Negotiating for What?

Peace talks can achieve nothing at this time, so why not consider other options?

by Moshe Dann

Insisting that the Palestinian Authority engage in negotiations rather than appeal to the United Nations for recognition is based on the belief that an agreement that will end the conflict is possible. However, both sides know that Israel cannot offer anything that will satisfy Palestinian demands and that the Palestinians refuse to agree to minimal Israeli requests.

Why then pretend they will? If the emperor has no clothes, why call for a fashion designer?

The idea that creating a second Arab Palestinian state will solve the problem not only defies reality, it prevents other options and undermines Israel's legitimate claims.

Why not consider other options? Because anything less than a Palestinian state and full sovereignty negates the Arab resistance movement that has sought Israel's destruction for the last 63 years.

Variations of a "two-state solution" – "land for peace,” which produced the Oslo Accords and fueled Palestinian demands for statehood - assumed the conflict was over territory ("the occupation"), not Israel's existence. And both Israeli and Arab negotiators at the time were careful to avoid core issues, which would have blocked an agreement and since then have remained to haunt and destroy.

After Israel broke the terrorist infrastructure, allowing modest cooperation, despite ongoing terrorism - and with Arafat no longer around - there seemed to be hope. But Hamas’ rise, a massive campaign of de-legitimization financed by Arabs and many European countries, a hostile US Administration, and spreading unrest throughout the Arab world have radically shifted the balance against Israel. Nothing can be taken for granted any more - even solemn peace treaties and international agreements.

The lid is off and the pot is boiling over.

The belief that Palestinian Arabs deserve a state is a powerful idea; if so, why not give it to them? And if negotiations will not lead to that state, why engage in them? For Israel, the illusion of negotiations buys time in the hope for recognition and acceptance; for the Arabs, negotiations only postpone their goal – Palestinian statehood and Israel’s elimination.

Alternative to 2-state plan

The problem is what constitutes that state; what are its permanent borders, can it be stable and will it end claims against Israel and end the conflict? Arab leaders have refused to commit to any answers - leaving the problems open, and the possibility of future violence a clear and present danger.

The only way Israel can rescue itself from this self-defeating position and avoid another policy failure is by offering an alternative to the "two-state" plan for another Palestinian state. This assumes that Israel must act in its self interest, independent of what Palestinian Arabs do, or don't do. It removes decision-making from the prison of false promises and addictive hopes to doing what is necessary to ensure Jewish survival.

Policy makers need to confront what is, not what they would like. That means understanding what Arab and Palestinian leaders really want, and how they try to get it.

For Arabs, it is about recognition and legitimacy for Hamas as a negotiating partner; it is about "the Nakba" of 1948 – the establishment of Israel and "the occupations" of 1949, and 1967. It is about core issues: "the Palestinian Right of Return," "al Quds" (Jerusalem), and complete Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria – for starters.

Since the Oslo Accords, Israeli diplomats, led by Shimon Peres, made a Palestinian state the cornerstone of Israeli policy. That has been a proven mistake. It led directly to the Palestinian bid for international recognition. Instead of reducing Palestinian Arab demands, it inflated them. Instead of moving towards accommodation, it led to conflict. Rather than promote reality, it encouraged the fantasy of Israel's demise.

As visions of a new Middle East sink into quicksand swamps of revolutions and counter revolutions throughout the Arab world, those concerned about Israel's survival must focus not only on the dangers of a Palestinian state, but Israel's needs.

Israeli policy can remain committed to peace without another Palestinian state. This requires a paradigm shift, a bold and imaginative new direction based on Jewish and Israeli – not Palestinian - sovereignty. This policy entails refuting charges of "illegal occupation," "illegitimate settlements," racism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. These accusations cannot be avoided by shifting attention to Israeli achievements in technology and science.

Shifting the focus from external form – statehood and symbols – to internal substance – values, purpose and transparency - moves the question to fundamentals: Will a Palestinian state be a force for stability and safety, or a combustible mixture primed to explode?

Advocates for another Palestinian state need to explain why those who are concerned about Israel's survival and regional peace need not be worried. Only then can negotiations become a play instead of a ploy.

The author is a PhD historian, writer and journalist living in Israel



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Crash Course in Islam and Arab Lies

MYTH 1: ISRAEL OCCUPIES ARAB PALESTINE

This is a genocidal claim made by the Muslim Students Association and other pro-Arab groups. It is genocidal because it obliterates the Jewish state. If Israel is actually “Occupied Palestine” then there is no legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East.

