Just look at the sentiments expressed by the organisation’s CEO’s Facebook friend and drivel merchant “Harriet,” who runs a scurrilous website called Harriet’s Place:
FROM A SCURRILOUS BRITISH BLOG https://hurryupharriet.wordpress.com/
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel is not facing a dilemma about how much, if any, land to give up from the West Bank, because the Palestinians will not agree to take land and cannot be forced to do so. The Palestinian community sees peace with Israel as defeat in their 100-year struggle. Continued Israeli occupation is one of the Palestinians’ best weapons against Israel, and they will not give it up while their war to eliminate Israel continues. Israelis should recognize that since the Palestinians are forcing Israel to continue the temporary but long-term occupation, Israelis need to a) cooperate in reducing the moral and other costs of that occupation; and b) stop telling the world that Israel could choose to end the occupation. The occupation, like the need for military strength and to absorb casualties, is part of the price Israel has to pay to live here. Maturity means being able to go forward with no solution in sight.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/overdramatization-israel-dilemma/
Ehud Barak recently had a long review in Haaretz of Micah Goodman’s important new book, Catch 67, to which Goodman responded the following week. Goodman argues that Israel’s 1967 victory created a “catch” or trap reflected in Israel’s current dilemma, in which both sides (the Israeli political left and right) are correct. Barak disagrees. In his view, the choice is clear: the left is correct.
Both Barak’s own view and his telling of Goodman’s ignore the reality of Israel’s actual choices today. We are not facing a dilemma about giving up territory. We are facing a distasteful task, and a need for patience over a period of decades.
Israel does not now have a choice about giving the Palestinians land or creating a Palestinian state; Israel is therefore not facing a dilemma.
While there are undoubtedly peace-seeking Palestinians, as a community, the Palestinians have not even begun to discuss the possibility of making a peace that accepts Israel and ends the Palestinian effort to gain all the land “from the river to the sea.” Nor have they begun public discussion of the possibility of most of the “refugees” settling outside Israel. Without debate among Palestinians, there is no way they can give up their determination to destroy Israel and make a genuine peace.
There is zero chance that there could be a real peace agreement now regardless of how much land Israel would be willing to give up.. A true two-state solution would finally defeat Palestinian and Arab efforts of a century, and they are not yet ready to accept defeat. Whatever disagreement there is among Israelis about how much land, if any, Israel should give up to get peace, that disagreement is not what is standing in the way of peace.
Theoretically, there are two other possibilities that might create a dilemma for Israel about giving up land. The first would be an agreement with the Palestinians to take over some of Judea and Samaria without making a full peace with Israel. The second would be a unilateral action by Israel to separate the peoples and end the occupation without Palestinian agreement.
For the reasons discussed below, neither of these is a realistic possibility regardless of how much of Judea and Samaria Israel is willing to give up. Again, no real dilemma.
The Palestinians have a voice in what happens. The choice they have made is to force Israel to “occupy” them, because they want to keep up the struggle to destroy Israel. Being a victim, an “occupied people,” improves their diplomatic position, causes Israel pain, and provokes internal conflict within Israel. These effects are bad for Israel and good for the Palestinians. Indeed, the more harmful they are for Israel, the more desirable they are for the Palestinians.
There would have to be a lot more disadvantages to the status quo for the Palestinians before they would give up such a weapon against Israel to improve their living conditions. This is especially true for the Palestinian leadership, which suffers less from the status quo than most Palestinians and benefits more from the continuation of the conflict.
But if the Palestinians will not make an agreement that would sacrifice the advantage of forcing Israel to be an “occupier”, is there any way that Israel can force them to do so by taking unilateral action to separate the peoples? This idea appealed to Sharon, and so he organized Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza. Some Israelis say the withdrawal was a good idea that only worked out badly because it was done unilaterally. But why should we think the Palestinians would have agreed to arrangements that would have been better for Israel? They consider themselves to be at war with us. They want to cause us pain and put us at a disadvantage, and are willing to accept casualties and suffering to do so.
No one forced Mr. Trump to make his pledge. He chose to make it a campaign issue. The Israelis will be disappointed but are still delighted to have a President who is friendlier than his predecessor. The Palestinians will pocket this concession and hold out for more.
Way back in 1995, Congress passed a law requiring the State Department to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. On Thursday Donald Trump became the latest in a long line of Presidents to issue a waiver to put the move off.
