Showing posts with label Oslo Accords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oslo Accords. Show all posts

Sunday, September 03, 2023

Diplomacy and peacemaking is not a smooth process. It requires a huge amount of preparation, planning and flexibility. 

It is always illuminating to look behind the scenes of the Oslo process. Gidi Grinstein, the youngest person at Camp David in 2000, is releasing his account of the events that he witnessed as well as his opinions of what to do moving forward to mark the 30th anniversary of Oslo.

His book, "(In)sights: Thirty Years of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process"  is his attempt to set the record straight after so many others gave their own versions of what happened at Camp David. 

Grinstein writes from the perspective of someone who truly wants to see peace. No one can doubt his love of Israel and Zionism - he was part of the team that founded Birthright Israel - but his perspective is decidedly on the Israeli Left.

I found his account fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons he intended.

Obviously Grinstein tries to spin the events towards his own politics. Instead of giving a straight chronological account of what happened, he spends a great deal of time on the "sausage" behind each negotiating point and then an overview of what has happened since then, along with his own opinions as to where things failed and what Israel should have done instead, in retrospect.

While Grinstein was the junior member at Camp David, he is perhaps the one person with the most knowledge of the big picture. He served as the Secretary and Coordinator of the Israeli Delegation for the Negotiations with the PLO from 1999-2001 under Ehud Barak.

Grinstein admires Barak a great deal, but his description of Barak is of someone who is cold and calculating, who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus for his own ends. He keeps his own cards close to his vest, so no one working for him has a clear idea of what their goals are. Grinstein extols Barak as "the smartest man in the room" who keeps his people working in a "matrix" of smaller tasks, while only Barak knows his real plan. This means that Barak creates his own backchannels to undermine the people officially working for him when he deems it necessary, he bypasses the chain of command, and he ensures plausible deniability.

Which, when you think about it, is a lot like Yasir Arafat. 

Before he worked for the Prime Minister's office, Grinstein worked for the Economic Cooperation Foundation. The ECF, founded in 1990, was itself one of those backchannels for creating relationships with, and building a peace plan with, the PLO. It was a power that helped bring about the Oslo Accords. 

To me, one of the most jarring parts of the book was where Grinstein describes how the ECF helped end Bibi Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. The ECF, which worked hand in glove with Yitzchak Rabin, opposed Netanyahu - and this Israeli think-tank colluded with the PLO to bring him down. Netanyahu demanded more concessions from the PLO in order to keep the Oslo process going, and the ECF convinced their friends in the PLO to pretend to agree to Netanyahu's demands, prompting him to sign the Hebron Agreement and the Wye River Memorandum based on lies. This caused the right wing of his coalition to revolt and new elections were called that brought Barak into office, just as the ECF intended.

Grinstein seemingly has no compunction about Israelis collaborating with the US and PLO to bring down an Israeli prime minister. The cause of peace justifies all.

Even Grinstein admits that the peace negotiators never really seriously thought about the possibility that Arafat had no intention to really sign a permanent agreement that would end the conflict and what would follow. They became friends with the PLO negotiators, and he lovingly describes how well his team would be treated when they visited Bethlehem or Ramallah and the personal friendships they struck up with the Palestinian team. He mentions and is fully aware of the wave of terror attacks during the 1990s, Arafat's incendiary speeches in Arabic, his actions being fully consistent with his "phased plan" to destroy Israel, but all of that is brushed aside in the pursuit of peace, just as using underhanded methods to bring down an Israeli prime minister is framed as a positive thing.

The only person who predicted the failure of the Oslo process, and that it would lead into war, was US Ambassador to Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, who hosted the negotiators for a Shabbat dinner. He had better insight than the entire Israeli peace delegation, who didn't even consider this.

Barak bet everything on the idea that Arafat could be pressured into signing an agreement. He was wrong. But there is very little hand-wringing on that mistake that brought about the second intifada. In fact, Grinstein emphasizes that Arafat was not the direct instigator of the intifada - even as he admits that Arafat had planned for such an event months ahead of time, and that his own security forces, trained and armed by the US, turned their weapons against Israeli forces in the first days of the fighting. He emphasizes that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount that supposedly triggered the war was fully coordinated with the PA but still doesn't blame the PA for its role - instead noting that the Jerusalem police response to the violence helped escalate it. 

Again, Grinstein isn't blind. But he seems to purposely keep one eye closed. 

