Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 34

 

How Israel – and the World – Changed After 7^th October 2023

 

Israel is embroiled in the greatest crisis in her history. The trauma her citizens have suffered since 7^th October 2023 defies the imagination. After a few days (in some cases hours) of sympathy, the international community – with few exceptions – has reverted to type and has either remained indifferent or has turned against her. We've seen a global rise in antisemitism fuelled by biased and distorted media reporting of the hideous war Hamas started and (at the time of writing) refuses to end.

I will not elaborate here the unspeakable horrors of 7^th October [1] that struck Israel with a force 13 times (proportionately) that of the 9/11 attacks on the USA. Nor will I try to fathom the psychopathology underpinning the obscene promise by the perpetrators to conduct similar massacres ‘again and again’ [2]. What I suggest is that we should consider, as best we can, the implications of that event, particularly for the people, mainly Israelis and Palestinians, directly involved.

The impact of the massacre and the misery it has caused will take time to assess. It’s hard to glimpse any positive signs through the vale of tears but there are nevertheless a few glimmers of light. 

With the exception of the extremist fringes, Israelis are more united than ever. Jews and Arabs, secular and religious, left and right have joined forces in an impressive show of mutual support. After the war, the major recriminations will begin but these are being held in abeyance for now. Remember Netanyahu’s attempted judicial reforms and the vast weekly street demonstrations they provoked? They seem but a distant memory. This divisive issue remains high on the agenda of an unpopular government but a more urgent matter is at hand – the continued viability of the Jewish state. 

Looking beyond Israel’s immediate horizon, the Arab countries have not mobilised their forces to defend Hamas nor have they torn up the 2020 Abraham accords. The truth is that most Arab leaders loathe Hamas and are praying for Israel to achieve its elimination. One reason for this is the threat that Islamism poses to their own regimes. A second is an overriding fear of Iran, the most powerful military force in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic’s mischief-making knows no bounds and may yet force a further expansion of the war on the multiple fronts – particularly in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen – where the IRGC holds sway.

The Jewish world has been shaken to the core. Many diaspora Jews had become exasperated with Israel in 2023, especially after an unscrupulous Likud party sought to shore up its power base by allying itself with ultra-nationalist fanatics. Today, many liberal Jews watch with dismay as their progressive friends make common cause with Islamo-fascists who were quick to disseminate antisemitic incitement via compliant mainstream and social media platforms [3]. This perceived betrayal is compelling a growing number of formerly Israel-sceptic Jews to reflect on their ideological allegiances and to seek to reconnect with their national roots. And a number of mainstream Jewish organisations (particularly on the left) that had until recently tolerated ‘antiZionists not antisemites’ in their midst are distancing themselves from hatemongers seeking shelter in ‘the Jewish tent’ [4].

While Jewish support for Israel has remained (with a few exceptions) steadfast or even strengthened, non-Jewish empathy has been patchy. Within hours of news breaking of the massacre, and before the IDF had launched its counter-offensive in Gaza, thousands of activists took to the streets of the world’s cities to demonstrate their support – for the terrorists. Over the ensuing weeks, the scale of these marches grew and became vehicles for jihadist chants calling to ‘globalise the intifada’ and liberate Palestine ‘from the river to the sea.’ While the marchers claimed to be demanding peace, they issued no condemnations of the Hamas massacre, no calls to release the abducted hostages, and no demands on Hamas to cease launching rockets at Israeli civilians. Noisy pro-Palestine, pro-peace activism was revealed as fraudulent, an alibi for those who were firmly on the side of those who would attack and murder Jews. The mask had slipped. This time, most Jews got the message. 

We all saw how quickly the window of global sympathy for the victims slammed shut (though to his credit President Biden maintained his support for longer than most). Dara Horn was right – people love dead Jews [5]. Women’s rights groups, always quick to protest every misogynistic micro-aggression, took weeks (if they bothered at all) to condemn the prolonged and sadistic sexual violence to which Israeli women and girls were subjected during the Hamas pogrom. UNICEF [6], ostensibly tasked to promote assistance ‘for every child,’ had little or nothing to say about the butchering of Israeli children or of the years of indoctrination and abuse to which Hamas had subjected Gazan youngsters. International Red Cross officials maintained their dismal historical record towards Jews by shrugging their shoulders in response to the pleas of the hostages’ families. The NGO superpowers of the human rights community, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, appeared more interested in highlighting the ‘context’ to the savagery unleashed by the killers than the plight of their victims. 