Moving the embassy to the actual capital of the Jewish State is not the most important U.S. priority in the region. But because Mr. Trump made such a point of it in the campaign—vowing that he would make good where others had backed down—the waiver damages American credibility. As President Obama’s infamous red line in Syria illustrated, the world is more dangerous when Presidents show they don’t mean what they say.
In a statement explaining the waiver, the White House said that “the question is not if that move happens, but only when.” The statement further claims the embassy waiver was given in hopes of boosting chances for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
Here lies the bigger problem, which is less that the embassy is staying in Tel Aviv than that the Trump White House has concluded it should spend scarce political capital on a Palestinian-Israeli peace that has eluded Presidents for decades. That peace will only have a chance when the two parties are prepared to negotiate seriously, and the Palestinians now are not. They won’t be any more likely to deal because Mr. Trump backed down on the embassy.
No one forced Mr. Trump to make his pledge. He chose to make it a campaign issue. The Israelis will be disappointed but are still delighted to have a President who is friendlier than his predecessor. The Palestinians will pocket this concession and hold out for more.
Here is what is being said on the Palestinian street: Today Israel runs away from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip; tomorrow Israel will run away from Ashkelon, then from Tel Aviv and from there to the sea, and we have achieved our goal of destroying Israel. Therefore, we need to continue attacking Israel.
As with the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal from Lebanon taught the Palestinians that terrorism could drive Israelis out of their country.
Never have the Palestinians given Israel credit for its goodwill steps. On the contrary, they scoff at these moves and describe them as “cosmetic changes”. The Palestinian line is that Israel’s steps are “insufficient” and “unhelpful.” Its concessions are regarded as gestures of a terrified people and as the rightful reward for terrorism. Far from satiating the appetite of the terrorists, such steps prompt them to step up their attacks against Israelis.
The West suffers under a major misconception concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that “goodwill gestures” and territorial concessions on the part of Israel boost the prospects of peace in the Middle East. The facts, suggest that precisely the opposite is true.
Last week, Israel’s Channel 10 television station reported that the U.S. administration was pushing Israel to transfer parts of Area C — areas under full Israeli security and civilian control in the West Bank — to the control of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA). According to the report, the U.S. believes that the transfer of the territory to the PA would be a “goodwill step” towards the Palestinians, paving the way for the revival of the stalled peace process with Israel.
This assumption, of course, has already proven wrong. The experiences of the past few decades have shown clearly that Israeli concessions have always sent the wrong message to the Palestinians.
In fact, Palestinians read Israeli goodwill steps as signs of weakness and retreat. This misinterpretation on the part of the Palestinians then leads to more violence against Israel. It would be hard for anyone not to conclude that if pressure works, keep on pressuring.
The past 24 years are littered with examples of how the Palestinians react to Israeli concessions.
The Oslo Accords that were signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993 were seen by Palestinians as a first step by Israel towards total capitulation.
The accords, which brought the PLO from several Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, came after five years of the first Palestinian Intifada. By allowing the PLO to assume control over large parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel sent a message that it was caving in to the violence and terrorism of the First Intifada.
Barely a breath after Oslo, Israel was again asked to conciliate the Palestinians: this time, hundreds of prisoners, many with Jewish (and Arab) blood on their hands, were released from Israeli prison in order to create an atmosphere “conducive” to the peace process.
Instead of viewing the prisoner release for what it was, namely a generous gesture, many Palestinians considered it a “victory” for terrorism and violence. Worse, it was not long before many of the released prisoners were rearrested for their role in further terrorism against Israel. The release of prisoners also sent a message of recidivism to Palestinians: terror does indeed pay! A short stint in an Israeli prison is sure to lead to release in some Israeli “confidence-building measure” or other.
According to statistics, at least half of released Palestinian prisoners have returned to terrorism.
Despite the grim statistics, the international community regularly demands that Israel release more convicted terrorists as a “gesture” towards Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinians.
Palestinian terrorists who were released from prison by Israel as a “goodwill gesture” are honored at Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential compound in Ramallah, on October 30, 2013. According to statistics, at least half of released Palestinian prisoners have returned to terrorism. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Getty Images)
Since 1993, Israel has complied again and again with such international pressure, only to reinforce the message to Palestinians: terrorism is indeed worth the trouble.
Let us consider, for a moment, Gaza. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, after destroying 21 Jewish settlements and expelling more than 8,000 Jews from their homes there.
In Palestinian eyes, however, the Israeli “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip was anything but an olive branch of peace. The withdrawal came after five years of the bloody Second Intifada, when Palestinians waged a massive campaign of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israelis.
