Can You Imagine? NY Times Pushes Claim That Settlers Are to Blame for Europe’s Anti-Israel Stance - by Ira Stoll

...It could be that what really antagonizes the European Union most about Israel is expansion of West Bank settlements. But there are also other possible explanations. Perhaps the European Union is antagonized because Israel is an obstacle to trade with Iran. That trade is craved by European companies such as Total, the French oil and gas company that had a $4.8 billion deal with Tehran, a deal that a French court found Total bribed Iranian officials to obtain. Perhaps the European Union would be increasingly hostile to Israel regardless of the West Bank settlements, in part because Europe has a large, restive Muslim population that is hostile to Israel and that might be placated by Israel-bashing. Perhaps...

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
22 February '19..

A New York Times news article about Israel’s relations with Poland concludes with a quote from an Israeli politician who — well, you can read the Times paragraphs for yourself:

While Mr. Netanyahu’s challengers in the coming election were quick to seize on his latest troubles, other critics took a longer view, saying they regretted his inability to curtail what antagonizes the European Union most about Israel: its steady expansion of settlements on the West Bank.

“If he were less beholden to the settlers,” said Einat Wilf, a former Israeli lawmaker from the Labor Party, “maybe he could get a few countries on our side that are not looking to be paid for in glossing over their World War II records.”

Far be it from me to disagree with Einat Wilf, who, unlike me, actually lives in Israel.

But this sure appears to be a fine example of the Times subtly shaping a story by choosing to give the final word to someone expressing a point of view that matches the newspaper’s own preconceptions, or at least those of its left-wing readers.

It could be that what really antagonizes the European Union most about Israel is expansion of West Bank settlements. But there are also other possible explanations.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The Real Truth About Settlement Growth by Evelyn Gordon

...As Arieli himself noted, building in the settlement blocs and Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem doesn’t endanger the two-state solution in any way. And these are the very places where construction would be most helpful in alleviating Israel’s housing crisis. Thus it’s long past time for Israel to resume building there. There’s no reason for it to keep paying the price of curbing settlement construction if its restraint earns it no international dividends.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
06 July '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/settlements-curbs-come-at-high-cost/

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon predictably assailed Israel’s announced decision to build 800 new apartments in Ma’aleh Adumim and eastern Jerusalem. He noted that just four days earlier, the Middle East Quartet (i.e. the U.S., EU, UN and Russia) had issued a report deeming settlement construction an obstacle to peace. What Ban didn’t mention is that just a few days before that report came out, a leading Israeli leftist expert on the settlements published a comprehensive rebuttal of this claim, providing facts and figures showing that the settlements effectively aren’t growing at all.

This juxtaposition begs an obvious question: If the world is going to accuse Israel of “massive settlement construction” that “threatens the two-state solution” when even leading leftists admit this is a lie, why should Israel continue to pay the very real price exacted by freezing settlement construction?

Shaul Arieli, who published the rebuttal in Haaretz last week, is hardly an apologist for the settlements. Since retiring from the army as a colonel in 2001, he has become a prominent peace activist. He helped produce the Geneva Initiative, a nongovernmental template for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. He’s on the board of the Council for Peace and Security, a group of former security officials that advocates for a peace deal. He has been involved in numerous legal cases challenging the West Bank security fence. He gives lectures and tours on the feasibility of a peace agreement, and he’s considered a leading expert on demarcating a future Israeli-Palestinian border.

Nevertheless, Arieli has no patience with those who keep predicting that settlement construction will doom the two-state solution if it hasn’t already. His view is expressed unambiguously in the article’s title: “Look at the Figures: Israel’s Settlement Enterprise Has Failed.”

First, he noted, though the settlement population is growing faster than the general Israeli population, “In 2015, as in the preceding five years, almost 90 percent” of this increase was “a result of natural population growth,” meaning people having babies. In other words, though the number of individual settlers has grown, the number of families–the relevant figure for anyone considering evacuating settlements–has remained virtually unchanged. In fact, the number of people moving to the settlements has plunged to a mere third of what it was when Benjamin Netanyahu began his first term as prime minister in 1996.

