This week, the Dobbs University Center (DUC) has become the center of debate about Israel-Palestine issues as student organizations have placed displays in the student center and have implemented programs on both sides of the conflict around campus.
Emory’s Jewish community and pro-Israel student organizations will hold events this week in response to Emory Students for Justice in Palestine’s (ESJP) “Separation and Annexation Wall,” a wall that aims to raise awareness of human rights violations and the annexation of land in Israel, according to College junior and ESJP Vice President Emilia Truluck.
ESJP’s wall, which is located on the Dobbs University Center (DUC) terraces, represents the Israeli West Bank, a physical barrier created by the Israeli cabinet in June 2002 to regulate entry of Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel, according to BBC News.
The wall contains a diagram depicting the Palestinian loss of land in Israel from 1946 to 2000, and it claims that the wall isolates and disrupts the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians currently living in Israel.
“[Emory students] have a strong obligation to be engaged in the issue [between Israel and Palestine] and to try to move our country to be on the right side of it, rather than enabling the status quo to continue,” College junior and Treasurer/Co-Founder of ESJP Anaïs Hussung said.
As global citizens and American taxpayers whose money is used in Israel without restrictions, Emory students should be aware of these issues, Truluck said.
In an email to the Wheel, College junior and MEOR Israeli Affairs Chair Elyssa Brezel stated that though its members may disagree with the statements made by the ESJP’s wall, the pro-Israeli coalition hopes to create dialogue on Emory’s campus that will allow students to make informed decisions about the state of Israel. She acknowledged the right of ESJP to exercise this right.
Last year, ESJP’s wall was vandalized and torn down. The wall declared Israel an apartheid state, meaning that it racially segregates groups and refers to a system of legislation previously used in South Africa.
The vandalism of last year’s wall should not cause ESJP to stop or compromise its goals, Hussung said.
This year, ESJP did not associate the word “apartheid” with its events nor did it put the word on its wall, according to President of ESJP and College junior Dina Masri.
In an email to the Wheel, representatives from MEOR at Emory, the Emory-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Hillel at Emory, Sigma Alpha Mu, Emory Students for Israel (ESI), Chabad and the Emory chapters of the historically Jewish fraternities Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) and Sigma Alpha Mu (SAM) noted that though “it is painful … to witness those in [the Emory] community delegitimizing and demonizing the State [of Israel] … it is imperative that [Emory students] do not tear down, vandalize or damage [the ESJP’s] displays.”
The email also acknowledged that the Emory community must continue to recognize Emory’s Respect for Open Expression Policy, which states that the University “supports courageous inquiry through open expression, dissent and protest, while acknowledging the challenges of the creative tensions associated with courageous inquiry in an ever changing community.”
“Although we may not agree with the conclusions [ESJP] has raised regarding the human rights situation in the area, our interjecting points do not hinder us from having an appropriate, respectful relationship,” Brezel wrote, noting that MEOR wishes the same from the broader Emory community.
Masri agreed that she hopes the organizations will be able to create a community that can safely and respectfully discuss the conflicts in Israel.
“College is a place for people to express different opinions and not feel ashamed for having certain opinions,” Masri said, noting that as a Palestinian, she does not always feel entirely accepted on Emory’s campus.
Masri also said that ESJP has extended an invitation to Emory Hillel to co-host an event later this semester through which students can come to learn about both perspectives of the issue, and she is hopeful that the organizations can collaborate in the future.
ESJP will also hold events this week to recognize the issues discussed on its wall, including a town hall event for students to ask questions related to the wall and conflicts in Israel.
Later this week, Jeff Halper, coordinating director and co-founder of the Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions, will deliver a lecture on what the conflicts between Israelites and Palestinians will lead to in the future. Hussung said that she hopes students will use these events as well as the wall to directly engage with the issues surrounding Israel.
“One of the things I’m very aware of is that people have very strong responses to [ESJP’s] wall, but they tend to ignore the content that we put on it,” Hussung said, encouraging students to further educate themselves about the conflicts in Israel.
The pro-Israeli coalition will hold events throughout the week aimed at bringing awareness to the issues displayed on ESJP’s wall, according to Brezel.
