Int'l group of some 60 lawyers say UN resolution on statehood would be a violation of all past agreements between Israel, the Palestinians.
An international group of some 60 attorneys, including former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker, has appealed to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to prevent a General Assembly resolution on unilateral Palestinian statehood, based on the pre-1967 lines.
In a letter dated Wednesday, the attorneys noted that such a resolution would be a violation of all past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. They added that it would also contravene UN resolutions 242 and 338.
According to the attorneys, the legal basis for the establishment of the state by the League of Nations in 1922 affirmed its presence on territories that included Judea, Samaria, and what is now east Jerusalem. “This was subsequently affirmed by both houses of US Congress,” the attorneys stated. According to Article 80 of the UN Charter, the attorneys said, rights granted to all states or people by already existing international instruments – including those adopted by the League of Nations – remain valid. As a result, the attorneys said, the “650,000 Jews [who] presently reside in the areas of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, reside there legitimately.” The 1949 Armistice Agreement stated that these lines “are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines, or to claims of either Party relating thereto,” the attorneys said. Therefore, they said, “the 1967 borders” do not exist, and have never existed. Past resolutions have called for a negotiated solution to the conflict, the attorneys affirmed. Additionally, attempts to unilaterally change the status of the territory would be a breach of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the attorneys said. When the Palestinians agreed to the Oslo Accords, they knew that the settlements existed and would be one of the issues that would be negotiated during talks for a permanent-status arrangement, the attorneys said. The Olso Accords did not limit settlement activity, they added. By TOVAH LAZAROFF via jpost.com
What is a dedicated leftist to do when he is unable to argue with a legitimate criticism of the president? What else, call him a racist (article in Hebrew).Putting aside the way Obama has treated Netanyahu in the past, the famous snub, leaving in the middle of closed door talks to have dinner; it is clear from the remarks made at the end of the press conference that Netanyahu was anything but rude. Israel is a sovereign nation and has the right to tell any other leader that the suggestion that it won’t commit national suicide at that world leader’s request. This is clearly an irrational approach to Oppenheimer who pulls the racism as well as the class card.
Yariv Oppenheimer is the Director of Peace Now, a radical leftist group that has relentlessly pushed for Israel to return to those very same indefensible borders as well as spear heading the attempt to demonize all Jews living on the wrong side of those borders. He has taken the Prime Minister to task for having the temerity to tell Mr. Obama in no uncertain words to butt out.
...Taliban fighters stand alongside kidnapped Polish geologist Piotr Stanczak
...minutes before he was beheaded...Reuters photo....
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (NYT) — American officials have met with a senior aide to the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, at least three times in recent months in the first direct exploratory peace talks, officials in the region said.
The meetings have been facilitated by Germany and Qatar, but American officials have been present each time, meeting with Tayeb Agha, who is a close personal assistant to Mullah Omar, the officials said. The C.I.A. and the State Department have been involved in the meetings, one official said.
The meetings were first reported by The Washington Post last week and the German magazine Der Spiegel this week. A senior Afghan official and Western officials working in the region confirmed the reports on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to the news media about the issue.
Begun well before the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, the meetings represent a clear shift in the attitude of the Obama administration toward peace talks with the Taliban, first signaled by a speech in February by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Western officials said. In that speech Mrs. Clinton said that previous requirements for starting talks could instead be considered “desired outcomes,” opening the way to exploratory meetings without preconditions. via bokertov.typepad.com
The United States Senate and House of Representatives treated Bibi like a Rock Star, but you would not know it from the Progressive newspaper of record, the New York Times headline proclaimed:
"Israelis See Netanyahu Trip as Diplomatic Failure."
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel's security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance peace negotiations with the Palestinians.”
Two new polls prove the NY Times report about Israeli reaction was totally biased.
A poll conduced by the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz which reported the positive Israeli reaction to Netanyahu's trip.
"Ha'aretz Poll: Netanyahu's Popularity Soaring Following Washington Trip"
"A new poll conducted by Dialog, under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of the Tel Aviv University Statistics Department, showed that 47% of the Israeli public believes Netanyahu's U.S. trip was a success, while only 10% viewed it as a failure."
When asked in the poll whether they saw Obama’s administration as more pro-Israel, more pro-Palestinian or neutral, just 12 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said more pro-Israel, while 40% said more pro-Palestinian, 34% said neutral and 13% did not express an opinion.
Other polls taken after the Netanyahu trip agree with the other two:
A Telesker poll published in Ma’ariv on Wednesday found that the Likud had strengthened against Kadima. The poll predicted that the Likud would rise from 27 to 30 Knesset seats, while Kadima would fall from 28 to 27.
Asked who was more fit to be prime minister, 36.9% said Netanyahu; 28.3% said Kadima leader Tzipi Livni; 9.2% said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of Israel Beiteinu; 2.6% said Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Independence; and 18.2% answered none of the above.
A Sarid Institute poll broadcast on Channel 2 Tuesday night found that 38% of Israelis found Netanyahu most fit to be prime minister, and 35% Livni. The poll found that the Likud had grown in support at Kadima’s expense.
If the NY Times had any interest in the truth it would have declared that Israelis saw the Netanyahu trip as a success, and as a result the Likud party grew in support. But the truth isn't the story the progressive media wanted to convey. They wanted to brand the Netanyahu trip as an object failure for the Israeli PM, after all he had dared to "school" the precious infallible President.