Israel didn’t start the war and was justified, both morally and legally, in seeking to repel and neutralise the attackers. Yet when the IDF struck back at Hamas targets embedded deep within Gazan civilian areas, the reflex double standard kicked in and the finger-wagging resumed, with the familiar charges of ‘war crimes,’ ‘collective punishment’ and ‘massacres’ hurled at Israeli commanders. Israeli attempts to remind everyone that Hamas had initiated the conflagration fell on deaf ears. Nevertheless, despite the great lengths to which the IDF goes to protect non-combatants [7], often at the expense of her own soldiers’ lives, the suffering of the Gazan people in the 2023-24 war is undeniable. 

It is also far from unique. UN officials solemnly intoned that the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza – that they explicitly blamed on Israel rather than Hamas – was unprecedented in scale and severity. Their selective memories had conveniently erased the millions of lives lost in the Balkans, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, Congo, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ukraine as well as the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur. Also forgotten in the rush to judgement of the IDF campaign were the huge casualty tolls that accompanied Western democracies’ recent assaults on Al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS. It was a woeful response by the international community that Israelis will not forget.

The UN, it turned out, not only failed to live up to its own lofty principle of impartiality in their obsessive berating of Israel; it was complicit in the slaughter of the innocents of 7^th October. Its role in facilitating the empowerment of a plethora of terrorist groups over many decades has now been established beyond dispute. It achieved this extraordinary feat through its relentless one-sided condemnations of Israel in the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and even the World Health Organization. Above all, it fanned the flames of conflict between Arabs and Jews via its Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. It’s never been a secret (even if denied) that the UNRWA school curriculum preaches antisemitic and anti-Israeli violence and hatred. 

But the rot runs deeper. Israeli intelligence has long suspected that Hamas could not have constructed the vast network of tunnels running under homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and other civilian structures without the knowledge and cooperation of UNRWA. Those fears were confirmed by powerful new evidence unearthed by the IDF in Gaza. It transpires that the body established as a temporary facility to promote the peaceful rehabilitation of refugees has been doing the opposite for decades – funded to the tune of billions of dollars by US, UK, EU and other taxpayers. Is it conceivable that the donors were unaware of the nature of the monster they were rearing? 

Let’s zoom out for a moment to reflect on the century-long Arab-Israeli conflict. Anyone with a brain is now aware that the conventional wisdom, both in Israel and abroad, was wrong. All the usual excuses for the failure of peace-making – land, settlements, refugees, Jerusalem – pale into insignificance next to the root cause, namely the genocidal Arab opposition to Jewish sovereignty. In the dying days of the Mandate, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, who was no phylosemite, grasped the truth when he explained with admirable concision the nature of the problem: the Jews’ determination to establish a state clashed with the Arabs’ determination to stop them [8]. Little has changed in the succeeding 75 years. 

Hamas and their supporters have left us in no doubt that the Arab annihilationist ambition remains undimmed and that ‘all means necessary’ continues to be their weaponry of choice to promote it. A visceral hatred of Jews has been drummed into successive generations of Arab children with results that found expression (though not for the first time) on 7^th October. This grim process was always there in plain sight but was too depressing (or, in the case of the UN, too embarrassing) for many to contemplate. Today denialism is no longer an option. Once this large-scale brainwashing is publicly exposed and a programme implemented to counter it – the denazification of post-war Germany might serve as a useful model – real peace-building can begin. That will benefit Israelis, Palestinians and the wider region. 

So where are we now? The nation of Israel, including the global Jewish community, remains traumatised and the nightmare continues. But Israelis across the political spectrum are convinced that they have no choice other than to defeat and disarm Hamas. At some point over the coming weeks or months, the war will have reached a conclusion at immense cost to both Israelis and Palestinians, for all of which Hamas is culpable. Displaced people on both sides of the border will gradually return to their homes. 

When that happens, we can't return to business as usual. The seismic shock of the 7^th October attack (and the legions of apologists who rushed, like the UN secretary-general, to explain that ‘it didn’t happen in a vacuum’) will take time to process. It has been a rude but necessary awakening. Jews have (re)learned a valuable lesson: Israel's continued existence and security are more vital than ever, not just for the Jewish and Israeli people but for the Palestinians, the Middle East and humanity. 