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, ESI will hold an event entitled “Soldiers’ Stories,” which will detail the experiences of two Israeli soldiers. On Wednesday, Feb. 24, Chabad at Emory will hold a Chill N Grill BBQ for students to meet and discuss the conflicts in Israel.
Hillel at Emory will sponsor an Israeli Shabbat on Friday, Feb. 26, which will spread panels throughout campus, recognizing Emory’s role and its related challenges.
The pro-Israel organizations will wear blue clothing in solidarity on Tuesday, Feb. 23, have tables at the DUC for Wonderful Wednesday including a humanitarian aid table on Thursday, Feb. 25.
“We are using this week as a new opportunity to bring together the numerous pro-Israel organizations on campus, and we look forward to using this coalition for multiple platforms in the future,” Brezel wrote.
Lauren is an Environmental Science and Media Studies double major from Braselton, Georgia. She is a staff writer for the Emory Wheel, a member of Pi Beta Phi, president of Emory Running Club and a member of the Emory Environment Senate Committee. In her free time, she likes to play with her four dogs, including one named Kat!
Free Palestine from corruption. There are a lot of wealthy Palestinians living in mansions, living off the cash of well meaning NGOs and extortion from the average Palestinian
There are lots of wealthy people living in mansions in every country in the world while people in the same country languish in poverty. Instead, we should focus on what makes the suffering of Palestinians unique – the 48 year old military occupation buoyed by 3.1 billion dollars of US military aid to Israel annually which has directly created the humanitarian emergency that INGOs are responding to. Consider, for example, the collapse of the economy in the eastern (Palestinian) part of Jerusalem after the construction of the annexation wall or or in Bethlehem where the wall cut it off from Jerusalem as well as much of the Palestinian community to the south, or one of the multiple villages entirely encircled by the wall with access granted now only by tunnel or in Hebron after the Israeli military closed all the businesses on Shahada street and erected a checkpoint in the middle of the city or in Gaza where Israel operates an absolute land, air and sea blockade.
Sure, wealthy people should share in Palestine and in every other country in the world, but that hasn’t produced the suffering of the Palestinians for the last 48 years. The occupation has done that.
The Pals had many opportunities for a state- based on the Peel agreement of 1937, the partition of mandatory Palestine in 1947, the 19 years of Jordanian rule from 1948-1967, Olmert’s proposal in 2008. The fact is that the entire meaning of Palestinian identity is opposition to a Jewish presence in Palestine. Hence, if the PA or Hamas would recognize a Jewish claim to part of the land, the entire Palestinian identity would crumble. This is why the Pals have rejected every opportunity for a state that includes a Jewish state beside them. Even if Israel would withdraw to the 1967 borders, a Palestinian state would be economically unviable, leading to continuing war against Israel. Israel would be judged to be at fault, because it is a Jewish state.
Opportunities for a state, yes. The question has always been what kind of state that would be and on whose terms. For example…
Peel Agreement – Created at a time when only 25% of Palestine’s population was Jewish. Gave the most productive land to the Jewish state. In this land, Arab ownership of land was 4x that of Jewish. Why would the Palestinian people ever accept a proposal that sacrifices their most productive land and in which they easily outnumber Jews? Could you imagine Texas’ response if the UN decided 60% of it would now become a part of Mexico?
UN Partition Plan – 70%/30% Arab/Jew demographic split but Jewish state awarded 60% of the land. Subsequent war created 750,000 Arab refugees whom have never been allowed to return to their land. A process Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe called an “ethnic cleansing.” Why would Palestinians accept a proposal that divides the land thusly when they are a vast majority and have been for centuries?
Jordanian Rule – Most Palestinians were happy with this. It ended, of course, when Israel invaded both the West Bank and Gaza (along with the Golan Heights and Sinai) in 1967 and installed the military occupation coming up on its 50th anniversary.
Olmert’s proposal failed because he failed to accept internationally recognized rulings concerning settlements, Jerusalem and the right of return. He sought to retain control of settlements that split the West Bank (most notably the Ariel bloc) and make a contiguous Palestinian state unrealistic, refused to recognize the eastern part of Jerusalem as a part of Palestine, and denied the right of return to all but 5,000 of the now 4,000,000 refugees created by Israel in the aforementioned invasion.
