Honig - Yesteryear’s peculiar predictions

Seven-year-old
Rachel Levy flees
Arab occupiers in
the old city of
Jerusalem as her
home goes up in flames.

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
14 October '11

http://sarahhonig.com/2011/10/14/another-tack-yesteryear%E2%80%99s-peculiar-predictions/

Back in 2003 I warned in several columns and editorials that by acquiescing (for seemingly pragmatic reasons) to the delegitimization of settlements we also delegitimize our standing in Jerusalem.

“For much of the world,” I noted in an editorial for Jerusalem Day 2003, “many sections of Jerusalem are settlements – no less than Ariel or Ofra. The neighborhood of Gilo, home to more than 45,000 Jerusalemites, is routinely described abroad as ‘the Gilo settlement.’ This can impact on the continued development of many city quarters. It’s not inconceivable that the Arabs will decry any development as an infringement of strictures set in the ‘Roadmap to Peace’ while the International Quartet, slated to oversee the process, may well agree.”

At the time, I recall, the reaction was that I had “exaggerated wildly” and “stretched things out of all proportion” to make a point that was in itself quite outlandish, if not outright scaremongering. No way would our claim to Gilo ever be compromised and no way would any friendly force ever dare insist we curtail construction in so quintessentially an Israeli neighborhood.

So a short while later, by way of defending my “peculiar predictions,” I elaborated on them in one of my Another Tack columns. “Too many professed Zionists regard settlers as enemies, frequently heaping more scorn upon them than on Arab terrorists,” I observed.

“Settlers are often political pariahs, whereas it’s politically incorrect to refer to any Arabs as enemies. There are only potential peace-partners on the other side, and they can be placated with the sacrifice of a few settlements we’ve never been to, inhabited by folks we don’t wish to associate with.

“And if the small sacrifices won’t do, they’ll be followed by bigger, more painful concessions … Via a process of rationalization we convince ourselves that what we cede is ‘undesirable.’ No beyond-the-Green-Line community is immune. This is why it behooves us to constantly bear in mind that overseas the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo is called the ‘the settlement of Gilo.’

Rennert - Wash. Post's silly semantics against Israel's rightful claims to Jerusalem

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
02 October '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/wash_posts_silly_semantics_against_israels_rightful_claims_to_jerusalem.html

Just when readers of the Washington Post might think that its reporters have exhausted all available semantic distortions to blacken Israel, here comes a new contorted Israel-bashing label that descends into the far reaches of utter silliness.

It's served up by Joel Greenberg, the Post's Jerusalem correspondent, in an Oct.2 article about a senior Palestinian official complaining that the Quartet of international mediators -- the U.S., the EU, the UN and Russia -- are too easy on Israel in pushing for resumption of negotiations ("Abbas aide presses for strong action by Quartet -- He portrays mediators' response to settlement plans as slap on wrist" page A14).

While the Quartet is pushing for a new round of talks without pre-conditions, the Abbas aide first wants an Israeli settlement freeze and Greenberg clearly sympathizes with him. Greenberg also writes that the dispute about how to proceed to negotiations was aggravated when Israel advanced building plans on West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem," -- as he puts it in his lead paragraph.

Farther down in his piece, Greenberg more specifically reiterates that Israel has complicated matters with plans to build "1,100 homes in Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem." It takes Greenberg a while to recognize the Jewish character of Gilo.

However, in Greenberg's view, it is not enough to simply label Gilo a Jewish neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. No, as far as he's concerned, Gilo doesn't belong to Israel and to these Jewish residents because it sits on "West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem." Such annexation, in his view, is Israel's original sin.
Consequently, Greenberg rejects any permissibility for Jerusalem, like many cities and capitals around the world, to grow by bursting its geographic boundaries -- a natural phenomenon elsewhere around the globe.

Which is utterly silly, when you think of it.