Similarly, he emphasizes that, in retrospect, Barak should not have pushed for an all or nothing deal, and worked towards a provisional Palestinian state that could be further refined with later negotiations. This, of course, would have been a huge concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state up front. But while he praises the Quartet for employing that idea in their Road Map for Peace, he glosses over that the Palestinian leaders rejected the Road Map out of hand, and have consistently said that they do not want a provisional state. 

Also jarring is that, as far as I can tell, the Israeli peace negotiating teams -- both Track I and Track II - apparently were exclusively made up of non-religious males, overwhelmingly if not exclusively Ashkenazic. He notes that the only Israeli woman at Camp David was a secretary. He never mentions that any of the participants in the many meals hosted in the West Bank or Europe had to make accommodations for kosher food. Most of Israeli society is not represented by these peacemakers, who all seem to believe that they are smarter than anyone else in how to look at the big picture, and not really self-critical when it comes to their miscalculations and false assumptions that led to the failure of the peace process. Diversity was not a priority for these liberals. 

There is a lot of good information in this book, and it is illuminating - sometimes in ways that it is not meant to be. It is not edited well, unfortunately - for example,  it talks extensively about the ECF without explaining what it is, and there are still numerous typos and misspellings (French Premier "Shirak"), it repeats the same anecdotes a couple of times. Hopefully these will be fixed by the time it goes to press. 

The book is planned to be released in Israel in two weeks and in the US in December.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Thursday, August 31, 2023


Akiva Bigman in Mida writes that Ehud Barak had been planning to bring Benjamin Netanyahu down via mass protests long before the judicial reform issue was brought up.
Ehud Barak is a central figure in the protest movement against judicial reform. If you have been following the media, you may get the impression that although he is adamantly against Netanyahu and judicial reform, he is merely providing commentary and interpreting events. The reality is the opposite. Do not be deceived by his age or because he is a former prime minister and supposed elder statesman. At 81 years old, Barak is one of the main architects behind the current mass demonstrations. Yet, his involvement goes deeper. Barak is not only orchestrating today’s mass demonstrations, he has been integral in forming the anti-Bibi movement over the past seven years.

Recently, a chilling video of a Zoom conversation was circulated in which Barak describes a scenario of how he will return to power. He mentions that he has a friend, a historian, who told to him that he will become Prime Minister again when there are “bodies floating in the Yarkon river” of Jews murdered in a civil war. Barak immediately said that this should never happen. Yet, that he would mention such a grotesque idea, a truly horrifying scenario is disturbing. Moreover, this comment was made to a forum whose whole raison d’être is to get rid of Netanyahu and explore ideas on how to implement such a plan. Perhaps this was a slip of the tongue, or maybe it was said by someone whose purpose in orchestrating these protests is about his own return to power.

Nonetheless, the Zoom conversation video containing the “bodies in the Yarkon river” comment actually occurred in 2020 during the Corona pandemic, years before judicial reform became a legislative issue. Meaning, the notion that it is specifically judicial reform that is bothering Barak, or the people he is guiding, is bogus. And the fact that Barak was having conversations with those who raised the idea of mass civil disobedience only serves to reinforce Barak’s role in guiding these protests.  

Barak's words in the 2020 video sure sounds like a blueprint for the protests happening today, especially using the word "democracy" as a slogan. 

But he had been saying the same thing since 2016:

These are Barak’s words at the Herzliya conference, pay attention to the recurring motifs that he still talks about today:

“We have been led for more than a year by a prime minister and a government that is weak, limp and all talk, even according to senior members of its coalition, deceitful and extremist, that fails repeatedly, in guaranteeing security, undermining the fabric of democracy in Israel, failing in managing diplomatic relations with the United States and in stabilizing Israel’s position in the world… Here, I call on the government to come to its senses and immediately get back on track. If you don’t do that, we will all have to get up from our comfortable and less comfortable seats – and overthrow it, through a popular protest and through the voter’s ballot – before it’s too late.”

These are the components of Ehud Barak’s second political comeback: de-legitimization of the government, a deep animus towards Bibi and therefore the slogan ‘anything-but-Bibi’, and mass demonstrations.

Bigman's article goes on to bring  other evidence to bolster this thesis.

Could this be true?