Despite AIPAC speech, 40% of 600 Jewish Israelis deem US administration pro-Palestinian in ‘Jerusalem Post’/Smith poll.
US President Barack Obama’s attempt to portray himself as pro-Israel in a
high-profile speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday
did not succeed, according to a Smith Research poll sponsored by The Jerusalem
Post.
The speech was intended to correct impressions that he was hostile
toward Israel, which may have been reinforced by a landmark address about the
Middle East that he delivered at the State Department last Thursday, and by a
tense press conference at the White House on Friday with Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu.
In the AIPAC speech, Obama chose not to specifically rule out
the “return” to Israel of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees, and
did not announce his first visit to Israel as president, as many hoped he would.
But he did insist that Israel must remain the Jewish “homeland,” indicating
opposition to the Palestinian demand for refugees’ “return, spoke about Jews’
yearning for Israel through the centuries, listed many ways in which his
administration was helping Israel and clarified his position on creating a
Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.
When asked in the poll
whether they saw Obama’s administration as more pro-Israel, more pro-Palestinian
or neutral, just 12 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said more pro-Israel, while
40% said more pro-Palestinian, 34% said neutral and 13% did not express an
opinion.
Still, the poll found that the gap between Israelis who say the
administration is pro-Palestinian and those deeming it pro-Israel has narrowed
since previous surveys.
The poll of 600 Jewish Israelis, representing a
statistical sample of the adult Jewish population, was taken on Monday and
Tuesday and had a 4-percentage point margin of error.
Respondents who
defined themselves at the left end of the political map were more likely than
others to deem the Obama administration more pro-Israel – 28% compared to 12%.
Among Kadima supporters, 37% said the administration was more pro-Palestinian;
19% said it was more pro-Israel.
The respondents most likely to label the
Obama administration as more pro- Palestinian were Orthodox Israelis, at 58%,
and right-wing respondents, at 53%. Among Likud supporters, 49% said the
administration was more pro-Palestinian; 11% said it was more
pro-Israel.
The question asked was exactly the same as in five previous
polls sponsored by this newspaper since May 2009.
The first poll, which
was taken before the first Netanyahu-Obama meeting in the White House – and
Obama’s landmark speech in Cairo in June 2009 – found that 31% considered his
presidency more pro- Israel, and 14% more pro-Palestinian.
The next poll,
taken just one month later, found a huge shift, with the proportion calling the
Obama administration more pro-Palestinian rising from 14% to 50%, and the
proportion calling it more pro-Israel falling from 31% to only 6%.
Those
calling the Obama presidency more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian fell in August
2009 to 4%, and rose to 9% in March 2010.
Since then, the share who
consider this White House more pro-Israel has risen gradually and slightly,
while the percentage saying it is more pro-Palestinian has gradually
fallen.
Polls taken in March and July 2010 found that 9% and 10%,
respectively, called the administration more pro- Israel; 48% and 46%,
respectively, called it more pro-Palestinian.
The gap between Israelis
calling the administration more pro-Palestinian and more pro-Israel has fallen
from 47% in August 2009 to 28% this week.
Obama fared better in a Dialog
poll published by Haaretz on Thursday, which found that a quarter of the public
considers him friendly to Israel, while 20% called him hostile and 43% described
him as “businesslike.”
The Dialog poll found that 47% of the Israeli
public deemed Netanyahu’s trip to Washington a success, while only 10% viewed it
as a failure.
Nearly half of the public felt pride at seeing Netanyahu
address Congress on Tuesday, while only 5% deemed it a “missed
opportunity.”
The proportion of the population expressing satisfaction
with Netanyahu’s performance as prime minister rose from 38% in the last Haaretz poll five weeks ago, to 51%.
Other polls also indicated a rise in support
for Netanyahu and his Likud Party since his speeches in Washington.
A
Telesker poll published in Ma’ariv on Wednesday found that the Likud had
strengthened against Kadima. The poll predicted that the Likud would rise from
27 to 30 Knesset seats, while Kadima would fall from 28 to 27.
Asked who
was more fit to be prime minister, 36.9% said Netanyahu; 28.3% said Kadima
leader Tzipi Livni; 9.2% said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of Israel
Beiteinu; 2.6% said Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Independence; and 18.2%
answered none of the above.
A Sarid Institute poll broadcast on Channel 2
Tuesday night found that 38% of Israelis found Netanyahu most fit to be prime
minister, and 35% Livni. The poll found that the Likud had grown in support at
Kadima’s expense.
Since the last poll taken by the institute during a
crisis over gas prices, Kadima fell by five seats and Likud rose by
four.
The poll found that if an election were held now, Likud would win
34 seats (up seven from the last election in February 2009); and Kadima 29 (up
one).
A Geocartographic Institute poll broadcast on Channel 1 Tuesday
night predicted that the Likud would win 33 seats, and Kadima 22. According to
that survey, 61% of Jewish Israelis oppose Obama’s formula of the 1967 lines
with land swaps as a basis for an agreement with the Palestinians, while only
27% favor it.
“Prosecutors say Wilders’ remarks are critical of Islam which is not the same as inciting hatred against muslims themselves.” At last, some common sense. But there is no certainty that it will prevail; if it had entered into these proceedings at any point before this, Wilders wouldn’t be on trial now.