Fresnozionism - Stop indulging Arab fantasies

Fresnozionism.org
28 September '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/09/stop-indulging-arab-fantasies/


Everyone is disappointed with Israel again:

[EU Foreign Affairs chief Catherine] Ashton urged Israel to “reverse” its decision to build 1,100 new housing units in Gilo, saying that “settlement activity” threatens the viability of a two-state solution.

Both Ashton and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague slammed Israel for seemingly ignoring the Quartet of Middle East mediators, which called last week for a resumption of peace talks and for both Israelis and Palestinians to resist “provocative actions” …

This new housing plan, Hague said, was just the kind of “provocative” move to be avoided. “Settlement expansion is illegal under international law [false -- ed.], corrodes trust and undermines the basic principle of land for peace,” Hague said, calling on Israel to “revoke this decision.”

Earlier, the United States said that Gilo plan was “counterproductive” and urged both Israel and the Palestinians not to take steps which could complicate resumption of direct peace talks. “We are deeply disappointed by this morning’s announcement by the government of Israel,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

And Mahmoud Abbas said this in his UN speech last week:

The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine.

So where is Gilo? Let’s see exactly how it is “provocative” and “redraws the borders”?

Tobin - Administration Refights the Battle of Gilo

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
27 September '11


http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/27/jerusalem-gilo-obama-housing-terror/

Those who believed the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel has changed for the better got a rude wakeup call today when Washington condemned the start of a housing project in Jerusalem. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed “disappointment” about the planned building of 1,100 homes in the Gilo section of the city. The Palestinian Authority also attacked the project as yet another “illegal settlement” built on Arab land.

While the administration’s defenders will say the comments from Foggy Bottom are nothing more than standard American criticism of settlement policy, attacks on the right of Jews to live in Gilo have a significance that may presage the outbreak of violence.


The first thing that needs to be understood is Gilo is no settlement. Built on the southern border of the city, it was established more than 40 years ago and is the home of approximately 40,000 residents of Israel’s capital. Up until Barack Obama took office, it was not the subject of much, if any comment, by any previous administration. By seeking to force Israel to cease building houses in existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Obama has legitimized Palestinian demands for not only a re-division of the city but also their desire to evict the more than 200,000 Jews who live in those parts that were illegally occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967.

But Gilo has a special importance that ought to have been remembered by the administration before they sought to make an issue of it. Gilo is more than just another place where the Palestinians wish to push the Jews out. Only a few short years ago during the second intifada, Gilo was the one section of the city that was under constant murderous sniper fire from the nearby Arab village of Beit Jala. Gilo was the laboratory where Palestinian terrorists sought to discover whether they could force Jews into abandoning their homes. They failed. Despite being subjected to murderous attacks for many months, the Jews of Gilo stood their ground and refused to be intimidated. Gilo became one of many symbols of the courage of the Israeli people and their determination to hold onto Jerusalem.

It should also be pointed out that far from being an obstacle to a putative peace deal, building in Gilo — or any other part of Jerusalem — would have no effect on the creation of a Palestinian state if a peace deal should ever be signed. It is generally understood that even according to President Obama’s idea of a border being created along the 1967 lines with land swaps that Jewish Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty. The only way homes in Gilo could be construed as an obstacle to peace is if the vision of peace being pursued is one in which every Jew is thrown out of much of the city.

Even worse, by branding Gilo as a place where Jews ought not to live and build, the State Department is doing more than just trying to appease the Palestinians. It is also illustrating that as far as the U.S. is concerned, this place where terror was decisively defeated is up for grabs. That’s a signal Palestinians may wrongly interpret as American indifference to a resumption of violence.

This latest episode is a reminder that no American leader has done more to chip away at Israel’s position on Jerusalem than Obama. Despite the hopeful signs about a rapprochement between the administration and Israel during the debate in the United Nations, the president is still holding on to dangerous misconceptions about Jerusalem and the goal of the Palestinians.

