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Transcript from a website that had used the wrong word, the correct spelling is: vicious.
By Iain Scobbie
Eric Rozenman’s Dec. 11 Op-Ed article, “Israeli settlements are more than legitimate,” is legal nonsense that disregards history. He is correct in his observation that Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine permitted “close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes,” but the conclusions he then draws are flatly wrong.
Rozenman fails to acknowledge that since its inception, Israel has never claimed legal title to all of the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine. On the contrary, it has repeatedly denied such a claim in official statements and acts. On May 22, 1948, soon after Israel’s declaration of independence, the country’s representative to the U.N. Security Council stated that its territory was “the area outlined in the map appended to the resolution of 29 November 1947, as constituting the area assigned to the Jewish state” — namely that area accorded to the nascent Israel by the U.N. Partition Plan contained in General Assembly Resolution 181. This did not include the West Bank. The same view was consistently expressed by Israeli courts. In 1950, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled, “The territory of the state of Israel does not coincide with all the territory under the former mandate.” Israel thus refused to be seen as the successor state to the Palestinian mandate. Accordingly, it refused to accede to treaties that bound the mandate and refused to pay the public debt that Palestine owed to Britain. How then can there be a right of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, territory to which Israel itself has never made legal claim?
Rozenman argues that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which prohibits the transfer of parts of a state’s population into territory it occupies, does not apply to nonforcible population transfers. On the contrary, as the authoritative commentary of this convention prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross states, this prohibition was adopted precisely to prohibit the colonization of occupied territories. It does not distinguish between forcible and nonforcible population transfers. Article 49 prohibits any and all population transfers from the occupying power to occupied territory. In 2004, the International Court of Justice unanimously found that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory breached Article 49.
As a longtime observer of the International Court, I can state without fear of contradiction that it is easier to get cats to dance in a parade in costume than to obtain a unanimous ruling from the International Court.
Israel knew soon after the Six-Day War in 1967 that settlements in the occupied territory were illegal. As Gershom Gorenberg recounts in his book, “The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of Settlements,” Theodor Meron, then legal advisor to Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs and a distinguished international lawyer specializing in the law of armed conflict and human rights, advised the Israeli government in September 1967 that settlements in the newly occupied territory were prohibited by Article 49. (Click here for a facsimile of Meron’s opinion in Hebrew at Gorenberg’s website; an English translation is available here.)
The fundamental point about settlements, then, is not that they obstruct diplomacy — which they do — but rather that they are illegal. Occupied territory is not under the sovereignty of the occupant. It cannot treat the territory it occupies as it sees fit. An occupant’s powers are circumscribed by international law, which unequivocally prohibits the settlement of part of its population, whether forcible or voluntary, in that territory. While this prohibition arises from Article 49, Article 1 requires parties not merely to respect the terms of the convention in their own conduct but also to ensure that others do. All states are party to the Geneva Conventions, therefore all states have the duty to ensure that Israel’s illegal policy of creating settlements in occupied Palestinian territory ceases without further delay.
Iain Scobbie, the Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law at the University of London, is coauthor of “The Israel-Palestine Conflict in International Law: Territorial Issues,” which is available for downloading here.
Israel has announced plans for nearly 700 homes in mainly Arab East Jerusalem – despite Palestinian and international demands that it freeze building there.
The US and EU criticized the move, which follows plans unveiled last month for 900 homes on occupied land in Gilo, south of Jerusalem.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move not recognised internationally.
The Palestinians want to locate their future capital in East Jerusalem.
They said the plans showed Israel was “not ready for peace”.
Dismay
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement: “The United States opposes new Israeli construction in East Jerusalem.”
Washington reiterated its call for both sides to resume stalled peace talks as soon as possible.
The European Union said it was “dismayed” by the announcement.
“Settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law,” it said.
The new plans “contravene repeated calls from the international community and prevent the creation of the an atmosphere conducive to resuming negotiations,” a statement from the Swedish EU presidency said.
Obstacles to peace: Jerusalem
Israel’s housing ministry announced on Monday that it has invited contractors to bid on the construction of 198 housing units in Pisgat Zeev, 377 homes in Neve Yaakov and 117 dwellings in Har Homa, which are built on land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
It is part of an invitation to bid for contracts on 6,500 housing units across the country.
The new buildings will make apartments cheaper and more affordable for young families, the Israeli housing ministry said.
Last month, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in settlements in the occupied West Bank, under heavy pressure from the US.
But the right-leaning government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that it does not regard Jewish areas in Jerusalem as settlements and the restrictions do not apply there.
The Palestinians have refused to resume peace talks without a complete halt to settlement building in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
When TIME Magazine named Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as its 2009 “Person of the Year,” the Southern Avenger decided to instead recognize a far worthier recipient: Texas Congress…
Each time the U.S. bombs a new location in the Muslim world, the same pattern emerges. First, officials from the U.S. or allied governments run to their favorite media outlet to claim — anonymously — that some big, bad, notorious, “top” Al Qaeda leader “may have been” or “likely was” killed in the strike, and this constitutes a “stinging” or ”devastating” blow against the Terrorist group. These compliant media outlets then sensationalistically trumpet that claim as the dominant theme of their ”reporting” on the attack, drowning out every other issue.