The idiocy of this witch-hunt will hound the Netherlands and the rest of the world for a long time to come. Geert Wilders, a patriot and an incorruptible hero, is threatened by millions of mad Muslims around the world, Muslim terrorists who openly call for murdering him, and his own people make him the scapegoat. Never have I seen so much falsehood and cowardice.
Do you know why America is in a better state than Europe? Because you enjoy more freedom than Europeans. And do you know why Americans enjoy more freedom than Europeans? Because you are still allowed to tell the truth. In Europe and Canada people are dragged to court for telling the truth about islam. (continue reading)
Europe risks losing all its precious gifts: human dignity, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, rule of law, separation of state and mosque. Across Europe there are dozens of journalists, cartoonists and writers who are living under terrorist threats. (continue reading)
Freysinger-Wilders Meeting in doubt:
The Central Commitee of Muslims in Switzerland “cannot guarantee Wilders safety”; the meeting in Savièse will have to be moved to Weinkellerei Giroud in Sitten (PI)
Klein Verzet Excerpt:
After the prosecution was finished around 17:00 the court decided to continue with councilor-complainants Nico Steijnen and Erik Olof. The courts behavior to these counselors gave us some interesting insights in the courts ideas about free speech.
These councilor-complainants are of course the extreme leftist and Muslim activist lawyers who had forced this court case in the first place. You can imagine that these lawyers were not very happy with the prosecutions plea for a not guilty. If these activist lawyers had their way, they would act as second prosecutors in this court case (that’s what they tried in the earlier court case).
But the law does give them a very specific role in a criminal trial. In a criminal trial the victims are only allowed to talk about damage done and request compensation (an idea that grew out of the frustration that victims had to start a costly civil suite for getting compensation for damages done). It’s of course the court’s responsibility to prevent abuse of this arrangement.
So the court decided to act pro-actively. Amazingly they decided to censor the lawyers. Thus instead of waiting what the councilor-complainant were going to bring in front of the court, they asked the lawyers to hand over their pleas. Then the court took as short recess, during which they quickly reviewed the plea and marked all sections they deemed not admissible in court. Then they asked the lawyers to hold their original plea but without the market sections. When the lawyer clumsy asked for making another ad hoc plea, the court president repeatedly pressed him for just making the censored plea.
It’s not hard to imagine how confusing a half censored Marxist rambling sound. Well, it was shorter, less structured but still much more than a plea for damages done. It can best be described as repetitive hate speech propaganda that tried to massage the brain with the message that evil Geert Wilders had to be stopped before he grabbed power and become an existential threat to all of us. If one would apply the same legal standards, as laid out by the prosecution today, to this court rant, you would have quite strong case for prosecution.
Logically the rand led to complaints of defense lawyer Moszkowicz. Although it was his first complaint in today’s session, it angered the court; the courts president snapped that he was only slowing things down with his complaints. The president said he did not stop the councilor because the court would just ignore all the inadmissible statements he would make (although the defense would never know what and what not they would considered allowed, making a defense against the allegations very hard). But the defense lawyer stood his ground and complaint he was not in a hurry, all he wanted was a fair trial even if that meant they would have to stay until midnight. The court ignored him.
The trial ended at 19:00, next session is Friday May 27, 2011. Wilders Trial day 20: Prosecution asks NOT guilty
Many of the non Ashkenazi Jews I know are not as Zionist as the European ones and when they come to America they are not so much against Israel as they come to America to survive and make a buck to bring back home... what is more many really don't want to go back to the army. It isn't so much that they don't support Israel, they do and they support it strongly, but they might not want to become career soldiers and coming to America is their chance at opportunity. If anything the born American European Jews have a home here and are more apt to become politically involved. I come from this background for instance and it was assumed that my political allegiance was to the left, but that was just the stereotype that people like Yglesias push. It is hard for Jews now to not support Israel, since the U.N. Goldstone Report was proven to be a fraud. there are Sephardic Jews like my father's family who were here for hundreds of years before the Eastern European Jews started showing up. Those Sephards were loyal to George Washington, Israel did not yet exist. Jews such as Harmon Hendricks and Washington's friend Rabbi Sextius. Other Sephardic Jews in my family would be Emma Lazarus, the poet and activist for both women's issues and other social ills of the era. She also was a staunch Zionist. Lazarus was the fourth of seven children of Moshe Lazarus and Esther Nathan, Portuguese Sephardic Jews whose families had been settled in New York since the colonial period. She was related through her mother to Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He corresponded with her until his death. She argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Theodor Herzl began to use the term Zionism. In the winter of 1882, multitudes of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York; Lazarus taught technical education to help them become self-supporting. Her most famous work is "The New Colossus", which is inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
Not exactly what Yglesias is talking about. I don't think Yglesias knows WTF Yglesias is talking about.
Wondering why most Israelis don't think like him anymore, Matt Yglesias claims that Israel is afflicted with 'post-Jewish Zionism.'
The existence of Christian Zionists is, of course, not new. But what is new is that Israeli politics has drifted toward the hawkish right over the past ten years even as Jewish Americans remain on the progressive left. That change in Israeli politics, meanwhile, has been in part driven by a demographic shift away from the kind of secular ashkenazi Jews who predominate in the American population. At the same time, Christian Zionist sentiment has boomed in America and the Palestinian cause has never been less popular among America’s overwhelmingly non-Jewish population.
