French Court: Israel is legitimately entitled to occupy all land beyond the 67 line

First and foremost, the Versailles Court of Appeals had to determine the legal rights of Palestinians and Israelis in West Bank. Their conclusion: Palestinians have no right – in the international legal sense – to the region, unlike Israel, who is legitimately entitled to occupy all land beyond the 67 line. Four different international treaties all state that the land belongs to the Jews and cannot be given to any other group (San Remo Treaty 1920, Covenant of the League of Nations – Article 22 of 1922, Anglo-American Treaty of 1924 and the United Nations Charter – Article 80 1945)
There is no legal claim for the Islamofascist [PA, Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah et al.] colonists for any of the land

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Paris Peace Conference On Israel-Palestine Will Ignore French Law

By Brian of London January 15, 2017 http://www.israellycool.com/2017/01/15/paris-peace-conference-on-israel-palestine-will-ignore-french-law/

Eifel Tower base

Eifel Tower base

Today in France 70 nations will come together in Paris and blindly ignore the legal ruling of a highly significant French court (Court of Appeal of Versailles) just a few years ago. They will most likely issue a statement which creates the impression that Israel’s activities in Judea and Samaria are illegal.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that there hasn’t been a proper legal case to decide the legality of Jews living in the lands captured back from Jordan in ’67, specifically Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem. I was wrong! There was exactly such a case and, even though I’ve written about it, it has received almost no attention and been buried.

Here’s a very simplistic background on how western legal systems operate. In a Western country founded on Judeo-Christian principles, some form of elected body decides to pass and enact laws. Perhaps there is a foundational document (like the US Constitution) or centuries of history and a set of procedures and prior law on how stuff is done (the UK). One thing that unites all these systems is that new laws must be tested in court.

A law enters the books when the elected officials have all agreed on it, but until someone breaks the law or challenges it in some way, it isn’t fully tested.

Fortunately there isn’t a government for the entire world (and plans for such a monstrosity probably took a backward step when Hillary Clinton lost in November). The UN, as a club of dictators, despots and dastardly deed doers (with a sprinkling of decent, democratic states) certainly isn’t remotely close to a single government for the world that any sane person would submit to. The International Criminal Court in the Hague is also similarly problematic. International law, therefore, stems from a bunch of widely (but not universally) accepted treaties and agreements many nations have signed up to going back, in cases, hundreds of years and methods for deciding disputes are confusing.

But just as with nations passing laws, until a court hears a case based on the law, interpretation of that law isn’t set. That’s why there is such a thing as a “legal opinion”. In any given case there are two or more sides arguing that they’ve understood the law correctly and the other side is wrong.

That’s the situation with Israel’s status in territory it captured in various defensive wars since 1948. When I wrote “you can believe arguments one way or another, but you can’t yet say the matter of settlements is settled” I was overlooking one very important case from France in 2013 which I even wrote about back then! A week after the case concluded (with a resounding win for the Israeli side and a defeat for a PLO backed boycott effort) I wrote the following:

As we first reported here on Israellycool last week, a French court has confirmed some aspects of the legal situation regarding Israel and the hills of Judea and Samaria, especially around Jerusalem.

Now the larger news outlets have had time to think about this and get the opinion of greater legal minds than this humble blogger.

And the answer seems to be, it is a victory, but only if you didn’t know anything about international law and the specifics of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Well I’d say that’s just about everyone on earth and doubly so for everyone who is deluded by BDS campaign lies!

Exactly as I noted then, the legacy media completely ignored this ruling or downplayed it because it didn’t fit their lethal narrative: Jews are illegal settlers in what was once their own land. Nobody in the hostile legacy media has referred to it since (try to google for it).

People on the Jerusalem light rail train

People on the Jerusalem light rail train

Jean-Patrick Grumberg (the original reporter I linked to back in 2013 on the story) has now re-published a more detailed account of the technicalities of the case which related to the building, in Jerusalem, of the light rail system which connects both predominantly Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods to the centre of Jerusalem.

