RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-israel-stealing-private-palestinian-land-opinion-6334

When Jewish communities (“settlements”) were established, it was done “in good faith,” and with government approval on vacant land. Arabs did not go to court to claim “their land.”

One of the most serious accusations against Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria to “end the occupation” and in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns is that Israel systematically steals or “seizes” “private Palestinian land.” Not only would that be illegal, it is immoral. This seems to be the basis for the High Court’s decision to strike down the Regulation Law.

It is important to remember the reason for the Regulation Law. When Jewish communities (“settlements”) were established, it was done “in good faith,” and with government approval on vacant land. Arabs did not go to court to claim “their land.” Only much later, led by left-wing NGOs, were Arabs encouraged to make their claims

The humanitarian purpose of the Regulation Law was to protect Jews who had built their homes “in good faith.” Most other countries have similar laws which protect homeowners in cases where the value of what was built far exceeds the value of the land. Destroying the homes of many thousands of Jews to resolve questionable or false Arab land claims would be unfair and unjust. Therefore, compensation was offered to Arab claimants, regardless of proof of ownership.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/its-time-to-give-netanyahu-trump-a-break-and-benefit-of-the-doubt-633661

Those in favor of the move expressed disappointment that it didn’t appear to be happening on schedule. Those opposed took the opportunity to ridicule Netanyahu.

Israelis across the spectrum were grumbling this week about the approach of the July 1 deadline that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had set for himself to begin extending sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and approximately 30% of Judea and Samaria.

Those in favor of the move expressed disappointment that it didn’t appear to be happening on schedule. Those opposed took the opportunity to ridicule Netanyahu for trying to wriggle out of his promise by orchestrating a fight with his coalition partner, Defense Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz, for internal political reasons. But all are accusing Netanyahu of capitulation or machinations, depending on their point of view.

Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, told Army Radio on Wednesday that the issue will not be brought to a vote until US President Donald Trump – author of the “Peace to Prosperity” plan that includes the sovereignty move – makes an announcement on the matter. Akunis was alluding to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s comment last week to White House reporters that she would “leave it to [Trump] to give you a big announcement” on the matter.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16173/israel-borders-islamic-law

This is where the plan for extending Israeli law over more territory becomes simpler to resolve both legally and morally. However many times the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state, they have chosen to turn it down, rejecting generous peace offers. They have preferred to use terrorism and three wars launched from Gaza in pursuit of their fantasy of destroying Israel. By 2017, they had rejected no fewer than seven peace offers, and this year Mahmoud Abbas turned down the new US-Israeli peace plan.

Fortunately, if Israel were to extend Israeli law to more land, the move could present a great opportunity to end the conflict. The decisive end by Israel to a Palestinian fantasy that should never have been humoured in the first place might finally enable Palestinian leaders finally to start their citizens on a constructive — rather than a destructive — path.

In part one, we identified several ways in which international bodies, states, and individuals interpret the US-Israeli plan for Israel to extend Israeli law in the ancient Jewish homeland of Judaea and Samaria. There is widespread, and misguided, agreement that such a move would be illegal under international law, which regards occupation and “annexation of territory” in a negative sense.

However, as we have seen, much of this interpretation is based on confusion about the history of the region, the origins of the state of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian rejection of a state for their own people. It is also a contradiction between Western-inspired international law and earlier Islamic law.

Let us start with a look at the original 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, a territory designed to be administered by Great Britain until it could emerge as an independent state. Even a brief glance at a map of the territory shows that the Mandate made the whole of Palestine, including Gaza and what is now the West Bank with Judea and Samaria, the region designated for the future Jewish homeland. Writing in Israel Hayom recently, Dr. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, argues that this original designation means that it is not appropriate to term Israel’s coming move to place the Jordan Valley of the West Bank an “annexation”. Aggressive annexation of territory through war is, he agrees, unacceptable and illegal — but Israel only entered the West Bank in 1967 during a defensive war.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-right-kind-of-gay-pride/

Israeli Public Security Minister Amir Ohana—a proud member of the LGBTQ community and equally proud member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party—has said that “being attracted to men doesn’t mean you have to believe in creating a Palestinian state.”

Ohana made that statement during an interview with The New York Times a year ago in June, when Netanyahu appointed him interim justice minister.

Ohana—a lawyer, a major in the reserves and a veteran of the Shin Bet—is hated by the left for the policies that he promotes and the bills that he has drafted. Among the latter is the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

But it is Ohana’s view of judiciary overreach that has earned him the greatest wrath among his detractors. When he was first appointed justice minister, he made a statement to the effect that not all Supreme Court decisions should be honored.

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In the wake of the ensuing uproar from the disingenuous “defenders of democracy”—those who don’t believe in the separation of powers as long as the judges that they deem politically correct are occupying the bench—Channel 12’s Amit Segal asked Ohana if he really meant what he had said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16172/israel-borders-law

Today’s Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews and glorify — and handsomely profit from — violence against them.

It is common today to find references to Palestine as a mainly Muslim Arab state that has supposedly been “stolen” by Jews, or promised but not given to those people who describe themselves as Palestinians. That is an immense misconception, albeit one that seems to influence political and legal thinking internationally, especially among people who would like to believe it.

In a clearer understanding [of international law], Israel’s planned move appears to be legal.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism…. [T]he moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” — PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen, the Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 31, 1977.

