Falsehoods, lies and more falsehoods By Rachel Neuwirth & John Landau
The recently adopted Security Council Resolution 2334 and Secretary of State’s follow-up speech that doubles down on the lame duck Obama administrations’ support for it, as well as outlining a “framework” for an additional destructive Security Council resolution that Obama and Kerry are believed to be planning for their last days in office, are major obstacles to peace in the Middle East. They contain an extraordinary array of falsehoods and misconceptions that are themselves major obstacles to peace.
Cardinal John Henry Newman, in his classic autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (“Apology for My Life”) explains how it is possible to slander a person in a single sentence, while it may require an entire book to refute the slander. It would take us an entire library of books to expose the scores of false and misleading statements in Secretary Kerry’s speech. So we will take up only a few of the worst falsehoods.
- A two-state solution is the only solution. In reality, it is no solution at all. The PLO Ramallah regime, (which calls itself the “State of Palestine,” and is called the “Palestinian Authority” in the Oslo Accords), regularly praises terrorists who murder Israeli civilians and soldiers by calling them “martyrs,” gives them photo opportunities with “President” Abbas and other PLO leaders, and names schools, hospitals, roads and athletic competitions after them within days after they commit these murders. Worst of all, it pays these terrorists generous salaries and awards generous pensions to their families. The very idea that Israel could “live in peace” with a state ruled by such monsters of hate and duplicity less than a mile, and in some places only a few yards, from its main population centers, is absurd. Kerry even admitted all this while still maintaining it is a worthy “peace partner” for Israel.
- The Israeli administration of Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”) is an “illegal occupation” that must be ended. This is nonsense. Two monumental and thoroughly documented studies by international lawyers Howard Grief, “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law,” Mazo Publishers, 2008), (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Legal-Foundation-Borders-Israel-International/dp/9657344522”), and Jacques Paul Gauthier, “Sovereignty Over the Old City of Jerusalem: A Study of the Historical, Religious, Political and Legal Aspects of the Question of the Old City,” (Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales, 2007), conclusively demonstrate that the San Remo Conference of the victorious World War I Allies (Britain, France, Italy and Japan), and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, approved unanimously by all 51 members of the League of Nations, decided that Palestine would become a Jewish state and the sovereign territory of the Jewish people.
They further demonstrate that both bodies had the legal authority at the time to award these territories to the Jewish people, and that under the international legal doctrine of estoppel, neither decision can be or has been lawfully altered. Further, the United Nations Charter, Article 80, obligates the United Nations to respect “the rights of nations and peoples” guaranteed by its predecessor organization, The League of Nations. The United Nations inherited both the property and the legal obligations of its predecessor, the League.
Israel is also the legal sovereign in Judea-Samaria under the doctrine of international law known asuti possidetis juris, as law professors Abraham Bell and and Eugene Kontorovich point out in their brilliant and timely study, “Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris, and the Borders of Israel” (http://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/58-3/58arizlrev633.pdf). This doctrine holds that when a foreign state (in this case, Britain), withdraws from a territory, the successor state formed in this territory acquires immediate and permanent sovereignty over the entire territory administered by the withdrawing power, according to its borders at the time the foreign state withdrew.
Since Israel was the only state formed in the former British mandatory territory of Palestine, on the very day that the British ended their administration of the territory, Israel became sovereign in all of Palestine immediately on that day, May 14, 1948. It has been the sole lawful sovereign there ever since. Bell and Kontorovich document that the International Court of Justice has expounded and cited this doctrine in its decisions resolving several dozen territorial disputes between states that had formally been territories administered by foreign (nearly always European) countries, The doctrine’s applicability to the former British Mandate territory of Palestine, which has been succeeded by the State of Israel, is beyond any rational dispute.
While there are many more falsehoods in Resolution 2334 and in Kerry’s expansion of it, we have already run out of the space for a single column! Our next column will be Part II on this subject.