Thus, for Palestinians, Israel was once again retreating in the face of unremitting bloodshed.
Here is what is being said on the Palestinian street: Today Israel runs away from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, tomorrow Israel will run away from Ashkelon, then from Ashdod and Tel Aviv and from there to the sea, and we have achieved our goal of destroying Israel. Therefore, we need to continue attacking Israel.
Daniel Gordis’s widely praised Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, chosen as the 2016 book of the year by the National Jewish Book Council, is a highly readable popular history that covers the history http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/reflections-on-daniel-gordiss-israel-a-concise-history-of-a-nation-reborn-by-roger-a-gerber.htmlof the State of Israel in a mere 425 pages of text, plus 27 pages of appendices that include helpful reference material, plus maps.
Gordis’s history has earned accolades from a wide range of luminaries including Ari Shavit, Dennis Ross, Michael Oren, Deborah Lipstadt and Yossi Klein Halevi, blurbs from all of whom adorn the back cover.
The book, taken as a whole, is a good popular primer but since it has received nothing but praise (with the exception of a generally favorable review by David Isaac in Washington Free Beacon that pointed out flaws), I will take this opportunity to point out some of the problematic sections in this account of Israel’s history.
Gordis does not profess to be a trained historian and his felicitous style masks the superficial treatment of several controversial topics of major import in Israel’s history, including the Altalena episode and the murder of Haim Arlosoroff, both of which roiled Israel’s society and politics from the early 1930’s (in the case of Arlosoff’s murder) to the present. After noting that the conviction of Jewish suspects was overturned by the British Court of Appeals, Rabbi Gordis concludes darkly that the murder “would not be the last time Jews killed Jews over political disagreements in the Jewish State”. This is despite the fact that it was never established that the murder of Arlosoroff was committed “over political disagreements”, nor that the killers were Jews. While Gordis writes that “Arlosoroff’s assassination remains a mystery,” he fails to indicate why this is so. Space precludes a discussion of the various speculations regarding the murder, including a possible connection to Arlosoroff’s alleged affair, while a student in Germany, with a close friend of his sister who subsequently became the wife of Joseph Goebbels. The thirty-four year old Arlosoroff was killed two days after he returned from negotiations in Germany arranged through Goebbels’ wife. The most plausible theory is that the killers were the two Arabs who actually confessed to the murder.
What is important to note is that the Arlosoroff murder left such an enduring scar on the Israeli body politic that in 1982, almost half a century after the crime, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, with cabinet approval, established an official commission of inquiry headed by David Bechor, a respected retired judge of Israel’s Supreme Court. In June 1985, after Begin’s retirement, the three man Bechor commission submitted a 202 page report unanimously exonerating the Revisionist suspects but failing to identify the perpetrators or to adduce new evidence in the case. Rabbi Gordis’s account gives no indication of the enduring impact on Israeli society of the Arlosoroff murder.
In discussing the ship named Altalena, whose destruction was the most divisive and dramatic episode in the birth of the State, Rabbi Gordis writes: “Suddenly, Palmach fighters …fired on the Altalena.” He fails to say that they did so on Ben-Gurion’s order or to mention his subsequent statement: “Blessed is the cannon that fired on the Altalena.” Sixteen Jews were killed, many others wounded, and large quantities of badly needed arms for the War of Independence destroyed. Gordis does write that among the Palmach commanders on the beach was Yitzhak Rabin, but without indicating that it was Rabin who commanded the group that first fired on the Altalena. In The Revolt, Menachem Begin devotes 22 pages to the discussion of the Altalena affair and it remains one of the most painful and controversial topics in Israel 69 years later.
In discussing the death of Avraham (“Yair”) Stern, the leader of Lechi (the underground group subsequently headed by future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir), Gordis asserts definitively that “Stern was killed in February 1942 in a shoot-out with British forces after a massive manhunt” (page 138). This is despite the fact that one of the three British officers alone with Stern admitted in an interview forty years later that the unarmed Stern was murdered in cold blood by a British officer. Even if Rabbi Gordis did not know this—and he should have—the official British story was considered highly suspect within the Jewish community from the beginning.
