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Abitrary: contrary to existing order
Capricious: without regard to any order
The matter of the occupation of the West Bank being legal or illegal is not
meant in the sense of running a red light is illegal. The proper question is
if it a lawful occupation. Lawful means that it is governed by laws binding
upon the occupier or if the occupier is not bound by law and rather capable
of both arbitrary and capricious acts and rulings.
Palestinians have been denied sovereign nation status since it was promised
by Britain during WWI. The Sykes-Picot agreement was a planned betrayal of
that promise. It is not necessary to consider T.H. Lawrence to concede the
betrayal. When one asks people to put their lives on the line betrayal of
the quid pro quo earns blood vengeance. British attitudes towards wogs are
not worthy of serious consideration. Their candid opinion of the ability of
the American colonials to govern themselves is still unflattering.
The annexation of the West Bank by Jordan was lawful in that it imposed the
laws and rule of Jordan upon the land. Though lawful this annexation was
recognized only by Egypt. Thus its actions in the West Bank were lawful
internally but were not generally recognized by the international community.
A further distinction was made with the annexation by Jordan. The people
were granted citizenship -- or subject-hood or whatever the kingdom of
Jordan called it. Annexing land without granting citizenship or other lawful
standing to the people as Israel claims to have done in Jerusalem and the
Golan Heights is without precedent in modern times. One has to review
history to find examples of it and then by figures such as Ghengis Khan not
the Greek and Roman empires.
As Israel is enamored by the Hollywood version of how the west was won, the
US recognized the separate standing of the Indian nations and members
thereof. Actually not enamored rather an insufferable, you did it in the
19th c. so we can do it today, based upon Hollywood movies not the reality.
Regardless of its faults and failings the US has peace treaties with the
Amerinds who use the courts to enforce them not overturn them. Israel has no
peace treaty with the Palestinians.
For Israel the issue always comes down to the people not the land. Were
Israel agreeable to including the people in the annexation of the land this
matter would have been settled decades ago. The occupied territories would
have been annexed and the people made citizens. This is not acceptable to
Israel as it would include not only the four million or so residents but the
seven plus million refugees. The Zionist enterprise would go down to defeat
in the first election. If the Palestinians had not been driven out in 1948
it would have down to defeat in the first election. Protestations that they
ran away are incompatible with the idea of a nation ruled by Jews. They had
to be expelled.
The unceasing appeals to historical claims to the West Bank as Judea and
Samaria belies other facts. Should Israel's claim to Judea and Samaria be
recognized based upon historical claims it must be noted there is no
historical claim to much more than the West Bank. At most the historical
claim would be to a landlocked area perhaps double the size of the West
Bank. It is clear Israel wants both the modern borders of the country in
addition to the historical claims rather than instead of the historical
claims. To argue for both is both having and eating one's cake.
The claims for the territorial possessions of historical Israel are found
solely in the bible. Unfortunately for modern Israel the bible has never had
legal merit. The territories of Judea and Samaria appear in history with
their accession into the Roman empire. This would include only Judea and
Samaria as lawful territorial claims. Despite the common and religious usage
of the word Israel, there is no historical existence of territorial
possessions defining a place known as Israel. As to the Roman description of
the territories they were assigned to Damascus in the early 2nd c. AD.
Should Roman claims govern, Syria has the lawful claim to Judea and Samaria.
The matter of the Golan Heights is a matter of the lawful claim of Syria to
lands lost when Israel attacked in 1967. That Israel attacked is not in
question. That was always the claim of Syria. It was confirmed by General
Moshe Dayan.
East Jerusalem is subject to two distinct claims. The first is the old city
itself. By all historical claims this is only the city within the walls and
a token jurisdictional distance beyond them. The second is the expansion of
the boundaries of the city by Israel far beyond any historical fact. In this
annexation under color of Israeli law the residents were not granted
citizenship. They were granted only authorization to live in the city and
its new environs. This authorization is not a right. It can and often is
revoked by bureaucratic rulings rather than law. For example, living
overseas long enough to obtain a college degree is also long enough to have
a residency permit revoked. It may be revoked retroactively as well as
proactively as a condition of leaving the territories to obtain a college
degree. Needless to say this strongly discourages higher education.
Targeting the educated, the intelligensia, is a Bolshevik strategy.
Israel's claim to all of the West Bank including Jerusalem is not between it
and any other country. Jordan renounced all territorial claims to it in 1993
[1987?-check]. The dispute is over the right of Israel to rule the lives of
non-citizens and the right of the people to self-rule, the ideal of a
modern, democratic state and the British promise dating back to the first
world war. This is the same dispute which arose in Apartheid South Africa
and which was settled in favor of the native population in the name of human
rights. The dispute in the occupied territories is the right of Israel to
rule the lives of non-Israelis which brings us back again to the difference
between lawful rule as opposed to arbitrary and capricious rule.