I guess if you redefine “state’ by putting it in parenthesis, you could make your case. I think it’s safer to stick with international law and history. The PA has been ready for years to accept a Jewish state beside them. They’re just waiting Israel to adhere to international law so it can happen.
Palestinian identity is not contrary to Jewish presence in Palestine. In fact Jews and Arabs have lived in Palestine for centuries as neighbors and friends. It is not Jews that Palestinians have a problem with. It is an Israeli regime that discriminates against Palestinians within Israel and oppresses Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
The PA has recognized Israel (again, this has nothing to do with Jews living there. Israel has Jewish, Christian and Arab citizens among others). Hamas doesn’t recognize the right of Israel to exist because its existence caused the 4,000,000 refugees and theft of best farmland mentioned above. If I were them, this might make me a wee bit upset too.
Finally, what is it that would make a Palestinian state “economically unviable” if Israel withdrew to the 1967 border as the international community has ruled it should do? Are Palestinians simply incapable of governing and developing themselves if they were freed from the chains of these open-air prisons Israel maintains?
• There is no “Palestine”. There might have been, but they chose war instead- time and again:
The would-have-been “Palestinians” would have had a state IN PEACE in 1937 with the Peel Plan, but they violently rejected it.
They would have had a state IN PEACE in 1939 with the MacDonald White Paper, but they violently rejected it (and Jews would have even been restricted from BUYING land from Arabs).
They would have had a state IN PEACE in 1948 with UN 181, but they violently rejected it (and actually claimed that the UN had no such mandate!).
They could have had a state IN PEACE in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza from 1948-1967 without any Jews- because the Arabs had ethnically cleansed every last one; but they violently rejected it. In fact, that’s exactly when they established Fatah (1959) and the PLO (1964).
They could have had a state IN PEACE after 1967, but instead, the entire Arab world issued the Khartoum Resolutions:
A. No peace with Israel
B. No recognition of Israel
C. No negotiations with Israel
They would have had a state IN PEACE in 2000 with the Oslo Accords, but they violently rejected it- as always.
And as soon as Israel pulled every single Israeli out of Gaza, what did the would-have-been “Palestinians” do? They immediately started shooting thousands of missiles into Israeli population centers, they elected Hamas (whose official platform calls for jihad with no negotiations until Israel is destroyed) to rule them, and they have dug tunnels crossing into the Negev to kill and kidnap Israelis.
And even afterwards, Ehud Olmert made his subsequent generous offer that went far beyond even that of Barak. The would-have-been “Palestinians” rejected it.
They had many chances.
They threw them all away because destroying Israel was higher on their priority list. It still is.
Oh well. That’s their choice.
Palestine has been a predominant name for the geographic region for more than two thousand years, dating back to the Hebrew Bible. It has also been the subject of talks of an independent state. Today, it is not an independent state because it is illegally militarily occupied by Israel contrary to international consensus and law.
If you had read and responded to my post as I did to the one prior to mine instead of copy and pasting something stamped all over the internet, we could have a conversation.
For instance, I already explained why the Peel Plan and UN 181 (Partition Plan) were not viable for Palestinians and you didn’t respond to those claims.
White Paper? The Arab Higher Committee ACCEPTED it. It was zionist groups that rejected and violently rebelled.
Judea/Samaria/Gaza from 48-67 – Arabs didn’t ethnically cleanse the West Bank. It is a far different situation because the West Bank and Gaza were 95-99% Arab before 1948 whereas the areas of Palestine in which Israel was created had a majority Palestinian population prior to 1948.According to the PLO, Jews living there in the West Bank prior to 1948 were to be considered Palestinian. There remain Jews living in the West Bank but not in illegal settlements. How did they violently reject this? What were they establishing thru Fatah and the PLO other than political parties to represent their aspirations for an independent state? Also, I know many Palestinians who partner with Jews in struggling against the occupation. It is the occupation that Palestinians despise, not Jews. By insisting that Israel is a Jewish state, the two are understandably conflated by some.