Although the physical wounds will heal over time, the emotional damage will not. The searing images of that autumn day will be indelibly woven into the fabric of the collective Jewish psyche. As that happens, a new realisation will dawn – that Jews remain a fragile, vulnerable minority despite their political self-determination and formidable army. Both were found wanting in 2023. Israel must restore her defensive deterrence if she is to continue to serve her foundational mission as the ultimate safe haven for all Jews everywhere. The post-Holocaust certainty that Never Again was more than a slogan has evaporated in the light of the discovery that Israel’s neighbours – and many more besides – seem unable or unwilling to shed their most violent antisemitic fantasies. What can the civilised world do to help? Well, it can start by acknowledging that it failed – Israelis, Jews and its own ideals. And that acknowledgement will spawn a realisation. It – we – must act. 

With the help of moderate Arab states, we must thwart Iran’s oft-repeated goal of destroying Israel, either directly or through its terrorist proxies. We must ensure that UNRWA is either radically reformed or, better still, scrapped altogether so that it can no longer nourish the aspiration to fulfil the non-existent ‘right of return.’ Above all, we must rid Arab (including Palestinian) society of its intergenerational Jew-hatred that antedates the establishment of Israel by at least a millennium. And in parallel with this focus on the region, we must hold to account those who promote or enable antisemitism in the UN, media, academia, churches, NGOs and elsewhere.

None of this will be easy but neither was the rebirth of Israel in 1948. Jews may lack a contemporary Theodor Herzl but they can draw inspiration from his words: if you will it, it is no dream. Israelis, backed by the Jewish diaspora along with well-wishers of all backgrounds, are more than capable of converting that dream of a secure and self-confident Jewish state into reality in the 21^st century just as they did in the 20^th. 

The bottom line is stark: a rebooting of Zionism is required to render it fit for our dangerous new world. This is non-optional. It must happen to avert Hamas’s publicly expressed vow to repeat the bloodbath of 7^th October ‘again and again’ until not a single Israeli - or Jew - remains alive. 

 

 
1.     Quitaz S. ‘I had never witnessed such barbarism before’: Major F and battle of Holit. Fathom, December 2023. https://fathomjournal.org/i-had-never-witnessed-such-barbarism-before-major-f-and-the-battle-of-holit/
2.     Hamas official threatens to repeat 7^th October.  https://youtu.be/BJNccvNJtGk
3.     Smiry M on X: https://twitter.com/MuhammadSmiry/status/1736810861740929134/photo/1
4.     Greenberg JK. Jewish Voices for Hate. Tablet, 18 December 2023. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/jewish-voices-hate
5.     Horn D. People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. London, Norton & Co, 2021
6.     Shurat Hadin on X:  https://x.com/ShuratHaDin/status/1736837774748110886?s=20
7.     Kemp R on X:  https://x.com/COLRICHARDKEMP/status/1732779663313801339?s=20
8.    Schwartz A, Wilf E. The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace. New York, All Points Books, 2020, p.2. 
 

 Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 33

 

Two words explain the entire Arab-Israeli conflict  

As a child, I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories. I still do. A large part of their appeal was the wisdom of the mythical detective. Here is one gem: ‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.’ [1] (We’ll return to the ‘obvious fact’ in question shortly).

Let me offer you a story worthy of the great sleuth. It is a tale of two tiny, monosyllabic words. Together they provide the answer to the question that sits at the heart of what has been called the world’s most intractable and complex conflict, the 100-year war between the Arabs and the Jews. The question is: why is peace so elusive? And the words provide the answer. They are yes and no, the diametrically opposite responses to the multiple attempts to achieve peace:

Yes – the Zionist/Israeli response to Arab demands for recognition and sovereignty.

No – the Arab/Palestinian response to Jewish demands for recognition and sovereignty.

Those two words explain the nature, duration and intractability of the conflict. They also hold the key to its resolution.

Arab rejectionism has resulted in a dismal historical record. The complete list of opportunities missed by Israel’s enemies to achieve the so-called two-state solution (2SS) is too long to reproduce but here is a sample (and hold tight, this will make your head spin): 

1919: If Prince Faisal had respected rather than reneged on his agreement with Chaim Weizmann and accepted Jewish as well as Arab sovereignty in the region.

1922: If Britain’s effective partition of Mandatory Palestine into an eastern Arab territory and a western Jewish one had satisfied Arab leaders.

1937: If Arab leaders had, like the Jews, accepted the partition proposal of the British Peel Commission.

