What are “the legitimate rights of the Palestinians”?
By Ted Belman
Yesterday Pres Obama addressed the UNGA on the subject of the conflict between Arabs and Jews conflict and had this to say;
-
“…I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world.”
What is noteworthy here, is that he referred to “Palestine” like it was a state already. Is that not pre-judging the outcome? He also wants there to be peace with the “Arab world” which means more pressure on Israel to cave to the demands of Syria.
-
“Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians. As a result of these efforts on both sides, the economy in the West Bank has begun to grow. But more progress is needed. We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”
He appears to be signing on to Netanyahu’s ideas regarding building the economy as a means to peace. But to my mind by rejecting the “legitimacy of the settlements”, he is declaring war on Israel.
The settlements are legitimate and legal. By taking such a position on no or spurious legal reasoning he is no better than Goldstone who took the position that Israel was guilty of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. Nether of the positions of Obama or Goldstone have any legitimacy. They are imposing on Israel an interpretation of law which favours the outcome they desire. Once again Obama has prejudged the outcome of negotiations. If the settlements are illegal as he says, then Israel Israel must agree to withdraw from all lands east of the green line. He made no distinction with respect to Jerusalem. But the US has long maintained the position that no one should do anything to prejudge the outcome.
Most presidents have shied away from saying that the settlements were illegal and contented themselves with declaring them “obstacles to peace”. This, also, is a debatable issue.
-
“The time has come — the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. And the goal is clear: Two states living side by side in peace and security — a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people.” (Applause.)
Obama is misleading the world to say that negotiations should start “without preconditions” when he doesn’t mean it. The negotiations will be fraught with preconditions. He names a few such as that Palestine must be “independent”, “viable” and “contiguous”. But there are others such as the need to “end the occupation that began in 1967″. This implies full withdrawal rather than partial withdrawal as provided for in Res 242. Then there is the matter of whether the negotiations are starting fresh, which would be without preconditions, or whether the negotiations must pick up where they left off. Obama has been pressing for the latter.
- “As we pursue this goal, we will also pursue peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and a broader peace between Israel and its many neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, we will develop regional initiatives with multilateral participation, alongside bilateral negotiations.
To break the old patterns, to break the cycle of insecurity and despair, all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private.”
On the contrary, when is he going to say privately what he says publically. Once again he wants to be “honest” with us.
-
“The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. (Applause.) And — and nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks against Israel over constructive willingness to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security.” (Applause.)
Now here is the bottom line, what are “the legitimate rights of the Palestinians”?
Refugees There is no legitimate right of return, There is only a right to receive compensation for the property owned by them and left behind when they evacuated. The Jewish refugees have a similar right for property they left behind in Arab countries when they were expelled.
Land. The land lying east of the armistice line, which the Arabs refer to as the West Bank and the Jews refer to as Judea and Samaria, can in no way be Palestinian land as claimed. The Palestinians never had sovereignty over it. Having lived there or even owned small parcels of land there, never confers sovereignty. There is absolutely no way they can establish a “legitimate right” to these lands. According to international law,The Jews were given these lands, as their national homeland over which they had political rights. These rights have never been forfeited.
Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is a Jewish concept, not an Islamic one. Jerusalem, as a city means nothing to Islam. Jerusalem means everything to Judaism. It is at the core of it. I have no idea why anyone would consider that the Arabs have legitimate rights over Jerusalem but am sure that Obama includes a share of Jerusalem as a legitimate Palestinian right.
“Legitimate rights” are important in a court of law. They have no place in negotiations. Negotiations are essentially a power play whether between Management and Labour in labour disputes or between countries in negotiating treaties. Obama is supporting the Palestinians to strengthen their negotiating position. He is attempting to influence the outcome while at the same time he says that no one should do anything to prejudge the outcome.
It amounts to an imposed solution. Obama leaves little to be negotiated. He has predetermined all. In fact, has he not publically embraced the Saudi Plan.
What’s a Palestinian?
According to Jeremiah Wright – Obama’s beloved mentor – every inch of Israel belongs to the Palestinians.