I am reading a pre-release edition of "(In)sighrs: Thirty Year of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process" by Gidi Grinstein. Grinstein was the secretary and youngest member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David in 2000 and his book is an account of the negotiations at the time. He worked for the Barak government during his premiership and famously used the Heimlich maneuver when Barak was choking at Camp David. 

 Grinstein loves Ehud Barak. He was "blown away" by Barak's speeches. He describes him as "the smartest man in the room" who manages to break down complex problems into a "matrix" of small tasks. He describes Barak's political brilliance in building a coalition as well as in his ambitious attempts to accomplish three things in a short time period - a peace deal with Syria, withdrawal from Lebanon whether negotiated or unilateral, and then peace with the PLO, all before Clinton would leave office. 

But, whether Grinstein realizes it or not, Barak comes off as a jerk in this book. His "matrix" of things to be done were all in his head and he wouldn't share his strategy or plans with anyone. On the contrary, Barak would instruct his PLO negotiating team to continue their work even as he sabotaged their progress because he wanted to work on the other tracks first. Grinstein admits this: chief negotiator Dr. Oded Eran was a serious expert who led the team, but he was a "pawn in Barak's masterplan" whose hands were politically tied by Barak, and Barak then built his own secret negotiating team, completely leaving Eran out of the loop.

This was hardly the only example where Barak would throw people under the bus because he thought he was the only one brilliant enough to see the big picture - and to maintain his power. There was no chain of command in Barak's government, and the only possible result in such a system is chaos. Grinstein himself admits that one day Barak asked him to leak information to the New York Times, bypassing his boss, and leaving him in an uncomfortable position. Official positions were circumvented by Barak's personal backchannels. No one knew their real roles.  Everyone working for Barak was a chess piece for his ambition, not a human being. Barak comes off as a paranoid, power-mad Machiavellian far more than the wise peacemaker Grinstein tries to position him as. 

The theory that Ehud Barak is the force behind the protests today in a bid to regain power, when he cannot hope to do so by democratic means, is entirely consistent with the Ehud Barak described in a book that adores him. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, August 09, 2023


The official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency reports:

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today received in his Ramallah office the new head of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Kerstin Gerling, in the presence of its former head, Alexander Tieman, and IMF Resident Representative Thomas Laursen, during which they discussed the impact of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian economy.

"The Israeli occupation is the main obstacle to the development process in Palestine. Israel has employed many tools to control us, whether through direct military occupation of our lands, and control of the borders, crossings, the labor market, and infrastructure," said the Prime Minister.
Let's look at the list of how Shtayyeh claims Israel is controlling the Palestinian economy and development - and compare it to how Jews existed in British Mandate Palestine:

The British military occupied the entire land.
The British controlled the borders.
The British controlled the crossings.
The British controlled the labor market.
The British controlled the infrastructure.

Yet , somehow, the Zionist Jews managed to build an economy, develop industry, create an entire export industry, innovate in farming techniques, drain the swamps to rid the country of malaria, and at the same time build universities, newspapers, cultural institutions, sports teams and everything else to be ready for independence.

And the Jews did it all in 26 years, from 1922 to 1948.

The Palestinians have essentially complete control of all of Area A and administrative control of Area B for 28 years now, since Oslo II in 1995. They have control over their own labor market. They have control over their own infrastructure. By nearly every metric, they have more autonomy than Jews did under British rule.

But what do they have to show for it? Whining about how the Jews are stopping them from building an economy!

Unlike Jews in the 1920s, Palestinians can build an economy providing services worldwide via networking. Residents can program, translate, do legal service work, artwork - anything that can be done remotely. Unlike the Jews in the British Mandate, the Palestinians are surrounded by fellow Arabs who would happily buy goods from them if they were competitive on price and quality. 

Where are the initiatives to build such an economy? 

As far as I can tell, every major plan to improve the Palestinian economy comes from non-Palestinians - from the UN, or the Quartet. The Palestinians outsource their own future to others - and then blame Israel when they don't accomplish anything. 

The Jews in the mandate period didn't have international organizations falling over themselves to build a Jewish state - but almost every nation in the world claims to support building an independent Palestinian state. 

Even with the billions of aid, the automatic majority in the UN, countless NGOs willing to fully support the Palestinian cause, and a history of hundreds of millions of petrodollars invested in Palestinian governance, the Palestinians still have next to nothing to show for it. 

But they do have someone to blame - Israel.

And the world believes the obvious lie.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Every month or so, Jewish pilgrims go to visit Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus). 