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Seething on the Left over new housing units in Gilo

Carl
Israel Matzav
16 January '11

Israel's hysterical Left is seething over a 1,400-unit housing project in the southeastern Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, which is slated to advance in the approval process next week.

A plan to build 1,400 new housing units in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood located beyond the Green Line, will be discussed next week and is expected to be approved by the city's local planning and building committee, reported Army Radio on Sunday. If approved, the plan will then be submitted to the District Committee. 

According to Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer, the plan is one of the largest to be established across the Green Line, one that is even bigger than the Ramat Shlomo and Har Homa plans that triggered a great uproar last year and raised tensions in relations between Israel and the United States, reported Army Radio.

With respect to Ramat Shlomo, that's a lie. The Ramat Shlomo plan is for 1,600 housing units. The Har Homa plan is 980 units. It would be nice if these people at least got their facts straight.

In any event, 1,400 units is far from the largest project in Jerusalem - 'east' or 'west.' The original Ramat Shlomo in the early '90's was over 2,000 units, and I believe that Har Homa was even more.

(Read full "Seething on the Left over new housing units in Gilo")

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Painting Israel into a corner

Moshe Dann
Israel Opinion/Ynet
02 December 09

Israel is being duped into a classic negotiating trap – and, it seems, quite willingly.

Forcing Israel to negotiate over Jerusalem neighborhoods, like Gilo, and dithering about threats from Iran, sets up Israel for strategic concessions. Moreover, temporarily freezing Jewish building in Judea and Samaria accomplishes nothing.

This bartering is calculated to divert Israel's attention away from the dangers of a second Arab Palestinian state and the obstacles that prevent that from happening.

By making it seem that Israel is getting something, e.g. reducing pressure against building in Jerusalem, the US is leveraging against Israeli interests elsewhere.

PM Netanyahu knows this game well, but is faced with a difficult choice: alienating an openly hostile American president, or turning against his own constituency. Tying to achieve some balance, he wants to appear that he is gaining something, and, that he is the victim of American pressure. In the end, he satisfies no one.

Agreeing to freeze Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, even temporarily, simply to get the PA to resume negotiations sets a dangerous precedent, one that will make it harder to withstand opposition to resume building after the time has elapsed.

Meanwhile, hilltops north of Ramallah are covered by new Arab housing projects, funded by the Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC), a US government agency, and the Middle East Investment Initiative (MEII), a project of the Aspen Institute, which has put up half the money (about a half billion dollars), and the Palestinian Authority's Investment Fund, International Finance Corp (World Bank) and local banks putting up the rest.

The Aspen Institute, World Bank, and other forums bring together political and economic elites at the highest levels, pursuing policies behind the scenes, for example, the two-state delusion. They were the active elements (along with Peres, Beilin, etc. on a local level) behind the Oslo Accords, the withdrawal from Gaza, etc.

(Continue reading ...)
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What About the Occupation of the Western Wall?

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
24 November 09

I’m having a hard time understanding the thinking behind the Obama administration’s decision to criticize construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. The administration seems to have decided that Gilo is a settlement, and the international press is of course helping the cause by falsely reporting that Gilo is in (Arab) East Jerusalem. As Maurice Ostroff points out in a must-read Jerusalem Post piece:

The reality is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land.

Gilo is one of several neighborhoods that sit on land occupied by Jordan from 1948-1967, after the withdrawal of the British Mandate. This border is called the Green Line, and it

refers only to the 1949 Armistice lines established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. … Nor is it fixed, as explained by Justice Stephen M. Schwebel, who spent 19 years as a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, including three years as President. He wrote “…modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are, in Secretary Rogers’s words, “insubstantial alterations required for mutual security” or more substantial alterations — such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.” …

The Palestinians never had sovereignty over the West Bank nor east Jerusalem and Justice Schwebel concluded that since Jordan, the prior holder of these territories had seized that territory unlawfully in 1948, Israel which subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967, has better title to it. Jordan’s illegal annexation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1948 was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan and Jordan now makes no claim to it.