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PART TWO
The Jewish “settlements” in Judea-Samaria (actually, villages, suburbs and urban neighborhoods) are illegal and must be demolished, and their inhabitants (about 750,000 people) should be expelled.
Actually, under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which still remains legally in force despite Britain’s abandonment of its responsibilities under the Mandate, Jews have every right to live in these territories, and Israel has the legal obligation of helping them to “settle” there. The Mandate document which defines the obligations of the Palestine “Administration” instructs it to facilitate the settlement of Jews on “state or waste” lands throughout Palestine—which is what Israel has done. International law requires the successor government of a territory to fulfill the legal obligations of the previous administering state when that state withdraws from the territory, as Britain did unilaterally in 1948. And that is the very most that Israel has done in Judea-Samaria since these territories came under its administration in 1967.
- Israel Has built its Settlements on Palestinian land.
This too is nonsense. But unfortunately, it has been to a large extent propagated by Israel’s own “Civil Administration” in Judea and Samaria, the Israeli Attorney General’s office, and above all, by the Israeli Supreme Court. Contrary to what Kerry and the Security Council claim, Israel’s Judea-Samaria administration is extremely pro-Arab and hostile to the settlers, especially in land dispute cases. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that all land in “occupied” territory is assumed to be “Privately owned Palestinian Land” unless there is very specific documentation that it once belonged to the Turkish or British former governments of the region. But since the laws of these governments regarded all undeveloped land as belonging to the state and rarely made any specific reference to any particular parcel of undeveloped, uninhabited land, this ruling means that the government has accepted without question the claims of Arab litigants (and their leftist Israeli backers) that they own land on which Jews have settled without ever demanding that the Arab claimants produce a title deed, or a shred of evidence that they own the land. In fact no Arab has ever produced in court, or even elsewhere, a title deed to even one square foot of land on which Jewish “settlers” are living. As a result of this self-destructive Israeli behavior, hundreds of Jews have been expelled by the Israeli military from homes in which they had lived for years, and entire Jewish neighborhoods and even whole villages (not Arab neighborhoods and villages) have been destroyed by Israel’s own government.
While there is no real evidence that any Jewish “settlers” are living on Arab-owned land, it is undeniable that more than 70,000 Arabs are living on Jewish-owned land in Judea-Samaria. Jewish individuals and organizations have title deeds going back well before 1948, often to the nineteenth century, for land on which Palestinian Arabs are now squatting. The United Nations has even built a refugee camp on one large tract of land, purchased by a Jew from the Ottoman Turkish government in the nineteenth century. PLO documents published by Al-Jazeera even admit all this.
None of this bending over backward to be fair to the Arabs living in the disputed territories has in any way lessened the false allegations of Kerry and the “international community” that Israel has stolen “Palestinian” land in order to give it to Jewish settlers.
- Israel has prevented Arabs from building new homes and developing land in the “West Bank.”
This is the most absurd balderdash of all. One of the authors was living in Israel shortly after the 1967 war, and saw with her own eyes that vast areas of the countryside were completely unoccupied. Since then, Arabs have built hundreds of new settlements in these previously vacant spaces since Israel first occupied (or rather liberated them) them in 1967—far more than the total number of Jewish settlements that have been built there in this time. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs have built and moved into houses in these new settlements. The Israeli authorities have demolished less than 1 percent of these homes—mostly those that created serious health and safety hazards due to faulty construction, or because they were located in places that impinged on roads, rights of way needed for emergency vehicles, or water and sewer lines, streams, wells, and aquifers that their neighbors depend on for clean water.
Even so, the Israeli authorities have tolerated many of these problematic structures and have allowed Arab families to occupy them. They have not required Arab families to obtain permits to build these homes, and have certainly not required them to produce title to the land they have squatted on, even though Jews are required to obtain numerous permits before they are allowed to build.
The Israeli military has also demolished a small number of structures that impinge on roads, bases, outposts and training areas used by soldiers, since houses built in these locations can be—and have been—used by terrorists to ambush Israeli soldiers.
