How can a people be called ‘settlers’ in their own homeland? Victor Sharpe
The Oslo Accords, the Wye Agreement, the Roadmap, ad nauseam, have all attempted to separate much, if not all, of the eternal possession of the Jewish people from their God given homeland? This decades long political foolishness has continued in order to appease a succession of occupants of the White House whose policies have, alas, too often become a clear and present danger to the very existence of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
The reluctance by many Israeli leaders to resist various U.S. administrations or offend various presidents has inexorably led to Jewish rights not asserted vigorously enough. It has thus allowed the erosion of those very millennial and inalienable entitlements of the Jewish people to their ancestral heartland – primarily the narrow strip of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.
History has proven that it was a near fatal mistake to embrace the pernicious, self-defeating and idiotic policies known as “land for peace” in which Israel gave away its historic land but never received peace.
That other evil seed, also spawned from the Oslo Peace Accords, namely what is called the “Two-State-Solution,” would, if enacted with the duplicitous and terrorist PLO, be as diabolical and deadly a euphemism for the Jewish state as was Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” for Europe’s Jews.
Instead, there should have always been watertight demands made upon the so-called Palestinian Authority, which now occupies large swathes of Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank).
This was left undone and now the PLO and the so-called Palestinian Authority spew anti-Jewish propaganda in schools and through its regime controlled media, poisoning the minds of yet another generation of Arabs. At the same time its terrorist entities, Fatah and Hamas, unleash relentless and barbaric violence resulting in thousands of Israeli civilian deaths.
Demands should also have been made upon the artificial entity known as the Kingdom of Jordan for the return of biblical Gilead – the ancestral homeland of the Jewish tribes of Gad and Manasseh, east of the River Jordan.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government and previous governments stretching back to that of Yitzhak Rabin, all betrayed Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel. They did not effectively reject the Arab and pro-Arab lie that Israel “occupies” Arab territory – specifically territory occupied by a fraudulent Arab people who have come to call themselves Palestinians.
Judea and Samaria have still not been annexed yet they are the very warp and woof, the heartland and very fabric and fiber of Jewish history during and after Biblical times.
I was looking back at what Professor Talia Einhorn of the University of Ariel wrote in 2003 about Judea, Samaria and Gaza, or as it is known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha: meaning Yehuda, Shomron and Azza.
She was commenting on the ‘slip of the tongue” by then Prime Minister Sharon who used the word “occupation” in reference to Israel’s presence in Yesha. In 2003, Yesha still included Gaza.
That territory in the Gaza Strip was tragically abandoned in 2005 with Jewish villages and farms uprooted, 10,000 villagers expelled, synagogues demolished and even graves exhumed.
Israel agreed to this self-inflicted and grievous wound for the sake of a delusional peace with the Arabs in Gaza who call themselves Palestinians. The result has been endless Arab crimes and aggression and costly wars shed in Israeli blood and treasure!
Professor Einhorn stated clearly then that Israel, the Jewish state, is not an “occupying force” in Yesha. This is what she said:
‘‘Up until 1948, Judea, Samaria and Gaza were a part of the British Mandate. In the 1948 War of Independence, Egypt illegally grabbed the Gaza Strip and Jordan took Judea and Samaria, the ‘West Bank.’
“Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza but Jordan decided, in 1950, to illegally annex Judea and Samaria. This annexation was not recognized by international law. The Arab nations objected to it, and only Britain and Pakistan recognized it – and Britain did not recognize the Jordanian occupation and annexation of eastern Jerusalem.
“In 1967, after the Six Day War, these territories – which were originally meant for the Jewish Nation’s National Home according to the Mandate Charter – returned to Israeli control.
Professor Einhorn added that, “according to international law, Israel has full right to try to populate the entire Land of Israel with dense settlement and thus actualize the principles set by the League of Nations in the original Mandate Charter of San Remo in 1920.
“At that time, the mandate to the Land of Israel was granted to the British and an introduction to the mandate charter states clearly that it is based on the international recognition of the historic ties between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. Clause II of that mandate charges Britain with ‘ensuring the existence of political, administrative, and economic conditions that will guarantee the establishment of the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel.’”
We, of course, know how that turned out. Britain reneged on its promises and its undertakings. Britain tore away 80% of all the mandate territory east of the Jordan River in 1922 and gave it to the Emir Abdullah.
There is nothing, therefore, in international law that requires the creation of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
Professor Einhorn pointed out that the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 merely recommended that a Jewish and Arab state in what was the entire geographical territory known as Palestine “shall come into existence.”
Though the Jewish leadership reluctantly accepted the partition plan in order to provide a refuge for the surviving remnant of the Holocaust, and for the growing numbers of Jews being driven from their ancient homes throughout the Arab world, it was, as we all know, rejected utterly by the Arab states, which thus voided the UN’s recommendation of any legal basis.
So the fact that what is left of Yesha – Judea and Samaria – has not previously been the subject of an Israeli annexation is neither here nor there. It is empirically the Land of Israel by all that is holy. And if that’s a dirty word to some, so be it.
Simply put: The Jewish people cannot be called settlers in their very own Biblical, ancestral and aboriginal homeland.
Now if those facts are understood and hammered home again and again by every Israeli and non-Israeli, every Jew and non-Jew in the world, think of the illuminating power and the glory that will emanate as the veil of deception is finally torn from the world’s eyes – and President Trump becomes its instrument of redemption.
As Caroline Glick, Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes:
“While Trump occasionally pays lip service to making peace in the Middle East, his real goal is to win the war against jihadist Islam. And he rightly views Israel as a woefully underutilized strategic ally that shares his goal and is well-placed to help him achieve it.”
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