In terms of international law, between 1948 and 1967 this territory was terra nullius, or “land belonging to no one” over which sovereignty may be acquired through occupation. The concept of terra nullius is well recognized in international law.

Getting back to the Obama administration: what is the principle behind the critique of construction in Gilo? There are many parts of Jerusalem that share its standing. Those places include the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall, both of which, like Gilo, were controlled by Jordan during the twenty years between the founding of the state and the Six Day War.

Is the Jewish Quarter a settlement? Is the Western Wall occupied? Is Israeli construction in them inimical to the peace process? Someone should ask these questions of Robert Gibbs at the next press conference. By the administration’s Gilo logic, the answer to all three would have to be yes.

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Gilo--History and International Law Back Israel

Daled Amos
23 November 09

In an article in the Jerusalem Post, Maurice Ostroff writes about the status of Gilo--where plans to build 900 houses have caused a new uproar and claims that Israel is once again expanding settlements.

However, as Ostroff points out, the emotional reaction ignores the facts--both historical and legal.

Historically:

THE REALITY is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land.

The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media. The plan was initiated a long time ago by the Israel Land Administration. Since Gilo is an integral part of the city, the approval was given by Jerusalem's Construction and Planning Committee and, as Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement released by his office, "Israeli law does not discriminate between Arabs and Jews, or between east and west of the city. The demand to cease construction just for Jews is illegal, as in the US and any other enlightened place in the world. The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in every part of the city for Jews and Arabs alike."

...In his video message to the November 8 Rabin Rally in Tel Aviv, US President Barack Obama urged Israel to pursue Rabin's legacy. It is therefore relevant to recall that Rabin had no intention of returning to the 1967 lines. In his last speech [view here] to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, Rabin said "The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines....First and foremost, united Jerusalem - which will include both Ma'aleh Adumim and Givat Ze'ev - as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths...."

No less supportive of Israel's right to build the houses is International Law, which is often misquoted in an effort to condemn Israel:

(Continue article)

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Obama to Israelis: Jerusalem Is a “Settlement”

P.David Hornik
FrontPageMag.com
20 November 09

Asked by Fox News in China what he thought of Israel’s plans to build 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem, President Obama responded:

“The situation in the Middle East is very difficult, and I’ve said repeatedly and I’ll say again, Israel’s security is a vital national interest to the United States, and we will make sure they are secure. I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.”

To most Israeli ears the statement is discordant. The avowal of commitment to Israel’s security doesn’t jibe with describing building in Gilo as “dangerously embittering” the Palestinians. Gilo, now a neighborhood of 40,000, was annexed by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war as part of the reunification of Jerusalem. Gilo is a fact; ordinary Israelis live in it, and calling them settlers would be laughable.

Not that Obama was breaking new ground in calling a Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood a settlement. Less than two years ago then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of another such neighborhood, Har Homa, that “Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning” and that the United States “doesn’t make a distinction” between settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Har Homa, however, only goes back to the 1990s and is a good deal smaller than Gilo. “Gilo” and “settlement” sounds even more jarring.

Nor was Obama, of course, alone in his statement; he was leading the international charge. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokeswoman said “such actions [as building in Gilo] undermine efforts for peace and cast doubt on the viability of the two-state solution.” The British Foreign Office said that “Expanding settlements on occupied land in east Jerusalem makes [a] deal much harder. So this decision on Gilo is wrong and we oppose it.” French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, in Israel for talks, also condemned the building plans.

And back in Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration was “dismayed” and that both parties should avoid actions that could “preempt, or appear to preempt, negotiations.”

Just as the official international reaction was unanimous in opposing the building, the internal Israeli reaction was unanimous in supporting it—and included leading figures from both the government and the opposition.

(Continue reading...)

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Is the President encouraging Palestinian violence?

Ira Sharkansky
The Shark Blog
19 November 09

There has been a worrisome shift in Israeli commentary on President Obama's efforts to force peace between Israel and Palestine.