Moreover, Arieli wrote, “Last year, as in all the preceding 40 years, 75 percent of the population growth occurred in settlement blocs.” In short, almost all the increase, from both births and migration, is happening in a handful of settlements near the Green Line that every peace plan ever proposed has agreed will remain Israeli. Thus it hasn’t affected the prospects of a two-state solution at all.

But while Arieli’s facts are indisputable, his explanation for why settlement growth has stagnated obscures an important truth. In his view, it’s because Israelis “are voting with their feet” against the settlements, despite “the efforts invested by Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government in consolidating the settlement enterprise.” In reality, however, nobody knows what Israelis would do if given a choice because, for the last seven years, they haven’t had one. Nobody will move to the settlements if there are no houses to move into. As data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics unambiguously shows, since taking office in 2009, Netanyahu has built far fewer units in the settlements than any of his predecessors. True, he periodically announces grandiose building plans, as he did this week. But most are quietly frozen again immediately afterward; very few ever get built.

Khaled Abu Toameh - Are Settlements the Major Obstacle to Peace?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
12 April '12..

The Palestinian Authority is demanding that the UN Security Council condemn Israel for building in the settlements and east Jerusalem neighborhoods. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Palestinian Authority said that Israeli settlements were "illegal" and "destructive" to the peace process.

The letter was sent to Ban Ki-moon ahead of a meeting of representatives of the Quartet - the US, EU, UN and Russia - in New York to discuss ways of reviving the stalled peace process. The Palestinian Authority, in its letter, also urged the Quartet to exert pressure on Israel to stop activities in the settlements or face being held fully responsible for "derailing" the peace process.

For the past two decades, the Palestinian Authority had been negotiating with Israel while construction in the settlements was continuing. The construction did not seem to bother Yasser Arafat, who continued to hold peace talks with Israel even while the bulldozers were working in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Arafat never demanded a full cessation of settlement activities as a pre-condition for pursuing the peace talks with Israel.

Abbas and his negotiators sat at the negotiating table with Israel even after they had threatened that the peace process would end if Israel built the new Har Homa neighborhood in east Jerusalem.

True, the Palestinian Authority under Arafat did sometimes voice opposition to Israel's policy of settlement construction. But that did not prompt them to boycott the peace talks. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, also did not seem to have a problem with the settlements during the first few years of his term in office.

Abbas continued to talk to representatives of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert while settlements were being expanded and new housing units were being built in east Jerusalem. Abbas cannot say that he was unaware of the construction, especially in light of the fact that from his office and home in Ramallah he could see the new houses in nearby settlements.

The issue of the settlements became a "major obstacle to peace" only when US President Barack Obama one day demanded that Israel freeze all settlement activities. Obama's demand embarrassed the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders rushed to endorse the call.

Marquadt-Bigman - The ever-growing settlements

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
10 April '12..



Last week, James Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), published a post entitled “The Politics of Palestine.” It’s the usual lament about the endless oppression inflicted upon Palestinians by Israel (and its US supporters), and of course, there is the inevitable reference to the “ever-growing settlements” that make the Palestinians feel “increasingly squeezed.”

The fact that Zogby can rightly assume that even people who have only the foggiest idea about the Middle East will think that these “ever-growing settlements” are a major obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict illustrates perfectly how divorced from reality much of the commentary and debate on this subject really are.

As Zogby knows full well, the “ever-growing settlements” haven’t grown for many years.

Veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat acknowledged as much publicly when he stated in an interview last November that “despite Israel’s continual policy of ‘occupation and settlement building,’ an aerial photograph provided by European sources shows that settlements have been built on approximately 1.1% of the West Bank.”

