Build, Bibi, Build!
"PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday (May 24) that Israel will continue to build homes in existing West Bank settlements, defying US calls to halt settlement growth."
Yahoo News, May 24, 2009
As predicted in our May 8 posting (1), Netanyahu has rebuffed US President Barack Obama's personal plea to stop expanding Israeli settlements, which Palestinian leaders consider obstacles to peace. That is because the Palestinians want their future homeland to be "Judenrein" (free of Jews). Unlike the Serbs, who undertook the onerous work of ethnic cleansing the Bosnian Muslims themselves, the Palestinians insist that the Israelis evict the settlers for them, and hand-over a pristine land. The Israelis, then under the leadership of PM Ariel Sharon, actually did just that in Gaza in 2005, but the Palestinians have not shown much appreciation for that effort.
In opposing the settlements, Obama is carrying forward the policy of the US government for more than the past thirty years, through both Republican and Democratic administrations. In fact, the most adamant opponent of the settlements was none other than Republican President George H W Bush (1989-1993), who often lambasted specific settlements by name. Of course, none of these administrations ever exacted a serious price from the Israelis for building and expanding the settlements, and I doubt that Obama will.
As noted in previous postings on the Glazerbeam, there is nothing illegal about the settlements, nor are they really obstacles to peace. The international community, represented by the League of Nations, called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" (2) on July 24, 1922. (The term "Palestine" at that time included not only the West Bank, but also the East Bank of the Jordan River, now known as the Kingdom of Jordan.) Jews were not restricted to any particular part of Palestine, although most settled in Jerusalem and along the Mediterranean shore.
Moreover, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan did not ban Jewish settlement in the territory assigned to the future Arab state (which was annexed by Jordan in 1948) or Arab settlement in Israel. Indeed, about a million Arabs now live in Israel, and no one considers their villages to be obstacles to peace (even though large numbers of them are not loyal to Israel). Jordan expelled all Jews living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank after taking that territory in the 1948 war, but there is no reason for Israel or the US to support restoring this Jordanian policy. If the Palestinians want a state, let them accept all those who reside there now as full citizens.
It is time for Congress to weigh-in on the settlement issue. I suggest adoption of a "Sense of Congress Resolution" containing language like the following:
"The United States shall not recommend or support the creation of any new state, or transfer of land from one state to another, that infringes upon the rights of people to remain in their homes, or discriminates in any way against any group of people on the basis of race, religion or national origin."
I hope that AIPAC will prevail upon Israel's many friends in Congress to take this stand. Those who are most supportive of human rights should now defend the human rights of Jews who have chosen to live in the West Bank, even if their land comes under Arab rule.
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(1) "Biden Dreams of Peace".
(2) League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, Paragraph 3.
Yahoo News, May 24, 2009
As predicted in our May 8 posting (1), Netanyahu has rebuffed US President Barack Obama's personal plea to stop expanding Israeli settlements, which Palestinian leaders consider obstacles to peace. That is because the Palestinians want their future homeland to be "Judenrein" (free of Jews). Unlike the Serbs, who undertook the onerous work of ethnic cleansing the Bosnian Muslims themselves, the Palestinians insist that the Israelis evict the settlers for them, and hand-over a pristine land. The Israelis, then under the leadership of PM Ariel Sharon, actually did just that in Gaza in 2005, but the Palestinians have not shown much appreciation for that effort.
In opposing the settlements, Obama is carrying forward the policy of the US government for more than the past thirty years, through both Republican and Democratic administrations. In fact, the most adamant opponent of the settlements was none other than Republican President George H W Bush (1989-1993), who often lambasted specific settlements by name. Of course, none of these administrations ever exacted a serious price from the Israelis for building and expanding the settlements, and I doubt that Obama will.
As noted in previous postings on the Glazerbeam, there is nothing illegal about the settlements, nor are they really obstacles to peace. The international community, represented by the League of Nations, called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" (2) on July 24, 1922. (The term "Palestine" at that time included not only the West Bank, but also the East Bank of the Jordan River, now known as the Kingdom of Jordan.) Jews were not restricted to any particular part of Palestine, although most settled in Jerusalem and along the Mediterranean shore.
Moreover, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan did not ban Jewish settlement in the territory assigned to the future Arab state (which was annexed by Jordan in 1948) or Arab settlement in Israel. Indeed, about a million Arabs now live in Israel, and no one considers their villages to be obstacles to peace (even though large numbers of them are not loyal to Israel). Jordan expelled all Jews living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank after taking that territory in the 1948 war, but there is no reason for Israel or the US to support restoring this Jordanian policy. If the Palestinians want a state, let them accept all those who reside there now as full citizens.
It is time for Congress to weigh-in on the settlement issue. I suggest adoption of a "Sense of Congress Resolution" containing language like the following:
"The United States shall not recommend or support the creation of any new state, or transfer of land from one state to another, that infringes upon the rights of people to remain in their homes, or discriminates in any way against any group of people on the basis of race, religion or national origin."
I hope that AIPAC will prevail upon Israel's many friends in Congress to take this stand. Those who are most supportive of human rights should now defend the human rights of Jews who have chosen to live in the West Bank, even if their land comes under Arab rule.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) "Biden Dreams of Peace".
(2) League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, Paragraph 3.
Labels: Israel, Palestine, settlements, West Bank
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 10:25 AM
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