Since Roman times when the Philistines inhabited the region around the Jordan (hence the name “Palestine”) there has never been a political entity – neither a province nor a state – called “Palestine” and no one claimed there was until well after the United Nations created Israel in 1948. The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even arabs.

There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.

MYTH 2: ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE

The term Apartheid refers to the segregation of groups on the basis of ethnicity or race, and the denial of basic civil rights to the segregated group. There is no such segregation in Israel. Arabs are granted full civil rights under Israeli law, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or sex. Arabs take part fully in Israeli society and government. Arab citizens of Israel vote in national elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on the Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court benches, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the Arabs of any Arab state.

MYTH 3: THE ARABS WANT PEACE AND A STATE ON THE WEST BANK

The Arab nations rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arab nations and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.

There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world. Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.

MYTH 4: THE HOLOCAUST IS EUROPE’S PROBLEM; PALESTINIANS HAD NO ROLE IN IT

The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, planned death camps for the Jews in the Middle East. Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted follower of Hitler who spent the war in Berlin, recruited an Arab legion to the Nazi cause and planned a “Final Solution” for the Jews of the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood, which created Hamas, the government of Gaza, translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth.

MYTH 5: ISRAEL’S SECURITY FENCE IS AN “APARTHEID” WALL

This is two myths in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.

In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.

MYTH 6: ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arab regimes have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.

MYTH 7: ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES BY KILLING CIVILIANS

This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from some Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.

The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

MYTH 8: JEWS HAVE LITTLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

MYTH 9: THE KORAN DESCRIBES JERUSALEM AS HOLY TO ISLAM

The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.

MYTH 10: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON IS NOT JEWISH

This myth is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered.



Rad More:
Wall of Truth

The Israeli Occupation and the Settlements

by Ted Belman

The pro-Palestinian propaganda machine has succeeded in stigmatizing the Israeli occupation and the settlements. Time and again we hear about the "brutal occupation" and the "illegal settlements".

We rarely hear the truth in opposition to these lies.

Occupation

Israel is accused of occupying the West Bank and Gaza. In fact these territories are described as "The occupied Palestinian territories." Not only are they not occupied in a legal sense, but also they are not "Palestinian" lands in a sovereign sense..

The Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) is a treaty between signatory states that are called High Contracting Parties (HCP). It regulates the obligations of one HCP who occupies the land of another HCP.

It defines the terms "Occupying Power" and "Occupied State".

Thus this convention does not apply to the territories because they were not the land of any HCP. They have never been the land of an HCP. Prior to 1967, Jordon was in occupation of these territories, just as Israel is currently in occupation. Jordanian sovereignty over these lands was never recognized and ultimately Jordan relinquished any claims she claimed to have over these lands. The FGC was never applied when Jordan occupied the land and it shouldn't be applied now that Israel does.

Yet the International Court of Justice, when it gave an advisory opinion on the Israeli security fence, "identified Jordan as the occupied power of the West Bank".

According to David Matas, an international lawyer of considerable repute, in his well argued book Aftershock, "The judgment moves on from this legal reasoning to labeling the West Bank as Palestinian occupied territory. But this labelling is based on the ethnic composition of the West Bank, not on its legal status." [..] "This assertion by the ICJ that the West Bank is occupied territory is a contortion the Court imposed on the law to get to its desired results of slapping the label "occupier" on Israel." "[This] shows that the primary concern of the court was to connect to pro-Palestinian rhetoric".

As a result the Palestinians consider themselves the "occupied power".

Matas notes "That the Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War do not recognize the legal possibility of the occupation of a people, only the occupation of the territory of a state." A Protocol to these conventions does recognize such a possibility but Israel is not a signatory to it and is thus not bound by it.

It must be clearly understood that Israel's occupation is not illegal and the UN has never claimed it to be. In fact Resolution 242 permits Israel to remain in occupation until they have an agreement on "secure and recognized borders".

The Palestinians have no greater claim to a state than any minority group in any other state that wants a state of their own. The Basques and the Kurds come to mind. No one is demanding that they be given statehood.