Even before, this was no secret – though there were definitely attempts to conceal this fact: a news report from mid-2010 was featured in Ha’aretz with a headline announcing that “Israeli settlements control 42 percent of West Bank;” the subheader highlighted the claim that “21 per cent of the settlements’ built up areas lie on private Palestinian land,” but the report itself finally acknowledged that “the settlements’ built-up area is just one per cent of the territory.”

Gordon - If Settlements Are Only 1.1 Percent of West Bank, How Are They an Obstacle to Peace?

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
17 November '11



http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/11/17/settlements-obstacle-to-peace/#more-774938

In an interview with Charlie Rose this week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate unless Israel freezes settlement construction is unjustified, because their claim settlements are stealing the land needed for a Palestinian state is pure “propaganda.” How so? Because “after 44 years, the whole Jewish settlement in the whole West Bank together doesn’t cover even two percent of the area.”

Is this mere propaganda on Barak’s part – a lie meant to downplay the devastating impact of Jewish settlement? Actually, Palestinians put the figure even lower: In an interview with the Arabic radio station As-Shams two weeks ago, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that based on an aerial photograph provided by European sources, the settlements cover only 1.1 percent of the West Bank.

So if settlements cover only 1.1 percent of the West Bank, why does the entire West deem them the main obstacle to peace? Because admitting that settlements aren’t the main obstacle to peace would force it to confront an unpalatable truth: that the real obstacle to peace is Palestinian unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in any borders.

Are Settlements An Obstacle to Peace Debate, (Video) Part 2

www.kumah.org
05 April '11


Highlights from Yishai Fleisher and Charney Bromberg debate, "Are Settlements An Obstacle to Peace?". Originally broadcast on ShalomTV on cable television for the month of January 2011.


Uploaded by EyeOnZionTV on Apr 4, 2011

Yishai Fleisher is the founder and executive director of Kumah (see info below). Charney Bromberg is a former executive director of Meretz USA. This shortened version was prepared by Kumah. This is Part 2.

Learn more about Kumah by visiting http://www.kumah.org

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No Settlement in Sight

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
22 February '11

During a week in which half the Middle-East was in flames, the diplomatic chatter over a UN condemnation of Israel's so-called "settlements" showed just how irrelevant Western diplomacy is to the real issues in the region. The riots in Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iran were not about a few Jewish villages on one side of a line on a map that has been redrawn half a dozen times in the 20th century. The trouble with the Muslim world does not lie in the vineyards of the Judean Hills, the glass factories of Ariel, the academies of the revived Maccabean town of Modi'in Illit, the solar panel plants of Nazareth Illit, the dairies of Carmel or the fruit orchards of Gush Etzion.

Ever since ten Arab nations lost a war to Israel over six days in the spring of 1967, too many diplomats have acted as if it were its responsibility to fix the Muslim world. In 1973, Israel was set up to lose a war in order to bolster Muslim self-esteem. But Israel still won and while its people buried more of their dead this time around, Muslim self-esteem did not noticeably improve. In the early 90's, Israel was pressured into providing an autonomous territory for Islamo-Marxist thugs who had been trained and equipped by its neighbors to carry out terrorist attacks on its citizens. And year after year, for almost two decades, Israel has been held responsible for all the problems in the region because it has been unable to achieve a lasting peace with the terrorists.

Only a few weeks before the rioting started, American diplomats and journalists were being told by Arab leaders that a solution to the Palestinian problem would stabilize the region. It would be interesting to go out into the streets of Cairo, Manama, Tripoli and Tunis to find out how many of the rioters would be willing to go home if there were a Palestinian state tomorrow. The answer would be none. Palestine has never been anything but a myth used as a channel for Muslim anger. Like Al-Andalus or the Mu-Pan-Li myth, (which Muslims use to claim that they were the first discoverers of America), Palestine feeds the Muslim ego and its sense of victimization. And like all xenophobic myths, its emotional teeth cannot be pulled by any amount of appeasement or concessions.