Under the Oslo Accords, Jews should have free access to the holy site. But Palestinians would rather kill them.

So the IDF has to go in to protect the worshipers, and the worshipers go in the middle of the might, to cause as little of a disturbance to the nearby residents as possible.

Fat chance. Terror groups are hell-bent on blocking the Jews from visiting their holy spot, so they try to stop the pilgrimage - with bullets, with IEDs, and generally turning the city into a mini-war zone.

Every month.

On Wednesday night, one mujahid was killed as he tried to prevent Jews from visiting the site. 

Terror-linked media gleefully brag about how much firepower they use to be active Jew-haters:

The Al-Quds Brigades - the Nablus Brigade responded to the storming of the occupation forces and settlers, by firing heavy salvoes of bullets at them and detonating a number of explosive devices in more than one area in the vicinity of Joseph's Tomb.
Islamic Jihad issued a press release saying that they successfully repelled the Jews:
Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, confirmed that its mujahideen in the Nablus Battalion repelled, tonight, the occupation forces' incursion into the eastern region of the city and the vicinity of Joseph's Tomb, with heavy salvoes of bullets and explosive devices.

The Saraya said in several military reports, "The soldiers of the Al-Mayamin Battalion targeted the occupation vehicles on Al-Hisba Street with heavy bullets, and they were also  able to detonate a number of explosive devices in the occupation vehicles on Amman Street and Al-Hisba directly.

The terrorists up the ante to bury IEDs in the road. Israel brings in armored bulldozers to detonate them.



The only reason there is escalation on the Palestinian side is a burning desire to stop religious Jews - they type they claim that they don't hate - from worshiping. 

The only reason there is escalation on the Israeli side is to continue to protect the Jewish worshipers, and not to knuckle under to terror.

The PA should be the ones protecting the Jews under signed agreements. Obviously, they cannot. And almost certainly some members of the Al Aqsa Brigades are there, shooting at and trying to bomb the Jews, who are also members of PA security forces during the day. 

These are the facts around Joseph's Tomb. It is all antisemitism.  But no media has the guts to report that.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

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Sunday, April 16, 2023

This Twitter thread by Seth Frantzman is too important to leave to Twitter alone.
_____________________________________________________________________