1947: If Arab leaders had, like the Jews, accepted the partition proposal of the UN Special Commission on Palestine.

1948-67: If the Jordanian and Egyptian leaders had established a Palestinian state during their occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

1949: If Arab leaders had withdrawn their insistence that the return of any refugees was conditional on (or a first step towards) the dissolution of Israel.

1964: If Arab leaders had rejected rather than supported the newly formed Palestine Liberation Organisation’s declared aim of destroying Israel. 

1967: If Arab leaders had, like Israel, accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 instead of issuing the Khartoum Declaration: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations.

1973: If Arab leaders had, like Israel, accepted UN Security Council Resolution 338 (that reiterated Resolution 242).

1978: If Yasser Arafat had accepted the US-Israeli proposal at Camp David for a five-year period of Palestinian autonomy to be followed by a final settlement.

1993-95: If the PLO had fulfilled their commitments at Oslo to make peace with Israel rather than re-igniting their campaign of terrorism.

2000-1: If Arafat had accepted Israel’s offer (at Camp David and Taba) of Palestinian statehood in over 90 per cent of the disputed territories.

2002-3: If Arafat had, like Israel, accepted the Bush Roadmap rather than sabotaging it with terrorism and a demand for the return of the Arab refugees.

2007-8: If Mahmoud Abbas had accepted Israeli PM Olmert’s offer (at Annapolis) of Palestinian statehood in 94 per cent of the disputed territories.

2014: If Abbas had, like Israel, accepted the Kerry-Allen framework for territorial compromise designed to lead to the 2SS.

2016: If Abbas had, like Israel, accepted the Biden peace initiative to revive negotiations with Israel. 

2020: If Abbas had, like Israel, accepted the Trump Peace to Prosperity Plan (that included the 2SS) as a basis for negotiations.

2022: If Abbas had accepted the Israeli invitation to join the Negev (Abraham Accords) Summit to help revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

1948 – present: If Arab leaders had accepted responsibility for the Jewish Nakba rather than demanding a return of the Arab refugees as part of a demographic strategy to destroy Israel.

 

As for the opportunities to reach the 2SS that were missed by Zionists/Israeli leaders since 1919, I couldn’t find any. None. I challenge anyone to improve on this figure. To avoid disappointing those readers who demand greater ‘balance,’ I will concede that there were a few times when Israeli leaders might have boosted peace hopes by being more accommodating to Arab demands:

1949: If Israel had been more flexible on the Arab refugees at the Lausanne conference.

1967-73: If Israel had abandoned her Conceptzia (complacency) after the Six Day War.

1971: If Israel had been more receptive to Sadat’s offer of an interim agreement.

1982: If Israel had agreed to explore the Reagan plan for Palestinian autonomy.

2002: If Israel had accepted the Arab (Saudi) Peace Initiative as a basis for negotiations.

 

These ‘opportunities’ were flimsy at best: at Lausanne, the Arab delegation refused to sit in the same room as the Israelis; after the Six Day War the Arab world declared Three Nos – no peace, no recognition, no negotiations; the Sadat peace offer demanded a ‘right of return’ of the Arab refugees; Reagan’s Palestinian autonomy plan was rejected by the PLO as well as Israel; and the Arab (Saudi) peace initiative, like Sadat’s offer three decades earlier, required the return of the Arab refugees and their descendants to Israel. 

Note that the 2SS – meaning two-states-for-two peoples not two Arab states – did not figure anywhere on the few occasions when Arab attitudes to Israel appeared to soften. Instead, one wholly unacceptable Arab demand – that Israelis commit national suicide – was never removed from the table throughout the century of conflict. That is the driver of the violence and the reason it has persisted. The ‘complexities’ of the dispute are consequences of that single, ever-present cause that translates into one deadly little Arabic word – la. 

How to explain this destructive mindset that has so often sabotaged the 2SS (or any other path to peace)? In the first place, the 2SS was always a potential outcome rather than a solution or it would have worked by now. Second, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (whom nobody could accuse of being friendly to the Jews) gave the answer in a 1947 speech though nobody seems to have noticed until Schwartz and Wilf recently rediscovered it: ‘For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine’ [2]:

In other words, the Jews wanted a state alongside existing or future Arab states while the Arabs (aided and abetted by the Iranians and their proxies since 1979) wanted existing and future Arab states instead of a Jewish one. That rejectionist posture, to which the Palestinians and their allies have adhered with limpet-like ferocity, denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination while demanding the fulfilment of that same right for Arabs. It also happens to be antisemitic through and through [3].