The entire blog post is definitely worth reading (a few times) but here are the headlines:

In a historical trial carefully « forgotten » by the media, the 3rd Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles declares that Israel is the legal occupant of the West Bank*.

In the 90s, Israel bid for the construction of the Jerusalem light rail. The tender was won by French companies Veolia and Alstom. The light rail was completed in 2011, and it cross Jerusalem all the way to the east side and the « occupied territories » (more about this term later).

Following this, the PLO filed a complaint with the High Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) of Versailles France, against Alstom and Veolia, because according to PLO, « the construction of the tram is illegal since the UN, the EU, many NGOs and governments consider that « Israel illegally occupy Palestinian territories ».

By Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa) - 2012-08-19OpenStreetMap data for the background, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20740571

By Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa) – 2012-08-19OpenStreetMap data for the background, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20740571

First and foremost, the Versailles Court of Appeals had to determine the legal rights of Palestinians and Israelis in West Bank. Their conclusion: Palestinians have no right – in the international legal sense – to the region, unlike Israel, who is legitimately entitled to occupy all land beyond the 67 line.

Why is this an historical ruling: it is the first international case since the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948.

The Court of Appeal does not deny the occupation, but it destroys one after another all the Palestinian arguments.

Israeli occupation does not violate any international law.

Propaganda is not international law.

Humanitarian law was not violated.

The PLO and the Palestinians were dismissed.

This is how Jean-Patrick concludes his post (which also includes the entire court decision in French).

The Court of Appeal therefore sentenced the PLO (and Association France Palestine Solidarité AFPS who was co-appellant) to pay 30,000 euros ($32,000) to Alstom, 30,000 euros to Alstom Transport and 30,000 euros to Veolia Transport.

Logo_50-liberation-of-Jerusalem

הסערה הבאה שרת התרבות מירי רגב הורתה להכניס ללוגו הרשמי של חגיגות היובל לאיחוד ירושלים את המילה שחרור ירושלים במקום איחוד העיר
נשלח על ידי
איתמר אייכנר
אחרי

Neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority nor the AFPS appealed to the Supreme Court, therefore the judgment has become final.

This is the first time that a Court has legally destroyed all Palestinian legal claim that Israel’s occupation is illegal.

The Jerusalem Chords Bridge or Jerusalem Bridge of Strings גשר המיתרים‎, Gesher HaMeitarim, also called the Jerusalem Light Rail Bridge is a cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge at the entrance to the city of Jerusalem, Israel, designed by the Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava. The bridge is used by Jerusalem Light Rail’s Red Line, Incorporated in the structure is a glass-sided pedestrian bridge enabling pedestrians to cross from Kiryat Moshe to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.

The Jerusalem Chords Bridge or Jerusalem Bridge of Strings גשר המיתרים‎, Gesher HaMeitarim, also called the Jerusalem Light Rail Bridge is a cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge at the entrance to the city of Jerusalem, Israel, designed by the Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava. The bridge is used by Jerusalem Light Rail’s Red Line, Incorporated in the structure is a glass-sided pedestrian bridge enabling pedestrians to cross from Kiryat Moshe to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.

Jews Down Under-logo https://jewsdownunder.com

Jews Down Under-logo https://jewsdownunder.com

The Green Line Through Jerusalem.

First.One.Through 28June2020 https://jewsdownunder.com/2020/06/28/the-green-line-through-jerusalem/

When the United Nations considered dividing Israel into an Arab State and a Jewish State in 1947, it sought to remove the contentious religious sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims into a distinct “corpus separatum” which would be under international control. The area of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem was to become a “Holy Basin,” and a unique model from the nascent United Nations.

The Arabs rejected partition and five Arab armies invaded Israel. At wars end in 1949, armistice lines with Egypt, Syria and Jordan created new boundaries in the region. Jordan took control and soon annexed the area it seized, including three-quarters of the Holy Basin. The division for the Jordanian frontiers were marked in green and it became known as the “Green Line.”

The division of Jerusalem in the 1949 Armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan.

