others call Judaism an illigitimate religion. Threone, one without status and not deserving of respect or even existence. To this day, I believe Obama used the word on purpose, in his Cairo speech when urging the Muslim Brotherhood to emerge, and by doing so agreeing with them that Israel has no right to exist.
Ted & Company
Very few or none at all of the candidates for President of the United States, during their political campaigns, speak of Jewish cities, villages, farms or industrial parks in the annexed parts of Jerusalem or Shomron/Yehuda as obstacles or impediments to peace. That comes after they get elected, and are exposed to the incessant and urgent whisperings of the bought and paid for Arabists of the US State Department, and to an unknown degree of this or that command of the US Defense Department and their Middle East connections.
Get it through your individual and collective heads that no US government ever will give Israel and our Jewish nation any green lights ever to defend Jewish national interests or to reclaim anything other than a smidgeon of ancient Jewish national territory.
And think about all this, just a little. Why in hell should any US government back the Jewish national enterprise? What’s in it for them? Chances are all this will change when you begin producing large amounts of natural gas and petroleum. But in 2011 and 2012, that is like pumping the stuff up to the surface of planet Mars, for all the good it does you right now.
I, for one, never have figured out why all of you — whom with few exceptions I classify as Jews who are tinged with the ancient Jewish curse of other-directedness — can’t shuck off such attitudes and just get on with the long-term job of taking and building Greater Israel. Why should any of you give a shit what ANY of the goyim think about that?
And remember that if you cannot stomach the idea of taking and building Greater Israel, especially if you live there — the people you are punishing the most with your sometimes hidden and sometimes open fears of what others think of you, are your own children and in turn their offspring. Do you want all of them to live in the Jewish ghetto of greater Tel Aviv? Just like in the sad and perpetually threatened Jewish Pale of the 17th-19th centuries in Eastern Europe?
Israel will not survive as a tiny country, with a cringing population trying to hide from rockets in their basement bunkers, or from Arab walk-in terrorists against whom they have to wall themselves in.
Expand Israel. Take more land every time that bastards provoke you. Then annex it and build on it. Stop talking about peace, which you can only achieve by victorious conquest, and never by reasoning with crazed and vicious animals.
Both your sense of logic and the instincts of tactical protective defense mechanism that are wired into all living matter on this planet, should all but scream at you that what I am telling you is correct.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
“World opinion” is manufactured by the Left’s media. There are two main obstacles to peace for Israel and the West. Those are their internal enemies, the Left, and their external enemies, the Islamists/jihadists/Palestinians, whichever title fits in a given circumstance.
We, Israel and the West, can not overcome, negotiate with, or if needs be, defeat, the external enemy as long as he is empowered, indeed, aided and abetted, by the internal enemy.
Therefore, I believe that we have to remove the Left from all vestiges of power, in every rung of society, before we will have a chance of dealing with our external enemies on an equal footing.
The friend of my enemy is my enemy…
@ dweller:
“illegitimate” was as close as he could get to “illegal” without saying “illegal”. I totally agree.
I was at a great panel discussion last night and an eminent law professor talked about international law and indicated that it has become a matter of “international legitimacy” otherwise known as world opinion. If you or should I say Israel, runs afoul of it, she is in breach of international law.
As for your greater detail in the second comment, its much appreciated.
Actually Candidate Reagan didn’t even concede their being an “obstacle to peace” either:
It is true that, as President, he and his administration allowed the “obstacle” language to become a part of their policy, but it’s clear that as candidate he flatly rejected it.
Actually, Ted, there IS a difference — and His Wonderfulness knows that there is.
That’s why he CONSISTENTLY avoids using the word illegal, always — and conspicuously — opting instead for illegitimate.
He means for the man-in-the-street to see “illegitimate” and think “illegal”
— without his having to use the actual WORD, illegal
— as that would open a can of legal worms he knows he could never close.
He is entirely too consistent with this substitution thing for it to be inadvertent or unconscious, Ted. The guy knows precisely what he’s doing.