The reason Western intelligence didn't see this coming, and Israeli intelligence did, is that the West was successfully gulled and deceived by Arab leaders who insisted that the only real source of regional instability was Israel. And now even when half a dozen cities are burning, Western diplomats wrangle over a few Israeli towns and villages as if they were the real threat to peace. European leaders like Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron may be proclaiming the failure of multiculturalism, but they are still unable to stop pandering to it anyway.

(Read full "No Settlement in Sight")

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Re: U.S. Offering to Join in Israel Condemnation at UN

John Podhoretz
Commentary/Contentions
16 February '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/02/16/re-u-s-offering-to-join-in-israel-condemnation-at-un/

Omri, I have no doubt the Foreign Policy story that says the U.S. will cast a vote hostile to Israel later this week in the UN Security Council is genuine. And horrifying. For, of course, the U.S. has absolute veto power over any Security Council action, and so any action that is not a veto is prima facie hostile to Israel, which really is, right now, our only viable ally in the Middle East.

But given the delicacy of the matter, why has it gone public? There are two possible reasons.

The first would be to create a fait accompli in which the U.S. has no choice but to join in the condemnation of Israel. That’s what’s suggested by the spin in the Foreign Policy story attempting to establish the ludicrous premise that it is only acting in this manner to forestall a worse Security Council resolution.

It’s a preposterous plan, but diplomats with no political understanding of American public opinion and leftist tunnel vision might think it a good one. That could include U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose own instincts are none too good in this direction.

The second would be to kill it by making it public. That seems unlikely, given the way Colum Lynch’s piece was written, but who knows? The last thing Obama needs is a domestic political firestorm over Israel-Palestine policy when that specific can of worms couldn’t be any less significant.

And a firestorm there will be. Word of this leaked during the same week that Gallup reported a favorability rating for Israel in the United States of 69 percent, compared to 17 percent for the Palestinians (who have the second-lowest standing among Americans when it comes to these matters, higher only than Iran).

Forget for a moment what such a vote suggests about the worldview of the Obama administration at a time of potentially historic peril for Israel, not only from Iran but also from what might happen as a result of the uprisings in Arab countries. An anti-Israel vote at the U.N. with these kinds of numbers would be would be a demented political act for the Obama administration, which spent much of 2010 trying to undo the damage caused by the president’s bizarrely counterproductive temper tantrum against Bibi Netanyahu—which scuttled a year’s worth of diplomatic efforts by his own negotiator, George Mitchell.

Has Obama learned nothing, really? We’ll see. Oh, we shall see.

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U.S. Offering to Join in Security Council Condemnation of Israel

Omri Ceren
Commentary/Contentions
16 February '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/02/16/u-s-offering-to-join-in-security-council-condemnation-of-israel/

Reports on this started leaking last night, with Bloomberg reporting that U.S. diplomats were shopping around an offer to Arab governments to get them to withdraw their UN resolution condemning Israel for settlement activity. Those reports had the U.S. trading increased pressure on Israel for a withdrawal of the Arab-backed resolution.

Apparently, that didn’t work out, or the initial reports were wrong. This just-posted Foreign Policy article says that Ambassador Susan Rice came back with an even bigger bus under which they could throw Israel, this one carrying the imprimatur of a formal UN Security Council condemnation plus an assortment of other international anti-Israel measures. That offer was, naturally, declined:

The U.S. informed Arab governments Friday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal. But the Palestinian’s rejected the American offer. … [Rice] outlined the new U.S. offer in a closed door meeting on Tuesday with the Arab Group. … [I]n exchange for scuttling the Palestinian resolution, the United States would support the council statement, consider supporting a U.N. Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel’s settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.

In a way, this is a natural follow-up to the administration’s bumbling in Egypt, where they managed to alienate all parties in the Middle East except the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, and Iran’s assorted proxies. This gesture won’t win us any lasting goodwill from Arab elites. WikiLeaks showed that they care far more about geopolitical stability than they do about the settlements, such that the spectacle of the White House abandoning a second ally for the second week in a row would be met with worried chagrin, regardless of what they say out loud.

