Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Moving the red lines

Binyomin Netanyahu has, apparently accidentally, stumbled upon one of the best political weapons Israel has. And even he doesn't realize it.

When he took office, the Western press started obsessing over his non-use of the words "two state solution." The world made the assumption - despite "Ultra-Rightist Avigdor Lieberman's"' acceptance of the Roadmap - that Netanyahu was a super-hawk whose proposals for peace were smokescreens for his real desire to annex the entire Arab world and perform a genocide on all Palestinian Arabs. The pressure started to build and Netanyahu, like all recent Israeli leaders, buckled a few days ago when he tacitly seemed to accept "linkage" despite explicitly renouncing it:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to tear down settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank in return for US backing on its stance on arch-foe Iran, local media reported on Tuesday.
Netanyahu told his right-wing Likud faction on Monday that Israel would have to dismantle what it considers illegal outposts, as demanded by Washington, since the issue of Iran was more important, newspaper reports said.
"I identify the danger and that's why I am willing to take unpopular steps such as evacuating outposts. The Iranian threat is above everything," the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot quoted Netanyahu as saying.
"There are things on which you have to compromise."

Despite the seeming waves of pressure on Israel in reaction to Bibi's "intransigence," however, there has been an undertow in the opposite direction from his perceived lack of support for a two-state solution.

His reticence to say the magic words "Palestinian state" are causing people to openly wonder whether a such a state is desirable or feasible.

Canada's National Post has always been on the right wing in the Middle East conflict, but the following article (republished in the Vancouver Sun) would have been inconceivable a few months ago:

The two-state solution illusion

...A two-state solution sounds pleasant to Western ears. It seems the proper thing for Canadian politicians to say. Certainly the media would pillory Harper and Ignatieff were they to refuse to play along. But were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to endorse the plan tomorrow—as Barack Obama wants as precondition to helping Israel resist Iranian nuclear agression—it would be utterly meaningless. “There is no partner on the Palestinian side,” [Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled] Toameh says. Israel's West Bank settlements are no obstacle, he adds; they are a red herring: a minor issue that Jerusalem will easily handle—based on its readiness to dismantle its settlements in the past—when the moment is right. That time is not now, and is not coming soon. Because, in today's environment, whatever proposed peace agreement is backed by Abbas would only be instantly rejected by Hamas, and any deal with Hamas—were any possible—reflexively rejected by Fatah. And neither group has much validity in citizens' eyes, he reports. In fact, Toameh mischievously suggests Netanyahu might be clever to try what Obama wants and publicly back a two-state plan immediately, if only to put the Palestinians and international peace-plan backers “in a corner” by revealing to all how truly impossible implementing anything of the sort would be under the current circumstances.

The international community’s error, says Toameh, is that it seems to think statehood is something to be handed to Palestinians, like a gift. It is, he believes, an undeserved one. “I believe a state is not something we should be given, it is something we should earn,” says the West Bank-born journalist. Far from demonstrating a capability to create a functioning, responsible civil society, he says, Palestinians have only proven their willingness to tolerate chaos, mob-rule and terror. They watched as, instead of building hospitals and schools and infrastructure with the billions sent to Ramallah and Gaza, Arafat lined his own pockets, Fatah fattened its cronies, and Hamas purchased weapons. On the one hand, Palestinians have fallen again and again for rotten leadership, which in turn, do their best to suppress the emergence of more responsible alternatives. On the other, Toameh seems to suggest that the Palestinians are getting the government they deserve. “Everything is going in the wrong direction, largely because of the failure of Palestinians to hold [their] government accountable,” he says.

Bibi has moved the very parameters of the debate, and that points to incredible political power.

The Arab/Israeli conflict is, ultimately, binary. There might be 22 Arab nations, 57 Islamic nations and an entire building of diplomats in New York's East Side who love to dump on Israel, but in the end Israel does not have to go along with anything that compromises its own red lines. Unfortunately, those lines have become fuzzy, to put it mildly, and each time Israel's leaders retreat from one of them the vacuum is instantly filled with more pressure to bring the lines in ever closer.