When Israel's counsel acknowledged to Israel's High Court when it was deliberating on the fence, that Israel held the land in "belligerent occupation", he did so to enable the Court to use the law of occupation in its deliberations. It was not an admission that the lands were Palestinian land or that the FGC applied.

Matas also takes issue with Dore Gold and others for calling the land "disputed land", because others argue all of Israel is disputed land.

UNSC Res 242 sanctioned Israel's right to remain in occupation until such time as the parties reached an agreement on secure and recognized borders.

This resolution makes no mention of the FGC.

Israel has accepted the PA as the negotiating party. Nevertheless she knows the PA is currently an illegitimate government, having overstayed its mandate, and speaks for no one much less Hamas.

Settlements

The anti-Zionists argue the settlements are illegal and rely solely on the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention which provides that the Occupying power is prohibited from transferring civilian populations to occupied territories. They say that the prohibition against transfer includes a prohibition against encouragement to settle. The matter has never been put to a court for interpretation or determination. But the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) advises "that this provision was intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War in which certain powers transferred portions of their populations to occupied territories for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed to colonize those territories."

Nazi Germany enforced two kinds of transfers but in both cases they were forced transfers. The victims were the persons being forced.

Transferring populations is not a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. However a Protocol to the GC makes it so but Israel is not a party to the protocol and is not bound by it.

The anti-Zionists reject the notion that the proscription is against only forced transfers and argue that the FGC proscribes inducement to move as well. But how can there be a crime of inducement when the person committing the act, the settler, has done nothing wrong.

How can you be guilty of a crime by inducing someone to do something which is not a crime? Furthermore, this inducement would be a War Crime on an equal footing with Genocide. The equation is ludicrous. And if the settlers settle on their own volition and not due to inducements, what then? Also it is impossible to prosecute an occupying power. So what individuals would be held responsible?

Even if someone in Israel was convicted of offering inducements to settle, the settlers would not be affected and could remain in the settlements if they wished.

Matas opines, "The interpretation defies the ordinary understanding of criminal responsibility where the person committing the act is the primary wrongdoer and the person inducing the act is only an accessory."

Matas concludes. "There is all the difference in the world between forcible transfer, the offence of the Geneva Convention, and voluntary settlement, even where the settlement is encouraged" (by are merely providing inducements).[..] "Transfer is something that is done to people. Settlement is something people do."

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court made it an offence to "directly or indirectly" transfer populations.

The ICRC has attempted to interpret "indirect transfers" as "inducements" thereby making them a crime. But the GC certainly does not and that currently is the prevailing opinion.

But that didn't prevent the ICJ, in its advisory opinion above noted, from finding that the settlements violated international law. No reasons were given and no authority cited. But elsewhere it expressed the opinion that the combination of the settlements and the fence amounted to de facto annexation. It ignored the fact that Israel took the position that the fence was not intended to be the border but was merely a security measure. While actual annexation may be a violation of the FGC, the settlements and the fence certainly were not.an annexation or a violation of the FGC.

What a legal stretch!

And what about the settlements on the west side of the fence? Are they an annexation too?

Thus the ICJ did not conclude that someone in Israel was guilty of inducing settlements or in any other way of transferring populations...

Matas expands on his dim view of the advisory opinion. He considers it an attempt to discredit Israel. In the end it discredited the ICJ. He prays that the ICC will be more judicious.

The ICJ, after all, is an organ of the UN who requested it to provide the opinion. Similarly the UN requested Goldstone to investigate Cast Lead and produce a report. This report, like the advisory opinion, was just what the UN "ordered".

But keep in mind that the opinion of the ICJ was just that, an opinion, and is not legally binding on anyone.

The US has traditionally, with the Carter administration being the only exception, refrained from describing the settlements as illegal and instead called them obstacles to peace. In September 2009, Obama went before the United Nations and declared "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

This is closer to Carter's position but falls short of declaring them illegal. Nevertheless, it prompted John Bolton to say "This is the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making."

All this ignores the fact that the Palestine Mandate encouraged close settlement of the land by Jews. This right has never been rescinded and the UN has no right to rescind it. . So Jews from anywhere have the right to settle on the West Bank and the PA and the UN has no right to say otherwise.

To demand that the future Palestinian state be Judenrein, free of Jews, is reprehensible and discriminatory.

The West should not condone it, but it does.




Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the editor of Israpundit. He made aliya last year from Toronto and currently lives in Jerusalem

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