It was interesting to once again read an article about “one state” and see how it relies on the same false premises as the previous recent claims regarding this at HRW, Amnesty, etc; very similar language employed to advance the theoryImage
The key sentence to always look for is “river to the sea” which is a classic far-right extreme national Palestinian talking point that has always asserted that Palestine must be “river to the sea” to remove Israel from the mapImage
This is important because the “river to the sea” is not a policy Israel has pushed, it’s solely a talking point historically of Palestinian extreme nationalism. And it’s all about Gaza. The key focus is always to force Israel to reoccupy Gaza 
It’s important to always be keyed into what is going on in these articles. Israel withdrew from Gaza but the goal of the “River to sea” Hamas movement and extreme nationalists was always to continue to define Gaza as “occupied” 
This was a lesson of the withdrawal. It didn’t matter if Israel withdrew and kept withdrawing, because it would always be defined as “occupying” so as to keep the “River to sea” narrative. 
It’s an important phrase to look for, because when we hear “one state” this is never about a one state of equality, this is solely about creating one Palestinian state from “the River to the sea” like every map used in a Hamas classroom. 
The bait and switch with any article on “one state” is it pretends to be about getting rights for Palestinians, but ignores the fact that Israelis also deserve rights and Israelis don’t want to run Gaza or “the River to the sea” 
What’s interesting is the article suggests the US seek to terminate Israel’s military rule…except when Israel has ended military rule, like leaving Gaza…the “River to the sea” crowd demand Israel re-occupy or define it as occupying anyway.Image
This is a key point. Because under Oslo the PA received autonomous areas run by a U.S.-backed Palestinian Security Force…but the goal of “River to the sea” is to make sure Israel returns to military rule in Ramallah. It doesn’t want more withdrawal. 
Now look at the bait and switch…they want an end to military rule. But also say “River to the sea” and then say “equality”. How do they suggest Israel will return to rule Gaza which is run by Hamas except via military force…but then bring in equality?Image
Of course another part of the scam of “River to the sea” is to turn Hamas into just a random organization that “brooks little dissent” ; whereas Israel is described as having the most harsh draconian rule…of course no mention that Hamas is a far right extremist hate groupImage
I just wonder if under the term “brooks little dissent” is included mass murder ethnic cleansing genocidal hate crimes that Hamas carried out? All the bus bombings were just “not brooking dissent”. No mention of rockets that can go 100km… 
Anyway, back to the premise. To get to the “River to the sea” and reoccupation of Gaza the claim has to be made that this is all a single state, which it is not. Anyone who drives from Tel Aviv to Ramallah and Gaza knows it’s not one stateImage
Nevertheless we get sentences like this…is the Gaza-Egypt border controlled by Israel? It’s not right? So the whole premise is based always on bad information. Israel doesn’t control all entry points to Gaza. But the whole premise is based on Israel controlling GazaImage
And we can see how problematic this is by just looking at how the same publication ran an article on Nagorna-Karabakh above the same piece…but that conflict is described totally differently.Image
When they discuss that conflict somehow the same logic and standards about controlling the entry of goods and people isn’t applied…so we can see that the analysis about Israeli control is solely applied to Israel to force Israel to re-occupy GazaImage
The irony of the push for one state today is that Israel is MORE divided from the West Bank Palestinian Authoriry areas and Gaza than in the past. This isn’t the 1980s…Gaza and the WB have been ruled by Hamas and the PA for more than a generation. 
Think about it. Someone born in Gaza in 2005 is now 18 years old. And this “River to the sea” nonsense suggests that they will be under one state along with Tel Aviv? How? How would that happen? 
Israel was told to withdraw. It did withdraw from Gaza and all it got was Hamas and rocket fire and endless attacks and Iran exploiting the withdrawal to send in middle tech; and it was told even if it withdraws it still “occupies” 
The goal of “River to the sea” was always to prevent Israel leaving. The more Israel leaves, the more it is told it is one state. Because the goal was always One Palestinian State. Greater Palestine. Not two states. 
Here is the piece in full
Let me add a few more aspects to this. When people push for one state of “equality” but without “military rule” they premise this on everyone being peaceful. These ideas, like “federation” might work in some place living in peace and coexistence, like in parts of the EU… 
But how can anyone force Israel and Hamas in Gaza under one state? It doesn’t make sense, it is trying to force groups to live together that have grown apart and despise one another. 
The one state people are purposely naive. They know Gaza can’t be ruled by the same polity that rules Tel Aviv and Ramallah and Jerusalem. They know this. These people would suggest turning Serbia and Kosovo into one state… 
The lie of one state is like suggesting that after years of brutal war, like in Ukraine, that somehow Ukraine and Russia and Belarus will be “one state”…it’s so ridiculous…and yet the theory keeps getting play because no one has to answer tough questions 
The theory is based on so many false premises, the worst of which is trying to force Israel to reconquer Gaza to force it into one state…but mostly it’s based on a lie that ignores the reality of division on the ground. It purposely ignores this 
The reason they don’t mention Iran arming Hamas or rockets or bus bombings is because to get to one state one has to ignore the extremist hate rhetoric that underpins much of Hamas rule and the PA. When people are educated for hate for generations how can they be one state 
These articles always are tough on Israel right wing government but they don’t ask questions about the far-right in Ramallah and Gaza, to get to one state how does anyone suggest forcibly putting together groups that viscerally oppose one another? 
In essence the program is for civil war, and that’s why River to the sea was always the motto, just like in 1947…it was about removing the desire of two groups for two states to force one state on them. They didn’t want it in 1947 or today. 
One could argue the one state lobby is a colonial lobby designed to create new states like in the eras of the past where lines would arbitrarily be drawn and peoples forced together, wars resulting. 
Although this article falls under the overall context of opinion and analysis…it still deserved fact checking regarding who controls the Gaza - Egypt border; it’s misleading to claim Israel controls it and on this hinges a key part of the one state argument. 
I also double checked the piece and couldn’t find any reference to Egypt throughout. How can you mention Gaza and not Egypt? Also Iran is mentioned only twice…kind of ridiculous considering it helped massively arm Hamas and this caused the Gaza blockade 
How can anyone suggest Israel must control all this area and extend equal citizenship to everyone but not mention that a foreign power is plowing weapons in that prevent this very thing…it’s deceptive and misleading 
It’s also interesting how the logic always applied to Israel is never applied to any other “occupation” like Afrin (no one demands Ankara extend equal rights there)…never used as analysis for any other disputed area or autonomous region or conflict. 
Also it’s interesting how they claim Israel is one of the most “illiberal” states but of course they never see that in other states the prioritize the rights of one group over others like Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, etc. they only find this in Israel… 
I’d be more willing to accept articles like this if these folk were also writing about how Kurds deserve equal rights and Ankara shouldn’t occupy Afrin and Yugoslavia should be one state again or whatever…but it’s never consistent. It’s only about Israel “River to the sea” 
Also if these kinds of articles treated Hamas as the far right extremist Greater Palestine organization that it is…instead of always claiming Israel’s right is extreme but downplaying Palestinian nationalist far rightism. 
Another assertion in the piece that rings hollow is critiquing the Abraham Accords and monarchies that normalized…but somehow not minding those “thrones” that didn’t normalize in Doha or Kuwait…like one monarchy bad, others good…be consistent if you don’t like monarchies 
You can’t be against authoritarianism when it makes peace with Israel “but doesn’t represent the people” but then not mention the authoritarians in Syria and Iran who also don’t represent “the people”. Which is it? Authoritarians are bad only when they normalize… 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