The division of Jerusalem in the 1949 Armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan.

The division of Jerusalem in the 1949 Armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan.
The Israeli portion of the map was marked in blue and Israel applied sovereignty up to that line. The space between the blue and green lines was considered “no man’s land.”

The Jordanian side included the entirety of the Old City of Jerusalem. The line ran right along the western side of the city, including the Jaffa and New Gates up to the Damascus Gate. The Jordanians forbade Jews from living in, visiting or praying at their holy sites in the city.

The map above is from the United Nations and marks the city’s sacred locations. Note that even though the city is only considered the holiest for Jews, the Jewish locations are listed last. The holiest location, the Jewish Temple Mount, is not even marked as sacred to Jews. The Western Wall is marked as holy – to both Jews and Muslims.

The map lists the Christian holy places first and includes numerous locations including each station of the Cross. It lists but does not show the various sacred spots in Bethlehem.
Muslims have the fewest holy sites of the three monotheistic religions, but occupy the dominant platform of Jerusalem. Uniquely among the monotheistic faiths, Muslims have no sites subject to “the status quo” according to the map.

The only holy location on the Israeli side of the lines is the Tomb of David, curiously listed as the only site holy to all three religions.

……

The world’s vision of Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967 was a place dominated by Christianity in terms of reverence, by Muslims in regards to prominence, and lastly by Jews, whose holiest spot was not even acknowledged and their basic human rights to live and worship were ignored. Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day Flag Dance Jerusalem Day is a day to mark the upending of that dynamic, at least in part.

The world’s vision of Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967 was a place dominated by Christianity in terms of reverence, by Muslims in regards to prominence, and lastly by Jews, whose holiest spot was not even acknowledged and their basic human rights to live and worship were ignored.
Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day Flag Dance
Jerusalem Day is a day to mark the upending of that dynamic, at least in part.

The world’s vision of Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967 was a place dominated by Christianity in terms of reverence, by Muslims in regards to prominence, and lastly by Jews, whose holiest spot was not even acknowledged and their basic human rights to live and worship were ignored.
Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day Flag Dance
Jerusalem Day is a day to mark the upending of that dynamic, at least in part.

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Pompeo Busts the ‘Occupation’ Myth The claim that Israeli settlements are illegal was flimsy in 1978 and is ridiculous in 2019. By Eugene Kontorovich

Posted By   20November2019 http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2019/11/20/pompeo-busts-the-occupation-myth-the-claim-that-israeli-settlements-are-illegal-was-flimsy-in-1978-and-is-ridiculous-in-2019-by-eugene-kontorovich/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-busts-the-occupation-myth-11574207220

Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate international law. That is now America’s official view, announced Monday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The historic decision repudiates the conclusions of a 1978 State Department memorandum.

For decades, Israel’s detractors have appealed to consensus, asserting that settlements are illegal because the entire international community agrees they are illegal. As with Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the Trump administration has refused to be cowed by a hollow consensus. By dissenting, the U.S. has destroyed both the consensus and the frail arguments that relied on it.

The four-page 1978 memo, written by legal adviser Herbert Hansell, was hardly a thorough study. It painted with broad strokes across several issues and cited no precedent for its key conclusions. Most important, its legal analysis of occupation and settlements has never been applied, by the U.S. or anyone else, to any other comparable situation.

Hansell’s memo took two analytic steps. First, it concluded that Israel was an “occupying power” in the West Bank. Next, it invoked an obscure provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says the “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Hansell concluded that Jews who have moved past the Green Line into disputed territory have somehow been “deported or transferred” there by the state of Israel.

Under international law, occupation occurs when a country takes over the sovereign territory of another country. But the West Bank was never part of Jordan, which seized it in 1949 and ethnically cleansed its entire Jewish population. Nor was it ever the site of an Arab Palestinian state.

Moreover, a country cannot occupy territory to which it has sovereign title, and Israel has the strongest claim to the land. International law holds that a new country inherits the borders of the prior geopolitical unit in that territory. Israel was preceded by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, whose borders included the West Bank. Hansell’s memo fails to discuss this principle for determining borders, which has been applied everywhere from Syria and Lebanon to post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.