While noting that “Judea and Samaria [is] the biblical name by which many Israelis refer to it” (page 414), Dr. Gordis consistently refers to the area as “the West Bank.” This is an inexplicable distortion given the fact that the territory was universally called Judea and Samaria until 1950. In that year the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan annexed the land west of the Jordan River which it had seized in Israel’s War of Independence and began to refer to it as the “west bank” of the renamed Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Not only are the terms “Judea and Samaria” venerable names for the areas in question but they were precisely the names used by the League of Nations, by the British Mandatory authority,, and even by the United Nation General Assembly in its famous resolution 181. That U.N. Resolution, describing the projected boundary lines in the area now commonly called the “west bank”, used only the terms “Judea and Samaria”. To imply that those names were confined to ancient times is simply wrong.
Gordis describes the Gaza “disengagement” of 2005 as “a remarkable display of Israeli democracy at work” (page 335). Yet two pages later he contradicts himself, writing that “Sharon had run for office promising not to evacuate Gaza, and then never called for a plebiscite on the disengagement; the entire process struck many Israelis as fundamentally undemocratic.” Just so. While Gordis correctly states that Sharon never called for a plebiscite, he did call for, and pledged to abide by, a vote of the Likud party membership. When that vote went against him by a 3-2 margin Sharon simply repudiated his pledge. Moshe Arens stated that the disengagement would be “inconceivable in any democratic society in this day and age” and Yoel Marcus, a prominent liberal columnist who supported the “disengagement” wrote that the government’s methods engendered “this gnawing feeling of disgust inside me”. The high-handed undemocratic manner in which the retreat and destruction of Jewish settlements was handled divided Israel, to quote Daniel Pipes, “in ways that may poison the body politic for decades.“ Some “remarkable display of Israeli democracy at work”!
Hezbollah, with an estimated 130,000-150,000 short, medium and long-range rockets steered by cutting-edge guidance systems, attack and suicide drones and the most advanced air defense hardware coming out of Russia, constitutes “the most serious conventional threat” Israel has faced since the major wars of l967 and 1973.
That’s the message coming out of the highly esteemed Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. It’s an arsenal which exceeds the combined total of all 27 NATO nations, rated as capable of hitting Israeli targets, civilian and military, with 260 missiles every six hours, 1,200 a day. That they have not been unleashed has little to do with either the dwindling constraints of the Lebanese government which hosts this terrorist phenomenon on its southern border or the zero constraints of UNIFIL. UNIFIL is the alleged peace-keeping force that opted out, before the ink was dry, of its obligation under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to prevent the rearming of Hezbollah following the termination of the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
Two factors have kept the lid on a third Hezbollah strike against Israel, both of them linked to the terrorist organization’s financial and operational master, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The German daily Die Welt, citing Western sources, reported in April that Hezbollah is seriously overdrawn on its account with Tehran, the source of 75 percent of its weapons and the working capital critical to the support of 20,000 fighters and another 20,000 reservists. To put it bluntly, the “Party of Allah,” is flirting with bankruptcy, the direct result of its Iranian-ordered engagement in a war to defend and secure Bashar Hafez Assad’s power base in Syria. The generous remunerations to the families of the estimated 1,500-1,800 fighters who have been killed, the more than 6,000 wounded and the “hazardous duty” bonus allocations to the 8,000 on the front lines of this noble enterprise appear to have at least temporarily stalled plans for a major move against Israel.
The hidden danger to Israel lurking behind Hezbollah’s current financial straits is complacency. Major General Jim Molan, who served as Australia’s chief of operations in Iraq, writing in The Australian, contends that the current calm along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel may be as much a case of deception as necessity – an attempt to put Jerusalem off its guard. “It’s quiet,” he submits, “because Hezbollah wants it that way at present.” And that, of course, means Iran wants it that way until stagnant oil demand gets an expected summer boost and the till for a major operation against Israel is refreshed.
Indeed, any suggestion of permanency to the current quiet should have been dispelled by a Hezbollah sponsored “media tour” in April of the thin line separating Israel from its terrorist adversary. Conducted by a Hezbollah honcho in combat fatigues, it described in depth to the assembled journalists the IDF’s positions on the other side of the line, including a string of barricades designed to stall any breakthrough by infantry forces. Al Manar, Hezbollah’s official publication, quoted the tour leader as having told the journalists that the organization had developed “special tactics to deal with these structures” and boasted that it had compelled the “Zionist army for the first time in history to move to a defensive position.”
From June edition of Mideast Outpost http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/capital-losses-by-ruth-king.html
Promises! Promises! One cannot count the number of times that our leaders, from the White House to Congress, have issued the call to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital city Jerusalem. Those empty words fill the air during election cycles. Nonetheless the American Embassy remains in Tel Aviv.