More to the point, and by now out of genuine curiosity: who exactly does the Obama administration envision having as a Middle East ally, say, six months from now? Strategic administration leaks about the Egypt crisis have already signaled a renewed chill in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. U.S. backing for a UN resolution wouldn’t detonate the alliance — military-to-military ties are too strong for that — but it would be the end of cooperation between this White House and this Israeli government, a government that a militarily and now diplomatically besieged Israeli public would rally behind.

And that’s before we get to how our UN mission, representing the world’s only hyperpower, seems to believe that “bargaining” means “getting progressively closer to the other side’s position.” We’re negotiating with the likes of Libya and the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon over whether we should protect one of our last Middle East allies against a biased UN lynch mob. It’s almost difficult to believe that the Iranians, per J.E. Dyer’s must-read post, are at this very moment literally sailing their way into regional hegemony.

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Video:Israeli settlements pose an obstacle to peace?

Winter Eye On Zion Tour 2011: “Enriching Connections – Nourishing Roots”

Israel is fruitful and flourishing behind the media curtain of gloom and doom. What is even more amazing is that relationships in the region are growing and positive from the local to the regional level. But good news is quiet and bad news dominates our media space and our thought space. The Winter Eye On Zion tour is focused on pulling back the curtain of negativity and letting the sunshine in. Experience a trip through the roots of Jewish connection to the land of Israel and see how it is blossoming today. Learn how new partnerships in the region are being formed below the radar and how they can and must be nourished. Understand where the sources of negativity originate and become enabled to stand up for a good and healthy future for the region as a whole.

Watch Yishai Fleisher and Charney Bromberg debate whether Israeli settlements pose an obstacle to peace, and whether Israel should relinquish the West Bank.





For more Eye on Zion event dates with Yishai Fleisher, click here.

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Are Settlements Really the Major Obstacle to Peace?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
22 October '10

For nearly two decades, the Palestinian Authority conducted peace talks with Israel while construction in the Jewish settlements was continuing. Every now and then the Palestinian leadership would complain about the construction, but it never made a big fuss about the issue. Nor had it threatened to suspend the peace process.

The Palestinian leaders even "forgot," when they signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993, to demand that the agreement include an Israeli commitment to stop building in the settlements.

Palestinian leaders living in the West Bank can't say that they never saw the bulldozers working in the settlements.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lives not far from a settlement near Ramallah. From his balcony, he saw how the Bet El settlement grew over the past two decades. It's impossible to travel throughout the West Bank without noticing the construction work in the settlements.

Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, talked and worked with Israel while the construction was continuing. Until two years ago, Abbas was negotiating with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, while the settlements were being expanded. Ironically, the Olmert government built more in the settlements than the "right-wing" government of Binyamin Netanyahu.

So how did the issue of the settlements become the "major obstacle to peace?"

(Read full article)

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How Can Obama's Ineptness on Middle East Issues Be Explained, Especially When It Makes Him Look Foolish?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
04 October '10

A friend who follows these issues closely wrote:

"How could Obama, who screwed up so badly before on the settlement issue, have convened a high-profile summit at the beginning of September only to possibly have it blow up in his face just weeks later because he failed to secure a deal on the moratorium [on construction] matter? How could he, and his staff, be so inept?....

"It's just hard to imagine that Obama didn't understand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's constraints or Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas's weakness (and need to find an excuse to get out of a negotiating process he can't compromise on).

"It's just hard to imagine that Obama didn't understand Netanyahu's constraints or Abbas's weakness (and need to find an excuse to get out of a negotiating process he can't compromise on)....This is simply incomprehensible, is it not?"

Well, it's comprehensible if one understands that it is largely stupid. Let me state the issue in one sentence:

Knowing that it was unlikely he would get a full continuation of the freeze and that the Palestinian Authority was eager to get out of negotiations, why did Obama put so much of his prestige on success; give himself unnecessary self-imposed impossible deadlines; make a breakthrough seem relatively likely and easy (despite giving lip service to the difficulties); and magnify the issue's importance so that a failure seemed all the worse?

