Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Wednesday 14 August 2019

David Singer: Trump Reaffirms Bush’s Recognition of Jewish claims in West Bank

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is frothing at the mouth at media reports indicating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a public declaration from US President Donald Trump recognizing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the occupied West Bank prior to the Israeli elections on 17 September.

PLO spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh stressed that any procedure or decision affecting Palestinian national rights and the resolutions of international legitimacy shall be considered illegitimate. Abu Rudeineh warned such a move would have “serious implications”.

Abu Rudineh continued:
“This step, if taken, would constitute ongoing playing with fire,” he added, and stressed that stability and security are indivisible and that “peace would not be made at any price”.
“Neither this step would establish any right [to Israel], nor it will create a viable false reality,” he added.”
Such a Trump declaration would undoubtedly help Netanyahu’s re-election chances – as have Trump’s declarations on Jerusalem being Israel’s capital, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognising Jewish claims in the  Golan Heights.

However Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel – David Friedman – has already made such a declaration – telling the New York Times on 8 June 2019:
 “Under certain circumstances I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.”
Friedman diplomatically continued:
“We really don’t have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves… These are all things that we’d want to understand, and I don’t want to prejudge … Certainly Israel’s entitled to retain some portion of it,”
Friedman confirmed what has been declared American policy since 2004 – when President Bush made the following written commitment in his letter to Israel’s then Prime Minister – the late Ariel Sharon – on 14 April 2004:
“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”
This commitment was overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407:9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95:3 the next day.

Bush’s letter welcomed the disengagement plan Sharon had prepared:
“under which Israel would withdraw certain military installations and all settlements from Gaza, and withdraw certain military installations and settlements in the West Bank. These steps described in the plan will mark real progress toward realizing my June 24, 2002 vision, and make a real contribution towards peace”
Israel honoured its commitment – at great personal loss of life, injury and property damage to both its civilian population and military forces. Israel continues to pay a heavy price for that disengagement as Hamas remains in control of Gaza with the avowed aim of wiping Israel off the face of the map.
Trump has already recognized – and will continue to recognize – Jewish rights in the West Bank as sacrosanct.

The PLO is shouting loads of codswallop from its Ramallah-Headquarters rooftop – as the ceiling slowly collapses under its feet.

Author's note:   Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

3 comments:

  1. Negotiations with the Arab leaders beyond Palestine were being carried out by T. E. Lawrence, who informed [Winston] Churchill on 17 January [1921 CE] that he had concluded an agreement with Hussein’s* eldest son, Emir Feisal, under which, in return for Arab sovereignty in Baghdad, Amman and Damascus, Feisal “agreed to abandon all claims of his father to [West] Palestine**.”

    * Sherif Hussein of Mecca
    ** West Palestine means Israel and East Palestine means Jordan.

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 5, page 46) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    In the year 1922 CE Winston Churchill said this:

    “Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine.

    They would have been quite content to dwell, a handful of philosophic people, in the wasted sun-scorched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan [River] continue to flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 7, page 81) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    Sir Winston Churchill said this in year 1922 CE:

    “The Arabs would have sat in the dark forever had not the Zionist engineers harnessed the Jordan River for electrification. Now they swarm into Palestine in seeking the light.”

    SOURCE: A Peace to End All Peace

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    QUESTION:

    If the Arabs are native to Palestine,
    then why did Winston Churchill say:

    "Now they swarm INTO
    Palestine in seeking the light.”

    The word "INTO" implies that most of them
    were NOT in Palestine before the Zionists.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment from Winston Churchill
    appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle
    dated 1929 September 12, one day after he said it:


    “The Jews have developed the country, grown orchards and grain fields out of the desert, built schools and great buildings, constructed irrigation projects and water power houses and have made Palestine a much better place in which to live than it was before they came a few years ago.

    The Arabs are much better off now than before the Jews came, and it will be a short time only before they realize it.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 8, page 91) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    The 1929 September 13 edition of the
    New York Times printed an article
    which quoted Winston Churchill saying:


    “To Jewish enterprise, the Arab owes nearly everything he has.

    Fanaticism and a sort of envy have driven the Arab to violence and for the present the problem is one of proper policing until harmony has been restored.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 8, page 92) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    As for the Arabs of Palestine,
    [Winston] Churchill wrote [in year 1929 CE],
    they had been brought, as a result
    of the Jewish presence there:


    “Nothing but good gifts, more wealth, more trade, more civilization, new sources of revenue, more employment, a higher rate of wages, larger cultivated areas, a better water supply; in a word, the fruits of reason and modern science.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 8, page 92) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    “In his memorandum [to Winston Churchill on July 16, 1937, Zev] Jabotinsky stressed that a partitioned Palestine would create a Jewish State too small in area to be defendable from sustained Arab attack from outside it.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 11, page 125) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ReplyDelete
  3. [Winston] Churchill was emphatic that the partition [of Palestine] would be a mistake.

    The small Jewish State envisioned in the Partition plan, he argued [in 1937 CE]:


    “Can be ravished by its enemies, defeated in war, annexed to other powers or suffer any of the other incidents that are common to small States in the fortunes and chances of war.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 11, page 131) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    The policy of Partition [of Palestine],
    [Winston] Churchill warned [in year 1937 CE]:


    “Will not lead away from violence, but into its
    very heart; will not end in peace, but in war.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 11, page 133) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ===================================

    Winston Churchill said this in 1937 CE:

    “[Winston] Churchill did not accept that the Jews
    were a foreign race [to the Holy Land]. He said it was
    the Arabs who had been the outsiders, the conquerors.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 10, page 115) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    HISTORY NOTE:

    According to the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia,
    these lands were conquered by the Rashidun Caliphs,
    from year 632 to year 661 of the Common Era
    (from west to East): Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon,
    Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Eastern Turkey, and Iran.

    Therefore, Winston Churchill was correct when
    he said that the Muslims were the outsiders
    and conquerors, with respect to the land of Israel.

    ===================================
    Winston Churchill said this in 1937 CE:

    “When the Mohammedan upset occurred in world history,
    and the great hordes of Islam swept over these places,
    they broke it [Palestine] all up, smashed it all up.

    You have seen the terraces on the hills which used to be
    cultivated, which under Arab rule have remained a desert.”

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 10, page 116) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE

    CHRONOLOGY:
    Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
    from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.

    ReplyDelete

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