Mr Spinkles
Mr
You cannot possibly be serious.
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What Should Be Done About Israel's Illegal Settlements?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
You cannot possibly be serious.
Alceste
Vagabond
Quite a tall order, considering all the members of the UN except Israel and the US consider the settlements illegal.
Repudiate terrorism and negotiate a 2-state solution.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
Sure. But does that answer the specific question as to what should be done about Israel's illegal settlements?
Caladan
Agnostic Pantheist
Lets start from the beginning. what should be done is in Israel's court first and foremost. the dismay of other parties is secondary.
now to the bone of the problem. as soldiers we always found it to be an ugly reality that we had to go into cities with tens of thousands of Palestinians to protect a negligible group of settler families.
Israel is a nation with some highly educated and experienced individuals who work around the clock to enrich science, medicine, agriculture, and other fields. it is beyond me why the current coalition is reversing the previous trends of pulling out and is getting us back into the mud of the settlements. it is holding us back, and creates rifts in our economy and our social fabric.
Don't get me wrong, the way that the Gaza pull out was done, was hardly appropriate either. but the settlements work against our best interests.
Predictable.
The first thing to be done is to understand ...
How settlements became 'illegal'
In 1967, under attack, Israel struck back and conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem (the West Bank) from Jordan. Israel had been threatened with a second Holocaust, and few questioned its actions. No one spoke of a Palestinian state; there was no "Palestinian people."
Many legal experts accepted Israel's right to "occupy" and settle its historic homeland, because the areas had been illegally occupied by invading Arab countries since 1948.
One organization, however - the International Committee of the Red Cross - disagreed.
Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC determined that Israel was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Based on the Hague Convention, GC IV was drawn up after World War II to protect innocent civilians and restrict brutal occupations. Unilaterally, the ICRC turned it into a weapon to delegitimize and demonize Israel.
As far as is known, the ICRC did not rely on any legal precedents; it made up "the law."
Judge and jury, its decisions lacked the pretense of due process. Since all decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the identities of the people involved are secret. And there is no appeal. Without transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became "international law." Its condemnations of Israel provide the basis for accusing Israel of "illegal occupation" of all territory conquered in 1967.
Although most of the international community, its NGOs and institutions accept the authority of the ICRC and other institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, as sole arbiters of what is "legal," or not, it's strange that some Israeli politicians and jurists cannot defend Israel's legal claim to the territories. And Israel's case is strong.
ADOPTED IN 1945, the UN Charter (Article 80) states: "...nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."
This means that the designation of "Palestine" as a "Jewish National Home," incorporated in the British Mandate and established by international agreements adopted by the League of Nations and US Congress, guarantees Israel's sovereign rights in this area. All Jewish settlement, therefore, was and is legal.
Two years later, amid growing civil war, the UN proposed a division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs - changing the terms of the Mandate; the Jews accepted, the Arabs launched a war of extermination.
When Britain ended the Mandate and left, the State of Israel was proclaimed and local mobs who had been attacking Jews for years were joined by five Arab armies. The armistice in 1949 - for Jews, independence, for Arabs, nakba (tragedy) - did not result in a Palestinian state, because the Arabs did not want it. Arab leaders never accepted Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state - most refuse to do so today.
Pressured by Russia and the Arab states, the Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which spoke of Israel's military withdrawal from some - not all - of these conquered territories in the context of a final peace agreement. The question of sovereignty remained elusive and problematic.
Israel's political echelon and Supreme Court refrained from asserting full sovereignty over the newly acquired areas but, in the absence of any reciprocal gestures, agreed to allow Jews to return toJerusalem 's Old City and Gush Etzion, where a flourishing group of settlements had been wiped out in 1947. Striking a compromise, it allowed the building of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, where theJewish community had been wiped out in Arab riots of 1929; Jews were permitted to pray at the Cave of Machpela, an ancient building containing the tombs of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, for the first time in 700 years.
Although free to leave UNRWA refugee camps, with new opportunities and challenges, Palestinians did not call for statehood or peace withIsrael. The PLO, which claimed to represent Palestinians, was dedicated to terrorism, not nation-building. [source]
"Jerusalem of Gold" (Hebrew: ירושלים של זהב‎, Yerushalayim Shel Zahav) is a popular Israeli song written by Naomi Shemer in 1967. The original song described the Jewish people's 2000-year longing to return to Jerusalem; Shemer added a final verse after the Six-Day War to celebrate Jerusalem's unification under Jewish control.
Naomi Shemer wrote the original song for the Israeli Music Festival on 15 May 1967, the night after Israel's nineteenth Independence Day. She chose the then-unknown Shuli Nathan to sing the song. At that time, the Old City was under Jordanian rule; Jews had been barred from entering, and many holy sites had been desecrated. Only three weeks after the song was published, the Six-Day War broke out. The song was the battle cry and morale booster of the Israeli troops. Shemer even sang it for them before the war and festival, making them among the first in the world to hear it. On 7 June, the Israel Defense Forces captured the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Old City from the Jordanians. When Shemer heard the paratroopers singing "Jerusalem of Gold" at the Western Wall, she wrote a final verse, reversing the phrases of lamentation found in the second verse. The line about shofars sounding from the Temple Mount is a reference to that actually happening on 7 June. [Wiki]
Elsewhere Wikipedia reports:Naomi Shemer wrote the original song for the Israeli Music Festival on 15 May 1967, the night after Israel's nineteenth Independence Day. She chose the then-unknown Shuli Nathan to sing the song. At that time, the Old City was under Jordanian rule; Jews had been barred from entering, and many holy sites had been desecrated. Only three weeks after the song was published, the Six-Day War broke out. The song was the battle cry and morale booster of the Israeli troops. Shemer even sang it for them before the war and festival, making them among the first in the world to hear it. On 7 June, the Israel Defense Forces captured the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Old City from the Jordanians. When Shemer heard the paratroopers singing "Jerusalem of Gold" at the Western Wall, she wrote a final verse, reversing the phrases of lamentation found in the second verse. The line about shofars sounding from the Temple Mount is a reference to that actually happening on 7 June. [Wiki]
The West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan (formerly Transjordan) for a period of nearly two decades (1948–1967) starting from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1950, with British approval, and despite Arab League opposition, Jordan extended its jurisdiction over the West Bank. The inhabitants of the West Bank became citizens of Jordan. [source]
Those who respond to persistent terrorism with "Sure, but" and wax indignant about "illegal settlements" and "occupied territories" are predictably quiet about the "illegal settlements" and "occupied territories" that served as precondition for the existential threat to Israel in 1967.
Moshe Dann gives the impression that this whole issue ultimtately comes down to the International Red Cross calling some settlements "illegal" and without much reason to do so. I find that notion implausible since it is the consensus view of the international community that at least some of the settlements are illegal. Surely not all those governments and organizations mindlessly arrived at the notion some of the settlements were illegal just because the IRC told them the settlements were illegal. Does anyone back up Dann's views? Or is he pretty much the only historian to believe what he does?
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
There's an Australian comedian called Tim Minchin who could settle all the unrest between Jews and Muslims in the middle east with his wonderful peace anthem. Lyrics are as follows :-
We don't eat pigs,
You don't eat pigs;
Seems it's been that way forever.
So if you don't eat pigs,
And we don't eat pigs;
Why not not eat pigs together?
Problem solved (if only)
j'adore ...j'adore....
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
Details, details, details. Sadly, in the Nintendo era human animals have incredibly short memories and attention spans.
I am being quite serious, actually.
Therefore?