A prominent emphasis had focused on the President's naivete, what one called a "childish" assumption that his engagement could bring the parties to positions they had not taken on their own.

Now there is a concern that the president may actually be advancing the prospect of violence.

The possibility comes from only part of a sentence, but it was a presidential sentence that received wide media coverage. Obama said that construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo makes it harder to achieve peace, and embitters the Palestinians in a way that could be dangerous.

It took less than a day for the media to note that a prominent Palestinian--one who was a leader in the 2000 intifada and muted as a possible successor to Mahmoud Abbas-- was urging the launch of popular campaigns to achieve statehood.

Is it too much of a stretch to see "popular campaigns" as code for mass demonstrations, likely to produce violence and the start of another intifada, and to see the Palestinians finding an endorsement for their actions in Barack Obama's mention of Israel's contribution to their dangerous embitterment?

To those who say we should not rest expectations on phrases expressed by an American president and a prominent Palestinian, it is appropriate to take another look at history. Palestinian statements and actions going back to the 1930s indicate a deep seated feeling that they have a monopoly of justice in this bi-national dispute. Moreover, they have gone the route of violence on several occasions. Recent statements by several prominent figures provide some justification for Obama's conclusion that prolonging their lack of satisfaction could produce another round.

Was the President simply expressing his worry? Was he careless in overlooking what his comment could add to existing tinder already smoldering? Could he possibly have intended to provide justification for violence, either by way of punishing Israel for not accepting his dictates about freezing settlements, or as an effort to achieve something that would save him the embarrassment of failure?
(Read full article)
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Map Check

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
20 November 09

The central problem in foreign press coverage of Israel is the tendency of journalists to rewrite and sensationalize current events or, more commonly, to mischaracterize them into agreement with a preferred narrative. Take the brouhaha over Gilo. Many journalists would like to incorporate the Israeli decision to add housing to this neighborhood into the larger narrative about West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements encroaching on land slated for a future Palestinian state. It would be complicated if it was acknowledged, as Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out, that

The building of apartments in Gilo is irrelevant to [the] eventual disposition of Jerusalem because everyone — the Americans, the Palestinians and the Israelis — knows that Gilo … will undoubtedly end up in Israel as part of a negotiated solution. … It doesn’t matter, then, if the Israelis build 900 housing units in Gilo or 900 skyscrapers: Gilo will be kept by Israel in exchange for a one-to-one land swap with Palestine.

The narrative of dispossession would be even more profoundly challenged if it was acknowledged that Gilo isn’t even in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. It’s actually in Southwest Jerusalem. Type “Gilo Jerusalem” into Google Maps if you want to see for yourself. Yet almost every single story on the Gilo controversy locates the neighborhood in a completely different region — specifically, an Arab region — of Jerusalem. What’s even more remarkable is that most of these stories are written by reporters who are stationed in Jerusalem. These sloppy characters either don’t know the geography of their own backyard or are willfully misleading their readers.

So, here’s to you, Ben Hubbard of the AP, Katya Adler of the BBC, Fox News, the BBC(again), Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, Ben Lynfield of the UK Independent, Ilene Prusherof the Christian Science Monitor, and many more.

You have all flunked Journalism 101.

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Barack Obama is no friend of Israel

FresnoZionism.org
18 November 09

Until now, I’ve refrained from being sharply critical of President Obama. I’ve wanted to give him time to develop his policies, to learn from his experience that the real obstacle to peace in the Mideast is not Israel. I’ve assumed that his native intelligence would allow him — once he became involved in the process — to get past the unexamined left-wing worldview that came from his educational background and his associations, and to put aside the bad advice that he’s received. I’ve hoped that he would turn out to be a Truman or JFK, someone capable of thinking for himself as soon as he realized that the buck does in fact stop at his desk.