From Ian:

Palestinians are playing the long game on world stage – Israel could lose
The United Nations General Assembly recently approved a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to render an opinion on whether the continuing Israeli occupation of the territories has become permanent, and in fact an annexation of the territories. In principle, the Court’s opinions are not binding, and its decisions cannot be directly translated into steps against Israel. However, in practice, the petition of the case to the ICJ is part of a broader Palestinian strategy, and in the present international climate is liable to have significant implications.

In recent years, the Palestinians have adopted the practice of involving international institutions in their conflict with Israel. These efforts include their appeal to the ICJ on the legality of the separation fence, a push for the establishment of international commissions of inquiry after every military operation in Gaza, complaints to the International Criminal Court that led to a pending investigation of Israeli actions related to the conflict, and a drive to have Palestine admitted as a member state of various international organizations.

The Palestinian activity in international organizations is coordinated and aggregate. For example, the General Assembly’s recognition of the State of Palestine in 2012 provided the basis for the determination that the International Criminal Court has the authority to investigate Israeli actions related to the conflict. An ICJ decision that the Israeli occupation is illegal would serve as the basis for additional proceedings against Israel.

Developments in Israeli law are also liable to affect the legal ramifications of the ICJ proceeding. In 2004, it published an opinion that the construction of the separation fence in the territories was a violation of international law. In practice, no steps were taken against Israel as a result of that ruling. A significant factor in Israel’s ability to fend off the opinion was the fact that the Supreme Court had looked into the issue and concluded that the fence was legal under international law. In several places, the Supreme Court even intervened and ordered that its location be modified in order to comply with international law.

However, it seems that the Supreme Court’s willingness to impose international law on Israel’s activities in the territories is no longer as resolute as in the past. In recent years, the court has refrained from intervening in issues related to international law. If the Override Clause is enacted, the Court’s authority to review Israeli actions in the territories will be weakened even more, and the Knesset will be able to pass legislation such as the Settlement Regulation Law, which the Court struck down in 2020. In this situation, it is quite likely that international tribunals will pay no attention to proceedings in the Israeli Supreme Court and not view them as a reason to refrain from investigating the issues.
PMW: The continuing lie of the “Gaza blockade”
In 2022, United Nations officials and reports, many countries and their representatives, and the Palestinian Authority continued to perpetuate the lie alleging that Israel has applied a “blockade” on the “besieged Gaza Strip.”

While the lie was commonplace and even often embellished by claiming that “Gaza is the biggest prison in the world,” statistics released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the so-called “occupied Palestinian territory” (OCHA) reveal the truth.

According to the OCHA statistics, in 2022 there were 424,417 exits via the Erez crossing from Gaza into Israel. 14,909 exits were for Gazan patients, who were accompanied by 10,930 people, entering Israel to receive medical treatment. There were also 573 entries into Israel to visit imprisoned terrorists.

Alongside the entry of the Gazans into Israel, OCHA also reported that 74,096 truckloads of commodities entered Gaza from Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing in 2022. According to the statistics, only 5% of the truckloads were carrying humanitarian products.

In addition to the 74,096 truckloads of commodities, thousands of trucks entered Gaza from Israel carrying fuel:

While statistics released by the Israeli Defense Ministry showed that from 2017-2021 Israel - incredibly - allowed 11,499 new vehicles into Gaza, the number of new cars that entered Gaza from Israel in 2022 has not yet been released.