(Read full article)

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The Demons Among Us

Marc Prowisor
Yesha Views
09 August '10

Settlers, Jewish Extremists, Messianics, religious extremists, etc… etc., words often used to describe the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. What about the visuals? Guys with big knitted kippahs (Head Coverings), Peiyot (hair side locks), Girls with long flowing skirts, scarves on their heads, all of them yelling, screaming, cursing, kicking and punching soldiers, police, Arabs, you name it. Their houses are caravans haphazardly stuck on some hilltop in the middle of a barren landscape.

That’s the picture, that’s the visual that most Jews in the world have of the Jews living in Judea and Samaria, in fact, that’s how most people view the Jews of Judea and Samaria. Yup, all of them are of the Jews are like that, all 300,000+ of them, they are all the same, crazies, fanatics, violent people who are stealing land from the poor Arabs who are guilty of only trying to live in peace and serenity.

Well, if you believe that one, I have a bridge to sell you, good price too!

Here is a scoop for all of you that have become victims of the media, Arab propaganda and left wing spin- NOT TRUE, WRONG, MISTAKE, BAD, STEROTYPE, RACIST!

Related videos: The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria, Part 1
The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria, Part 2

The Jewish make up of Judea and Samaria is no different than the make up of the rest of Israel, for that matter, much in common with every other Jewish community in the world. The faces vary in color and shape, the dresses go from long to short, just like the pants, the heads are covered, uncovered, Shabbat is observed and not observed, Kashruth is kept and not kept, you get the picture. A region as diverse in people as the rest of the country, and world. Yes, some areas have more religious than others, some have no religious, all of them just people, some crazy, some not, some professional, some not. Our kids serve in the IDF, all over the IDF, protecting and defending all of Israel, not just part. We have Artists, Musicians, Writers, Professors, Doctors, Trash men, Teachers, Hippies, Geeks, existentialists, and so on and so on.

Hey, just like where you live, no?

What kinds of synagogues make up your area? Do you all get along?

(Read full post)

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Who Needs Apartheid?

Mark Steyn
National Review Online
17 April '10

This is a question that should be asked more often:

Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israel Defense Forces general who now serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, posed the following query in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post: “If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews? Why do those areas have to be Judenrein? Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”

As Jonathan Tobin points out, the official goal of the Middle East "peace process" is a "two-state solution", in one of which Muslims live alongside Jews and have voting rights and representation in the legislature, while in the other there are no Jews at all and, as in "moderate" Jordan, to sell your house to a Jew is a crime punishable by death. There goes the neighborhood, right? When the western campus left holds its annual "Israeli Apartheid Week", presumably it's in philosophical support of the notion that you don't need to run an "apartheid" system if you just get rid of everyone who's not like you.

If Muslims are so revolted by Jews that they cannot tolerate any living among them, well, they're free to believe what they want. What is less understandable is the present position of the United States government. The President and his Secretary of State have made it very clear that they regard a few dozen housing units in Jerusalem as a far greater threat to Middle East peace than the Iranian nuclear program. Why is it in the interest of the United States to validate, enthusiastically, the most explicit and crudest bigotry of the Palestinian "cause"?

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Why No Jews in a Palestinian State?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
16 April '10

One of the orthodoxies of Middle East peace advocacy is that Jewish settlements in the West Bank (which by now has come to include Jewish neighborhoods in the city of Jerusalem) are a terrible obstacle to peace. You see, so long as Jews are building homes in these places, the Palestinians and their supporters can’t believe in peace. So those who claim to be peace advocates insist that the number of houses and Jews in these towns and villages must be absolutely frozen as prerequisite for peace. And we are assured that, once a peace agreement is signed, this will mean without doubt that all of these settlements, including every single house and every single Jew living in the houses, must be removed. That is, we are assured, the definition of peace for Palestinians.