Occasionally, peace talks with neighbouring regimes got off the ground and in the case of Egypt and Jordan bore fruit, even if the harvests turned out to be more meagre than promised. And since 2020, the Abraham Accords have defied expectations and brought about a degree of normalisation between Israel and a handful of Arab states though the latter’s unequivocal recognition of Jewish national rights has yet to be realised. But Israel’s negotiations with her more intransigent opponents – including Syria and the Palestinians – have failed for two reasons: successive Arab leaders never unambiguously accepted Israel’s right to exist as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, nor have they relinquished their demand for the alleged (though legally non-existent) ‘right of return’ of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The purpose of the refugees’ return was never a secret – to extinguish the Jewish state demographically rather than physically.

The historical record from 1917 onwards is clear: the Zionists/Israelis have time and again said yes to the partition of Mandatory Palestine and self-determination for both peoples through territorial compromise. The Arabs/Palestinians have just as consistently said no. Yet here’s the extraordinary thing: the world blames the Jews and exonerates the Arabs for the tragic collapse of the numerous peace initiatives, as if Israeli guilt were self-evident – an ‘obvious fact.’ Why? Orientalism, neo-colonialism, ignorance? None is explanatory except one. Conan Doyle’s alter ego famously declared: ‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one that remains must be the truth’ [4].

What is that one remaining factor that might explain the intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the knee-jerk tendency of the international community to place the burden of guilt exclusively on Israel? Jew-hatred fits the bill and is the ‘obvious fact’ that is often overlooked. Its chronic presence throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and its malign impact on global diplomacy, are well-documented even if many commentators seem wilfully blind to it. 

The time is long past for antisemitism’s central role in the conflict – and its manifestation as a two-letter word that has negated all attempts at peace-making – to be acknowledged, confronted and neutralised [5]. 

1       Conan Doyle, A. The Boscombe Valley Mystery - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story. London, MX Publishing, 2014 (first published 1891).

2      Schwartz A, Wilf E. The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace. New York, All Points Books, 2020.

3      International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. About the IHRA non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism. https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism

4      Conan Doyle, A. The Sign of Four. London, Penguin (Classics), 2001 (first published 1890).

5      Stone DH. Taming the Middle East Elephant: The Role of Antisemitism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London, Vallentine Mitchell, 2023 (forthcoming).

 

 Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 32

 

The charge that Israel builds “illegal settlements” has no basis in international law – Part 2

 

This is not a pro-settlement blog. Nor is it an anti-settlement blog. As I’ve made absolutely clear to the point where people become confused, the future of the settlements and other issues for which Israel’s government has responsibility are matters for Israel’s democratically elected politicians. What I am attempting to do in these two articles is to look critically at the evidence for the near-universal depiction of Israeli settlements as illegal. The phrase illegal settlements is a dyad so ubiquitous that it has almost become one word. 

            In Part 1 [Blog 31], I identified several allegations that demand careful scrutiny as they are the primary battlegrounds in the “lawfare” campaign against Israel’s settlement policies. All have been forcefully rebutted by successive Israeli governments of varying political hues but Israel’s counterarguments have rarely been publicised in the mainstream media and are never taken seriously. So the attacks continue and must be confronted.

            Contrary to conventional wisdom, Israel’s legal approach to the settlements is not an eccentric one. Many heavyweight legal authorities have offered persuasive evidence that the settlements are legal. They have highlighted four specific topics: the Palestine Mandate, the Geneva Convention, the Oslo Accords, and the need for equality before the law. 

Respected Canadian expert on international law Jacques Gauthier [1] explains that historical events established today's Jewish legal rights in their reconstituted homeland. The key decisions were taken by the Principal Allied Powers at San Remo in April 1920, endorsed at the Treaty of Sèvres in August of that year, and then accorded full legal force by the League of Nations Palestine Mandate of 1922. All point to Israel’s legal rights to the territories she has held since 1967. (Similar legal processes were applied to Syria and Iraq under the Mandate system). The legal Jewish title to Western Palestine (i.e. from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea), including the right of “close settlement” (Article 6 of the Mandate), is extant under the UN Charter (Article 80), and is not nullified by military conquest. Declarations by the UN and others that the settlements are illegal reflect political opinions that are not evidence-based.