This is all part of what I’ve called the trend toward post-Jewish Zionism. That’s not to say that there are no Jewish Zionists in the United States (or Canada, etc.) but merely to observe that Jews as such are decreasingly relevant to the politics of Israel. In Europe, too, we’re seeing a boom of far-right parties (True Finns, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, the Danish People’s Party) with strong pro-Israel stands.
But look at whom he is defining as 'post-Jewish.'
Daniel Levy's article on Israeli demographics is also relevant to this. If you're a typical Jewish American, this is quite literally not your father's Israel. The Palestinian, Haredi, "national Orthodox," and Russian immigrant shares of the population have all grown substantially.
While it's true that the Haredi, national Orthodox (by which I assume he means National Religious) and Russian immigrant (by the way, most of whom are not religious and many of whom are not Jewish at all) populations have grown, that does not explain why Israelis have become what Yglesias calls 'hawkish right,' nor does it explain why fewer and fewer Israelis are sympathetic to the 'Palestinian' cause.
The Likud gets very few Haredi votes and probably not a whole lot of National Religious votes or Russian immigrant votes either. What's driven Israel to the right is not changing demographics but changing perceptions of the possibility of peace (without scare quotes) with the 'Palestinians.' Most Israelis have realized the truth over the last 6-11 years (look up those dates): That it's not peace or a state that the 'Palestinians' want. It's that they want to destroy the Jewish state. We won't roll over and play dead for them.
Some people would call that kind of shift democracy.
And by the way, those Haredim and National Religious Jews are more Jewish (in practice) than Yglesias will ever be. I would definitely not call them 'post Jewish.' That's absurd.
Matt Yglesias, at Think Progress, writes about the Daily Caller op-ed in which Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Gevalt) castigates American Jews for not being his kind of American Jew. (Next up: Joe Walsh wishes wimmin were still ladies!)
I won't pile more on Walsh -- it seems gratuitous at this stage -- but Yglesias seems to have contracted Walsh's unseemly "they're all alike" affect in this passage:
Israeli politics has drifted toward the hawkish right over the past ten years even as Jewish Americans remain on the progressive left. That change in Israeli politics, meanwhile, has been in part driven by a demographic shift away from the kind of secular ashkenazi Jews who predominate in the American population.
Say what? Ashkenazim have a genetic predisposition toward liberal democracy?
Let me put it this way: Vus?
There's been a lot of talk recently about the lines of 1967, most of it not helpful, and some of it vague. Politicians, journalists, pundits, bloggers and most everyone else much prefer generalities to particulars. Here's an attempt to be specific and grounded.
(Map taken from the CIA World Factbook)
The original line was drawn in 1949 during the armistice talks between Israel and Jordan. They mostly reflected the reality of military positions at the end of the war of 1948, but with one major change. The Israelis, fearing that the extreme narrowness of their country would repeatedly entice their neighbors to attack it, demanded that a strip of land along the northwestern edge of the Jordanian-held West Bank be handed over to them, in return for an area to the west of Hebron. The area, known till this day in Israel as The Triangle, contained a series of Arab villages, from Um el-Fachem at its north-east down to Kfar Kassem at the south-west. The Americans demanded that Israel promise not to force any of the villagers out of their homes, and Israel agreed, and today there are hundreds of thousands of their descendents, Israeli citizens all, living in the area. A very detailed map of the region can be found here, put up by the University of Texas, but since it's so detailed it is a bit cumbersome to navigate. It's worth the effort, however.
At the time, in 1949, the line, along with the rest of Israel's borders, was explicitly and contractually defined as an armistice line, not as a border, since the Arab states were not willing to officially recognize Israel's existence, and perhaps they wished to have legal grounds for changing the lines later on. For all I know, Israel may have had the same thought. The importance of the matter, however, is that all sides agreed the line was not permanent.
This line is variously referred to as the Green Line, the 1949 line, and the 1967 line (meaning June 4th 1967).
At its narrowest point, the distance between Kalkilya on the West Bank and Israel's coast north of Kfar Shemaryahu is 8.54 miles, according to the ruler function of Google Earth. Israel politicians of all stripes like to talk about Israel's narrow waist, even those among them who propose to relinquish control of most of the West Bank. On the other side, Palestinians and their myriad supporters demand that Maale Adumim, a very large settlement east of Jerusalem, must be dismantled, since it cuts the West Bank in two; the distance between the town of Maale Adumim and the Dead Sea is 9.69 miles if you use the definition of the Geneva Initiative folks, and 8.82 miles if you measure from the easternmost structure in the industrial area to the east of town. There is however a significant difference in that Israel has repeatedly indicated that there will be a north-south road under Palestinian control to the west of Maale Adumin, under or over the Jerusalem-Maale Adumim road, so that Palestinians will not need to go all the way around Maale Adumim when traveling from Ramallah to Bethlehem.
(Pardon my rather clumsy cartographic additions, but you get the idea).
My apologies in advance to all friends of Israel for the myth-busting I'm about to engage in, but honesty forces me to it: Nowadays there is no serious Israeli politician who suggests Israel annex the Palestinian town of Kalkilya and its tens of thousands of people; indeed, the security barrier, commonly accepted in Israel as an approximation of the line Israel is comfortable with moving back to, follows the Green Line here. This means that Israel essentially accepts it will return to that narrow waistline of 8.54 miles.
