‘A Rare Point of Clarification’
November 27, 2006 13:45 by BackSpin Editor
James Carroll picked up on a Peace Now report (pdf format) alleging that a high percentage of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians. We don’t want to comment on the issue of settlements, but the Boston Globe columnist makes one inappropriate claim that the rest of his comments are based on.
The worsening conflict between Israelis and Palestinians reached a rare point of clarification last week….
Peace Now’s report hasn’t been clarified. The Jerusalem Post reported that the government set up a committee to investigate and verify the report’s findings. As our colleagues at CAMERA recently pointed out, Peace Now doesn’t represent the final word on settlements. Why is Carroll so eager to think otherwise?
David B. Greenberg
4:14 pm
Nov 27, 2006
Saying that “we don’t want to comment on the issue of settlements” says much more than “no comment.”
Legally, for there to be “settlement,” the territory concerned must be occupied, and the occupying government must have made its citizens go to live there.
Israel never made people go to live in these communities. Further, as the Israelis have unfortunately forgotten recently, the land is not occupied. It was assigned to the nascent Israel by the League of Nations mandate. It was illegally occupied by Jordan — which had no claim to it — until 1967, during which time Jordan refused to acquire it by agreeing to a peace treaty, since the Arabs then as now insisted on ultimately destroying Israel; thus the 1948 lines were only ceasefire lines, not international borders. In 1967, Israel liberated what legally remained its own land (and made the foolish error of failing to annex it). Judea, Gaza, and Samaria never were separated from Israel by international borders. A country cannot be an occupying power when it took a territory from a power that had no right to be there — much less when the land is legally Israel’s own!
Thus the word “settlement” in and of itself is an incorrect and biased term you would do well not to use.
Thank you.
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marvin brogin
3:32 pm
Nov 28, 2006
It becomes clearer all the time that legal wrangling over Israel’s land rights are an exersize in futility.
People who hate Jews will continue to do so for their own twisted reasons. No matter how “legal or logical” Israel’s rght to the land The Creator gave to them, all will be argued in quasi-legal terms that it belongs to anyone OTHER than Jews!
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Paul
4:52 pm
Nov 28, 2006
What happens if the falsehoods and distortions so ably refuted by CAMERA are endorsed by the Olmert government? There are, it should be remembered, two open Peace Now (sic) sympathisers in the government – one, Yuli Tamir, a co-founder, the other, a minister of defence with no experience and willingness to learn from experienced IDF people.
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