HERE IS A PICTURE THAT PROVES THE POINT….THAT’S TEL-AVIV AS SEEN
FROM THE “WEST BANK” - AND RIGHT BEHIND TEL AVIV IS THE
SEA…..RSK
Settlements are not just legal, but necessary
By STEVEN PLAUT
There are no alternative effective ways to prevent the
conversion of the West Bank into Hamastan.
A fascinating development this week
in Israel was the release of the report of a governmental commission whose
assignment had been to define the legal status of the “occupied territories”
for purposes of government policy. The commission was headed by Edmond Levy, an
interesting former Supreme Court justice and one of the only ones who is not a
judicial activist leftist.
The Obama people are upset with the
report (an indication of how good it is) and Israel’s moonbat Left is
positively wetting itself in anguish.
Basically the report says that the
West Bank – Judea and Samaria – are not occupied territories at all but, at
most, disputed territories, something like the US-Canadian border areas were during
parts of North American history.
As such, there is no reason why
Israel cannot build there and even seize land there under eminent domain.
There is nothing in international
law that would make settlements “illegal.” And they should thus be proclaimed
by Israel to be completely legal. Whether or not Israel builds settlements then
becomes a matter of Israeli interests and policy, not legal obstacles.
Here in brief is the case for Jewish
settlements in the West Bank:
• It is in Israel’s acute national
interest to prevent the West Bank from serving as a terrorist base, from which
rockets, mortars and possibly weapons of mass destruction would be launched at
Israel. Life in Israel would be impossible with the West Bank serving as a
“Palestinian state,” basically a clone of Hamastan in Gaza. It is thus critical
to do everything to prevent that from happening.
• Every accord or “deal” that
provides for any sort of “Palestinian” state or sovereignty or entity operating
outside Israeli control in the West Bank will produce the scenario of the
previous point, mass terrorist aggression from “Palestine,” making life in
Israel impossible.
It does not matter what would be
written in any accord or treaty.
• Israel would be prevented from
taking serious action against terrorist aggression from this “Palestine” by
international pressures and sanctions, and the Israeli Left would rally the
world against Israeli “aggression” in all such cases.
• The only way effectively to
prevent the conversion of the West Bank into a Hamastan terror base is by
maintaining a significant Jewish population there. This effectively prevents
international pressure from producing the conversion of the West Bank into the
second Hamastan, and effectively prevents endlessly- appeasing and cowardly
Israeli governments from capitulating to those pressures.
(Imagine what Olmert would have done
without the settlements. Since most of the settlers are actually living in
Jerusalem suburbs, their presence there also prevents any capitulations by Israel
to pressures regarding relinquishing Jerusalem.) • While there are other moral
and historic arguments for why Israel and Jews have the right to live in the
West Bank, the only real purpose of “settlements” is to prevent the emergence
of any “Palestinian state.” No other rationalization or justification is
needed.
There are no alternative effective
ways to prevent the conversion of the West Bank into Hamastan.
• West Bank settlements are no
obstacle at all for the economic development of the Palestinian population
centers there, nor to forms of limited autonomy, which should be the most that
Israel is willing to concede to the Palestinians. (And even they are not an
entitlement.) There’s a more fundamental problem with the word “occupation.”
The anti-Israel lobby, including Israel’s Left, adopted the nonsense word
“occupation” originally after 1967 because at the time it still conjured up
associations with the Nazi occupation of Europe and the Japanese occupation of
East Asia before and during the War.
As in everything else, Israeli
leaders decided that semantics do not matter and refused to fight that battle,
forfeiting more than 40 years ago.
The analogous Hebrew word, “kibush,”
is even stupider – it means “conquest.” It is like claiming that the Belgian
and Dutch territories liberated from the Nazis by the Allies are now “conquered
territories.”
As a matter of general policy, I
would suggest that any time an Israeli uses the nonsense word “kibush,” and
that includes half the articles in Haaretz, you should regard absolutely
everything else that person says about everything and anything in the world to
be absolute nonsense.
The writer teaches in the Graduate
School of Management at the University of Haifa.
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