This is not to say the entire argument is farcical. It isn't. Israel has serious threats to worry about should it relinquish military control of the West Bank; but that particular, eye-catching slogan, so convenient for sound bites, isn't one of them.
The dangers of relinquishing military control of the West Bank are as follows:
An Arab army will attempt to sever Israel at its narrow waist along the coastal plain.
Palestinian forces - regular or irregular - will infiltrate along the line, and given the tiny distances they'll be able to reach Israel's main cities within minutes and wreak havoc.
Palestinians will be able to shoot directly at numerous targets in Israel's populous heartland.
Palestinians will be able to shoot mortars and short-range rockets at numerous targets in Israel's populous heartland.
Israel will lose its ability to collect human intelligence about terror cells in the West Bank.
Rather than controlling the West Ban, Israel will have to defend itself along a long and twisted border much of it in hilly terrain.
Israel will lose most of its control over the aquifer that supplies much of the water to the coastal wells.
The Palestinians will have the legal right to demand some of the water of the Jordan Basin.
These threats are of varying quality. The first, regarding an Arab army, can be fended off through two measures. First, the Palestinians will not be allowed to have a full-fledged army. If they ask the Europeans, this will be a blessing for them, since armies are extremely expensive things to have, but if they insist having an army is essential to sovereignty they should be reminded that Germany (both of it) was allowed only a limited military between 1945 and 1991, and got along quite well, and Japan's military was also limited post 1945. So no, having an army is not an essential prerequisite for sovereignty.
Second, Israel demands a military presence along the Jordan River, to the east of the West Bank. This presence is directed at anyone to the east of Palestine who might be tempted to use it as a launching pad for an invasion of Israel. There is total unanimity among all Israel's security types that this presence is essential, though Netanyahu has recently been hinting it need not require Israeli sovereignty. Perhaps the Jordan Valley will be sovereign Palestinian territory in which Israel has contractual rights to a military presence. I admit I'm personally skeptical. Modern armies being the cumbersome things they are, I don't see how one could arrive on the West Bank suddenly, unannounced, and launch an attack on Israel. Not to mention that no Arab army has tried the full-fronted assault method since 1973, probably for the good reason that it's a harmful exercise. In any scenario Israel will need a powerful and threatening military for the first three or five generations after making peace with all its neighbors, but I don't see why a few thousand troops along the Jordan make much difference. There's a major road down there from Jerusalem, and another can be built from the north, and if there's to be a war IDF forces will be there long before Iraqi or Iranian or Emirati divisions arrive.
Water: this is a serious matter, but ever less so. At the moment we're preparing to lay the fifth major pipeline from the coast up to Jerusalem (if I'm not mistaken), which will be unusual in that for the first time it will draw its water not from coastal springs but from desalination stations. There isn't enough natural water in Israel/Palestine for the 12 million people who already live here, and there's not going to be any more, either. Israel already operates major desalination plants, while holding the world record for recycling water; this trend will have to continue no matter what. I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but Israel already supplies some of the water the Palestinians use, and will probably supply more as their numbers grow, no matter who controls them politically. This means water will be a Palestinian weakness, not a threat against Israel. Anyway, the entire subject is one that can be resolved with money, and need not cost human lives.
Which leaves us with the various threats of low-level Palestinian violence. These are serious. In 2002-2004 Israel needed to reoccupy the entire West Bank, re-build its intelligence sources and networks, and also construct the security barrier; only then was the bloody 2nd Intifada defeated. Its ongoing control is the reason no kassam rockets or mortars are shot from the West Bank, while many thousands have been shot from Gaza. Moreover, only a fool, or perhaps a Swedish foreign minister, would believe that by signing a peace agreement with some Palestinians, there will remain no Palestinian individuals or groups willing to shoot at Israeli civilians from the shelter of civilians towns and villages; those Swedes and other EU fellows will conspicuously not fly into Ben Gurion airport if they ever remotely fear that their plane could be shot down as it comes in to land at the airport which is within range of Palestinian gunmen with easily portable shoulder missiles. Until someone comes up with a way to assure Israel this danger is not acute, I don't see how it will relinquish military control of some sort over the West Bank. Which is not to say that Israel might not move all its civilians back to a line, say that of the barrier. Which brings us to the matter of the settlers.
The real reason Israel insists it cannot go back to the Green line is a combination of security to the east of the airport, and the existence of large settlements, most of them quite close to the Green Line. No official maps have ever been made public, obviously, since the negotiations have never reached completion, but here are a number of plausible approximations:
This comes from Le Monde, and refrains from showing that Israel apparently offered some ground inside the Green Line in return for some of the areas it demanded in the West Bank. In any case, since most of the 2nd Intifada happened after the talks at Taba, it clearly didn't happen because Israel was unwilling to dismantle most of its settlements. In case the map isn't clear, everything in either hue of green was to be Palestine.
Here we've got a projection of what Ehud Olmert apparently offered the Palestinians in September 2008, a proposal they never even responded to. (source)
A cursory glance tells us Olmert wasn't trying to create "defensible borders", since the crazy lines reaching up to Kdumim and Ariel, deep into the West Bank, can't really be defended. But we can see how he wanted the line away from the airport (to the west of Jerusalem), and he wished to uproot as few settlers as possible and was willing to pay with territory from within the Green Line. Some of that territory would have made the Gaza Strip noticeably larger, which may have been one reason Abbas never responded: Gaza is Hamas-land, and why would he want them to gain anything?