What Bibi has inadvertently proven is that the opposite is still true. If Israel's leaders stake out an uncompromising position that pushes the lines outward, even at this late date, there will be a perceptible shift in the world's reaction, even amongst the predictable criticism.

While previous Israeli governments have effectively ceded parts of Jerusalem, Bibi is at least publicly moving that line back outward. If he doesn't yield, the net effect would be to change the very discourse from "how much of Jerusalem should Israel give away" to "should Israel give any away." Similarly, his public statements on natural growth in the settlements would also change the very terms of the debate from "Israel should return all of the West Bank" to "How much should Israel return?"

When all is said and done, the resolution to the problem is not to be found in legal or historic or religious arguments - it will be the result of negotiations. Netanyahu has the potential to strengthen Israel's negotiating position immensely, if he chooses to, by simply being strong in his convictions.

As one of the sides in this lopsided conflict against her, Israel holds some impressive cards that cost little to show. And if Israel is to learn anything from its Palestinian Arab neighbors, it is that the consequences of saying "no" often end up being rewards.

CAMERA picks up on EoZ PCHR research

From CAMERA's blog:

Elder of Ziyon blog's investigation of a list of Palestinian dead during the Israeli military operation in December and January reveals that hundreds who were reported to be civilians were in fact militants. The list of 1417 Palestinian victims was published in March by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based organization. By cross-checking the names on the list with other Palestinian sources, including Hamas-affiliated web sites, Elder of Ziyon was able to compile the names of 286 militants who PCHR misidentified as civilians.
Media coverage of the Israeli operation in Gaza prominently featured the accusation that Israeli forces engaged in indiscriminate and excessive violence, in some cases intentionally targeting civilians. PCHR's reports of civilian fatalities were frequently cited to substantiate this accusation. As CAMERA pointed out as early as January 21, scrutiny of PCHR's own data cast serious doubts about its accuracy. The CAMERA analysis pointed out over 20 cases of mislabeling militants as civilians and noted that 75 percent of the fatalities were young males of combat age.

The recent analysis by Elder of Ziyon delves further into PCHR's data and debunks PCHR's assertion that most members of Hamas internal security forces (policemen) were civilians. It also reveals that a number of children (aged 17 or under) were Hamas combatants - a point initially suggested in the CAMERA analysis.

While these revelations come too late to impact coverage of the fighting, it can only be hoped that responsible journalists will be less inclined to accept without scrutiny the casualty statistics and claims made by PCHR and other groups that most of the casualties caused by Israeli military action are civilians.

The research has slowed down but it is not finished yet.

New PA minister urges boycott of Israeli goods

From Ma'an:

Newly-appointed Palestinian Minister of Social Affairs Majida Al-Masri has ordered a ministry-wide boycott of Israeli products as her first decision in her new role.

The decision says Palestinian products must have the priority, but if a certain product is unavailable, priority goes to Arab countries, then foreign equivalent. Israeli products are to be boycotted altogether.

I hope she expands her plan to the entire PA.

I don't have recent statistics but in 2000, over 92% of the PA exports went to Israel, and 73% of Palestinian Arab imports came from Israel.

If we implement her plan, what little economy the PA has would disappear altogether.

But as their citizens go through garbage to get scraps of food, at least they'll have their honor!

Thoughts on Cardozo

There are a number of articles today asking whether Benjamin Cardozo would be properly considered the first Hispanic US Supreme Court Justice.

His ancestors likely came from Portugal, although his family lived in the US for generations. And some people question whether Portuguese people are properly considered Hispanic, with some contradictory evidence whether the US legally considers them as such.

I think that there is a subconscious reason why people did not historically consider Cardozo to be Hispanic or even Portuguese: because he was Jewish. And throughout history, with rare exceptions, Jews were not popularly considered to be full members of their adopted countries.

Some of the reason is from the Jews themselves, especially the more religious ones, who would tend to be more insular and separate. But much of the reason is simply because the Jews were never accepted as equal members of most of the societies they became a part of, even after hundreds of years.

The bottom line is that, throughout history, both Jews and non-Jews considered the Jewish people to be a nation of their own. Cardozo was first and foremost a (Sephardic) Jew, by his self-definition as well as by others, and this definition of Jew had little to do with religion and a lot to do with ancestry.