- Israel has denied Arabs permits to build homes and businesses in Judea-Samaria.
Israel gives several hundred building permits a year to Arabs for construction in “East” Jerusalem, where some of the Arab residents accept the authority of the Israeli government. Elsewhere in Judea-Samaria, no Arab would dare request a building permit from Israel, or have any other open dealings with the Israeli authorities, especially where land is concerned, for fear of being murdered by the PLO Ramallah-Fatah regime’s “police.” The PLO government regards any dealings with the Israeli authorities that acknowledge Israel’s authority over land as treason. In fact, many Arabs have been murdered for having any dealings with Israelis connected with land. But as we have seen, Israel allows Arabs to build without permits.
- The security checkpoints maintained by Israel to prevent terrorist attacks are a terrible affront to the dignity of Palestinians, prevent economic growth, reduce the Palestinian Arabs to dire poverty and prevent them from receiving medical treatment.
Americans have to endure far longer delays, and have to answer far more intrusive questions every time they try to make a doctor’s appointment over the phone, or to obtain any help from “Customer Service” when their utilities or appliances aren’t working. They also must endure worse delays in “normal” commuter traffic, when lanes or bridges are closed for construction, or when American police forces establish checkpoints on roads to make routine checks for traffic violations, or to catch escaped convicts (as police frequently do).
As for inhibiting Palestinian economic growth and denying Palestinians access to medical care, in reality the Arab population has prospered enormously under Israel’s administration. Life expectancy has nearly doubled. Real incomes have tripled. When Israel first ‘occupied’ Judea-Samaria, it had only one two-year college. Now it has 24, including many that offer masters and doctorate degrees. Less than 30 percent of Arab children went to school; now over 99 percent do. Hundreds of new Palestinian businesses have been established, and several new hospitals have been built along with many new clinics and medical centers. Large numbers of Arab patients receive the best treatment in the world at state-of-the-art Israeli hospitals; now 99 percent do. Less than 30 percent of Arab homes had running water, electricity, telephone service, television, and heating in 1967; now nearly all do.
Between 1967 and 1993, when Israel administered all of the ‘West Bank,’ it experienced annual economic growth rates of 10 percent a year, rivaling those of China. Growth has slowed somewhat since the Ramallah-PLO regime took over the Arab-populated areas of Judea-Samaria—because of the massive corruption of the Ramallah regime and its extortion from Arab businessmen, not because of the Israeli “occupation” or security checkpoints.
Documentation: Dr. Moshe Dann, “Is Amona built on private Palestinian land?” Israelnationalnews (Arutz Sheva web site Nov. 11, 2016.Hillel Fendel, “The Myth of Private Palestinian Land in Judea and Samaria,” INN, September 20, 2016. JNi Media,“Eight Crucial facts You Need to Know About the Amona Case,” The Jewish Press, http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/eight-crucial-things-you-must-know-about-the-amona-case/2016/11/20/
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PART 3
Here we will conclude our review of the potpourri of misconceptions with which lame duck Secretary of State John Kerry loaded his infamous speech in defense of the equally infamous Security Council Resolution 3442. Kerry managed to incorporate into his 71-minute speech every misconception of the “international community” that has prevented peace from breaking out for the past fifty years.
- If Israel continues to permit Jews to live in Judea-Samaria and continues to maintain security control over the area, it can be either a Jewish state or a democratic state, but not both.