Finally, here's the line proposed by the Israelis and Palestinians from the Geneva Initiative.
There are no security considerations here at all, with the possible exception that Israel retains its half of the no-man's land east of the airport. The only consideration is to leave Israeli settlers in their place, if they are within a very few miles of the Green Line; in return, the Palestinians get equal territories from Israel. If you compare their map with that of Olmert inch by inch, as I have, there are the obvious differences of Ariel and Kdumim, but there are also less obvious ones such as dismantling Efrat (15,000 people) because it's to the east of Route 60 from Bethlehem to Hebron, dismantling the industrial zone of Maale Adumim, and other things like that. Even in the Geneva Initiative map, however, a majority of Israeli settlers don't move.
No matter which map you use, from Taba onwards, the Palestinians get all of the Gaza strip (they've already got it), and just about all of the West Bank, with compensation for what they don't get. I think this demonstrates quite clearly that the inability to reach an agreement isn't about Palestinian sovereignty, which the Israelis have long since agreed to, nor about the size of Palestine. Ariel and Kdumim may still be a noticeable sticking point, but they're not the reason for the lack of a peace treaty. Those would be Jerusalem and the right of return or its corollary, Israel's demand to be recognized as the Jewish State. This has been the case for at least 11 years, if not 45, or 63, or 100.
A personal comment: if I had my druthers, I wouldn't have Israel offering empty areas in the foothills west of Hebron or along the Gaza Strip. I would undo the mistake of 1949, when Israel took over the villages of The Triangle, which in the meantime have turned into cities. If the sense of partition is to divide the land along ethnic lines, then that should be what is done. The Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in the Galilee, the Negev, Haifa and Jaffa all live too far from any line to be transferred to Palestine, and they are welcome to remain Israelis. Yet by moving the populace of the Triangle from Israel to Palestine, without ever physically moving any of them a single inch, the Palestinian minority inside Israel will drop from about 20% to a number significantly lower. Since the Palestinians will not allow there to be any Jews at all in Palestine, this seems a reasonable proposition. The reality, however, is that in the occasional case where Israeli politicians moot this idea (Sharon in 2004, for example, and Lieberman since then) they are always received with howls of protest, and marked as fascists, racists, brutes and evil. The Palestinian Israelis, you see, are eager for their nation to have its own state, but they don't want to live there. They want to live in Israel.
Which isn't surprising, if you think about it. Given the choice, who would prefer otherwise? Would you?
catch this... Jefferson's jurisdiction and limitation to government... i.e. many people is the equivalent to the self and "personal responsibility"? This is the argument here that we should tolerate the practice of Jihad and Islam? It can not make the distinction between the state and the individual.
As Jefferson wrote in 1802, "religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
Jefferson could have been paraphrasing chapter and verse of the Qur'an, like 6:94 and 164, 7:39, 17:15, 18:35, 19:95, 35:18, and many others which all emphatically confirm the individual personal responsibility of every Muslim for what she or he does or fail to do. All founding scholars of Islam agree that no act has any religious value unless done freely and without any coercion.
Just as Jefferson believed that the newly formed United States should not be a Christian state, for Muslims the notion that the state can be Islamic is false from a religious point of view, and has no support in 15 centuries of Islamic history. It is true that Muslims everywhere, whether minorities or majorities, are bound to observe Shari'a as a matter of religious obligation. Some practices are collective in form, but always individual in substance. Any observance of Shari'a can be best achieved when the state is neutral regarding all religious doctrines. Enforcing a Shari'a through coercive power of the state negates its religious nature, because Muslims would be observing the law of the state and not freely performing their religious obligation as Muslims.
I didn't get it either. Besides disagreeing... it leads me to see some interesting characterizations of the writer and his faith.
How's this for a diplomatic incident in the making? Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's son has joined the IHH. I can tell you this much for sure: If he shows up on a boat trying to run the Gaza blockade, he will not be treated differently than anyone else
If we created a facebook page like this for Americans do you think they would allow it? I'm guessing Sheryl Sandberg would enact a double standard that we have come to expect.
A campaign has been launched on Facebook calling for men to beat Saudi women who drive their cars in a planned protest next month against the ultra-conservative kingdom's ban on women taking the wheel.
The call comes as activists are demanding the release of Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi woman who was jailed for defying the ban.
The page, titled "The Iqal Campaign: June 17 for preventing women from driving," refers to the Arabic name for the cord used to hold on the traditional headdress worn by many men in the Gulf, advocating the cord be used to hit women who dare to drive.
It has drawn over 6,000 "likes" on the popular social networking website.
Some on the page proposed distributing boxes of Iqals to youths and encouraging them use them to hit women who participate in the June 17 protest.
One joked about the price of Iqals going up due to men buying them before the protest. via news.yahoo.com
Allah made them do it:
JEDDAH: Women in the Kingdom, fatigued by repeated cases of Saudi sexual harassment, are calling for a help line number.
Nawal Bukhari, 45, called for more security measures on behalf of all her Muslim sisters, saying it is imperative the law derives a method to protect women in emergencies.