Even on its own terms, the memo’s conclusions no longer apply. Because occupation is part of the law of war, Hansell wrote, the state of occupation would end if Israel entered into a peace treaty with Jordan. In 1994 Jerusalem and Amman signed a full and unconditional peace treaty, but the State Department neglected to update the memo.

Even if there were an occupation, the notion that it creates an impermeable demographic bubble around the territory—no Jew can move in—has no basis in the history or application of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Almost every prolonged occupation since 1949—from the Allies’ 40-year administration of West Berlin to Turkey’s 2016 occupation of northern Syria—has seen population movement into the occupied territory. In none of these cases has the U.S., or the United Nations, ever claimed a violation of this Geneva Convention provision.

Mr. Pompeo’s action shows the U.S. understands that we can’t have one international law for one country and another for the rest of the world.

Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School.


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Pompeo Declares BDS Movement Antisemitic, Seeks to Defund Anti-Israel Boycott Campaigners

Posted by Thursday, November 19, 2020 at 3:00pm https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/11/pompeo-declares-bds-movement-antisemitic-seeks-to-defund-anti-israel-boycott-campaigners/

Secretary of State Mike: “We want to join all the other nations that recognize BDS for the cancer that it is.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recognized the anti-Israel boycott campaign, or the BDS Movement, as antisemitic.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recognized the anti-Israel boycott campaign, or the BDS Movement, as antisemitic.

The State Department “will regard the global anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” Secretary Pompeo said during a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

 

The State Department “will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct, and withdraw US government support for such groups.” Secretary Pompeo announced on the second day of his Israel trip.

“We want to join all the other nations that recognize BDS for the cancer that it is,” he added.

Thursday’s move will “cut off government support for any organizations taking part in it, a step that could deny funding to Palestinian and international human rights groups,” the Associated Press noted. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering cutting U.S. funding for international activist groups who have been supporting boycott calls against Israel, including big names like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam, news reports suggest.

 

Secretary-Pompeo-tweet-19November2020-BDS-AntiSemitism

Secretary-Pompeo-tweet-19November2020-BDS-AntiSemitism

 

Israeli TV network i24News reported Secretary Pompeo’s remarks:

The US government will take action against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and groups that support it, US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said Thursday.

The statement was made in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

‘We will regard the global anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,’ Pompeo said, adding that the designation will come along with concrete steps against it.

“We will immediately take steps to identify the organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw US government support from such groups,” he announced.

Pompeo minced no words, comparing the BDS movement with “cancer,” and reinstated the “ironclad” US commitment to Israel’s security: “During the [US President Donald] Trump administration, America stands with Israel like never before.”

 

Lahav-Harkov-tweet-19November2020-labeling-products-made-in-Israel

Lahav-Harkov-tweet-19November2020-labeling-products-made-in-Israel

 

On Thursday, Secretary Pompeo became the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Israel’s Judea and Samaria region, often referred to in the mainstream media as the “West Bank.” President Trump last year recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the area.

In a symbolic gesture, the Secretary of State visited the Psagot winery in Samaria. The top EU court, the European Court of Justice, in its November 2019 judgment, ruled against the winery, ordering mandatory labeling of products from the Judea and Samaria region as ‘settlement’ goods.

“It is a blessing to be here in Judea and Samaria,” he wrote in the winery guestbook. “May I not be the last secretary of state to visit this beautiful land.”

Rejecting discriminatory labeling of Israeli products as mandated by the EU, Secretary Pompeo announced on Thursday that products made in areas under Israeli sovereignty, which includes Judea and Samaria, “ will be required to mark goods as “Israel,” “Product of Israel,” or “Made in Israel” when exporting to the United States. ”

The Palestinian leadership was angered by Pompeo’s visit to the region and his decision to do away with the discriminatory labeling. “The decision blatantly violates international law,” a spokesman for Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas declared. The PA “condemned” the announcement as “yet another biased, pro-Israeli move by US President Donald Trump’s administration,” the Times of Israel reported.