Has anything Obama done indicated that he disagrees?
email rec’d
email rec’d
wanna begin to win the public relations war?
use language, a powerful tool.
call them what they are: FAKESTINIANS.
as ted has posted here: hadrian’s curse is the series of articles where the fakestinians admit the ruse themselves.
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2008/07/hadrians-curse-invention-of-palestine_21.html
Kapo Of The Day
And the winner is…Aaron David Miller, who never met an anti-Semite he didn’t like:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miller25-2009sep25,0,4731403.story
Mahmoud Abbas is a lifelong terrorist murderer of Jews, which makes him Miller’s idea of a good man possessing exquisite wisdom.
During the Bush I Administration, Miller was known in Israel as “Jim Baker’s Jewboy”.
Two decades later, nothing has changed.
very good composition of argumentations, Ted, but it should be (as it actually is) be adressed to Jews, to assimilated in particular.
by contrary, the only thing that will work with the goyim is a hard hand and intransigency
argumentations will not make them change
history proves that
we Jews were despised as long as we had no State
once we began to settle the Land they started considering us
once we proclaimed our State they considered us more
once we won several wars although we had no real chance to win them, they considered even more
once we agreed to Oslo thay stopped considering us at all
Palestinian Arabs residing in Israel have a right to be free from oppression. (Exodus 23:9)
Of course, they would be subject to the laws of Israel. If they refuse to be subject to the laws of Israel, they can not claim this right be be free from oppression.
Palestinian rights, real or imagined are not so easily determined as checking a clear and authoritative international law book.
As to the “right of return”, Olmert and Barak at least, speaking on behalf of Israel in the context of peace discussions offered to allow a relatively small number of Palestinians to return to live in Israel, not in recognition of any validity to the Palestinian claimed right of return, but on humanitarian or other grounds.
Israel’s enemies, the Quartet and its supporters could care less about justifications for Israel’s position. They all will look to Israel’s offered concession as limited as it is as Israel’s admission of the validity of the Palestinian claimed right of return. For Israel backers such as the U.S., they have essentially taken the view that the Palestinian claimed right of return is a right, but that for that right to be exercised would create a demographic Muslim majority.
As to Ted’s denying there is a right of return, he says:
Where do these rights for compensation derive from?
Certainly no Jew forced out of Arab nations would find any Arab court even willing to entertain such claim against the Arab state.
As for Palestinian right to compensation, if such right exists, why is it Israel that is to bear that cost since the refugee issue was created by a failed Arab genocidal war? Why are the Arabs not therefore called on to compensate the displaced Palestinians?
As to land and settlements, Pres. Bush spoke of illegal settlements as did Barak, Sharon and Olmert, but such label was applied not to all settlements, but certain ones. Pres. Obama has expanded the meaning of “illegal settlements” to mean all settlements built since 1967 on disputed land which Pres. Obama, like his predecessors and indeed successive governments have variously described as occupied or disputed territory.
Nonetheless, the very fact that Israel has not only spoken of Palestinian territory, referring to the West Bank, but have signed agreements to that effect at least implicitly and acted upon those agreements. If there was a time when one could clearly make the simple, but solid case that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to the lands comprised by the West Bank, Israel’s words and deeds have robbed that argument of both strength and clarity.
As to Jerusalem, Barak and Olmert both made proposals to the Palestinians that would have allowed the Palestinians sovereignty over part of East Jerusalem and to have that as their capital. Again, the simple solid case that Israel is entitled to the whole of Jerusalem has been robbed of both strength and clarity.
In all three cases, refugees, land and Jerusalem, Netanyahu appears to have reversed course on Jerusalem but he is still talking as his predecessors did vis a vis refugees and land, albeit in different terms and adding his own conditions.
As to the issue of undefined and unjustified Palestinian claimed “legitimate rights”, unfortunately Israel has given credence to that claim in agreements made such as the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Washington, D.C., September 28, 1995, which is set out at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website at:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/THE%20ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN%20INTERIM%20AGREEMENT
The interim agreement begins:
One might argue that the rights of the contracting parties, Israel and Palestinians are not rights at law at all, but exist only within the framework of the peace process. I expect however that anyone arguing that Israel has not herself recognized Palestinians have legitimate rights outside the peace process, whether within or outside the peace process, that person would be derisively dismissed as a right winger or just a quack.