Facebook is an interesting organization. One of the key people in Facebook's current corporate structure is the COO who had previously worked for Google, Sheryl Sandberg. A recent feature story entitled Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg, May 12, 2011, gives a great deal of pertinent background.
The article paints a picture of a very well-qualified COO, who is a caring and concerned person, well-liked by associates. From Page 4: via bytheearlylight.blogspot.com
How tone deaf can he get? President Obama has decided to take on the cause of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. He wants to give them a 'right of return.' Does he really think there will be any takers?
Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for communications and President Barack Obama's chief speechwriter on foreign policy, talked about what's known as the "Jewish right of return" during an off-the-record conference call with Jewish community leaders on May 20, only one day after Obama's major speech on the Middle East. A recording of the call was provided to The Cable.
In response to a question asking why there is a great deal of focus on the Palestinian refugee issue but almost no focus on the Jews who departed Arab lands, Rhodes declared that the Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate on the Jewish right of return to Arab and Muslim countries and that the United States could play in role in mediating that issue.
Here's the full exchange:
"While Palestinian refugees have concerns that are understandable and need to be dealt with in the peace process, there was no reference in the president's speech to the approximately one million Jewish refugees that emerged from the same Middle East conflict. I'm talking about Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who were forced out of their homelands where they had lived for centuries," said B'nai B'rith International Director of Legislative Affairs Eric Fusfield.
"The international community has never acknowledged their rights and their grievances," Fusfield continued, "[C]an the U.S., as the peace process move forward, play a role in advancing the rights and concerns of these Jewish refugee groups and help ensure that as refugee issues are dealt with... that the focus will not just be on one refugee group but on all refugee groups emerging from the same conflict?"
Rhodes responded: "Certainly the U.S., in our role, is attuned to all the concerns on both sides to include interests among Israel and others in Jewish refugees, so it is something that would come up in the context of negotiations. And certainly, we believe that ultimately the parties themselves should negotiate this. We can introduce ideas, we can introduce parameters for potential negotiation."
"We believe those types of issues that you alluded to could certainly be a part of that discussion and put on the table and it's something that we would obviously be involved in."
The extent to which the Obami don't get it is truly appalling.
The issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries is raised for two reasons: First, in the hope of getting the descendants some compensation for having fled with only the clothes on their backs. And second, to show that what took place in the late 1940's and early 1950's was an exchange of populations that ought to be left alone.
But you can't expect Obama to understand that. He just doesn't care. via israelmatzav.blogspot.com
...A key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948... - Abu Mazen AKA Abbas
The Drafting History of 242 Shows it Pertains to all Refugees – Jewish and Arab
Resolution 242 speaks of “a just settlement of the refugee problem,” not ‘the Palestinian or Arab refugee problem.’ The history of the resolution shows that it was intentional and reflected recognition that the Arab-Israeli conflict created two refugee populations, not one. Parallel to the estimated 600,000 Arabs who left Israel, more than 899,000(12) Jews fled from Arab countries in the aftermath of the 1948 war – 650,000 of them finding asylum in Israel.
A history of the behind-the-scenes work drafting the resolution shows that the former Soviet Union Ambassador Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kuznetsov sought to restrict the term ‘just settlement’ to Palestinian refugees only. But former U.S. Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, the American Ambassador to the UN who played a key role in the ultimate language adopted, pointed out:
“A notable omission in 242 is any reference to Palestinians, a Palestinian state on the West Bank or the PLO. The resolution addresses the objective of ‘achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.’ This language presumably refers both to Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a result of the several wars.” via crethiplethi.com via Obama shows his ignorance of Resolution 194.
The point is not that Jews in the democratic state of Israel want to return to the repressive regimes inMuslim countries where they have the status of dhimmis. The point is that if the children and grandchildren of Arabs who left then-Palestine retain rights, then so too do the Jewish refugees as well. There are close to a million such refugees from Arab countries--and they deserve compensation for the land and property they lost.
In 2004, Jack Epstein wrote an article about what Jews forced out of their homes in Arab countries wanted:
Last year, House Resolution 311 called on the international community to recognize Jewish refugees who "fled Arab countries because they faced a campaign of ethnic cleansing and were forced to leave behind land, private homes, personal effects, businesses, community assets and thousands of years of their Jewish heritage and history. [full text of HR 311 here]"
The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, a group affiliated with Urman's coalition, estimates the value of the confiscated property at more than $100 billion.
If the descendants of those Arabs want to insist that they have rights, then the rights of the similar number of Jews, all of whom were repopulated in Israel if that was their wish, must be upheld as well.
Elevation of prof. Noam Chomsky to the title "Mastermind of forever" (MOFO) from the rather limiting and pedestrian title of "leading living public intellectual". November 7, 2017. Details and locale of the ceremony to be provided. Other dates on the calendar via simplyjews.blogspot.com
Haim Saban, who is believed to be the largest donor to the Democratic party, will not donate money to President Obama's re-election campaign, because of the President's stand on Israel (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
“I’m very perplexed as to why the president, who’s been to Cairo, to Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, has not made a stop in Israel and spoken to the Israeli people,” he continued. “I believe that the president can clarify to the Israeli people what his positions are on Israel and calm them down. Because they are not calm right now.”