Khartoum Resolutions – Issued after ISRAEL invaded and militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Not sure how a state in peace was possible at that point. A central demand of these resolutions was the creation of a peaceful, independent Palestinian state…
Oslo Accords – Palestinians didn’t reject them. Israel didn’t follow through on their commitments. This upset Palestinians. The transitionary period to an independent state had expired without progress. Settlement building continued, etc.
Hamas? – “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says retired Israeli official Avner Cohen. Look it up. Israel’s policy has long been the marginalization and fragmentation of Palestinians. Hamas was that tactic borne again. Now they have sometimes fired rockets because Israel maintains an absolute blockade on the country making one of the most populated urban areas in the world into an open air prison where fresh water is running out and unemployment exceeds 40%.
It is not “generous offer” that Olmert or Barak made. In their “generosity” both failed to accept international law and expectations about withdrawal of illegal settlers, following the Armistice Line, return of refugees, or status of Jerusalem. Generous would be offering more than what international consensus and human rights law claims is Palestine’s own. It is not generous to return part of what is not yours in the first place.
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David M. Phillips: The Illegal-Settlements Myth
by David M. Phillips
December 3, 2009
Source: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME)
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http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-illegal-settlements-myth-15295
The conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. But it is. Decades of argument about the issue have obscured the complex nature of the specific legal question about which a supposedly overwhelming verdict of guilty has been rendered against settlement policy. There can be no doubt that this avalanche of negative opinion has been deeply influenced by the settlements’ unpopularity around the world and even within Israel itself. Yet, while one may debate the wisdom of Israeli settlements, the idea that they are imprudent is quite different from branding them as illegal. Indeed, the analysis underlying the conclusion that the settlements violate international law depends entirely on an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative that the West Bank is “Arab” land. Followed to its logical conclusion-as some have done-this narrative precludes the legitimacy of Israel itself.
These arguments date back to the aftermath of the Six-Day War. When Israel went into battle in June 1967, its objective was clear: to remove the Arab military threat to its existence. Following its victory, the Jewish state faced a new challenge: what to do with the territorial fruits of that triumph. While many Israelis assumed that the overwhelming nature of their victory would shock the Arab world into coming to terms with their legitimacy and making peace, they would soon be disabused of this belief. At the end of August 1967, the heads of eight countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (all of which lost land as the result of their failed policy of confrontation with Israel), met at a summit in Khartoum, Sudan, and agreed to the three principles that were to guide the Arab world’s postwar stands: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Though many Israelis hoped to trade most if not all the conquered lands for peace, they would have no takers. This set the stage for decades of their nation’s control of these territories.
The attachment of Israelis to the newly unified city of Jerusalem led to its quick annexation, and Jewish neighborhoods were planted on its flanks in the hope that this would render unification irrevocable. A similar motivation for returning Jewish life to the West Bank, the place where Jewish history began-albeit one that did not reflect the same strong consensus as that which underpinned the drive to hold on to Jerusalem-led to the fitful process that, over the course of the next several decades, produced numerous Jewish settlements throughout this area for a variety of reasons, including strategic, historical and/or religious considerations. In contrast, settlements created by Israel in the Egyptian Sinai or the Syrian Golan were primarily based initially on the strategic value of the terrain.
Over the course of the years to come, there was little dispute about Egypt’s sovereign right to the Sinai, and it was eventually returned after Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat broke the Arab consensus and made peace with Israel. Though the rulers of Syria have, to date, preferred the continuance of belligerency to a similar decision to end the conflict, the question of their right to the return of the Golan in the event of peace seems to hinge more on the nature of the regime in Damascus than any dispute about the provenance of Syria’s title to the land.
The question of the legal status of the West Bank, as well as Jerusalem, is not so easily resolved. To understand why this is the case, we must first revisit the history of the region in the 20th century.
Though routinely referred to nowadays as “Palestinian” land, at no point in history has Jerusalem or the West Bank been under Palestinian Arab sovereignty in any sense of the term. For several hundred years leading up to World War I, all of Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan, and the putative state of Palestine were merely provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After British-led Allied troops routed the Turks from the country in 1917-18, the League of Nations blessed Britain’s occupation with a document that gave the British conditional control granted under a mandate. It empowered Britain to facilitate the creation of a “Jewish National Home” while respecting the rights of the native Arab population. British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill later partitioned the mandate in 1922 and gave the East Bank of the Jordan to his country’s Hashemite Arab allies, who created the Kingdom of Jordan there under British tutelage.