Democracy is not a suicide pact. Israel would not retain its Jewish and democratic character if it handed over control of strategic territory only a mile, or even a few yards, from its major centers of population, to well-armed enemies committed to destroy it. It would cease to exist at all! As long as the Palestinian Arabs continue to wage war against Israel and to seek its utter destruction—and their own statements and action give every indication that this is the case—Israel has no obligation whatsoever to hand over territory to them. Nor is Israel obligated to allow them to vote in Israeli elections—a privilege that they have never even requested. In any case, the research of former Israel Ambassador Yoram Ettinger and a team of American demographers has demonstrated that Jews are the overwhelming majority of the population in Israel “from the river to the sea” once Gaza, from which Israel has already withdrawn, is excluded. Further, a Jewish majority will become permanent and even grow, as long as Israel maintains its control of Judea-Samaria and permits Jews to live there. The Palestinian Arab birth rate has been falling rapidly while the Jewish birth rate has been rising. Arab emigration from the disputed territories—some of it to the United States—has been substantial in recent years. At least one entire “West Bank” village has now been completely deserted, because all of its inhabitants have emigrated to the United States! This emigration is occurring despite the absence of any pressure from Israel on the inhabitants to leave. On the other hand, incorporation of these territories into Israel is likely to spur Jewish immigration to Israel, further strengthening its Jewish majority. The claims that Arabs will soon be the majority in the Land of Israel are based on false statistics published by the “State of Palestine,” as Ettinger and his team of demographic researchers have shown.
- The Arabs in Judea-Samaria are segregated and discriminated against and will remain so as long as they are subject to Israeli rule.
The Arabs living within “pre-1967” Israel have full equality as citizens with Jews. They are represented in the Israeli Parliament. There is an Arab judge on the Israeli supreme court. Israel has even instituted “affirmative action” programs to favor Arabs in college admissions and employment—including government employment. Arab communities elect their own mayors and city councils. And despite claims that Israel is an “apartheid state,” Israeli Arabs are free to live anywhere in Israel; there are many Israeli communities, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, and Beersheva, where Jews and Arabs live side by side.
If the Arabs in Judea and Samaria genuinely want to have equal rights with Jews inside Israel, they should stop waging war against Israel and accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state. No nation can grant equal rights to people who are waging war against them—and by brutal and inhumane means forbidden by international law, at that. The comparison with the situation of the Palestinian Arabs of African-Americans during three hundred plus years of discrimination against them is not valid, since African-Americans have always been loyal Americans, and have fought for the United States in every war since 1775! The comparison of Israel’s treatment of the Arabs of Judea-Samaria with South Africa’s former apartheid regime is also invalid, since the indigenous black peoples of South Africa were living peacefully alongside whites when the apartheid laws were imposed on them. They posed no military and security threat to their white neighbors, nor was South Africa ever threatened by well-armed and wealthy states along its borders, as Israel has been for 68 years.
- “But what if the Arabs of Judea-Samaria should request the right to vote in Israeli elections?” Kerry asks.
This hasn’t happened yet, and all indications are that it is extremely unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Israelis should not be required to answer a hypothetical question, any more than anyone else should be. Our guess is that if the Palestinian Arabs were ever to end their terrorist attacks on Israel, if they ever stop indoctrinating their children to hate Israel in their schools, if the Palestinian Arab media ever stops inciting their people to hate Israel and commit terrorist attacks on them, if the Ramallah regime ever stops demanding a never-ending torrent of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, and if it recognizes Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state, then the Israelis would seriously consider such a request from the Arabs of Judea-Samaria. Israel might then negotiate a “pathway to citizenship” for them, as Israeli journalist Carolyn Glick has suggested in her brilliant book The Israeli Solution.
- What if the Ramallah regime makes good on Mahmoud Abbas’ “threat” to flee Judea-Samaria and transfer “full responsibility” for administering it to the “occupying” power? Would Israel then be willing to pay the costs of running the Palestinian Arab schools and providing for the humanitarian needs of the Arab population?
Here Kerry is just repeating a bizarre “threat” that Mahmoud Abbas has made repeatedly over the past year. Of course, this is a purely hypothetical and unlikely scenario, like Kerry’s other hypothetical question that we have just addressed.