In general, taking territory from another country is treated under international law as illegal. Much of our sense that such illegality is as much morally wrong as it is legally prohibited comes from historical realities in modern history. The Nazi German takeovers of numerous countries across Europe between 1938 and 1945, together with the brutality with which they were carried out, stand even today as notorious examples of unacceptable behaviour in an attempt to dominate other peoples without the least pretence of legality of purpose or practice. More recently, the Russian Federation’s 2014 invasion of Crimea has caused unnecessary conflict with Ukraine and damaged Russia’s own international reputation.

Article 2 of the first chapter of the United Nations Charter declares:

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

This was formulated in 1945, in a very understandable response to the aggressions by Nazi Germany. It remains a valid ruling on the dangers posed by powerful nations should they too choose to use force to take over neighbouring territories. Even so, Article 2 was contravened by China in 1959 when it overran Tibet; by Turkey in 1974 when it invaded northern Cyprus, and is constantly contravened by Iran — with the evident complicity of most of the members of the UN — in its expansions into Iraq, Syria, Yemen ad Lebanon, as well as its 41-year-long threats to obliterate a fellow UN member state, Israel.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/palestinian_intransigence_and_the_illusion_of_peace_enough_is_enough_.html

On Jan. 28, 2020, the long-awaited Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century,” officially titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People,” was made public.  The proposal aspires to reach the goal within its title after unfreezing and advancing negotiations between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The aim is to end a conflict as old as the State of Israel, and in some ways older.  The plan entails Israel replacing the present military law with its system of civil law in the still non-sovereign territory that Israel captured from the Jordanians and has administered since June 1967. The change would directly affect the lives of the estimated nearly 400,000 Israeli citizens who reside in this area. 

The plan allows Israel to execute this change only after July 1st and on no more than what constitutes 30 percent of the West Bank, or biblical Judea and Samaria. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently acknowledged in a meeting with the elected heads of a number of Jewish towns from these areas that the initial application of Israeli civil law would apply to only about 3% of the territory that constitutes 132 Jewish communities recognized by the state.  The remaining 27%, essentially the Jordan valley, would undergo the transition pending further negotiations with the Trump administration.

The plan also envisions a sovereign State of Palestine on the remaining 70 percent of this land, plus a small area of the western Negev Desert that is currently within the borders of Israel.  But the Palestinians stand to gain not only land.  The economic section of the plan that was rolled out at a multi-national workshop held in Manama, Bahrain, June 25-26, 2019, sets as an objective the establishment of a $50 billion international investment fund for 179 infrastructure and business projects within the nascent Palestinian state.  However, a sovereign Palestine with a national capital just beyond the border of East Jerusalem would receive recognition by the United States and Israel only if after four years from its acceptance of the plan the Palestinian Authority succeeds in meeting a number of criteria. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16167/palestinians-execute-unarmed-civilian

The two fatal incidents — the killing of the terrorist by the IDF and the killing of the unarmed, handcuffed civilian by the Palestinian security forces — are a perfect demonstration of how the Palestinians twist truth until it is utterly unrecognizable to the international media while hiding their own crimes against their own people.

The same Palestinian officials who are accusing Israel of carrying out “extrajudicial executions” are facing the same charge by Palestinian human rights organizations. That, however, is an inconvenient truth that the leaders of the Palestinians are striving to conceal from the eyes of the world.

The real problem, however, lies far beyond the con artists Erekat and Ashrawi: it lies instead with the attitude of the international media and community towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Why are foreign media outlets who are reporting about the killing of a terrorist by Israeli troops ignoring the real “extrajudicial executions” — the ones that are carried out by the Palestinians who are again trying to conceal their crime by diverting attention (and outrage) against Israel?

If Palestinian officials, so called human rights organizations and international reporters are worried about “extrajudicial killings,”… they should talk to the family of Al-Amouri, human rights organizations and eyewitnesses — who can describe in detail how Palestinian security forces shot dead a handcuffed man in front of his elderly mother.

Two Palestinians were shot dead near Jerusalem on June 23 — one by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) near the village of Abu Dis and the other by the Palestinian Authority security forces in the town of Al-Eizariya.

The man killed by the IDF, 28-year-old Ahmed Erekat, was fatally shot after he attempted to carry out a terror attack against Israeli soldiers with his car. A female soldier was lightly wounded in the attack.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/06/28/netanyahu-is-a-peacemaker-and-dont-think-the-left-will-mention-it-n583470

The “last decade,” notes James Sinkinson in a perceptive article, has seen a “sea change” in Israel’s ties with “key Arab states.”

And that last decade is also the one in which Benjamin Netanyahu (again, after a stint in the 1990s) has been Israel’s prime minister — specifically since March 2009.

True, conditions for enhanced Arab-Israeli ties have been propitious — particularly the behavior of regional bully Iran, a common enemy; the Obama administration’s courting of Iran and signing of a nuclear deal with it that scared the wits out of both Israelis and Arabs; and the Trump administration’s ambivalence about the U.S. role in the Middle East. Sunni radicalism in the form of ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others is another common enemy of Israel and Arab states.

Added to that are Israel’s ever-intensifying military activity against Iran, particularly in Syria, which Arab governments watch with approval, along with Israel’s dramatically growing military, economic, technological, and diplomatic clout in general, to the point that in 2019 US News and World Report ranked it — despite how tiny it is — the world’s eighth most powerful country.

But ripe conditions are one thing; the ability to convert them into results is another. And the repeatedly reelected Netanyahu is little less than a diplomatic genius, under whose tenure Israel’s ties have surged not only with Arab states but also with India, China, Russia, as well as East European, African, and South American countries — basically in every niche of the world.

In the Arab sphere, as Sinkinson notes, “Israel’s cooperation and communication with the leadership of eight…nations — the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan — is greater than ever.”