Following World War II, the League of Nations’ successor, the United Nations, voted in November 1947 to partition the remaining portion of the land into Arab and Jewish states. While the Jews accepted partition, the Arabs did not, and after the British decamped in May 1948, Jordan joined with four other Arab countries to invade the fledgling Jewish state on the first day of its existence. Though Israel survived the onslaught, the fighting left the Jordanians in control of what would come to be known as the West Bank as well as approximately half of Jerusalem, including the Old City. Those Jewish communities in the West Bank that had existed prior to the Arab invasion were demolished, as was the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
After the cease-fire that ended Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Jordan annexed both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But, as was the case when Israel annexed those same parts of the ancient city that it would win back 19 years later, the world largely ignored this attempt to legitimize Jordan’s presence. Only Jordan’s allies Britain and Pakistan recognized its claims of sovereignty. After King Hussein’s disastrous decision to ally himself with Egypt’s Nasser during the prelude to June 1967, Jordan was evicted from the lands it had won in 1948.
This left open the question of the sovereign authority over the West Bank. The legal vacuum in which Israel operated in the West Bank after 1967 was exacerbated by Jordan’s subsequent stubborn refusal to engage in talks about the future of these territories. King Hussein was initially deterred from dealing with the issue by the three “no’s” of Khartoum. Soon enough, he was taught a real-world lesson by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which fomented a bloody civil war against him and his regime in 1970. With the open support of Israel, Hussein survived that threat to his throne, but his desire to reduce rather than enlarge the Palestinian population in his kingdom ultimately led him to disavow any further claim to the lands he had lost in 1967. Eventually, this stance was formalized on July 31, 1988.
Thus, if the charge that Israel’s hold on the territories is illegal is based on the charge of theft from its previous owners, Jordan’s own illegitimacy on matters of legal title and its subsequent withdrawal from the fray makes that legal case a losing one. Well before Jordan’s renunciation, Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School and undersecretary of state for political affairs in 1967 during the Six-Day War, argued that the West Bank should be considered “unallocated territory,” once part of the Ottoman Empire. From this perspective, Israel, rather than simply “a belligerent occupant,” had the status of a “claimant to the territory.”
To Rostow, “Jews have a right to settle in it under the Mandate,” a right he declared to be “unchallengeable as a matter of law.” In accord with these views, Israel has historically characterized the West Bank as “disputed territory” (although some senior government officials have more recently begun to use the term “occupied territory”).
Because neither Great Britain, as the former trustee under the League of Nations mandate, nor the since deceased Ottoman Empire-the former sovereigns prior to the Jordanians-is desirous or capable of standing up as the injured party to put Israel in the dock, we must therefore ask: On what points of law does the case against Israel stand?
nternational-law arguments against the settlements have rested primarily upon two sources. First are the 1907 Hague Regulations, whose provisions are primarily designed to protect the interests of a temporarily ousted sovereign in the context of a short-term occupation. Second is the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, the first international agreement designed specifically to protect civilians during wartime.
While Israel was not and is not a party to the Hague Regulations, the Israeli Supreme Court has generally regarded its provisions as part of customary international law (that is, law generally observed by nations even if they have not signed an international agreement to that effect) and hence applicable to Israel. The regulations are transparently geared toward short-term occupations during which a peace treaty is negotiated between the victorious and defeated nations. The “no’s” of Khartoum signaled that there would be no quick negotiations.
Nonetheless, Israel established and maintains a military administration overseeing the West Bank in accordance with the Hague Regulations, probably the only military power since World War II other than the United States (in Iraq) that has done so. For example, consistent with Article 43 of the Regulations, which calls on the occupant to “respect, . . . unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country,” Israel has for the most part continued to follow Jordanian law in the West Bank, despite its position that Jordan itself had illegally occupied it. Israel’s stance has been criticized as contradictory, but general continuance of Jordanian law can be justified on grounds of legal stability and long-term reliance reflected in most legal systems, including international law.