‘Secretary Mike Pompeo in Israel, Announces US Action Against BDS movement.’

Secretary Mike Pompeo in Israel, Announces US Action Against BDS movement

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Department-of-State-tweet-19November2020-Anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism

Department-of-State-tweet-19November2020-Anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism

 

Arutz Sheva http://www.israelnationalnews.com/

The only question on settlement legality is: Why did it take so long?

When it came to the issue of the settlements, the discussion was not, to quote Professor Eugene Rostow, “about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights.”

Dr. Richard L. Cravatts, 20November2019 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24755

In reversing the Obama administration’s shameful acceding to the UN Security Council’s 2016 resolution that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria were illegal under international law,  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo finally stated what was obvious to many legal scholars and others who have assessed the facts on the ground; namely, as Pompeo put it, “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.” Additionally, as he noted, while the decision “does not prejudice or decide legal conclusions regarding situations in any other parts of the world,” the Secretary emphasized that the affirmation of the settlements’ legality “is based on the unique facts, history, and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank.”

Those “unique facts, history, and circumstances,” of course, have existed for some time now, but were ignored or purposely contorted to promote a defective diplomacy in which, it was thought, the realization of Palestinian Arab statehood was being compromised by the construction of Jewish housing in the ‘West Bank’.

The settlement debate had also been hijacked by the Arab world and its Western apologists who, willingly blind to history, international law, and fact, continued to assign the blame for the absence of peace on the perceived offenses of occupation and Israeli truculence. Thus, for instance, then-Secretary Hillary Clinton and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, had both referred to the nuisance Israel caused by letting Jews live in the ‘West Bank’, against the wishes of the Palestinian Arabs who view that territory as once and forever theirs, as “unhelpful” in seeking a viable solution to Palestinian Arab statehood.

What was truly “unhelpful,” however, were the repeated references to the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem, as “Arab” land, the putative Palestinian state in waiting, encumbered only by Israeli oppression, the dreaded occupation, and those pesky settlers. This widely held notion that European Jews, with no connection to historic Palestine, colonized Arab land and displaced the indigenous Palestinian Arab population, of course, is a key part of what Professor Richard Landes of Boston University defined as the “cognitive war” against Israel; it serves the perverse purpose of validating Arab territorial rights to the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza, and, more importantly, casts Israelis as squatters who have unlawfully expropriated land that is not—and never was—theirs.

Secretary Pompeo’s confirmation of the legality of the settlements serves to reverse the faulty historical assumptions and misreading of law that has animated the settlement debate, principally the fact that not only all of the land that is current-day Israel, but also Gaza and the ‘West Bank’, is part of the land granted to the Jews as part of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to “close settlement” in a portion of those territories gained after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

According to Eugene V. Rostow, the late legal scholar and one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 written after the 1967 war to outline peace negotiations, “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors,” something which Israel’s intransigent Arab neighbors have never seemed prepared to do.

Moreover, Rostow contended, “The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created,” and “the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.”

The Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel recaptured Gaza and the ‘West Bank’, including Jerusalem, resulted in Israel being cast in another perfidious role—in addition to colonial usurper of Arab land, the Jewish state became a “brutal” “occupier” of Arab Palestine, lands to which the Jews presumably had no right and now occupied, in the opinion of many in the international community, illegally.

But when did the ‘West Bank’, Gaza, and East Jerusalem become Palestinian land? The answer is: never. In fact, when Israel acquired the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza and other territory in 1967 after being attacked by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, the Jewish state gained legally recognized title to those areas.

In Israel’s 1948 war of independence, Egypt, it will be recalled, illegally annexed Gaza at the same time Jordan illegally annexed the ‘West Bank’—actions that were not recognized by most of the international community as legitimate in establishing their respective sovereignties.