In 2011, award-winning legal analyst Cynthia Day Wallace [2] wrote this about the Geneva Convention Article 49(6) that is often invoked to condemn the settlements: "The drafters’ intent was that of protecting vulnerable civilians in times of armed conflict by creating an international legal instrument that would declare as unlawful all coerced deportation such as that suffered by over forty million Germans, Soviets, Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians and others, immediately after the Second World war. In the case of Israel, under international law as embodied in the Mandate for Palestine, Jews were permitted and even encouraged to settle in every part of Palestine, but they were not deported or forcibly transferred by the Government. Accordingly, calling the “East Jerusalem”, Judea and Samaria Israeli settlements “illegal” is not an apt application of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

The Oslo Accords (1993-95) did not outlaw the building of Jewish settlements in Area C (under full Israeli control) just as they didn’t outlaw the building of Arab settlements in Area A (under full PA control). What Oslo did was prohibit Jewish settlements in area A and Arab settlements in area C – unless authorised by the respective authorities. Israel has always abided by these terms while the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly violated them. Turning legal reality on its head, the PA – shamelessly supported by the international community – condemns the former while ignoring the latter. 

There’s more. In signing the Oslo accords, the PA recognised the settlements as a temporary reality the disposition of which would depend on the outcome of negotiations. Israel, in turn, gave two key assurances to President Bush (via a 2004 correspondence with PM Sharon) that went beyond her legal commitments at Oslo – that no new settlements would be built, and that existing ones would only develop from their outer perimeters inward to avoid encroachment on land that might comprise part of a future Palestinian state. Israel has abided by those promises.

So while Israel is wrongly excoriated for “illegal settlements” and even “war-crime settlements” the PA is actually the criminal, aided and abetted by the EU [3].

Those who conduct lawfare against Israel deliberately conflate the legal and political arguments surrounding the settlements. A cruel irony lies at the heart of the matter: if the spurious legal assertions were put aside, politics might stand a chance. The overwhelming majority of Israeli settlers live in the large settlement blocs of the West Bank, such as Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel, located close to the 1949 ceasefire lines. This means that almost all of the West Bank could potentially still be relinquished to the Palestinians as part of a future peace agreement, while these settlements could be integrated into Israel in a land swap [4].

The settlements are undoubtedly politically contentious and an irritant to the prospects of peace. But Israel is not responsible for the diplomatic impasse. As Sabel [5] has written: “The political wisdom of setting up Israeli settlements in the West Bank is a controversial issue. It can well be argued, however, that the Palestinians should have been aware that it is impossible to freeze a situation for over forty years. By refusing to reach a peace agreement they have incurred the inevitable result that the demographics of the area have changed over the years by the natural phenomena of population movement and natural increase.”         

           I have yet to see acknowledgement in any major global media platform of any of these rigorous, evidence-based counterarguments to the “illegal settlements” charge. The reason? It doesn’t fit with the contemporary narrative of Israeli wrong-doing and Palestinian victimhood. 
            The debate is not merely an academic one. In a convergence of lawfare and BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), several governments and international bodies (including the EU) have issued guidance discouraging trade involving Israel’s settlements on the grounds that they violate the Geneva Convention. Such guidance has not been issued in relation to Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara, Tibet, Crimea and other occupied territories on which settlements have been built. Kontorovich [6] reveals this blatant double standard regarding the applicability of the Geneva Convention to settlements: “No one has ever been prosecuted for this war crime, and its interpretation has been confined to academic and political statements — entirely within the particular context of Israel.” 
            The unfair singling out of Israel is part of a longstanding pattern of discrimination. We’ve seen how the other states emerging from the Mandate system established borders that reflected the administrative frontiers of their Mandates in keeping with uti possidetis juris, a doctrine denied only to Israel. We’ve seen how the Geneva Convention has been used to vilify Israeli settlements and no other settlement projects around the world. We’ve seen the way the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was deliberately formulated to attack Israel and only Israel. And we’ve seen this pattern of inequitable behaviour being replicated in other international fora. Such selectivity is a violation of the principle of equality as enshrined in article 2(1) of the UN Charter [7] and declared by the International Court of Justice as a fundamental pillar of international law. 
            Moreover, the disproportionate political and media focus on Israeli settlements – whose municipal boundaries occupy under 5% of the area of the West Bank – arguably represents a greater obstacle to peace than either their existence or their disputed legal status.
            Anti-Israel activists who claim that they are merely upholding international law are being disingenuous. Don’t be shy in challenging them if you don’t have a legal training – most of them don’t either. Next time you are faced with the “illegal settlements” smear, I suggest you retort with another dyad in the form of this simple request – evidence please. But don’t hold your breath for the answer. 