Which goes to show that, not too long ago, pretty much everyone agreed that the Jews were part of their own nation. It is interesting that only recently have people, for political purposes, started to question that fact.

PalArab news roundup 5/27/09

Work accident - A Hamas member was killed on a special "jihad mission" in the the northern Gaza Strip, and apparently he managed to kill someone else along with him. Interestingly, he seems to have been killed in a tunnel that is nowhere near Egypt, meaning that it is likely that Hamas is working on more tunnels to Israel to stage terror attacks.

Tunnel collapse - Another Gaza man was killed, and another injured, when a smuggling tunnel collapsed on them in Rafah.

Hamas, Fatah tensions escalate - For the past couple of weeks, the numbers of tit-for-tat arrests of Hamas members in the West Bank and Fatah members in Gaza have accelerated.

Love doesn't conquer all - An Israeli court is hearing an appeal of a gay Palestinian Arab man to become a permanent resident of Israel, as he has an Israeli lover and believes that his life is in danger under PA control.

Syrian snakes strike back - A Syrian girl was bitten four times by a viper in a single week. Perhaps the snakes are organizing their own resistance movement against Syrian girls for the Snake Nakba.

The 2009 PalArab self death count is now at 85.

Notable links

Nakba Day letter - the story of how a Jewish family was massacred in 1929 a day after the sheikh of a neighboring town promised their safety.

Solomonia on the Jewish Nakba.

Yaakov Lozowick on a small irony of "linkage."

Arabs worry about eating donkeys and pigs

Although I cannot find the source now, Gazans earlier this month feared that the meat being served in restaurants was actually donkey meat.

And now, Egyptians are worried that the hundreds of thousands of pigs slaughtered in Egypt because of swine flu fears have made their way into Egyptian markets as well.

Both pig and donkey are not allowed to be eaten by Muslims.

So, the Arab media has been publishing handy guides on how to tell the difference between pork and beef.

In other Islamic news, some $80,000 that had been donated by Yemen to Gazans via the "Islamic Society" charity has disappeared.

Egyptian police bribed by Gaza smugglers

From Ma'an:

Four Egyptian police officers stationed in the northern Sinai were arrested on suspicion of receiving bribes from Gazan smugglers, an Egyptian security source said on Tuesday. According to the source, the four officers are first lieutenants, and they were taken to north Sinai security department in Al-Arish city for questioning.

The four, according to the source, received a sum exceeding 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($17,800) each. The source highlighted that Egyptian Minister of Interior Habib Al-Aadily ordered suspending the four officers and withdrawing their weapons.

The bribes are nothing new.

This helps explain why Egypt regularly finds caches of weapons and explosives hidden in the Sinai but never seems to find them en route to Gaza from Rafah. The Rafah police are part of the problem.

Why did this Gaza baby die?

Ma'an reports:

The number of Palestinians to die as a result of the Israeli and Egyptian siege of Gaza reached 337 when an infant succumbed to illness on Monday.

The child, 12-month-old Muhammad Rami Ibrahim Nofal, was not issued a permit for medical treatment abroad, despite his serious heart condition. He died at a Khan Younis hospital while doctors waited for the permit that never came.

In a statement, the de facto Health Ministry said it had appealed to Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah border crossing for the movement of patients seeking treatment abroad.

Here's one of the stories where you have to read between the lines. Notice that nowhere in the story does it say that Israeli authorities were even contacted to treat the boy, and that Hamas only asked Egypt for help.

Some more details on the situation from IPS:

A Referral Abroad Department (RAD), comprising Gaza-based PA officials who
liaise with the West Bank's Ramallah government, was established by Hamas officials to coordinate the transfer of patients out of Gaza.
However, on Mar. 22, Hamas dismissed RAD's PA officials and replaced them with its own employees. The dismissal was based on Hamas accusations of nepotism and political favouritism by the PA in the issuance of the exit permits. Hamas also refused to cover the travel expenses of patients as the PA had previously done.
The Egyptian authorities, under pressure from Ramallah, then refused to allow those Gazan patients with Hamas documentation to cross over into Egypt.
Following the intervention of human rights organisations and Egyptian civil
rights groups, a compromise was reached Apr. 26 allowing a number of patients to
once again leave Gaza. The compromise involved Hamas reinstating the PA
officials, and the PA agreeing to establish a non-partisan medical committee to
approve the referrals abroad. Hamas has expressed reservations about the new
committee. Some patients who managed to cross the border with Hamas
documentation were, however, turned away at Egyptian hospitals because the
hospitals demanded PA references.