Israel's rule of the Palestinians is both arbitrary and capricious. It is
not based upon the good of the Palestinians or their reasonable needs. It is
not based upon anything but the accommodation of jewish Israeli desires.
Thus an enclave of fanatical Jews is permitted to exist in the West Bank
city of Hebron and their proclivity towards racial violence is protected and
thus encouraged by martial law which punishes just retribution. Historical
claims to the city ought have no bearing upon the law and are best left to
impartial historians of which there appear to be none. Every example of the
life of jewish Israelis in the territories is a further example of the
absence of lawful governance.
For decades Israel recognized their squattertowns were a violation of the
Geneva Conventions created to codify the crimes established at Nuremberg. In
recognition of this war crime from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s these
towns were declared military outposts for the defense of Israel. Clearly
when peace is on the horizon with the Oslo Accords military outposts are no
longer justified. After Oslo they became something else. Changing the name
of a thing does not change the nature of a thing. They either never were
defensive outposts or they still are defensive outposts. Their nature does
not change. Their nature has always been to steal land under color of law.
Propagandists change their description but their purpose does not change.
A distracting question is often raised. Do not Jews have a right to live in
Judea and Samaria? While that is the popular form of the question, the
correct form of the question is, Do not Israelis have a right to live in
Judea and Samaria? This leads to a further question. Does the government of
Israel have the lawful to right to guarantee the right and safety of its
Jewish citizens and only its Jewish citizens to live and do as they wish to
the detriment of the Palestinians? The answer is clearly no. It is clearly
discrimination in favor of only its jewish citizens. The guarantees and
protections follow whatever these Jewish citizens choose to do. That is the
rules and laws retroactively protect individual whims and actions making
them capricious. When a squattertown is aided despite Israeli law that aid
is arbitrary. The governance of the occupied territories is either arbitrary
or caprecious as desired by the occupying power.
It is important to note these settlements in Judea and Samaria are for Jews
only. They are strictly segregated. Non-jewish Israelis cannot live in them
any more than a Palestinian can live in them. Thus they are contrary to the
Basic Law of Israel which requires equal protection and equal treatment of
all of its citizens. While this is as difficult to enforce inside Israel as
were civil rights in the old South the actions of the Israeli government in
the West Bank should be governed solely by the laws of Israel. Clearly these
actions are contrary to Israeli law.
Israel's right to exist is not being questioned. There are no proposals to
dissolve it or to meld its lands with those of another country. What is
being questioned is the right of Israel to be a Jewish supremacist state to
the detriment of not only its own non-jewish citizens but also of the
Palestinians and Syrians. The question is if one group may live at the
expense of other groups as imposed by the government. In today's world the
western answer to this is always no. Even back to the days of the Balfour
Declaration nearly a century ago the privilege, note privilege,
granted to Jews by Britain to establish a national home in Palestine was
conditioned upon no harm to the native Palestinian population. This
condition was preserved in the League of Nations mandate. Thus there has
been no change in the position of the west from the beginning. The purpose
of Israel is not changed by the imposition of the original terms and
conditions.
Israelis tend to blame everything on the failure to make peace with the
Palestinians. One view has it that its international standing has declined
because of the Oslo Accords. This is based upon the unfounded assumption
that its standing would be better without Oslo. Rather one can imagine its
standing being even lower without its mostly faux attempt to make peace with
the Palestinians. If the peace process were seen by the world to be a
serious attempt to achieve peace things might be different.
The world has never been fooled by the apologists claims of wanting peace.
Israel wants land at the expense of peace. The lady has always protested her
desire for peace too much. The world sees it is land and peace be damned.
Peace with Syria has been available for decades at the price of ending the
occupation of Syrian lands taken by Israeli aggression in 1967. The
stumbling block to peace with Hezbollah is holding onto a few square miles
of Lebonese farmland.
Is Hezbollah lying? Probably. Is holding on to a few square miles of
farmland helping? No. Is Israel posturing to the same degree as Hezbollah?
The impartial observer might conclude even more so. Is Israel lying? There
is no doubt. Regardless of the problem the solution is to control more land.
Does Israel need more land? No more than any other country needs more land.
While one can establish international precedent to create a national
homeland for Jews nothing in it suggests it needs be an attractive, first
world homeland. There is a difference between a promised homeland and a
promised paradise. The old joke was that a Zionist was a Jew who solicited
donations from another Jew to send a third Jew to Palestine. Discounting
political and religous fervor, Palestine/Israel has only been a desirable
destination for those who could not get to a true western civilization.
