JUDEA AND SAMARIA
THE LEGALITY OF ISRAEL’S “LAND GRAB”
A plan to build homes for Jews triggers international outrage. A scheme to build homes for east Jerusalem’s Arab populations is virtually ignored by the international media? Why the disparity?
When Israel recently declared its intention to develop 400 hectares of land in Gush Etzion (an area settled before 1947, destroyed by the Arab Legion in 1948 and recaptured in 1967), the world loudly condemned it as a “land grab.” But when Jerusalem’s building committee announced 2,200 new homes for Arabs in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Arav al-Swahara, there was almost total silence.
The message is loud and clear. Despite residing in the land of Judea and Samaria for millennia, today’s Jews are now forbidden to live there at all. Arabs, on the other hand, are endowed with a natural entitlement to “Palestine.” It is no surprise, then, that the Obama administration has officially demanded Israel reverses its land appropriation in Gush Etzion, saying it is counterproductive to the so-called peace process.
If Obama had any sense he would he see that Israel’s appropriation of land is both practically and legally comprehensible. Israel’s decision to bring the land under state control is simply an attempt to create contiguity between the Green Line and the settlements in Betar Ilit, Kfar Etzion and Gevaot. It is widely understood that this land will one day form part of an agreed land swap between Israel and the Palestinians.
Plus, if Obama knew his history (and he obviously doesn’t) he would know that the “West Bank” is unclaimed land. Contrary to popular opinion, Israeli settlements are entirely legal as long as they are within the parameters of the 1922 Mandate of Palestine. This is the same mandate that legalized and encouraged the immigration of Jews to all parts of historic Israel.
Israel’s critics may be surprised to know that the 1922 Mandate has never been superseded in international law, not even by the United Nation’s 1947 partition plan. Because the Arabs refused to recognize the partition of “Palestine,” the legal status of Judea and Samaria reverted back to the 1922 law . The capture of Judea and Samaria from Jordan in 1967 was the first step in the restoration of the territory’s true legal status. It also means that Israel’s recent “land grab” is actually the fulfilment of the original 1922 Mandate.
(Quoting the Fourth Geneva Convention to argue that the settlements are in fact illegal is nonsensical. The Fourth Geneva Convention pertains only to cases of occupation of a sovereign entity. Because of the Arab refusal to reach an agreement between 1947 and 1949, the area popularly referred to as the West Bank never became the legal territory of any sovereign entity – not even Jordan, despite its occupation of the territory until 1967. Only Israel has a legal entitlement to Judea and Samaria.)
If anyone is in any doubt, they would do well to consult a document boasting the signatures of over 1,000 respected diplomats and legal experts from around the world, ranging from South Africa and Canada to Norway and Brazil. The file was delivered to the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in the form of a petition just over a year ago.
According to these legal experts, it is factually incorrect to refer to the settlements as illegal for the simple reason that the term “1967 lines” does not exist in international law. The pre-1967 lines are in fact 1949 armistice lines, and are not recognized lines or security lines. Moreover, the issue of borders is on the agenda of the peace talks and is subject to final status negotiations.
All of which means that the Palestinian claim that statehood is an unassailable right should not be taken at face value. Arab hatred of Israel has never been about the settlements or even about land. The primary obstacle is an ideological refusal to recognize the Jewish people’s deep-rooted historic, cultural and legal connections to the entire land of Israel. Until the Arabs and the rest of the world accept that the Jews have an inalienable and legal right to live in Judea and Samaria, there will never be peace.
First published on September 10 for the Jewish Media Agency
Vote Draiman
ReplyDeleteMay 30, 2014 at 7:13 pm
Under International Law – An Arab/Palestinian State cannot be established in Israel
The Exclusive Political Rights Granted To Jews In 1920 At San Remo
San Remo Agreement of 1920 that established the British Mandate for Palestine. It granted the Jews exclusive collective political rights to Palestine, in trust, to vest when the Jews had attained a population majority.
The San Remo agreement of 1922 states that only the Jewish people can set-up its own government.
In violation of the of the agreement the British allocated over 77% of the Jewish land to Trans-Jordan.
Now you want to allocate more Jewish land to the Arab/Palestinians, again in violation of the agreement. This would create two Arab countries and one Jewish country greatly reduced in its original land allocation. This is in violation of International law and the San Remo agreement which was adapted by the League of Nations and signed by 51 member countries.
Under the law we must address the ejection of close to a million Jews from Arab countries and the property and assets that were confiscated. In addition about a third of those Jews died during those Arab pogroms against its Jewish population.
YJ Draiman
Why the erroneous use of the term "occupation's policy". The term "occupation" was being used as if it were a bad thing. What the United State recognizes is that Jews have every right to live in, to take up space in, to "occupy", their ancient homeland -- and even to advance it to improved, higher, stages of development. Jews have not taken-over someone else's country; they live in their own country and they uphold legal, documented, property ownership by non-Jews as well as Jews. The Arab-Palestinian narrative that tries to assert Arab sovereignty over the land is nothing but an attempt to reverse the defeat of the Ottoman Turks a century ago. Even under them, Arabs never sought to create a state or territorial region of "Palestine aka The Land of Israel"; and very few people, Arabs or Jews, lived in the territory west of the Jordan River. There were some absentee landlords, some of whom agreed to sell to Jews parcels of what they deemed to be worthless land consisting of swamps and desert at high prices. Arabs today have no more rights to this land than they did at that time (i.e., none), and only a very small percentage of those who live in it now are descended from ancestors who lived in it. Arab claims to it are nothing more than surreptitious warfare against the sovereignty of Jews in this Jewish home-land. If they actually have any intention of pursuing peaceful relations with their Jewish neighbors, they must stop talking about territory and start talking about individual and communal well-being in the towns and villages where they do already live and own property that they, too, "occupy". But the Arabs cannot make peace among themselves for over 1400 years and you expect them to make peace with the unbelievers.
ReplyDeleteThere never has been a country called 'Palestine' anyway so it cannot be occupied. The Russians are still holding territory they occupied belonging to Finland and Japan. They rushed to grab what they could of Japan in 1945 having had a non aggression treaty for the length of the war. If the Japanese had been fighting Russia all along it would have given the Germans an advantage. Of course it would have been an extra burden for Japan as well. The European countries are occupying other countries, UK occupy other countries France occupies Alsace-Lorraine.
The Arabs have been actually occupying Israel's land for many centuries under different Muslim occupiers and different nations and nationality while abusing its resources and turning it into a desolate land, much of it uninhabitable.
It is time to relocate the Arabs in Israel to Jordan and to the homes and the 120,000 sq. km. of Jewish land the Arab countries confiscated from the over a million Jewish families that they terrorized and expelled and those expelled Jews were resettled in Israel. They can use the trillions of dollars in reparations for the Jewish assets to finance the relocation of the Arabs and help set-up an economy and industry instead of living on the world charity. The Arab countries were allocated over 13 million sq. km. with a wealth of oil reserves.
YJ Draiman