1.     Gauthier J. The Jewish Claim to Jerusalem. https://bbcwatch.org/2013/11/23/dr-jacques-gauthier-the-jewish-claim-to-jerusalem-the-case-under-international-law/

2.     Wallace CD (2011). Foundations of the International Legal Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel: Implications for the Current Debate: Executive Summary. European Coalition for Israel.

3.     Honest Reporting. https://honestreporting.com/honestreporting-exclusive-how-european-union-funding-of-west-bank-activities-breaches-intl-law-undermines-peace/

4.     Cornell S, Shaffer B. Occupied Elsewhere. Selective Policies on Occupations, Protracted Conflicts, and Territorial Disputes. Washington D.C., FDD, 2020.

5.     Sabel R. International Legal Issues of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: An Israeli Lawyer’s Position. Journal of East Asia and International Law 2010, 3(2):8-8. 

6.     Kontorovich E. Unsettled: A Global Study Of Settlements In Occupied Territories. Journal of Legal Analysis 2017, Vol 9 (2), 285–350  https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/lax004

7.     United Nations. United Nations Charter (Full Text), Preamble, Article 2(1). Geneva, United Nations, 1945.

 

 Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 31

The charge that Israel builds “illegal settlements” has no basis in international law – Part 1

 

Most people who damn Israel as a serial lawbreaker have no knowledge of international law; instead they absorb the torrent of legal smears about the country through a filter of disdain and assume they must be true. This illogical-logic even has a name: argumentum ad populum or “everyone knows.”

The phrase “illegal settlements” is an example of such inanity. It rolls off the tongue as though it were a statement of the obvious but like its twin, “Illegal occupation,” it poisons rational discourse on Israel. Both expressions are built on flimsy or non-existent foundations but their endless repetition – even within some relatively pro-Israel circles – has elevated them to a position of seemingly unassailable veracity. 

Those who promote the “illegal settlements” charge know that few people will take the trouble to dissect its legal foundation. This apathy hands an advantage to those who indulge in “lawfare” – the weaponisation of the law for political ends – against Israel. Because the many issues surrounding the legality of the settlements are complex and important, I’m devoting two articles to this topic [see Footnote*].

A brief historical recap is necessary. Following Israel’s entry to the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the defensive Six Day War of 1967, Israel’s Labour-dominated government established a network of strategically located IDF installations and Jewish communities in these territories. Their purpose was threefold: to bolster the state’s security in the face of the ongoing refusal of her enemies to abandon violence and negotiate peace; to restore Jewish access to historically and religiously significant sites (most notably in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem) from which Jews had been unlawfully ejected by Arab forces in the War of Independence of 1947-49; and to hold as bargaining chips in the event of future peace negotiations. 

Following the election of the Likud in 1977, Israel approved the construction of additional settlements even if they served a minimal security need. This empowered militant Greater Israel groups who attempted to “create facts” by initiating unofficial settlements across the newly acquired territories. The government and Supreme Court responded by specifying strict conditions for a settlement to be formally recognised. First, its establishment had to be based on a government decision. Second, it could be built only on state-owned land or on land legally acquired by an Israeli citizen. Third, it had to accord with planning laws supervised by a municipal authority. If any of these conditions were not met, a settlement was deemed illegal and had to be removed, and thousands of such settlements have been evacuated and demolished over the years. 

Unauthorised settlements are clearly different from those that have been officially sanctioned by the state. For political reasons, the UN (most notoriously in Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016) and the wider international community have chosen to blur this distinction. 

The UN, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and various NGOs offer three main arguments to justify the blanket designation of all Israeli settlements as illegal: that the occupation is illegal and therefore so are the settlements; that settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention; and that the Rome Statute outlaws the settlements.