Trying to compellingly argue and prove that the Palestinians have no rights as they claim to rights of “return, land and Jerusalem” to even be heard let alone convince the otherwise convinced is akin to trying to swim up a waterfall. Not that it can’t be done, but needless to say it will be quite a feat if one can pull that off.
Instead of trying to swim up a waterfall, advocacy strategies should be geared to knocking down the waterfall to just part of the stream of world opinion and then try swimming against the current. That seems to be a better strategy. If that can be accomplished, then gains in reversing the direction of the stream of world opinion will be possible.
There is no justification for Jewish nationalism, statehood, and existence other than Judaism.
What are the alternatives, anyway? I cannot stand the silliness of the “historical right.” Look into an encyclopedia. Jews were sovereign on this land, in traditional chronology, from David’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1034 to 719 BCE when the Assyrians sacked Israel, a total of 315 years. That can be extended here and there: take the fall of Jerusalem rather than Israel, add a few years of Hasmonean independence, calculate from the time of Saul’s raid on Amalek, and so on. But the essence is clear: by whatever measure, Jewish sovereignty was very short. Jewish dominance lasted much longer, from the era of judges (the real ones, not the Supreme Court’s) in the fifteenth century BCE until the second century CE, but that still hardly breaks us even with the centuries of Arab dominance in this land. Ask yourselves: if the direct, proven descendants of the Canaanites were to pop up now, say in Africa, and demand the right of return to their historical land, would you consider their demands relevant?
That Jewish presence in the Land of Israel never ceased and the fact that Jews are its oldest residents is irrelevant: native populations throughout the world are annihilated and subdued rather than allowed to prosper and win sovereignty; look at the Native Indians in America.
Besides, Jews are not settling our historical lands now. The historical lands are exactly the “occupied territories.” The Jewish state was there while the sea coast was dominated first by Philistines, then by Greeks and Romans. Jews held it only for short time, and it was largely a pagan area. Our historical connection to Tel Aviv is just a bit stronger than to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Or take the related argument for Jewish “historical connection” to this land. Arabs, too, have a historical connection to it. Not all of them; some are relatively recent migrants—though even a century-long stay in Palestine makes them more native then the Russian Jews who came in the 1990s. But what is the historical connection of the perfectly proper Jews of Khazar descent to Palestine? Their ancestors never lived here. What is the historical connection of Ethiopian converts to Judaism to Palestine? What warped atheistic reasoning allocates them more rights to the land than the local Arabs? Jews demonstrably have a stronger historical connection to Europe than to Palestine: we spent 1,900 years of our history in Europe, much longer than in the Middle East.
The argument that Jews need a state is also dumb. Chechens need a state. Basques need a state. Some Eskimos, perhaps, think they need a state. There are more than 2,000 written languages in the world; behind each one there is at least one national group. Not even 10 percent of them have their own states. The number of Jews willing to man our own state is minuscule: states are not normally made up for just six million people. Much larger ethnic groups strive for independence with no international support.
Why should atheist Jews have a state in the current location? Palestinians justly rejoin that Europeans made them pay for Christian crimes against Jews in the Holocaust. Theodore Herzl was cynical about Jewish religious rights, left Jerusalem to Christians, and so retained a single stupid justification for founding the Jewish state in the Land of Israel: it was ostensibly a “land without people.” Of course, the land was settled from time immemorial, and even the deserts and swamps were a part of the Muslim world. Would anyone presume to take the vast uninhabited tracts of Siberia away from Russia? If Muslims had no rights to uninhabited desert, what rights does Israel have over the largely uninhabited Negev desert?
The utilitarian argument that no place other than Palestine was available for Jews is wrong and irrelevant. Wrong, because Jews were offered Uganda. That, by the way, was a bad choice: decades later, the Entebbe affair made Uganda’s capital a household name among Jews. Wrong, because Jews could as well take uninhabited land elsewhere: purchase a group of islands, plead for autonomy in the Australian savannah, build a gated community in Arizona, or occupy land elsewhere. If anyone should be compassionate to the perils of landless Jews, it is the European Christians who persecuted us. The Europeans have plenty of near-empty lands, especially in mountainous terrain, suitable for a tiny Jewish state.