What is an American Embassy on foreign soil? Here is how the State Department describes it:
“The mission of the United States Embassy is to advance the interests of the United States, and to serve and protect U.S. citizens. An embassy is the nerve center for a country’s diplomatic affairs within the borders of another nation, serving as the headquarters of the chief of mission, staff and other agencies. …“Embassy staff interact with host governments, local business and nongovernmental organizations, the media and educational institutions, and private citizens to create positive responses to U.S. policy and the U.S. in general.”
There is absolutely nothing here that precludes placing the American embassy in Israel’s capital. Moreover, an embassy implies recognition of a country’s sovereignty and its status as a nation.
The United States currently does not have embassies in North Korea, Iran, and Bhutan. In Taiwan, there is no longer an embassy, but, rather, an “American Institute in Taiwan” located in the capital Taipei. Here hangs a cautionary tale for Israel, demonstrating how an embassy’s location impacts a host nation’s legitimacy.
In order to appease China’s tyrants, heeding Henry Kissinger’s advice, Nixon visited China in 1972, accepted mass murderer Mao’s “one China” policy and opened the door to more diplomatic ties. These were fully implemented in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter broke diplomatic relations with Taiwan and moved our embassy in Taipei to Beijing. In short order Taiwan lost its seat on the Security Council and was ousted from the United Nations. Its security and sovereignty have thus been weakened.
Out of the 192 UN member states, 161 currently recognize Israel. Thirty-one Arab/Moslem nations have no diplomatic exchanges with Israel.
There are currently over 86 embassies in Tel Aviv (not including honorary consulates). Due to America’s implied pressure, of the thirteen nations (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Netherlands, Panama, Uruguay , Venezuela) that had earlier established embassies in Jerusalem, none remain.
As justification, the U.S. State Department claims that Jerusalem is “disputed territory.” This is balderdash, and the fully staffed United States embassy in Kosovo proves the hypocrisy of this argument.
In Kosovo, although 114 nations offered recognition in 2008, there are only 21 embassies in Pristina, the U.S. among them. Many nations question the legitimacy of Kosovo which was historically part of Serbia, and is considered “disputed territory.” Accordingly, Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations.
Why does the U.S. have an embassy in Pristina and not in Jerusalem? This upside-down diplomacy can only be explained by a stubborn anti-Israel bias that has always existed in the State Department swamps.
President Trump made lavish promises to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. Will he do it?
In the movie, the Allied commandos sneak through Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia to the bridge they were assigned to blow up. After the requisite setbacks, our heroes enter the internal machinery of a dam upstream of the bridge and detonate their explosives. Then… nothing. Unperturbed, the explosives expert says, “Wait. It is the accumulation of vibrations that does it.” Indeed, the smallish explosion causes cracks; the cracks cause more cracks; water begins to seep through the dam. Then, more water, more pressure, more cracks, more water. The bridge sways, and then collapses with a satisfying crash, sending the Nazi tanks and their crews into the drink.
Friends of Israel have known for years that regardless what the Palestinian Authority (PA) says in diplomatic circles, in truth it rejects the legitimacy of Israel in the region and encourages violence against Israelis. The evidence is easily accessible: the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) translates material from across the Arab world into English. NGO Monitor tracks nongovernmental organizations and their support for Palestinian violence and intransigence. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) studies Palestinian society through its media and textbooks.
Those are the vibrations, and in the presence of a blunt American president, they appear to be accumulating. President Trump’s White House statement to PA President Mahmoud Abbas laid down an unmistakable American marker:
There cannot be lasting peace unless the Palestinian leaders speak in a unified voice against incitement to violence and hate. There’s such hatred. But hopefully there won’t be such hatred for very long. All children of God must be taught to value and respect human life, and condemn all of those who target the innocent.
Abbas responded that Palestinian children are “raised in a culture of peace.” That was demonstrably false and was so demonstrated. By the time the President went to Bethlehem, it appears that he had seen enough to lambaste Abbas for lying to him. The President also, “raised concerns about the payments to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have committed acts of terrorism, and to their families, and emphasized the need to resolve this issue,” according to the White House press secretary.
Another crack in the dam and the water is beginning to rise.
PMW had already documented the Palestinian Authority’s veneration of Dalal Mughrabi -– a female terrorist involved in the Coastal Road massacre in which 37 civilians, 12 of them children, were killed and more than 70 others wounded. PMW notes that in the West Bank, there are three schools and a computer center named after her, and Abbas held a birthday celebration for her. But when the “Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Center: A cultural and social center and youth center in partnership with the Burqa village council and the Women’s [Technical] Affairs Committee,” was found to have Norwegian government and UN money behind it, the bridge began to sway.