Article 46 of the Hague Regulations bars an occupying power from confiscating private property. And it is on this point that the loudest cries against the settlements have been based. Israel did requisition land from private Arab owners to establish some early settlements, but requisitioning differs from confiscation (compensation is paid for use of the land), and the establishment of these settlements was based on military necessity. In a 1979 case, Ayyub v. Minister of Defense, the Israeli Supreme Court considered whether military authorities could requisition private property for a civilian settlement, Beth El, on proof of military necessity. The theoretical and, in that specific case, actual answers were affirmative. But in another seminal decision the same year, Dwaikat v. Israel, known as the Elon Moreh case, the court more deeply explored the definition of military necessity and rejected the tendered evidence in that case because the military had only later acquiesced in the establishment of the Elon Moreh settlement by its inhabitants. The court’s decision effectively precluded further requisitioning of Palestinian privately held land for civilian settlements.
After the Elon Moreh case, all Israeli settlements legally authorized by the Israeli Military Administration (a category that, by definition, excludes “illegal outposts” constructed without prior authorization or subsequent acceptance) have been constructed either on lands that Israel characterizes as state-owned or “public” or, in a small minority of cases, on land purchased by Jews from Arabs after 1967. The term “public land” includes uncultivated rural land not registered in anyone’s name and land owned by absentee owners, both categories of public land under Jordanian and Ottoman law. Inversely, the term excludes land registered in the name of someone other than an absentee owner (regardless of whether the land is presently cultivated), land to which a title deed exists (even if the deed is unregistered), and land held by prescriptive use. The last stipulation requires continuous use of the land for a period of 10 years.
Israel’s characterization of certain lands as “state” or “public” has provoked considerable controversy. In one of the most detailed and cited critiques, B’Tselem, the Israeli human-rights group, concedes that 90 percent of the settlements have been established on what is nominally “state” land but argues that approximately 40 percent of the West Bank now falls within that category. That would represent a vast expansion of the 16 percent of the West Bank that had been considered public under Jordanian control.
As B’Tselem acknowledges, however, the vast majority of this land is in the Jordan Valley, which, with the primary exception of the city of Jericho, was barely populated by Palestinian Arabs prior to 1967 (which explains why such land was both unregistered and uncultivated). The percentage may also be on the high side because of the inclusion of certain Jerusalem neighborhoods in B’Tselem’s calculations. Regardless of the gross percentage, according to B’Tselem’s own statistics, only approximately 5 percent of the West Bank is within settlement “municipal boundaries,” and a much, much smaller percentage of land, 1.7 percent, is developed.
One of B’Tselem’s most frequently cited publications argues that Ma’aleh Adumim, the largest Israeli settlement on the West Bank, several kilometers to the east of Jerusalem, sits on territory taken from five Palestinian Arab villages and therefore amounts to an expropriation. But because the villagers lack registered title or even unregistered deeds, B’Tselem argues that the nomadic Jahalin Bedouin, who intermittently camp and graze their livestock on land to the east of Jerusalem going down to the Dead Sea, have effectively earned the right of title to the land because of their prescriptive use.
Perhaps. But it is far from clear how a Bedouin right to the land has anything to do with the legal claim of Palestinian villagers 60 years earlier. B’Tselem offers this rather astonishing argument: “They grazed on village land in accordance with lease agreements (at times symbolic) with the landowners-including landowners from the villages of Abu Dis and al’Izariyyeh.” At times symbolic!
In other words, only Palestinian Arab villages may be constructed and expanded on the land because Bedouin have occasionally grazed their flocks thereon pursuant to the implied consent of Palestinian villagers. But those villagers only have a right to the land because of its use by the Bedouin!
The sophistry here masks a deeper issue. Aside from its circularity, B’Tselem’s argument equates whatever rights Bedouin may have with the rights of sedentary Arab villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The only reason for such an equation is that both are Arabs and not Jews. B’Tselem’s assertion that the land belongs to these villages collapses into the contention that only Arabs, not Jews, have the right to own and use these lands.
Settlement opponents more frequently cite the Fourth Geneva Convention these days for their legal arguments. They specifically charge that the settlements violate Article 49(6), which states: “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies.”