I’ve criticized some of his actions, true. I was upset by his early choice of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samantha Power, Rob Malley, and some others as advisers. I objected to his nomination of Chas Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. I found his Cairo speech offensive. I was unhappy with his embrace of the phony ‘pro-Israel’ group J Street. I strongly objected to his original call for a settlement freeze. I was dismayed by his treatment of PM Netanyahu when he visited the US recently.

But I kept hoping that he would someday ‘get it’. Not any more:

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) — Israeli plans to build 900 new homes in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, constructed beyond the city’s 1967 borders, could have “dangerous” consequences, President Barack Obama said today.

Obama said “additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security,” according to a transcript of an interview he gave Fox News. “I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors, I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.”

Obama’s remark was echoed by the European Union, Ban Ki-Moon, and others.

Some background: Gilo is within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, on the southwest side of the city, next to the Arab town of Beit Jala and not far from Bethlehem. Some Jews lived there pre-1948. In 1967, the area was captured from the Jordanians along with the rest of East Jerusalem, and in 1980 it was formally annexed to Israel as part of Jerusalem. Today, about 40,000 Jews live in Gilo.

(Continue article...)

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Note to Media: Gilo Is in Jerusalem

CAMERA
18 November 09

Yesterday, Israel approved the building of 900 homes in Jerusalem, a move opposed by the United States, and incorrectly reported by some media outlets which misreported Gilo's location. For instance, the International Herald Tribune ran the following brief today on Page 4:

Whether you call it a settlement or a neighborhood of Jerusalem, Gilo is not in the West Bank. As Isabel Kershner correctly reports today in the New York Times (which publishes the Tribune):

Israel said Tuesday that it had advanced plans to expand a Jewish district of Jerusalem in territory that was captured in the 1967 war and that the Palestinians claim as part of their future state. . . .

The Israeli move to push forward the building plans in Jerusalem comes as the Palestinians have begun seeking support for a plan to win the United Nations Security Council's recognition of a Palestinian state, without Israel's agreement, in the lands Israel won in 1967. . .

[The 900 housing units] are in Gilo, an area in southern Jerusalem considered by Israel to be a neighborhood of the city and by the Palestinians and much of the world to be a settlement that violates international law

In addition, it is clear from reading the transcript of yesterday's State Department press briefing that the Obama administration also understands that Gilo is situated in Jerusalem and not the West Bank. For instance, spokesman Ian Kelly states:

Well, I think, Michel, you've heard us say many times that we believe that neither party should engage in any kind of actions that could unilaterally preempt or appear to preempt negotiations. And I think that we find the Jerusalem Planning Committee's decision to move forward on the approval of the - approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem as dismaying.

Gilo lies within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, though it is outside the Green Line delineating the pre-1967 boundaries, as shown in this U.N. map. Another part of the city that falls within this category -- within municipal boundaries but outside the Green Line -- is Jabel Mukater, the home of the Arab attacker who shot dead eight yeshiva students in April 2008. As Steven Erlanger and Kershner reported March 8, 2008 in the NYT:

(Continue reading...)

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Analysis: Obama's press on Gilo shows a continued misread of Israel

Herb Keinon
JPost
19 November 09

US President Barack Obama is an extremely intelligent man surrounded by equally intelligent advisers, many of whom have years of experience dealing with the Middle East. His continued misreading and misunderstanding of the Israeli public is, therefore, somewhat baffling.

This misread was evident again in the past few days by the US objection to the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee's approval of a plan to build some 900 new units in Gilo - not in a far-flung settlement overlooking Nablus, nor even in one of the settlement blocs like Gush Etzion, nor even a Jewish complex in one of the Arab neighborhoods of the capital, but in Gilo, one of the large new neighborhoods built in the city following the Six Day War. If Israel cannot build in Gilo without US approval, than it cannot build in Ramot Eshkol, French Hill, Ramot, Neveh Yaakov, Pisgat Ze'ev, East Talpiot or Har Homa.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Tuesday expressed "dismay" at the decision. The dismay, however, cuts both ways, with many Israelis clearly dismayed that the US - like Europe - now seems to be considering as settlements the post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The EU, clearly following Gibbs's lead and then taking it one step further, released a statement on Wednesday saying, "The European Union is dismayed by the recent decision on the expansion of the settlement of Gilo."