Israel’s recapture of those territories in 1967, noted Professor Stephen Schwebel, State Department legal advisor and later the President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, made the Jewish state what is referred to as the High Contracting Party of those territories, both because they were acquired in a defensive, not aggressive, war, and because they were part of the original Mandate and not previously under the sovereignty of any other High Contracting Party. “Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully,” Schwebel wrote, referring to Jordan and Egypt, “the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.”’

It is also morally repellent, for those arguing on the Palestinian Arab side, that the ‘West Bank’, like Gaza, eventually be made judenrein, totally absent of Jews, that, as Mahmoud Abbas has loudly announced on more than one occasion, the future Palestinian state would not have one Jew living within its borders.

Putting aside the fact that it is Israel that is continually derided for being racist and exclusionary (despite having one million Arab citizens), only in a world turned upside down would diplomats uphold a principle that Jews—and only Jews—not be allowed to live in certain territories, and particularly those areas to which they have irrevocable and inalterable biblical, historic, and legal claims.

In fact, Professor Emeritus Jerold Auerbach of Wellesley College has written that, protests from the State Department and many in the West aside, “Israeli settlement throughout the West Bank is explicitly protected by international agreements dating from the World War I era, subsequently reaffirmed after World War II, and never revoked since . . . The [Mandate for Palestine] recognized ‘the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine’ and ‘the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country’ . . . This was not framed as a gift to the Jewish people; rather, based on recognition of historical rights reaching back into antiquity, it was their entitlement.”

While those seeking Palestinian statehood conveniently overlook the legal rights Jews still enjoy to enable them to occupy all areas of historic Palestine, they have also used another oft-cited, but defective, argument in accusing Israel of violating international law by maintaining settlements in the ‘West Bank’: that since the Six Day War, Israel has conducted a “belligerent occupation.”

But as Professor Julius Stone discussed in his book, Israel and Palestine, the fact that the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza were acquired by Israel in a “sovereignty vacuum,” that is, that there was an absence of High Contracting Party with legal claim to the areas, means that, in this instance, the definition of a belligerent occupant in invalid. “There are solid grounds in international law for denying any sovereign title to Jordan in the West Bank,” Stone wrote, “and therefore any rights as reversioner state under the law of belligerent occupation.”

So, significantly, the absence of any sovereignty on territories acquired in a defensive war—as was the case in the Six Day War of 1967—means the absence of what can legally be called an occupation by Israel of the ‘West Bank’, belligerent or otherwise.

The matter of Israel violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention is one that has been used regularly, and disingenuously, as part of the cognitive war by those wishing to criminalize the settlement of Jews in the ‘West Bank’ and demonize Israel for behavior in violation of international law. It asserts that in allowing its citizens to move into occupied territories Israel violates Article 49, which stipulates that “The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies.”

The use of this particular Geneva Convention seems particularly grotesque in the case of Israel, since it was crafted after World War II specifically to prevent a repetition of the actions of the Nazis in cleansing Germany of its own Jewish citizens and deporting them to Nazi-occupied countries for slave labor or extermination.

Clearly, the intent of the Convention was to prevent belligerents from forcibly moving their citizens to other territories, for malignant purposes— something completely different than the Israel government allowing its citizens to willingly relocate and settle in territories without any current sovereignty, to which Jews have longstanding legal claim, and, whether or not the area may become a future Palestinian state, should certainly be a place where a person could live, even if he or she is a Jew.

And does anyone doubt that once the Palestinians, aided and abetted by mendacious Western elites, diplomats, and an anti-Israel international community of supporters, have purged Gaza, the ‘West Bank’, and East Jerusalem of all Jews, that new calls will then arise accusing Jews of “occupying” more “Arab” lands in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Tiberias, or Haifa?

Professor Rostow himself saw through the disingenuous talk about legal rights and resolutions when it came to the issue of the settlements. The discussion was not, in his mind, “about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights.” In fact, the settlement debate is part of the decades-old narrative created by the Palestinian Arabs and their Western enablers to write a false historical account that legitimizes Palestinian claims while air-brushing away Jewish history.