Since March, Hamas has been playing games with Gazans' lives, severely limiting the number of patients who go to Israel (the number plumetted from 325 in March to 90 in April.) Similarly, the PA has been telling Egypt not to accept patients with Hamas paperwork, causing more deaths.

Here is a clear case of people dying because of Palestinian Arab actions, that the world believes is because of the Israeli "siege."

An Arab serial killer is caught in Israel

From Ha'aretz:

Police revealed on Tuesday that the Israeli-American teen Dana Bennett was murdered by a serial killer.

Adwan Yahiya Farhan, 34, of the northern Arab village Wadi Hamam, has confessed to Bennett's killing, as well as three others.

The first murder attributed to Farhan took place in 1995. He allegedly murdered an acquaintance near the Jordan estuary, possibly following a homosexual relationship with him.

Farhan also confessed to having murdered his cellmate while being under arrest at Valleys Police, also in 1995. Up until now, police believed the victim committed suicide in his cell.

Farhan was imprisoned for the first time in 1999 and served four years after being convicted of sexual offenses.

His sentence commuted, he was released in 2002. In July 2003, he brutally murdered a 20-year-old Czech tourist in the northern Tzalmon River. Less than a month later, he kidnapped and murdered Dana Bennet.

In January 2004 he was sentenced for 20 months on charges of illegal possession of arms.

In September 2005, a month after his release, he was jailed again for three and a half years after being convicted of armed robbery and fraud.

In December 2008, while in prison, he was charged of rape.

YNet adds that he apparently tried to kill his sister and that he had no motive for the killings.

A terror group, the "Freedom for Galilee Brigades," had claimed responsibility for Bennet's kidnapping (calling the waitress a "soldier") and pretended that they were holding her. They have a history of claiming terror attacks that never occurred.

Report: Mubarak's grandson was treated in Israel

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak lost his grandson last week, forcing him to cancel a trip to Washington.

The official reports said that Mohammed Mubarak was treated at a hospital in Paris, but Arab sources are now reporting that the boy was in fact treated at a hospital in Petah Tikva, and that Egypt tried to cover up that fact.

Arab eyewitnesses at the hospital reported increased security around one patient, as well as Egyptian security forces. They assumed it was a prominent patient from Egypt but put the pieces together after hearing about Mubarak's loss.

The report says that the body was transferred to Paris and then back to Egypt, and that Israel cooperated fully in secrecy in order to avoid embarrassing President Mubarak.

A spokesperson for Schneider Hospital in Petah Tikva denied the report.

Heat Wave - by The Who?

This morning I heard an awful cover of the classic Motown hit, "Heat Wave," by Martha and the Vandellas. I have no idea who made that travesty, but as I surfed YouTube I came across a version by The Who.

Even though I'm a Who fan, I assumed that it would be bad, as most 60's covers were. But it is actually a pretty good version:

It seems appropriate for the unofficial first day of summer....

The Legal Status of Jerusalem

This is an excerpt from a pamphlet that was written by Julius Stone, a hugely influential legal scholar and prolific author of standard texts in the field, along with comments added by one of his students after Stone's death:

SOVEREIGNTY IN JERUSALEM

The Partition Plan of 1947 envisaged an international Jerusalem, separated from both Israel and the then proposed Palestinian State. During the 1948 war, East Jerusalem (which includes the holy places of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the old city) came into Jordanian hands; and Jordan claimed sovereignty. In 1967, after Jordan launched an attack on West Jerusalem, the whole of Jerusalem came under Israeli rule; and Israel claimed sovereignty over a united Jerusalem. Professor Stone examines the legal principles which apply, and considers the analysis of Professor Elihu Lauterpacht, the distinguished editor of the authoritative “Oppenheim’s International Law”.