The argument about safety is laughable. Nowhere in the world are Jews less secure than on a tiny strip of land perched between a sea of water and a sea of Muslims, besieged by Arabs from within and Arabs from without, where a single nuclear bomb can kill a tenth of the population.
Israel is a bad place to escape from anti-Semitism. If anything, Israel offered anti-Semites a politically correct way to express their hatred of Jews: now they hate Israel; hating a state is okay. The unavoidable Israeli repressions against Arabs provoke a wave of anti-Semitism among the leftists who were otherwise neutral-to-positive to secular Jews.
There is no cultural reason for Israel because there is no Israeli culture. It is American pop in Hebrew, with no connection to Jewishness whatsoever. Israel formally renounced the core Jewish traditions of Shabbat, kashrut, public rules of Pesach, and even Yom Kippur. Forget Israeli culture, there is not even Jewish culture. There is no common history: Sephardi Jews were largely spared the hallmark feature of the Ashkenazi Exile: continuous persecution.
Jewishness without religion is racist. What would Jews say of WASP Americans launching a campaign against intermarriage? Or of white citizens of South Africa urging their kin against marrying the blacks? What would we think of American black nationalists calling upon their tribe to avoid marrying whites? Everyone, however, is completely fine with religious distinctions. It’s okay for a Muslim to refuse to marry a non-Muslim, and so it is for Catholics. It is politically acceptable for Saudi Arabia to forbid non-Islamic worship in Mecca, and for the Vatican to refuse citizenship to non-Catholics. Imagine the US proclaiming a policy of preserving itself as a white, non-Hispanic state, or of the Belgians suppressing the birth rate among their Muslim citizens. However reasonable, such efforts would be detested. A Jewish religious state can restrict intermarriage, banish the Arabs, and do away with foreign worship (and conveniently, also foreign presence) in the Land of Israel.
Jewishness is indefensible on atheist grounds. Anti-Semites all over the world protest the Jewish concept of chosen-ness as racist, and decry anti-gentile pronouncements in Jewish religious books. American liberals already censored the school edition of Huckleberry Finn to remove racist remarks, and it will not be long before they will get to the Talmud and Shulhan Aruch. Liberal “rabbis” have already disavowed “barbaric” and “racist” statements in the Bible. Jews will be unable to defend our religion against liberal onslaught unless we fall back onto the statement of honest belief that Judaism is divinely revealed in its entirety.
There is a single atheist argument for Jews ruling over the Land of Israel: Raw Power. We are powerful and willing enough to take over this land. As good an argument as this is, it is not without the divine miracle that the handful of us Jews can stand against the Muslim hordes.
Religion provides Jews the only politically correct justification for the necessary actions. Everyone claims that the days are gone when European colonists annihilated the Native Americans to clear a country for themselves and Israel cannot act likewise now. Everyone says that Jews cannot repeat the sixty-year old example of Czechs and Poles who evicted millions of their Germans after the WWII. Cleansing the land of sworn enemies is confused with cleansing it of an undesirable ethnic group, and condemned. The world media screamed when Israel displaced 400,000 Palestinians in 1948. It is unlikely that media would abandon this topic after some months if Israel repeated the trick. But claiming a religious commandment to cleanse the land of natives, however nice and loyal, and to annex all the Promised Land that we hold, is a somewhat more acceptable way of dealing with foreign sensibilities. Few Western and Russian politicians are prepared for a head-on assault on the Bible. Religious justification is still workable, whether you’re a believer or not.
Though one can easily criticize the Bible, there is no point in doing so, as that undermines secular Jewish values as well. People don’t question many concepts with direct bearing on their lives: monetary policy, military intelligence, or state’s investment of their retirement funds. People take on faith incomprehensible scientific doctrines, such as the theory of evolution, parallel lines not crossing in infinity, and the Big Bang. So include the commandments among those unquestioned things.