The OCHA website further revealed that in 2022, in addition to the 424,417 exits from Gaza into Israel, there were an additional 245,145 exits from Gaza, via the Rafah crossing, into Egypt.

In addition to the movement of people, 32,353 truckloads of commodities also entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing. All the commodities that entered Gaza from Egypt were for commercial use. No humanitarian goods entered Gaza from Egypt.
A child of Oslo watches the Tel Aviv protests
Yet as a child of Oslo, born and raised in the dark years of rampant terror in which parents lost friends and friends lost parents, in which the obituary sections drove home realities that were decades premature, I have to ask myself: Does the Supreme Court really fulfill these functions in the name of protecting democracy and civil liberties? If so, shouldn't its decisions to rein in government policies be devoid of political bias?

In Oct. 1995, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's government pushed the Oslo B agreement through the Knesset by a 61-59 majority. It did so by promising members of Knesset, from a right-wing party, positions in the government in exchange for their votes. Where were the calls for reining in majority rule back then?

At the time, the left was perfectly happy to win by the slimmest of majorities, however it was achieved. This was the case even though the ramifications of the vote were severe. They did not only threaten civil rights but the physical lives and safety of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Israelis.

Ten years later, I spent the summer of 2005 in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. I witnessed firsthand what it was like for the people there when Ariel Sharon turned his back on everyone who voted for him and rammed the disengagement plan through, firing anyone in his government who dissented.

Yet for some reason, the Supreme Court, sans Justice Edmond Levy, decided that it was not its place to interfere. It stood by as the government sent soldiers to expel citizens from their homes, crushing any semblance of their civil liberties.

Sadly, we are still paying for this decision to this day, with Hamas now ruling the dunes where once our hothouses bloomed.

This two-faced approach proves that we should not blindly accept the rhetoric employed by the protestors. This controversy is not really about civil rights or the strength of Israel's democracy. It's about power. Political power and judicial power. It is about people who want influence over the future of the State of Israel even when the majority of the people chose not to elect them.

It's hard to contain the feelings that bubble up when I hear friends on the left who supported Oslo and then the disengagement talk about how the Supreme Court is the defender of civil rights in this country. The Supreme Court proved otherwise when it abandoned the people of Gush Katif. They proved that their own politics supersede their supposed commitment to upholding the civil rights of all Israelis, making this argument against the reform null and void.

Monday, January 09, 2023



Ralph Wilde, an associate professor at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, writes in OpinioJuris that Israel's presence anywhere beyond the 1949 armistice lines is illegal - not the settlements, but the "occupation" of every square centimeter. 

It is a classic case where the opinion precedes the evidence, and the evidence is then shoe-horned into the argument.

There is a great deal of garbage there, but here's an argument that I had never seen before, that is profoundly stupid.
 Neither United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, nor the so-called Oslo Accords, provide an alternative legal basis for the existence/continuation of the occupation. Indeed, the Oslo Accords are themselves violative of international law, because ‘consent’ to them by the PLO was coerced through the illegal use of force, and, relatedly, they conflicted with norms of international law that have a special non-derogable/jus cogens status (the prohibition on the use of force other than in self-defence, and the right of self-determination).  

According to Wilde, the Oslo Accords were illegal because the PLO was coerced to sign them by Israel.

No one to my knowledge has made that claim, ever. Not during the Oslo process from 1993-2000, not during the second intifada, not afterwards. 

The PLO itself certainly never made this claim; to this day, Mahmoud Abbas charges Israel with violating the Oslo Accords but he has not once said that they don't apply because the PLO was coerced

What next? Do we retroactively invalidate the Treaty of Versailles because the Germans lost World War I and therefore were subject to coercion if they didn't sign?

Wilde's illogic is remarkable. But he really tries to make it seem reasonable. In his more expansive article on the topic, he writes:

Given that much of international law operates on the basis of a fiction of sovereign equality despite de facto inequality, treaties between unequal parties are not necessarily invalid for that reason. But one red line is when the powerful party, as here, is subjugating the other party in a particular manner—through an illegal use of force—in a way that has so compromised the freedom of action of that other party when it comes to their consent to the agreement, that the agreement can be understood to have been “procured” through that particular form of subjugation. The Oslo Accords meet this test and are legally-void on this basis. Indeed, their procurement in the context of the occupation constitutes a manifest and egregious form of coercion prescribed by the equivalent rule of customary international law to the provision in the [Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties] when it comes to invalidity.