“Throughout Israel’s occupation,” Rostow observed, “the Arab countries, helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories, so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the West Bank is ‘Arab’ territory could be made more plausible.”

With Secretary Pompeo’s bold statement reversing the legal status of the settlements, at least for the time being, that “convenient moment” may be less likely to occur and at least one key element in the cognitive war against Israel seems to have neutralized.

Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.

The Jerusalem Chords Bridge or Jerusalem Bridge of Strings גשר המיתרים‎, Gesher HaMeitarim, also called the Jerusalem Light Rail Bridge is a cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge at the entrance to the city of Jerusalem, Israel, designed by the Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava. The bridge is used by Jerusalem Light Rail’s Red Line, Incorporated in the structure is a glass-sided pedestrian bridge enabling pedestrians to cross from Kiryat Moshe to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.

The Jerusalem Chords Bridge or Jerusalem Bridge of Strings גשר המיתרים‎, Gesher HaMeitarim, also called the Jerusalem Light Rail Bridge is a cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge at the entrance to the city of Jerusalem, Israel, designed by the Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava. The bridge is used by Jerusalem Light Rail’s Red Line, Incorporated in the structure is a glass-sided pedestrian bridge enabling pedestrians to cross from Kiryat Moshe to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.

 

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely to Arab MKs: You are thieves of history

tzipihotovely
July 12, 2017

In a highly charged debate that developed in the plenum tonight (Wednesday, 12.7.17 [EDD-12July2017]) in the framework of a motion on the subject of UNESCO’s decision on Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely responded on behalf of the government to the Arab Knesset members.

Tzipi Hotovely stands up in front of Arabs members:
“You are stealing our history” and then shows them the Old Testament proving Jewish connection to Israel and then the “history” of Palestine… an empty book
Watch her take them apart!

Cat-thus-logo

What the Members of the Knesset need to do is listen to the Gedolim and transfer the terrorist and their supporters out of Israel.

Pew 2016.03.08 Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.

Pew 2016.03.08 Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.

Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel How would you transfer a hostile Arab population? According to the Pew Research Center

Israeli Jews divided on the status of Arabs

Israeli Jews are divided on the question of whether Arabs should be allowed to live in the Jewish state. The survey asked Jews whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.”








This is what we get if we do not transfer the terrorist and their supporters out of  Eretz Israel.

Numbers 33:55:But if you don’t drive out the inhabitants of the land from in front of you, then those you allow to remain will become like thorns in your eyes and stings in your sides — they will harass you in the land where you are living.

15 Seconds in Sderot, Israel

sderotmedia23 June 2, 2008
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Notice: Not for Leftist Antisemites who do not want to know the truth! Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)

8 February 2017: Multiple rockets fired from Egypt into Eilat, Israel 3 hours on and not a single non-Israeli main stream media source has mentioned this, but every major news outlet has headlines screaming about " illegal Jewish aettlements ". Reminder to every news reporter and editor: if you continue to ignore stories like this while headlining the fact that a few houses are being built in the Jewish homeland, then your ARE an antisemite

8 February 2017: Multiple rockets fired from Egypt into Eilat, Israel 3 hours on and not a single non-Israeli main stream media source has mentioned this, but every major news outlet has headlines screaming about ” illegal Jewish aettlements “. Reminder to every news reporter and editor: if you continue to ignore stories like this while headlining the fact that a few houses are being built in the Jewish homeland, then your ARE an antisemite

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One Raid Shows All You Need to Know About Israel’s Current Predicament

by Stephen M. Flatow / JNS.org (https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/01/23/one-raid-shows-all-you-need-to-know-about-israels-current-predicament/)

Israeli forces operating in the West Bank city of Jenin, Jan. 18, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.

Israeli forces operating in the West Bank city of Jenin, Jan. 18, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.

JNS.org – You wouldn’t think that one isolated Israeli counter-terror raid could explode every major myth about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. But last week’s raid in Jenin came pretty close to doing just that.