The agreements implementing the Oslo Accords provide that Jerusalem is one of the issues to be considered in the permanent status negotiations, and failure to reach agreement on the sharing of administration in Jerusalem was one of the reasons for the failure to conclude a permanent status agreement at Camp David II and at Taba in 2000. In the absence of such agreement, however, sovereignty over Jerusalem under international law remains as described by Stone.

The Effect of the Partition Plan

Elihu Lauterpacht concludes, correctly that the 1947 partition resolution had no legislative character to vest territorial rights in either Jews or Arabs. Any binding force of it would have had to arise from the principle pacta sunt servanda, that is, from the agreement of the parties concerned to the proposed plan. Such an agreement, however, was frustrated ab initio by the Arab rejection, a rejection underlined by armed invasion of Palestine by the forces of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, timed for the British withdrawal on May 14, 1948, and aimed at destroying Israel and at ending even the merely hortatory value of the plan…

The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control. At most, as Israel's Declaration of Independence expressed it, the General Assembly resolution was a recognition of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people in Palestine. The immediate recognition of Israel by the United States and other states was in no way predicated on its creation by the partition resolution, nor was its admission in 1949 to membership in the United Nations… As a mere resolution of the General Assembly, Resolution 181(11) lacked binding force ab initio. It would have acquired the force under the principle pacta sunt servanda if the parties at variance had accepted it. While the state of Israel did for her part express willingness to accept it, the other states concerned both rejected it and took up arms unlawfully against it. The Partition Resolution thus never became operative either in law or in fact, either as to the proposed Jerusalem corpus separatum or other territorial dispositions in Palestine.

The Corpus Separatum Concept

We venture to agree with the results of the careful examination of the corpus separatum proposal by E. Lauterpacht in his monograph Jerusalem and the Holy Places:

“(1) During the critical period of the changeover of power in Palestine from British to Israeli and Arab hands, the UN did nothing effectively to implement the idea of the internationalization of Jerusalem.

(2) In the five years 1948-1952 inclusive, the UN sought to develop the concept as a theoretical exercise in the face of a gradual realization that it was acceptable neither to Israel nor to Jordan and could never be enforced. Eventually the idea was allowed quietly to drop.

(3) In the meantime, both Israel and Jordan demonstrated that each was capable of ensuring the security of the Holy Places and maintaining access to and free worship at them - with the exception, on the part of Jordan, that the Jews were not allowed access to Jewish Holy places in the area of Jordanian control.

(4) The UN by its concern with the idea of territorial internationalization, as demonstrated from 1952 to the present date (1968) effectively acquiesced in the demise of the concept. The event of 1967 and 1968 have not led to its revival.

(5) Nonetheless there began to emerge, as long ago as 1950, the idea of functional internationalization of the Holy Places in contradistinction to the territorial internationalization of Jerusalem. This means that there should be an element of international government of the City, but only a measure of international interest in and concern with the Holy Places. This idea has been propounded by Israel and has been said to be acceptable to her. Jordan has not subscribed to it.”

Even if no notion of a corpus separatum had ever floated on the international seas, serious questions about the legal status of Jerusalem would have arisen after the 1967 War. Did it have the status of territory that came under belligerent occupation in the course of active hostilities, for which international law prescribes a detailed regime of powers granted to the occupying power or withheld it from in the interest of the ousted reversionary sovereign? Or was this status qualified in Israel's favour by virtue of the fact that the ousted power, in this case, Jordan, itself had occupied the city in the course of an unlawful aggression and therefore could not, under principle of ex iniuria non oritur ius, be regarded as an ousted reversioner? Or was Jerusalem, as we will see that a distinguished authority thought at the time, in the legal status of res nullius modo juridico? That is, was it a territory to which by reason of the copies of international instruments, and their lacunae, together with the above vice in the Jordanian title, no other state than Israel could have sovereign title? The consequence of this could be to make the legal status of Jerusalem that of subjection to Israel sovereignty.