As we approach the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, although it is six months away (see below), it seems to me that it is important to start talking about it and what it does say and what it doesn’t say, as well as trying to make clear its status and impact.
The actual Declaration itself is but one sentence in a letter sent to Baron Rothschild: brief to the point of being easy to miss. As Wikipedia notes:
The Balfour Declaration was a single paragraph in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It read:
His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The text of the letter was published in the press one week later, on 9 November 1917. The “Balfour Declaration” was later incorporated into both the Sèvres peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, and the Mandate for Palestine.” [Wikipedia]
The Balfour Declaration
It was, of course, the culmination of a long campaign by the Zionist Federation (ZF) (and by Chaim Weizmann in particular). Weizmann was especially influential in this, largely because of his scientific work, as a research chemist, and especially his development of the extraction of acetone (vital for the munitions industry) from maize during the First World War on behalf of the Allies. This meant that the British Government of the day was particularly beholden to him, and Weizmann used this influence wholeheartedly on behalf of the Zionist Federation. (The Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Weizmann is particularly informative on this period of his life.) It is important to note developments such as the San Remo Conference of Allied Powers (1920), which confirmed the Balfour Declaration and awarded the Palestine Mandate to Great Britain (Britannica, ibid).
It is as important, at this point, to remember that phrase from the Declaration that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” This will be returned to below.
To move on, it is possible to argue that the Peel Commission recommendations of 1936 come close to allocating much the same territory to each side as did the 1947 UN Resolution on the ending of the British Mandate. Remember: I said “much the same” not exactly the the same, though it’s a moot point, as the Arab side rejected the Commission’s recommendations outright, despite earlier agreements between at least some Arab leaders and the Jewish Agency.
All that said, the British Government failed, consistently, to live up to the wording of the Declaration. From the San Remo Conference onwards, despite that Conference’s agreement that
Britain was charged with establishing a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine [although] Terroritorial boundaries were not decided until four years after (http://www.cfr.org/israel/san-remo-resolution/p15248),
Britain did nothing to establish any boundaries, then or later, including after World War 2 and, indeed, after the 1947 UN Resolution ending the Mandate. The British didn’t even take steps to establish Transjordan, although they much favoured its creation. As a result, it is hardly surprising that the Arabs, both those in the Mandate territory and the independent nations outside it, utterly rejected the 1947 Resolution.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama’s last waiver pursuant to the Jerusalem Embassy Act will expire. Absent a new waiver by President Trump, the provisions of the law will go into full effect. Trump promised during his campaign to move the embassy, a policy embodied both in federal law and the Republican Party platform. But since he came into office, Trump’s promise seems to have lost some momentum.
This piece will examine the mechanics of the Embassy Act waiver — it is not actually a waiver on moving the embassy. The details of the law make it a particularly convenient way for Trump to defy now-lowered expectations and not issue a waiver on June 1.
First, some context. Many commentators have sought to cast a possible Trump waiver as proof that Obama’s Israeli policy is really the only possible game in town. But whether or not a waiver is issued, Trump has succeeded in fundamentally changing the discussion about the U.S.-Israel relationship. Waivers under the 1995 act come twice a year, and for the past two decades, they have hardly warranted a news item. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, they were entirely taken for granted.
Now everyone is holding his or her breath to see whether Trump will sign the waiver. If he does, it will certainly be a disappointment to his supporters. But if he does not, it is not the end of the show — he will have seven more waivers ahead, with mounting pressure as his term progresses. Under Obama, speculation focused on what actions he would take or allow against Israel (and even these waited until very late in his second term).
***
The waiver available to the president under the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 does not waive the obligation to move the embassy. That policy has been fully adopted by Congress in the Act (sec. 3(a)(3)) and is not waivable. Of course, Congress cannot simply order the president to implement such a move, especially given his core constitutional power over diplomatic relations.
But Congress, having total power over the spending of taxpayer dollars, does not have to pay for an embassy in Tel Aviv. The Act’s enforcement mechanism is to suspend half of the appropriated funds for the State Department’s “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad” until the law’s terms are complied with. The waiver provision simply allows the president to waive the financial penalty.
What this means is that by not signing a waiver, Trump would not actually be requiring the embassy to move to Jerusalem, moving the embassy or recognizing Jerusalem. That could give him significant diplomatic flexibility or deniability if June 1 goes by with mere silence from the White House.