The real question should be, “Why on earth is Abbas making such a ‘threat?’” Is he convinced that his Fatah regime will soon be overthrown by his own people, and is therefore preparing to take the money and run? Obviously, if Abbas ever actually implements this strange proposal, Israel should be prepared to take the opportunity to restore its administration of Judea-Samaria, take the appropriate measures to stamp out terrorism there, ban incitement to terrorism, and break up all terrorist groups operating there; in return, it should also provide for the humanitarian needs of, and government services required by, the Arab population. Whether Israel’s timid government would avail themselves of such an opportunity in the rather unlikely circumstance that it should actually arise is anyone’s guess. But the very fact that Abbas would make such a “threat” suggests either that he has no concern for the welfare of his people, only for his own wealth and safety, or that he believes (correctly) they would be better off under an Israeli administration than under his present regime. In either case, it is proof that Israel should remove the PLO-Fatah regime and resume its “occupation” of Judea-Samaria. A government that lacks even the commitment to govern should not exist.
- Israel has “systematically” encouraged the growth of the settlements since the Israel–PLO accords were first signed in 1993.
Actually, Israel has done everything it can to discourage settlement growth since 1993. It has repeatedly imposed bans on new construction in Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem. Some of these bans have been public, and others theoretically secret but reported in the Israeli press. But since the “settlers” have a high birth rate, the Israeli government had no humane way of preventing all “natural growth” in the settlements. In other words, it could not fairly deny to young couples the right to build a home of their own when their parents’ houses became too cramped to accommodate their growing families. Nor could they deny to these communities the occasional new school building when their existing schools became hopelessly overcrowded. There have been no new settlements built since 1993. The Israeli government has only permitted, from time to time, some new houses in existing settlements. The increase in the population of these communities over the past 24 years has resulted almost entirely from a high birth rate among the many young families living on them.
Undoubtedly Kerry would be outraged if Israelis were to suggest that Arabs should not have so many children. Is he now demanding this of Israeli Jews?
- Kerry claims that negotiations between Israel and the PLO have failed because of a lack of “political courage” on both sides.
It would take far more courage for Arab leaders now to accept even one Israeli settlement outside the June 4, 1967, armistice lines now that the Security Council has declared all such settlements, even Jewish neighborhoods in “East Jerusalem,” to be illegal. Would the Arab world tolerate it if Palestinians accepted something less than what the Security Council by a 14–0 vote, with one nominal abstention, has declared is their due? No chance.
- Resolution 3442 is compatible with a settlement based on direct negotiations between the parties, and with “territorial swaps” that would permit some of the 750,000 Israelis living in Judea and Samaria to remain in their homes.
For the reasons we have just noted, this is untrue. The resolution also demands “the end of the Israeli occupation that began in June 1967.” That is incompatible with any territorial swaps. And there is no reference to such “swaps” in the resolution.
- Israel’s government is the most rightwing in Israeli history, and is dominated by its most extreme elements.
This was too much even for Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, even though she is no great friend of Israel. She pointed out that such blatant interference in the internal politics of a fellow democracy is “inappropriate.”
And is the Israeli government really extreme rightwing? Its defense minister has repeatedly proposed the territorial swaps idea that Kerry seems to favor—only to have these proposals repeatedly rejected by the PLO, and even by Israel’s Arab parties, who were horrified by any suggestion that Arab Israeli citizens might have to live under a PLO government.
As far as the Israeli Arab leaders are concerned, that’s fine for other Arabs but not them.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also proposed that Israel assist the Hamas regime in Gaza in constructing a port for the people of Gaza, without even demanding that Hamas end its armed attacks on Israelis and stop calling for the genocide of all Jews.
The Israeli government provides the Palestinians with water and electric power even while the Palestinians wage war against them, and doesn’t even insist that it pay for these services. The Israeli government also allows the Palestinians to use Israel banks and Israeli currency, and as we have seen, consistently favors Arabs over Jews in disputes over land ownership. Prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has frequently offered to meet Mahmoud Abbas at any time without preconditions, and has also invited him to address the Israeli Parliament. Abbas refused both offers.
The Israeli government has banned books that it considers to be extreme rightwing, and incarcerates many Jews without trial whom it regards as rightwing extremists. These repressive measures are very rarely employed against Arab anti-Jewish extremists. On the contrary, Arab anti-Jewish extremists are allowed to sit in Parliament! Surely an extreme rightwing government should be made of sterner stuff.