Frequently, this sentence is cited as if its meaning is transparent and its application to the establishment of Israeli settlements beyond dispute. Neither is the case.
To settlement opponents, the word “transfer” in Article 49(6) connotes that any transfer of the occupying power’s civilian population, voluntary or involuntary, is prohibited. However, the first paragraph of Article 49 complicates that case. It reads: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” Unquestionably, any forcible transfer of populations is illegal. But what about voluntary movements with the antecedent permission or subsequent acquiescence by the occupant?
Even settlement opponents concede that many settlements closest to Palestinian population areas, on the central mountain range of the West Bank, were built without government permission and often contrary to governmental policy; their continued existence forced the government to recognize the settlement as an existing fact. Given this history, it is questionable to claim that Israel “transferred” those settlers.
The response of settlement critics is that certain tax subsidies and other benefits conferred by the Israeli government or the World Zionist Organization that may have encouraged Jews to settle in the West Bank constructively amounts to a “transfer.” This interpretation would have greater traction under a l977 protocol to the Geneva Convention or under the Treaty of Rome, which established the International Criminal Court, but Israel is a signatory to neither (both covenants were heavily influenced by anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations and the PLO).
To the extent that a violation of Article 49(6) depends upon the distinction between the voluntary and involuntary movement of people, the inclusion of “forcible” in Article 49(1) but not in 49(6) makes a different interpretation not only plausible but more credible. It’s a matter of simple grammar that when similar language is used in several different paragraphs of the same provision, modifying language is omitted in later paragraphs because the modifier is understood. To Julius Stone, an international-law scholar, “the word ‘transfer’ [in 49(6)] in itself implies that the movement is not voluntary on the part of the persons concerned, but a magisterial act of the state concerned.”
To understand the phraseology used in Article 49(1), “individual or mass forcible transfers,” as well as one plausible origin of Article 49(6), some background is necessary.
According to Stone, discussions at the 1949 Geneva Diplomatic Conference “were dominated . . . by a common horror of the evils caused by the recent World War and a determination to lessen the sufferings of war victims.” The various nations’ delegates considered a draft of the convention produced at a conference of the Red Cross Societies held in Stockholm during August 1948. Final Article 49 was the renumbered and revised successor to Article 45 of the Stockholm Draft.
At a legal subcommittee meeting at Stockholm seemingly attended by fewer than 10 active participants, a Danish Jew named Georg Cohn proposed the sentence, albeit with a wider scope, that became Article 49(6). Cohn’s initial sentence, in French, would have prohibited an occupying power from deporting or transferring a “part of its own inhabitants or the inhabitants of another territory which it occupies” into the occupied territory.
According to Cohn’s own report to the Danish foreign ministry, his language was directed at an event the aspects of which were little known outside Scandinavia. In the waning days of World War II, as the Russian military advanced westward through the Baltic states and the Germans retreated, the Germans rightly feared that the Russians would take retribution on all German citizens and ethnic Germans who had collaborated with the Nazis. The Germans evacuated more than 2 million people into boats, hoping to land them in northern Germany.
Many of the ports had been bombed, however, and the Germans began unloading the people wherever they could, including several hundred thousand people into Copenhagen. In the spring of 1945, German children comprised a majority of the pupils in Copenhagen’s schools. The Danes despised them and placed them in concentration camps after the war, waiting to deport them to Germany as fast as possible. That goal had still not been accomplished in August 1948, at the time of the Stockholm conference.
No, it is Palestinian society which mirrors the apartheid regime of South Africa. It is official Palestinian Authority policy that no Jew can live in any territory it administers. isn’t that apartheid?
As for Hamas run Gaza, their policy, as stated in the freely available charter, is to kill every last Jew on earth in a mass genocide.
Your hypocrisy is evident.
• Apartheid is a psychological warfare and propaganda technique used by Arabs to demonize Israel.
In 1948, the Arabs said they were going to invade Israel, which had at that time “occupied” NO Arab land (Egypt owned Gaza, and Jordan Judea and Samaria), and throw all the Jews into the sea. The Arabs had modern weapons and aircraft, and the Israelis had small arms and a Piper Cub. The Arabs lost because they don’t like to fight armed men, or even armed women. They are pretty good with children, as shown by the Palestinian terrorist who smashed a little girl’s head with a rifle butt.