This means that every case of occupation can never be ended through negotiations because the occupied party is by definition coerced into its agreement. 

Wilde's bizarre argument brings up another question. Who determines, under his fantasy version of international law, that one party is being coerced? Normal people would say that it would be the coerced parties themselves. But if the PLO doesn't claim they were coerced to sign the agreements, and indeed make constant arguments that Oslo is valid and Israel is violating it, then how can anyone else possibly make that assertion as fact? 

Apparently, Wilde thinks that his own opinion on what constitutes coercion outweighs that of the party he says was coerced! This is no longer the pretense of interpreting international law - this is an attempt to create international law based on what a single uninvolved anti-Israel academic thinks.

Beyond that, we have another problem. If Oslo was signed under coercion, then why didn't the PLO sign the proposed peace agreements from Camp David and Taba, when they were being pressured not only by Israel but by the world's only superpower at the time, the United States? How did Arafat resist that pressure but succumb to the much milder coercion of 1993? What changed - under an international law framework - from his being unable to have free will in 1993 and his freedom in 2000?

It gets better. If Oslo is retroactively illegal, then the Palestinian Authority created by them must retroactively disappear, and any agreements that it signed  over the past 25 years are also meaningless, since it never existed. And since the UNGA-recognized "State of Palestine" is simply a renaming of the PA, then it must also disappear - and its signature erased from all the treaties it signed. 

Wilde, for all his erudition and expertise, proves himself to be a fraud in this argument. He is clearly twisting international law to fit his own pre-determined conclusion. 

And that should disqualify him from teaching anyone. 

(h/t Irene)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, January 02, 2023

Bulldozers demolishing Jewish vineyard with illegally built mosque nearby, untouched


Here's a story that you won't ever see in the media. 

From a press release by Regavim (received via email):
This morning, the Civil Administration uprooted a Jewish vineyard near Yitzhar, only 300 meters away from an illegal mosque for which demolition orders were issued 15 years ago

The Civil Administration – under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense - uprooted a vineyard near the Yitzhar community this morning, following a petition submitted by Palestinian Arabs to Israel’s High Court of Justice. Despite the fact that no Arab ownership of the land on which the vineyard was planted, some four years ago, has ever been proven, the Jewish owners of the vineyard received a “Disruptive Land-Use Order.” This unique military order allows removal of agriculture, even when no conflicting claim of ownership is submitted or proven – and is used by the Civil Administration exclusively against Jews.  

Only 300 meters away from the uprooted orchard, in Area C on the outskirts of the nearby Arab town Burin, stands an illegal mosque for which the Civil Administration issued a demolition order over 15 years ago. The Regavim Movement appealed to the High Court of Justice to force the Civil Administration to enforce the demolition order, and the government gave its solemn commitment to uphold the law – but the illegal mosque stands, undisturbed, to this very day - and dozens of additional illegal structures have been built around it in the interim.  

Regavim’s spokesperson called upon Minister Betzalel Smotrich to tackle this absurdity on his very first full day in office: “The Disruptive Land-Use  Order is a draconian measure that has been applied in a wildly discriminatory fashion, and should be struck down without delay. This was the conclusion reached years ago by the Special Commission headed by Justice Edmond Levy, and we call upon Minister Smotrich to take this long-overdue step.”   

Moshe Shmueli, Regavim’s Field Coordinator for Judea and Samaria, added: “For 15 years, the Civil Administration has failed to enforce the law against nearby illegal Palestinian construction – despite its commitment to the High Court of Justice. On the other hand, it has taken swift, even brutal enforcement action and uprooted a Jewish vineyard, costing the owners hundreds of thousands of shekels in losses. The rule of law must be equal, or it cannot be called the rule of law. This morning’s demolition is one more example of how far off track the Civil Administration has strayed.”  
Arabs will take over whatever non-claimed land they can find in Area C, often with EU support. But often when Jews try to do the exact same thing, the Israeli Civil Administration steps in.

Regavim is not an anti-Arab organization. They just want the laws to be applied equally. 

Interestingly, Regavim has a decent chance to be heard in the new government - because its founder was Betzalel Smotrich. (h/t YMedad)




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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