Truth be told, this is not the first indication of US policy on this matter. Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice seemed to be giving the new neighborhoods settlement status in 2007 when she opposed a new project in Har Homa. She didn't clarify, however, whether other Jerusalem neighborhoods over the Green Line, such as Gilo and Ramot, were settlements in the eyes of the United States.

(Continue reading...)
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Helping the Palestinians Falsify History

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
18 November 09

For sheer gall, Barack Obama’s labeling half of Israel’s capital a “settlement,” as Jonathan has pointed out, may be hard to beat. But a New York Times report of a new book about the Temple Mount is definitely in the running. Seeking to give readers some background, the report offered the following gem: “The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau.”

We’ll ignore the fact that the Second Temple is actually well-documented in extant writings from the period, and that several sections of the Temple compound’s outer walls, as described in these writings, have been uncovered (the Western Wall being one of them).

Instead, let’s discuss why there is a dearth of findings from the Temples themselves. (1) There happens to be a mosque on the exact site where, according to tradition, the Temples once stood. (2) Israel, contrary to Palestinian propaganda, is not out to “destroy al-Aqsa”; indeed, it scrupulously avoids any action that might endanger the mosque. (3) Israel is so deferential to Muslim sensibilities that, after capturing the Mount in 1967, it handed control of the site back to the Muslim waqf. Which brings us to (4): for all these reasons, Israel has never excavated the only place in the world where remnants of the Temple could possibly be found. Nor were any digs conducted there before 1967: al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock have stood undisturbed for hundreds of years. And yes, it is hard to produce archaeological evidence if you never even conduct a dig.

What is outrageous about this report is not just the way it abets Palestinian falsifications of history, though it certainly does that: since the reader isn’t told that this “lack of evidence” stems from the fact that nobody ever looked, he naturally assumes that archaeologists did, in fact, look and found nothing.

Even more outrageous, however, is the way Israel’s generosity is being used against it: its very restraint in eschewing excavations on the Mount — its concern, again, for Muslim sensibilities, its desire to avoid even the appearance of harm to the mosques — has been twisted into “evidence” that no Jewish connection to the Mount ever existed.

This is a standard Palestinian tactic: Israel’s refusal to let Jews pray on the Mount, also in deference to Muslim sensibilities, is similarly used as “proof” that Jews have no connection to the site. After all, Muslims pray there; Jews don’t; QED. And this tactic has been wildly successful: most of the world is completely convinced that Israel lacks any rights on the Mount.

But if Israel’s generosity is being exploited in this fashion, perhaps Jerusalem needs to rethink its tactics — and start demonstrating the Jewish connection to the Mount in actions rather than words. Excavating under al-Aqsa would be too drastic a first step. But letting Jews pray on a designated section of the Mount devoid of mosques would be an excellent place to begin.

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Gilo and Diplomatic Dismay

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
19 November 09

Noah, as you note, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s statement that the administration is “dismayed” at the construction of more housing in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem — because “neither party should unilaterally preempt negotiations” – is a non-sequitur. Last May, Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House for his first meeting as prime minister with President Obama and announced he wanted to commence negotiations “immediately,” without preconditions, which has been his position ever since.

What unilaterally preempted negotiations was the Obama/Abbas precondition of a settlement “freeze” that (1) was not previously demanded in any prior negotiations, (2) contradicted a six-year understanding about the meaning of a “freeze” (no new settlements, no expansion of existing settlement borders, and no financial incentives for new settlers), (3) could not be defined in practical terms even by George Mitchell, and (4) was not a condition that any Israeli government, Left or Right, could accept.