Saban is not alone
...and this is from AJ and Media Matters, so don't act like I'm making this up. They thank Bibi and Congress for rejecting Palestine because it means they don't care what America thinks anymore. We should give them a state of Palestine in a parallel dimension just for the chuckle of their virtual state that doesn't exist. People of the fart that no one can smell. Sadly these virtual farts stink, but only if you force yourself to sniff. Stupid people always try to sniff when you warn them not to.
MJ Rosenberg Al Jazeera
If anyone had any doubt about whether the Palestinians would declare a state in September, they can't have them now.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to Congress that essentially was a series of insults to Palestinians and every insult was met by applause and standing ovations.
In fact, Netanyahu's appearance itself was an insult.
In the entire history of the United States, only four foreign leaders have addressed joint sessions of Congress more than once.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, America's great ally, addressed Congress three times during World War II. President Nelson Mandela was honored for destroying apartheid and freeing South Africa. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was recognised for opening negotiations with the Palestinian people.
And now Netanyahu. For what? In his entire term in office he has done nothing but reject every request by the United States that he take some action (like freezing settlements) to promote Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In the history of Israel, there has been no prime minister as hardline on Palestinian rights and as indifferent to the wishes of the United States as Netanyahu.So why was he invited to address a rare joint session?
He was invited because the new Republican leadership of the House of Representatives wanted to demonstrate, loudly and clearly, that Congress will not support President Barak Obama in the event that he tries to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
And that is exactly what the Netanyahu appearance today did demonstrate. The prime minister unambiguously stated that he had no intention of making peace with the Palestinians.
He began by saying that, in point of fact, there is no occupation, stating, that "in Judea and Samaria [the term Israeli right-wingers use for the West Bank], Israelis are not foreign occupiers" but the native inhabitants. (He cited Abraham and Isaiah from the Bible!)
He said he might consider giving up some of that land but not an inch of Jerusalem. Additionally, he said that Israel would retain most settlements and insist on a military presence in the Jordan Valley (thereby ensuring the any State of Palestine would be locked in on both sides by Israel).
He said that Israel would never negotiate with a Palestinian government that included Hamas, whether democratically elected or not. He declared that not a single Palestinian would be allowed to return to Israel; not even a symbolic return would be acceptable to him.
There is little reason to elaborate. Netanyahu today essentially returned to the policies that Israel pursued before Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat agreed on mutual recognition and the joint pursuit of peace.
And the worst part is not the appalling things Netanyahu said, but how Congress received them. Even Netanyahu's declaration that there is no Israeli occupation was met with thunderous applause with the Democrats joining the Republicans in ecstatic support. Every Netanyahu statement, no matter how extreme, was met with cheers.
Netanyahu was also applauded wildly when he invoked Palestinian terrorism over and over again, even seeming to lump his former "partner," President Mahmoud Abbas with people who "educate their children to hate, [who] continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees."
His bottom line, which Congress fully bought, was that all Palestinians are terrorists who haven't earned a state. And probably never will.
Congress cheered and cheered and when Netanyahu was finished, they climbed over each other to touch the hem of his garment.
It was as if Congress thought that no Palestinians or other Arabs (or Muslims) would be watching. It was as if it believes that it can shout its lungs out for Netanyahu (and thereby secure those campaign contributions from AIPAC), without any consequences to US policy and national interests in the Arab world.
But Congress is wrong. The message it sent to the Middle East today, to the whole world, in fact, was that Palestinians cannot count on the United States to ever play the role of "honest broker" between Israel and the Palestinians. Even if President Obama was inclined to, Congress would stop him. And AIPAC, using the leverage its campaign contributions gives it, would hold Obama's feet to the fire too. As far as Congress is concerned, Palestinians do not exist. They have no rights, to a state least of all.
And that is why Palestinians have no choice but to unilaterally declare a state in the fall. They cannot count on America. As David Ben Gurion understood when he went to the General Assembly to achieve recognition of Israel, a small, powerless people must take its destiny into its own hands.
The good news is that, although Congress is in Netanyahu's pocket, the Obama administration isn't. Netanyahu insulted the President at the White House last Thursday and then again in the halls of Congress by eliciting support for policies Obama rejects. And the administration is furious.
That means that although Palestinians can and should ignore Congress, the White House and State Department are still in play. Yes, they will both go along with Netanyahu, but, probably, without much enthusiasm.
And they can send a signal to our allies that although the United States cannot openly oppose Bibi's policies because of Congress - and AIPAC's control of it - the allies can. The Palestinians should not give up on Obama or on Secretary of State Clinton either who cannot abide Netanyahu and made sure she was out of the country to escape being present for his speech.
And so we can look forward to a unilateral declaration of statehood in September. The Israelis who refuse to negotiate with stateless Palestinians will have no choice but to negotiate with the state whose land it is occupying. And those negotiations, state to state, may produce peace and the "two states for two peoples" that most Palestinians and Israelis aspire to. In any case, it's the only hope.
Palestinians should thank Prime Minister Netanyahu and, even more, the United states Congress for making their choice so much easier. Together they helped create the Palestinian state today. And that is a very good thing.
As for Americans, we should be deeply ashamed of our Congress. It has been sold to the highest bidder.
MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.
You can follow MJ on twitter @MJayRosenberg
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Int'l group of some 60 lawyers say UN resolution on statehood would be a violation of all past agreements between Israel, the Palestinians. 