Overnight on January 17, Israeli commandos entered the city of Jenin in search of two particular Arab terrorists. When the operation was over a few hours later, the Israeli forces withdrew

Wait — the Israelis withdrew? But isn’t Israel “occupying” the Palestinians? That’s what J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace are always telling us. Just this week, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote that Israel is “ruling over millions of Palestinians.”

I guess that Rabbi Jacobs hasn’t been to Jenin lately. In fact, I would imagine that he hasn’t been there since at least 1995. That was the year when Israel withdrew all of its forces from the city (and the other areas where 98 percent of Palestinians reside), and a new power took over: the Palestinian Authority (PA). Counter-terror raids like the one in Jenin are the only occasions when Israeli forces enter PA-ruled cities.

Back to the story. The Israeli commandos were searching for the terrorists who carried out last week’s brutal drive-by murder of Rabbi Raziel Shevach, the father of six young children. As the Israelis were searching, The Times of Israel reports, “a violent riot broke out. … Palestinians hurled improvised explosive devices, rocks and fired at the forces.”

Wait — what? Some on the left have been telling us for decades that ordinary Palestinian Arabs are moderate, peace-seeking, and opposed to terrorism. The residents of Jenin should have been delighted that Israeli forces were coming to rid their city of terrorists. In fact, if they’re so moderate, they should have been actively assisting the anti-terror efforts.

Instead, the local residents impeded the hunt for the terrorists — by trying to shoot, stone and burn the Israeli soldiers to death. Would some J Streeter please explain this? I’m confused. Can these be Israel’s future peaceful neighbors?

I wonder if Jenin residents’ passionate support for terrorism and hatred of Jews and Israel has anything to do with the anti-Jewish textbooks that are used in PA schools, or the non-stop anti-Jewish incitement in the PA-controlled media and mosques.

Or maybe that’s all just a coincidence. Maybe how Palestinians behave has no connection whatsoever to what they watch, hear and read from their teachers, imams and political leaders 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Fortunately, the Israeli forces eventually caught up to two of the terrorists. They killed one and captured the other. Both were identified as members of a local Hamas cell.

But that can’t be. The Palestinian leadership promised, in the Oslo Accords, to disband all terrorist groups, seize their weapons and outlaw them. In other words, to put them out of business. How can it be that, 23 years after the PA took over, Hamas still has active terrorist cells in the city?

Surely the PA has the means to do the job. After all, the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world. Yet the PA never outlawed Hamas. It never arrested its members or seized its weapons. The PA treats Hamas like brothers, and allows the group to operate freely in Jenin, and everywhere else.

But don’t take my word for it. Look at The New York Times. Every once in a while, the truth about the PA and Palestinian terrorists manages to slip into one of its articles. On March 23, 2014, the Times reported that Israeli troops were forced to enter the Jenin refugee camp in pursuit of terrorists because although Jenin is under the “full control” of the PA, “the Palestinian [security forces] did not generally operate in refugee camps.”

Let me repeat what the Times said: The PA’s security forces do not operate in refugee camps. It doesn’t matter what the Oslo Accords say about the PA’s obligation to fight terrorists. It doesn’t matter how many Israelis the terrorists murder. The PA is not going to shut them down. Never has, never will.

One final fact from the recent Jenin raid. The shots fired — by “moderate” Jenin residents and by terrorists whom the PA lets run free — wounded two of the Israeli soldiers. An Israeli military spokesman said that one soldier was injured “seriously,” and that one was injured “lightly.”

According to IDF terminology, an injury is classified as “serious” if the victim’s life is in danger. A “moderate” injury means the victim could lose a limb. Anything short of losing a limb is categorized as a “light” injury. The victim might have to go through dozens of surgeries. He might have to walk with a severe limp, or he might suffer seizures for years to come. Technically, it’s still a “light” injury.

These two courageous young Israeli men risked their lives to protect their fellow Jews — and their lives may well have been shattered as a result. But you will never hear anything further about it. You will never hear on CNN, or read in The New York Times, about what these two Israelis suffered, or how their future lives will be affected. That kind of news is not considered fit to print.

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.