There was a little comedy silver at the State Department press conference yesterday, as spokesman Ian Kelly repeated the notion that the expansion of housing in Gilo was “dismaying” because it could “unilaterally” preempt negotiations. One of the reporters asked Kelly if he could “give us just a brief synopsis of the progress that Senator Mitchell has made in his months on the job” — to which Kelly responded that the administration had gotten both sides to agree on a goal:

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Apartments in Jerusalem, Now More Scandalizing than Ever

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
18 November 09

The latest expression of displeasure from the Obama administration over Israeli construction in Jerusalem should not be taken as a comment on the construction itself. It is actually a clumsy attempt at damage control. From China, Robert Gibbs said:

“We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem,” Gibbs said in the statement. “At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations.” … “Our position is clear,” Gibbs continued. “The status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.”

If “neither party should unilaterally preempt negotiations,” what does Gibbs have to say about the actual reason there are no negotiations currently taking place? That would be the Palestinian refusal to hold talks, on the unprecedented and invented grounds that any Israeli construction on land that was occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967 unilaterally preempts negotiations. In other words, the White House has endorsed the Palestinian preconditions on negotiations — at the same time as it rejects any attempt to set preconditions on negotiations. Quite a feat.

But this level of nonsense is necessary, and not because of anything the Palestinians or Israelis did. It is because of the immense damage the administration has done to the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas. Having staked the peace process on an undeliverable promise to the Palestinians of a settlement freeze, the administration is now forced to spin furiously for Abbas in order to shield him from even more humiliation than he’s already suffered.

Robert Gibbs pretends to be scandalized, but nobody should buy it. Are we really supposed to believe that George Mitchell thought the Netanyahu government, having rejected numerous such demands previously, would suddenly agree to allow the State Department to dictate to Israel about housing construction in its own capital?

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In a Tizzy Again

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 November 09

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is willing to show “restraint” in constructionin the West Bank, but will not accept any restriction on building in Jerusalem, senior government sources said Tuesday night. Their comments followed the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee’s approval of a plan to build some 900 new units in the southeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and the ensuing international objections.

The administration is unhinged again (isn’t it always?) over Jerusalem settlements:

“We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem,” [Robert] Gibbs said in a statement. ” At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations. The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.”

“Our position is clear,” Gibbs continued. “The status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.”

It’s probably poor form to cite “permanent status” issues since the administration has been on a mission to force Israel to cough up concessions on settlements up front, not as a final-status issue, as has been envisioned on the “road map.”

But this is evidence, certainly, if any more were needed, that the Obama administration has been spectacularly unsuccessful at getting either side in the inert “peace process” to do anything. The Bush administration, you will recall — criticized for being “too close” to Israel — was able to get the Israeli government to withdraw from Gaza, dismantle settlements, slow the growth of new ones and address the issue of checkpoints — not by threatening Israel but by building rapport and demonstrating that we consider Israel an ally, not an impediment to peace. Back in August, former Bush deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who was instrumental in that approach, wrote :

The Obama administration has managed to win the mistrust of most Israelis, not just conservative politicians. Despite his great popularity in many parts of the world, in Israel Obama is now seen as no ally. A June poll found that just 6% of Israelis called him “pro-Israel,” when 88% had seen President George W. Bush that way. So the troubles between the U.S. and Israel are not fundamentally found in the personal relations among policy makers.

The deeper problem—and the more complex explanation of bilateral tensions—is that the Obama administration, while claiming to separate itself from the “ideologues” of the Bush administration in favor of a more balanced and realistic Middle East policy, is in fact following a highly ideological policy path. Its ability to cope with, indeed even to see clearly, the realities of life in Israel and the West Bank and the challenge of Iran to the region is compromised by the prism through which it analyzes events.

And then came months of more of the same ineffective haranguing from the Obami, topped off by the egregious rudeness shown the Israeli Prime Minister on his recent visit. The Obama team now sees the results of its own failed policy.

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