But a member of Israel’s Cabinet has now asked a very pertinent question. Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israel Defense Forces general who now serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, posed the following query in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post: “If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews? Why do those areas have to be Judenrein? Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?” Ya’alon believes that previous withdrawals, such as the evacuation from Gaza, only encouraged Hamas and Hezbollah to raise the ante in terms of violence.

These are excellent questions. If what Israel is being asked to negotiate with the Palestinians is mutual recognition and legitimacy in the context of a cessation of violence, why can’t Jews stay in the areas designated as part of a Palestinian state, just as Arabs live in Israel with full rights as citizens? Indeed, what kind of a crazy peace would create a state alongside Israel in which Jews are forbidden to live and where Arabs face the death sentence for selling property to Jews, as is currently the case in both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority?

(Read full post)

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'No need to remove any settlements'

Ya'alon to Post: Jews should be able to stay in Palestinian entity.


Herb Keinon
JPost
16 April '10
Posted before Shabbat

(While not the bottom line, there is a lot going on between the lines. Y.)

Israel should not have to remove any settlements in a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon has told The Jerusalem Post, adding that just as Arabs live in Israel, so, too, should Jews be able to live in a future Palestinian entity.

“If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews?” Ya’alon asked during a wide-ranging interview that will appear in the Post’s Yom Ha’atzmaut supplement on Monday.

“Why do those areas have to be Judenrein?” he asked. “Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”

Ya’alon said that if Israel and the Palestinians were truly headed down the path of peace and coexistence, “Jews living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and citizenship” should be possible.

He stressed that “no settlement” should be removed, and that the country’s previous withdrawals – from Lebanon and from Gaza – strengthened Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively.

“That is opposed to our strategic interest and to the strategic interests of the West,” he said.

Ya’alon, who sits on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s top decision-making body, known as the septet, and is among those deliberating on how to reply to US President Barack Obama’s reported demands for a construction freeze in east Jerusalem, said Israel must not give in on the issue.

“We cannot fold on Jerusalem. What is Jerusalem? It is Zion,” he said.

“We disengaged politically in Judea and Samaria, and physically from Gaza,” Ya’alon pointed out. “The policy of the Netanyahu government is that we don’t want to rule over them [the Palestinians]. But not ruling over them does not mean we have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, which are indefensible borders; or that we have to divide Jerusalem in order to bring Hamas snipers into Jerusalem.”

Ya’alon, like the other members of the septet, is very discreet about the discussions regarding the answers to be given to the Americans, and would not even discuss what it was exactly that Obama was demanding.

(Read full article)

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False settler linkage denies Jewish refugee rights

Bataween
Point of No Return
30 March '10

The fixation with Israel's 'settlements' as the leading obstacle to peace in the Middle East has spawned a worrying trend: a false linkage between Israeli settlers and Palestinian Arab refugees.

In December, Ray Hanania, in his manifesto as Palestinian presidential candidate, put forward a proposal linking Jewish settlers and Arab refugees.

Now it's the turn of the director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College Oxford, Eugene Rogan. Rogan brightly unveils a plan, in an article for the Financial Times (28 March) Refugees for settlers is the way forward for Israel, proposing an exchange between Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria and Palestinian refugees living in Syria and Lebanon.

While Jewish settlers would be allowed to stay in territory that will become a Palestinian state, descendants of Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, Rogan argues, should be permitted a 'right of return' to their 'ancestral homes' in Israel proper.

"The only way forward is to put a real price on settlements that might make the Israeli government pause before expanding them," Rogan writes.

There are several things wrong with Rogan's plan. It is nothing more than a proposal to allow a Palestinian 'right of return' to Israel by subterfuge - a red line Israel has always refused to cross. Assuming that principle is enshrined in international law - a dubious proposition - why limit that 'right of return' to Palestinians from Syria and Lebanon? What about Palestinians in Jordan? Egypt? Kuwait? Chile? An influx of hundreds of thousands, largely radicalised, Arabs displacing current occupants from their 'ancestral homes' in Israel (assuming these homes still exist) would be a recipe for chaos and violence.

(Read full article)
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