We have all heard the bemoaning and whining that Israel is such a small land
with no significant natural resources. They chose Palestine. No one forced
them to go to Palestine. They chose a land with minimal natural resources
and with a hostile population amid hostile neighbors. It was not forced upon
them. They chose it. The world has no responsibility or obligation to
improve the lot they freely chose.
Nor does the world have an obligation to preserve or promote Israel
according to its political desires. A national homeland without prejudicing
the rights of Palestinians is all that was ever promised. Support of the
destruction of the rights of Palestinians is contrary to what was promised.
There exists no obligation to support much less preserve jewish superiority
over the native Palestinians. That Israel will have no attraction for Jews
without this superiority is not of concern to the world. That is what the
Jews chose in going to Palestine. Poor choices cannot be corrected by
increased enthusiasm.
Israel's attempts to make peace are not serious. A nation cannot insist upon
making unilateral gains as a consequence of peace. Peace can and should be a
win-win situation for the participants. In this case the only party to peace
is the Palestinians who have nothing to give as Israel controls it all.
Having nothing of their own to give Israel can never make peace with the
Palestinians. Thus the world has arrived at a truism, Israel wants land not
peace as it cannot have both from the Palestinians who have nothing to give.
Concessions can only be a one way street as Palestinians have nothing to
concede.
The issue of nearly ten million refugees cannot go away as some two million
of them are internal refugees in Israel itself. Their property was stolen
under color of law by Jews. There were herded into internal refugee camps by
Jews. Their recourse to the law to recover their property is prohibited by
Jews. There is no nicer way to say this than to lay all of these crimes and
injustices at the feet of the Jews. At the same time Israel creates
capricious laws and rulings which establish the right of Jews to reclaim
property they or their families or their synagogues or simply Jews lost when
Jordan took over the West Bank and Jerusalem proper. The issue of property
rights is one that cannot go away as long as Israel perpetuates property
rights for Jews only.
Worse than just going back to military actions in 1948, jewish rhetoric
appears ot know no bounds. The rude, crude and vulgar jewish fanatics in
Hebron base their claims on a riot in the 1920s. But that is hardly
scratching the surface. There also a claim based upon expulsion by the
emperor of Rome in the early 2nd c. AD even though it was only an expulsion
from Jerusalem. Other claims go back to Abraham and Mose and David and
Solomon which all credible research put into the realm of myth not fact.
If Israel wishes to hold these territories then world opinion requires the
Palestinians living in the territories become citizens of Israel. This is a
solution even the Palestinians can and will come to accept. This will not be
the end of Israel any more than the end of Apartheid was the end of South
Africa. It was the end of a white supremacy state and this will be the end
of a jewish supremacy state. It is not an inequity to end
legally entrenched group supremacy in favor of equal rights for all no
matter for how long Jews have come to expect superior rights and privileges.
The west, of which Israel pridefully declares itself a part, does not accept
superior rights for any group even if it is the majority. Rather the essence
of a modern democracy is the protection of minority rights an idea foreign
to Israel. Israel is the antithesis of a modern western democracy.
The times have changed since the founding of Zionism nearly a century and a
half ago. Some may consider this a shame. Jews may declare they should not
suffer because the world has changed. This world is always changing. There
are always people caught up in the changes who sees the changes as harmful
to themselves. As it happens to individuals it happens to nations. The
British empire is no longer with us to the great relief of its former
colonies. Monarchies of all sorts have been largely relegated to the curio
cabinet of history and where they still exist their powers are far from
those traditional to the title of king.
The world has changed. Zionism has joined monarchies as anachronistic
curiosities. The world did not change because it hates Jews. Read Acts of
the Apostles. The animosity started with Jewish persecution of Christians.
Never start a fight you can't finish.
Although usually more delicately stated, Israel has a claim to the
territories by right of conquest. Syria is not included in this as the
Heights were obtained by Israeli aggression in 1967. No country in the world
recognizes Israel's claim to the Heights by right of conquest.
This does apply to Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. In the matter of a
claim by right of conquest we have recent precedent to call upon. When
Jordan claimed the West Bank by right of conquest that claim was recognized
only by Egypt. When Jordan claimed Jerusalem by right of conquest no country
recognized that claim, not even Egypt. Thus there is also no recognition by
any country in the world to Israel's claim to Jerusalem by right of
conquest.
Going back only a few years further only Russia recognized Germany's claim
to eastern Poland by right of conquest. After the war the leaders of Germany
were found guilty of many crimes as a consequence of the Nuremberg Trials.
Among those crimes was the conquest and annexation of eastern Poland. For
that and other crimes the death penalty was mandated.