As a result, and by design, there is never any debate or discussion over the propriety or wisdom of these strikes. After all, what sane, rational, Serious person would possibly question a bombing raid or missile strike that ”likely” killed a murderous, top Al Qaeda fighter and struck a “devastating blow” to that group’s operationg abilities? Having the story shaped this way also ensures that there is virtually no attention paid to the resulting civilian casualties (i.e., the slaughter of innocent people); most Americans, especially journalists, have been trained to ignore such deaths as nothing more than justifiable “collateral damage,” especially when a murderous, top Al Qaeda fighter was killed by the bombs (besides, as Alan Dershowitz once explained, “civilians” in close enough proximity to a Top Terrorist themselves may very well bear some degree of culpability). The adolescent We-Got-the-Bad-Guy! headline also ensures there is no attention paid to the radicalizing effect of these civilian deaths and our attacks for that country and in the region.
Maybe it seems beside the point, even on the eve of Christmas, to ask ourselves what would Jesus do in the Holy Land today. The narrow confines of Gaza, Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria are places where God’s love was long ago supplanted by war for land and ill will among men. It has been a year now since the bloody and fruitless Israeli effort to crush Hamas in what amounts to a massive prison for a million people. Peacemakers in the Middle East are rarely blessed, and often reviled; just ask special envoy George Mitchell. And the truth rarely sets anyone free, as proved most recently by the fact-filled United Nations report by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which was dissed by Washington and dismissed by Israel.
But given that it’s Barack Obama who’s president of the United States, the Jesus question has a relevance today it wouldn’t have had even a year ago. No, Obama is not the messiah. I’m not saying that. But Obama actually uses the word love in a way that Jesus would have understood. So while the question of what Christ might do in today’s Holy Land is hypothetical, the question of what Obama will do is not. And some of his most cherished ideas about peace, love, and understanding could be put to the test Dec. 31 when activists are hoping to stage a massive Gaza Freedom March.
It is precisely the kind of protest Obama himself called for in his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last June when he said Palestinians must abandon violence, and held up the example of the civil-rights movement in the United States, and of similar struggles by people from South Africa to South Asia, from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.
The choice would seem to be a clear one between the policies of terror, occupation, corrosive combat, and cynical poitics that we’ve seen for so long from both the Palestinian and Israeli leadership, or policies of civil disobedience and sweet reason, which is what Obama says he wants. But don’t expect to hear much about that march when it happens, if it happens at all. Egypt as well as Israel may make it impossible for foreign peace activists to join the marchers in Gaza. Protests come and go in the Palestinian territories, but only blood normally draws media attention and even then, not much.
Perhaps the only hope that a massive nonviolent march will have to make an impact is if Obama himself takes note. But since Cairo, he has been stymied by hardball politics in Israel. Thus in June Obama flatly stated that the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements, which sounded tough. But he quickly discovered that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu didn’t really give a damn what Obama accepts. After much hand wringing, Washington finally coaxed Netanyahu into announcing a partial temporary freeze on some new apartment blocks and houses on the West Bank, but construction of public buildings and projects already begun goes right ahead.
Oslo was a chance for Obama to set things straight: either he believes in the power of nonviolent protest to affect the future of peace in the Middle East or he does not. But as he made his pitch to the Europeans to send more NATO troops to the “just war” in Afghanistan, he wandered away from his old theme in the Middle East. The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it, Obama said. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
The George W. Bush Institute — the “action- oriented think tank” that is part of Bush’s Presidential Center — will co-produce a public television show hosted by its executive director, Ambassador James Glassman, in a rare convergence of public broadcasting and a partisan research organization.
“Ideas in Action” will premiere in February and will be co-produced by Andrew Walworth, who produces PBS’s “Think Tank.” Glassman, the former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy under President Bush and one-time moderator of CNN’s “Capital Gang Sunday,” will lead a discussion on public policy issues in front of a live audience at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He will remain executive director of the Institute.
The show will be distributed by Executive Program Services (EPS) to public television stations nationwide, including many PBS affiliates. Beginning in January, EPS will also begin distributing repeats of “Think Tank,” currently distributed by PBS.
PBS confirmed that host Ben Wattenberg is leaving “Think Tank” and Walworth said an announcement will be made in the new year regarding the future of that program.
Glassman told the Huffington Post that they’ve filmed two episodes of the new show, “Ideas in Action,” thus far.
The first episode, a discussion on pay for performance in education, includes one panelist from the George W. Bush Institute and panelists from the Economic Policy Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute.
“The idea is to discuss a difficult issue with a balanced panel,” Glassman said.
The Bush Institute has a special focus on education policy — along with economic growth, global health, human freedom and a women’s initative — but Glassman said the shows will tackle other topics as well. The second episode, for instance, highlights the use of online tools by dissident groups, such as those active in Iran.
It is questionable to say the least for a public television station to air a show produced and moderated by the George W. Bush Institute; one could easily imagine a conservative uproar if a similar show were produced by, say, the Clinton Foundation.
But Walworth cautioned not to jump to conclusions about the show based on the Institute’s involvement.
“The Hoover Institution had a show on,” Walworth said, citing the conservative think tank’s “Uncommon Knowledge,” which aired from 1997 to 2005.
“The proof will be in the pudding,” he said. “When you see the shows, they’re balanced, they’re fair and Jim’s got a long track record on TV. I’ve been in this business for 25 years, I’ve had many talk shows on PBS. I think the proof will be in the pudding.”