Acquisition of Sovereignty

This analysis, based on the sovereignty vacuum, affords a common legal frame for the legal positions of both West and East Jerusalem after both the 1948-49 and the 1967 wars. In 1967, Israel's entry into Jerusalem was by way lawful self-defence, confirmed in the Security Council and General Assembly by the defeat of Soviet and Arab-sponsored resolutions demanding her withdrawal…

Lauterpacht has offered a cogent legal analysis leading to the conclusion that sovereignty over Jerusalem has already vested in Israel. His view is that when the partition proposals were immediately rejected and aborted by Arab armed aggression, those proposals could not, both because of their inherent nature and because of the terms in which they were framed, operate as an effective legal re-disposition of the sovereign title. They might (he thinks) have been transformed by agreement of the parties concerned into a consensual root of title, but this never happened. And he points out that the idea that some kind of title remained in the United Nations is quite at odds, both with the absence of any evidence of vesting, and with complete United Nations silence on this aspect of the matter from 1950 to 1967?…

In these circumstances, that writer is led to the view that there was, following the British withdrawal and the abortion of the partition proposals, a lapse or vacancy or vacuum of sovereignty. In this situation of sovereignty vacuum, he thinks, sovereignty could be forthwith acquired by any state that was in a position to assert effective and stable control without resort to unlawful means. On the merely political and commonsense level, there is also ground for greater tolerance towards Israel's position, not only because of the historic centrality of Jerusalem to Judaism for 3,000 years, but also because in modern times Jews have always exceeded Arabs in Jerusalem. In 1844 there were 7,000 Jews to 5,000 Moslems; in 1910, 47,000 Jews to 9,800 Moslems; in 1931, 51,222 Jews to 19,894 Moslems; in 1948, 100,000 Jews to 40,000 Moslems, and in 1967 200,000 Jews to 54,902 Moslems.

For those who disagree with this analysis, the question remains - who has a better legal right to Jerusalem than Israel? It cannot be Jordan (who gave up its own legal claim,) it cannot be the UN for the reasons given above and it cannot be a nonexistent Palestinian Arab state or entity which didn't even exist when Israel captured it.

(The rest of the booklet includes analyses of the legality of Israel's control of the West Bank, settlements, the Palestinian Arab "right of return," and other issues.)

"Zionist Pig" stories never get old

One more time, Ma'an shows how ridiculously biased it is:

A herd of settler-owned wild boars were released onto Palestinian farmlands in western Salfit on Monday morning, damaging crops there.

The chair of the Palestinian Agricultural Trade Union, Khalil Omran, said, "The boars broke into the fields at the Al-Najara and Al-Jaheer areas of western Salfit. They caused the destruction of wheat and barley fields and damaged fruit trees.”

“One of the attacked fields was planted with peach trees. All were broken and caused a big loss for the field’s owner, farmer Abo Ayman Oada,” Omran added.

Omran reiterated his call that something be done about the wild boars that cause losses to farmers' livelihood each year, in addition to fears over the H1N1 flu virus, which some believe is carried by pigs.

The fact that Jews in Judea and Samaria have the same problem with wild pigs does not mean that Ma'an will ever acknowledge the absurdity of religious Jews raising boars who have no use other than to terrorize poor Arabs.

PalArab news roundup 5/25

About 70 Christian gravestones were desecrated in the West Bank over the weekend in two separate cemeteries. The village, Jafna, is one of the very few remaining areas in the West Bank with a Christian majority.

The PA leadership has a new list of demands before they will even deign to negotiate with Israel: An end to all construction in "settlements" including Jerusalem, dismantling all security roadblocks, and the removal of outposts "as required in the roadmap." Of course, the roadmap has some prerequisites from the Palestinian Arab side that have to be adhered to before any settlement restrictions, a fact that the PA likes to ignore.

Reacting to criticism in the Palestinian Arab media, Hamas has denied that they are enforcing any sort of restrictions of firing Qassam rockets from the various terror groups in Gaza.

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is essentially calling Der Spiegel a Zionist front for having the audacity of publishing results of an investigation that shows that Hezbollah was behind the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Der Spiegel has published more details about the incident.

Saudi Arabia will soon require all women who appear as hosts on TV programs to wear an abaya/robe. Up until now, just covering their hair was considered OK.