As a consequence of Germany's actions and due to the fact that Germany did
in fact act largely in accordance with the Hague treaty on land warfare that
the Geneva Conventions were added to modify that treaty. These conventions
legitimized violent resistance against foreign occupiers without regard to
their adherence to the Hague Treaty.
A distinction must always be made between the property rights of land
ownership which are held by people and sovereignty which is held by
governments. That a government has sovereignty over land does not mean or
imply or in any manner suggest the government owns the land. State lands,
lands which are in fact owned by the government, are separately titled as to
the government in fact owning it.
Sovereignty is the right to rule land. It is the right to regulate taxation,
ownership, disposition, and usage of land. It is not the right to be a
silent partner in the land nor to be an unnamed party to the deed to land.
When we read assertions that Israel owns the West Bank we have nothing but
sloppy thinking without basis in law. Israel does in fact declare some lands
to be those owned by the state which has nothing to do with sovereignty over
the lands.
In this matter annexation means the extension of sovereignty to the land. It
is the right to govern the land. It is not a claim to own the land.
Individuals still own the land. This is the reasons for the legal
contortions of absent owners (external refugees) of lands under Israeli
sovereignty. It also explains the even greater contortions to use the color
of law to steal land from the present-absent (internal refugees) owners of
the land. If an owner was absent from the land for several years even if the
reason was they would be murdered by Jews if they tried to return to their
land even if they were Israeli citizens, Israeli law transferred ownership
from the individuals to that state. Thus while it always had sovereignty
over Israel proper, ownership had to come via a different route.
As an example of the capricious nature of Israeli law Jerusalem was annexed,
that is, Israel declared its sovereignty over the city. But it was not just
over the original city but the city with the boundaries that were
artificially extended into the West Bank without distinction between the
original city and the extended city.
Bringing this all back home we have Palestinian ownership of the West Bank
lands as far as they are titled including those in the expanded Jerusalem
all of which are titled. We have no Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank
except for the part that is in the extended Jerusalem. We have the Supreme
Court and Attorney General of Israel saying the West Bank is occupied under
the meaning of the Hague Treaty. We have apologists for Israel saying there
is no occupation of the West Bank.
The legal standing of the West Bank is sound and it to be judged by the
standards of the Hague Treaty and the fourth Geneva Convention. In this
regard we find it lacking in the extreme for all the reasons cited above.
Because the occupation is lawful, that it is an occupation in accordance
with relevant law, we also find it malfeasant in its implementation. On the
other hand we have the apologists for Israel asserting there is no
occupation and as such asserting Israel has no rights at all in the occupied
territories beyond those of armed thugs.
The attempt to justify Israel in propaganda condemns it in law. That Israeli government officials are engaged in this
propaganda leads to a valid reason to prosecute them in the International
Criminal Court by quoting their own words in the indictment.
Israel has only two routes to lawful action in the occupied territories.
Those routes are annexation and occupation. With annexation must come the
people and land without people has been rejected by all nations but Israel.
With occupation comes the requirement to conduct it in accordance with
international law. In both cases the matters are against the squatters who
would be required to go back to Israel where they belong. Hundreds of them
would be alive today had they remained in Israel where they belong. They may
believe their god gave it to them. Their protection rests solely in the hands
of that god.
By political theory authored and implemented by the United States, the just
powers of government arise from the consent of the governed. Despite the
abysmally poor ways by which the consent is determined in the West it is
clear the Palestinians are not governed by a just government by any measure.
It is accepted in the West that the governed have an inalienable right to
establish their own government by assenting to it. By this theory and
practice Israeli rule of Palestinians can never be just. This is not to
single out Israel but rather to point out Israel subscribes to the concept
of the consent of the governed and fails to allow it to Palestinians.
It remains a mystery to me that jewish Americans of all people would argue
against the right of the Palestinians to a just government in order to
promote the prima facia unjust rule of the Palestinians by Jews. Are they
Americans or are they not? It is a simple question.
It is impossible to achieve universally correct usage of the terms Jews,
Israelis and Zionists. The members of these groups are usually members of at
least two and perhaps all three groups. They do not make distinctions as to
which group they are speaking for and often deliberately confabulate their
status to representatives of all three groups.
Conversely it is the habit of these people to take offense at a departure
from a meticulous accuracy as to which group or groups a comment applies.
Put simply, it is attempt to hide behind the all too frequent allegation of
antisemitism. As in this environment it is impossible to avoid the
allegation one should enter into any discussion knowing it will be alleged
and learn to live with it. The allegation is the sword and the shielf of
scoundrels.
Yes, I am a rabid American and intend this to be offensive to people who
present any loyalty to Israel regardless of their self definition. If this
is also antisemitic then so be it.
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