Israel should apologize to the Palestinian refugees for all the harm that it has done them, pay them generous compensation, arrange permanent homes for them, and allow them the “option” of settling in Israel.
The Palestinians became refugees only when they launched an all-out guerilla-terrorist war against the Israelis in 1948, attacking nearly every Jewish community, attacking all Jewish-operated vehicles trying to drive on the country’s roads, seizing huge amounts of food and other supplies being sent to Jewish communities, reducing them to near starvation, etc. Israel owes them no apologies.
The so-called refugees are mainly people who have never lived in Israel, and in many cases have never lived in “Palestine” as it was defined under the British Mandate. Rather they have grandparents who claimed—in some cases falsely—to have once lived in Palestine before 1948. Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s many people falsely claimed Palestinian refugee status in order to obtain generous UN financial assistance. Their ‘refugee camps’ are towns with paved streets, businesses and permanent houses—in some cases, quite luxurious ones built with money supplied by the “international community.”
While the UN gives assistance to refugees from other ethnic groups only if they themselves are refugees, not descendant of a past generation who were once refugees, it considers all descendants of Palestinian refugees or alleged refugees as refugees to the nth generation. It spends 30 times more money on each Palestinian “refugee” than it does on each real refugee from other countries, and it employs 30 times more staff per refugee (nearly all of these UN staff members are Palestinian Arabs). The international community should stop pampering these fake refugees. Certainly Israel has no obligation to pamper them.
The alleged Palestinian Arab refugees are brainwashed from birth in UN, Hamas or PLO schools to hate all Israeli Jews and to try to kill them whenever the opportunity arises. Obviously, Israel can’t admit these people to their country without putting the life and limbs of its citizens in mortal peril, and endangering Israel’s national existence.
As for compensation, the Israelis have offered it to the alleged Palestinian refugees many times, but these offers have repeatedly been refused.
- A negotiated settlement should be based on the Arab League peace proposal and the United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947.
This is the heart of what Kerry proposed, and it is by far the most sinister proposal in his speech, The Arab League Peace Initiative demands that Israel withdraw from every inch of territory that it occupied in June 1967, and that it allow the supposed Palestinian refugees to “return” to what is now Israel in unlimited numbers. It is a complete non-starter for negotiations, for all the reasons we have given. Kerry claims the Arab League has accepted the ideas of “territorial swaps” and adjustments to the pre-1067 frontiers. But this is an outright lie. Arab League spokesmen made it clear over and over again that they will never accept any revisions to their demands.
Even worse, though, is Kerry’s suggestion that the United Nations General Assembly Partition Resolution of 1947 should be one of the bases for a settlement. That Resolution called for a Jewish state only two-thirds the size of even pre-1967 Israel. It proposed that the Jewish state be composed of three noncontiguous enclaves, connected only by two checkpoints. It would render Israel militarily indefensible. Millions of Israelis would be forced from their homes if this plan were implemented today. The plan also provided for an “international” government for Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and nearby villages. Such a regime would not be possible without a large military force under permanent UN military command—something the permanent members of the UN Security Council have never agreed to anywhere in the world.
While the Israeli Jews accepted the partition plan at the time it was adopted by the general assembly, the Arabs immediately declared their rejection of it and initiated all-out war against Israel to prevent its being put into effect. The UN Security Council declined to endorse or implement the General Assembly plan, which was only a recommendation unless the Security Council chose to endorse it. History and the Arabs passed by this plan 70 years ago. For Kerry to raise it now as a basis for a future settlement is by far the most outrageous element of a speech loaded with falsehood.
Will incoming President Donald Trump be able to pull the monkey-wrench that lame ducks Obama and Kerry have thrown into the machinery of Middle East diplomacy just a few days before they must leave office? Let us hope and pray that he will.
References:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/120823
http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=72208
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/113546/they-stole-our-land-vs-grand-mufti-jerusalem-david-meir-levi
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