The Arabs started another war in 1956, which they lost.
The Arabs started yet another war in 1967, again with the intention of exterminating all the Jews. They lost, and only then did Israel occupy any land. You do realize, of course, that, had a country done the same thing to the U.S. that the Arabs did to Israel, nuclear weapons would have been used in response.
Then the Arabs started another war in 1973: that is four in the space of 25 years. The Palestinians also perpetrated an ongoing litany of mindless terroristic violence, including the Ma’alot school massacre and Munich Massacre.
Then, when Israel turned Gaza over to these people, it gave them greenhouses in which to grow food and build an economy. The Palestinians promptly destroyed the greenhouses, along with synagogues they could have converted into mosques, schools, housing, and so on. Recall that, when the “Terrible” Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, they did not raze the Hagia Sophia; they turned it into a mosque, and even preserved the Christian mosaics which can therefore be seen even today.
All I can say is that the Palestinians made their own bed, so now they must lie in it. They are also living proof, as in a controlled experiment, that Arab culture is inferior to Euro-American and Judeo-Christian culture. Israelis and Arabs live on similar land that is relatively poor in natural resources, although some Arabs have oil wealth. Israel’s per-capita income is, however, much higher than that of even Saudi Arabia. Maybe it has something to do with women playing an equal and important role in Israeli society, while Saudi religious policemen drove girls back into a burning school because their faces were not covered properly. Maybe it has to do with Israel’s promotion of education and science over religious fanaticism. Speaking of which, here is what the Palestinians teach their children.
Countries that do not allow Israelis (Jews) into their territory:
Algeria
Bangladesh
Brunei
Iran
Iraq (except Iraqi Kurdistan)
Kuwait
Lebanon (neighboring country; territory dispute – Shebaa farms)
Libya
Malaysia (Clearance permit needed from the Ministry of Home Affairs.)
Oman
Pakistan (Clearance permit needed from the Ministry of Internal Security.)
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
Syria (neighboring country; territory dispute – Golan Heights)
United Arab Emirates (accepted for transit only; not allowed for admission)
Yemen
1.2 million Arabs live and work in Israel.
Now explain to me again about this f***ing ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ nonsense!
Only in their Holy Land could the Jews weave their own destinies at last — and do. Israel thrives. They have won Nobel prizes and made some of the greatest advances in science, technology, and medicine. Israelis create world-class hospitals and universities. They have written more scientific papers per capita than any other nation, and have saved children’s lives – Palestinian children’s lives – in a dozen operating theatres, and sent aid teams around the world to save yet more lives. Israeli “apartheid”? Far from it. All facilities and opportunities are equally open to all Israelis: Black, White, Arab, Christian, Jew — everyone. Far more than in say, Saudi Arabia, where there are special roads for non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina, or where a Bible is not even allowed in the country. Or all the mosques where every Friday congregants are told that Jews are the sons of pigs and apes. It would seem that is racism; that is apartheid.
What the destroyers of Israel would do is negate every one of Israel’s achievements and more, and leave a hole in the world, in their own world. What, after all, would take the place of Israel? Another failed state, riven by strife, characterized by failure, poverty-stricken, dependent, just another victim of the authoritarian Arab way of governing? Is that something that will set civilization towards new horizons? It is up to us to keep the lights on, to place civilization against barbarism, to put our minds and bodies between Israel and all who mean her ill.
Arafat, I thought we were having a pleasant conversation, but then you just wouldn’t stop talking! A good way to undermine a conversation that is threatening to your claims is to say (or rather copy and paste) so much, so quickly that the other could never respond to everything. Very well done. You win on that count. Anyway, we could never have an actual conversation since you more highly value Israeli government and court redefinitions and determinations above an international law and human rights framework.
Comparing Israel to other states does not free Israel from criticism – especially within the US which annually provides Israel with 3+ billion in military aid and uniformly protects them in the UN from consequences that are otherwise international consensus.
Google is your friend, folks. Even Wikipedia is far more fair than this.