Why the settlements are not the problem

Last updated on: September 26, 2016 at 10:21 am by Gerald McDermott

Why the settlements are not the problem 2016-09-26T10:21:08-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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We hear incessantly that if only the Israeli government would give up its West Bank settlements, peace would be at hand.

Malcolm Lowe has written the best short explanation I have seen of why that is not so. If you are involved in discussing Israel-Palestine and today’s Middle East, this is must reading.

Here are some excerpts from Dr Lowe’s article:

“First, the present Israeli occupation of lands acquired during the Six Day War of 1967 is not illegal per se, because it resulted from aggression by the neighboring states concerned. . . .

“During World War II, the Soviet Union perpetrated a vast land grab from states to its west: Karelia from Finland, the three Baltic Republics, half of prewar Poland, Transcarpathia from Czechoslovakia and Moldova (Bessarabia and North Bukovina) from Romania. That massive theft remains valid in international law (only the breakup of the Soviet Union freed some of the subject peoples). But the building of a dozen Israeli homes in Samaria is a serious ‘violation of international law. . . .

“The crux is the interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which says, inter alia: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ This statement occurs in Article 49 of Section III of Part III of the Convention.

“The professor acknowledged that some international lawyers, not only Israelis, object to the application of the Convention to areas beyond the Green Line on various grounds: that Article 49 was formulated with Nazi deportations of Jews in mind, that those areas did not belong to any state in 1967, and that the Jews who subsequently chose to live there did so of their own free will and not because they were ‘deported’ or ‘transferred’ by Israeli governments, although it was these governments that planned and approved the settlements. . . .

“When the Israel Defense Force (IDF) occupied Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah during 2002-2004, it found documents signed by Arafat authorizing money for bomb belts for suicide bombers. Arafat was aware of what he was signing, as he had personally crossed out the sums requested and replaced them with smaller sums. So much in secret; his public speeches in Arabic included a ditty that sang of “a million martyrs marching on Jerusalem.” It made meaningless his commitments in the Oslo accords to cease terrorism and incitement. . . .

“The fault of this consensus [that a two-state solution is the only one possible] is that it treats a civil war as an inter-state war and proposes a half-baked solution that fits neither kind of war. It is no wonder that the decades-long attempts to implement such a misconception constantly end in failure. That it is a misconception can be shown by a brief review of the whole history. It will suffice to recall main features of the history: the aim is simply to show that the history reads best as a history of civil war among the inhabitants of a single territory. . . .

“The custom of referring to the two lines collectively as ‘the Green Line’ may be convenient, but it is seriously misleading. Hardly any contemporary politician or journalist is aware that there were two lines and that their purpose was just to show the positions of armed forces, not to designate a border. At the insistence of the Arab states, all the Armistice Agreements included a statement to this very effect. In both the Jordanian and Lebanese cases, the wording was:

It is also recognised that no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations.

“Thus when the IDF crossed the violet and green lines in June 1967, it was crossing not a border but mere ceasefire lines that had been made inoperable by a massive violation of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement by the Kingdom of Jordan. . .

“Some 200,000 Palestinians receive treatment in Israeli hospitals annually and that Israel supplies most of Gaza’s water and electricity, even when Gaza is shooting thousands of rockets at Israel and even though Hamas publicly declares its intention to destroy and replace Israel. In practical terms, Mandatory Palestine is still one country. . .

“Put those three articles together [from Oslo I and Oslo II] and several conclusions seem to follow concerning Israeli settlements. First, the PLO accepted that the already existing settlements would remain throughout the interim period until the conclusion of the permanent status negotiations. That is, the PLO itself legitimized their continued provisional existence. Second, the Israeli side effectively conceded that during the interim period no new settlements would be built. This is because the powers to be transferred immediately in ‘the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area’ (Article VI) were presumably ones that would be exercised by the Council in ‘West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for’ the already existing settlements (Articles IV+V); thus the Council would exercise them in any new Israeli settlements. . . .

“A fourth conclusion, however, is that the proviso in Article V quoted above implies that those three conclusions apply only to the interim period. In negotiating the final status, the Palestinians can ask for the removal of all Israeli settlements, while the Israeli side can ask to acquire not merely individual existing settlements but blocks of settlements that include territory lying between settlements. Indeed, neither Israel nor the PLO is excluded a priori from asking for any part of Mandatory Palestine.

“A fifth conclusion, then, is that if the PLO decides unilaterally to abolish the Oslo accords, as some of its senior members have threatened, then all restrictions accepted by Israel in the accords will end. The violet and green lines will vanish completely once and for all, and the conflict will revert to a conflict between two Parties within and over a single territory — the territory of Mandatory Palestine. Israel can again create settlements in any part of that territory, as the only relevant provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention will again be Article 3 of Part I. . . .

“We can summarize all the above findings in a few sentences. All the settlements created by Israel before the Oslo accords are legitimate, including the new Israeli housing estates created in the extended boundaries of Jerusalem. As long as the ‘interim period’ envisaged in those accords remains in force, Israel is allowed to build within the originally defined pre-Oslo boundaries of the settlements, but is not allowed to change their pre-Oslo status. As initial negotiating positions on the final status agreement, the Palestinians are not excluded from demanding a total Israeli withdrawal to the ceasefire lines of 1949, but Israel is likewise not excluded from demanding the retention not merely of the settlements but also of any other part of the Mandatory Palestine of 1947 (that is, the territory remaining after Transjordan was separated from the Mandate and made independent). . . .

“Another feature of the international consensus — that Jerusalem should be split into two capitals for two states — is also seriously flawed. The maintenance of a united city is the preference of Israeli and Palestinian residents alike, while even the latter tend to prefer Israeli over Palestinian rule. Moreover, the whole structure of the city has thoroughly changed during the last 49 years. Instead of pontificating from afar, we would like the devotees of the international consensus on dividing Jerusalem to spend a few days actually visiting the city. There they can count the scores of border crossings that would need to be installed, turning all the major traffic arteries into dead ends. This, too, is ‘a ass.'”

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