Israel’s response to all three has been robust and evidence-based:

1. The occupation was an act of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter and was therefore legal pending a peace treaty (Blog 30). UN Security Council resolution 242 of 1967 (accepted by Israel and rejected by her neighbours) implicitly recognised the legality of the occupation as it did not require Israel’s withdrawal from all the territories but to “secure and recognised boundaries” because at that time the Security Council acknowledged that the 1949 ceasefire lines – that resulted in Israel having a narrow waist only 9 miles wide – were indefensible. Resolution 242 has been the starting point for all attempts to achieve a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and her neighbours. While those efforts bore fruit with Egypt and Jordan, they have repeatedly floundered in relation to the Palestinians due to the intransigence of successive Palestinian leaders. 

 

2. The 1949 Geneva Convention, formulated in response both to Nazi atrocities directed primarily against Jews and to the post-war displacement of millions of Europeans, outlawed the forcible transfer of civilians across the international borders of sovereign states (“High Contracting Parties”). These conditions are not met by the settlements as a) all Israeli settlers relocated themselves voluntarily, b) no settlers have crossed internationally recognised borders, c) no Palestinians have been displaced to make way for settlements, and d) prior to 1967, no states held legal sovereignty over the so-called “Palestinian territories” – to which the Jordanians in any case renounced all claims, excluding the Islamic holy sites, in 1988 (Blog 29).

 

3. The 1998 Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court declared that “indirect transfer” of civilians was a war crime – a novel notion that had no precedent in international relations The clause was inserted by the Arab states because they knew that invoking the Geneva Convention was inappropriate. In the words of blogger Elder of Ziyon [1], it was “a law written only for Israel. European powers went along with this hijacking of international law to target a single state. This makes the Rome Statute a travesty of international law.”               

    Several further counterarguments are offered by Israel and her supporters: 

1.  The legal provisions of the 1922 League of Nations’ British Mandate, guaranteeing the right of “close settlement by Jews” (Article 6) throughout Western Palestine (i.e. from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea), were never rescinded and still apply under Article 80 of the UN Charter [2].

2. All of the states, with one exception, that emerged from the Mandate system adopted borders derived from the territorial frontiers of the Mandates based on the doctrine of uti possidetis juris; the one exception was Israel. Since article 2(1) of the UN Charter requires that all states and conflicts be treated equally, Israel has a legitimate claim to sovereignty based on the territorial frontiers of the Palestine Mandate as of May 1948 when she became an independent state [3].

3. Many settlements are located in areas (including Greater Jerusalem) that had not been allocated to the putative Arab state in the 1947 UN partition resolution that was accepted by the Zionist leadership and rejected by their Arab counterparts. Consequently, these areas cannot be retrospectively defined, in legal terms, as “Palestinian territory.”

4. Many settlements are located in places from which Jews were forcibly expelled in 1948 despite having lived there for centuries or millennia and to which they had legal title (e.g. Gush Etzion, Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter).

5. The legal status of the settlements was transformed in 1993 when Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Authority, thereby ending her “belligerent occupancy” and thus the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The terms of these accords, formally endorsed by the international community, relegated a resolution of the settlement problem to final status negotiations, all attempts at which have floundered due to Palestinian intransigence.

6. The right of Jews (and indeed Arabs) to live peaceably and lawfully anywhere is enshrined in international treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), just as the discriminatory denial of Jewish (and indeed Arab) rights is illegal under the UN Charter [4]. 

        Out of this morass of disputation, which specific legal squabbles have paramountcy? That’s a matter of opinion but I suggest there are four: the Palestine Mandate, the Geneva Convention, the Oslo Accords, and the principle of equality before the law. I’ll explore those in more detail in the next blog.
        Meanwhile, keep half an eye out for the ubiquitous argumentum ad populum and watch what happens when you point out to its advocates the absurdity of elevating populist dogma to the status of legal fact. I’d wager that your challenge will, more often than not, be met with a revealing response – stunned silence.

*Full transparency: I am not an international lawyer but in these articles I cite many authorities who are and they deserve to be taken seriously – as does the legal position of all Israeli governments, whether of the left, right or centre, since 1967. That has not happened to date. 

1 Elder of Ziyon (2015). How the Arabs added specifically anti-Israel language to the Rome Statute of the ICC.  https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-arabs-added-specifically-anti.html

2 De Blois, M, Tucker A. Israel on Trial: How international law is being misused to delegitimise the state of Israel. The Netherlands, The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, 2018.

3 Thinc. The Hague Statement of Jurists on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Netherlands, The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, 2017.

4 United Nations. United Nations Charter (Full Text), Preamble, Article 2(1). Geneva, United Nations, 1945.