There Is Just Israeli 'Liberation' not 'Occupation': It’s Not Arab-Palestinians Land and 97 Percent of Arab-Palestinians Live Under Arab Autocratic Rule
Summary ... Ambassador Friedman merely spoke the truth when he used the term 'alleged occupation'. Simply put, there is no Israeli 'occupation' in Judea/Samaria/Jerusalem.
The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, recently made headlines for using the term “alleged occupation” during an interview with the Jerusalem Post. Arab-Palestinian Authority (“PA”) dictator and Holocaust denier Mahmmoud Abbas condemned the term “alleged occupation” and then falsely proclaimed that there is an Israeli “occupation of the territory of the Arab state of Palestine” and variations of the same line some 27 times during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. However, an honest examination of the facts and actual international law reveal that Ambassador Friedman’s words were correct: In fact, the presence of Israel and Israeli Jews in Judea/Samaria (“West Bank”) and the old city of Jerusalem is a liberation, not an “Israeli occupation.”
Occupation means possessing/exercising actual authority over another country’s sovereign territory. A nation who has the sovereign rights to land cannot be an “occupier” of that land. Israel has the lawful sovereign right — as well as the strongest historical, religious, and legal connection — to Israel, including Judea/Samaria and all of Jerusalem.
The Jews are indigenous people of Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Jerusalem, and the east bank of the Jordan River. The word “Jew” comes from “Judea” — because this is where the Jewish people lived. (Jordan renamed Judea/Samaria “the West Bank” during Jordan’s 19-year [1948-67] illegal occupation of the area, as explained below). Jewish kings and kingdoms reigned in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria for hundreds of years (c.920 bce – 597 bce). For over 3,000 years, there was always a Jewish presence in Israel, even after conquests and dispersion's of the Jewish people.
By contrast, there has never been a Arab-Palestinian state or kingdom in Israel, Jerusalem or Judea/Samaria. Ever. “Palestine” is not an Arab name but is a Roman name, named by the Romans in 135 ce for the geographic area, to attempt to de-Judaize Israel and Judea/Samaria, after destroying the Second Temple in 70 ce and crushing the Jewish Bar Kochba Revolt (133-135 ce).
Israel thus does not “occupy” land belonging to any Arab-Palestinian foreign sovereign — for no Arab-Palestinian foreign sovereign ever existed.
Israel fell into desolation under Ottoman rule (1517-1917) and was sparsely populated then. Mark Twain wrote in 1867 that Israel was a “desolate country ... We never saw a human being on the whole route ... There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere.”
Most Arab “Palestinians” are not indigenous to Israel. Most Arab - “Palestinian” immigrated into Israel from Arab nations and northern Africa (Algeria, etc.) after waves of Jewish communities started rebuilding Israel in the mid-to-late 1800's through mid-1900's. Arab “Palestinian” last names such as “al Masri” (meaning “from Egypt”) and “Mugrabi” (“North African”) reveal some of the Arab-Palestinians’ origins.
Indeed, the world always understood that “Palestinian” meant “Jew.” The media used to refer to Arabs in Judea/Samaria as “West Bankers” not Arab “Palestinians.”
Britain’s Balfour Declaration (November 1917) and legally binding international treaties, including Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant; the Mandate for Palestine (1922), San Remo Resolution (April 1920), Feisal-Weitzman Treaty (January 1919) (an Arab-Jewish treaty, signed by the Emir of the Kingdom of Hejaz, now part of Saudi Arabia), the 1924 Anglo-American Convention [Treaty] (ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1925, making it a binding U.S. treaty obligation), designated the area that is now Israel including Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria and present-day Jordan as a “sacred trust” for reconstituting the Jewish homeland.
Winston Churchill thus wrote in 1922 that “the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine without boundary restrictions ... is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community ... [T]he Jewish people ... is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance.”
Also, under the firmly established international legal doctrine “uti posseditis juris,” new states inherit the full borders of the preceding mandate. Thus, Israel is entitled to the full mandatory territory and borders, which include Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria — and included present-day Jordan. (Arab nations in the Middle East — Syria, Lebanon, Iraq — received the full mandatory borders of the mandates that preceded those states, under the same doctrine.) Interested readers may wish to watch international legal scholar Northwestern Univ. Professor Eugene Kontorovich’s excellent video discussing this in detail.
In 1922, Britain, in essence, lopped off 78 percent of the area legally designated for a Jewish homeland, to create Transjordan, later Jordan, which expelled the Jews. The Jews were left with only 22 percent of the Mandate of Palestine designated for the Jewish homeland.
The UN Charter Article 80 (the “Jewish people’s clause), adopted in 1945, preserved intact all rights granted to Jews under the Mandate for Palestine, even after the Mandate’s expiration in 1948. As legal scholar Howard Grief has explained , Article 80 prevents the UN from transferring rights over any part of Palestine to any non-Jewish entity, such as the Arab Palestinian Authority or a “Arab Palestinian state.”
In 1948, the Arabs rejected a UN non-binding recommendation to partition the remaining 22 percent portion of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states (the so-called “partition resolution” which is non-binding).
Instead, six Arab nations invaded the newly reestablished State of Israel, in an attempt to obliterate Israel and murder the Jews. During the aggressive Arab war, Jordan captured and illegally occupied the eastern portion of Jerusalem (the “Old City” including the Jewish quarter) and Judea/Samaria for the next 19 years. Only two countries recognized Jordan’s illegal occupation. Jordan expelled and murdered the Jewish residents, destroyed 58 centuries-old synagogues and vandalized the 3,000-year-old Mt. of Olives Jewish cemetery in eastern Jerusalem and took over Jewish homes and property.
Significantly, during Jordan’s 19-year illegal occupation of eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria, Arab-Palestinians made no claim for a state there. The 1964 PLO Charter proclaimed that the PLO “does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank or Gaza.” It also never mentioned Jerusalem.
The so-called “pre-1967 lines” (a/k/a the “green line” or “1949 Armistice lines” or indefensible “suicide borders”) are not binding internationally recognized borders. In 1949, Israel and its neighbors (which had invaded and tried to destroy Israel), signed armistice agreements establishing “armistice demarcation lines” at approximately the point where the fighting stopped. The armistice agreements stated that the armistice lines were “without prejudice” to a future political settlement. Israel is not required to return to the tiny area within “pre-1967 lines.”
In 1967, Jordan attacked Israel again — even though Israel implored Jordan not to attack, saying: “We are engaged in defensive fighting on the Egyptian sector, and we shall not engage ourselves in any action against Jordan, unless Jordan attacks us. Should Jordan attack Israel, we shall go against her with all our might.” In the ensuing defensive Six-Day War, Israel recaptured and liberated eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria and Gaza, restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem and Jewish sovereign rights to Judea/Samaria and the Golan heights.
After the 1967 Six Day War, UNSC Resolution 242 (non-binding) called for Israel to have “recognized and secure” borders, and did not call for Israel to surrender “all” lands captured and liberated in 1967. Then- U.S. President Lyndon Johnson stated shortly afterward: “We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of June 4, 1967, will not bring peace.”
The Levy Commission (appointed by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and headed by esteemed former Israel Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy) concluded that when Israel recaptured and liberated eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria: “the original legal status of the territory was restored, namely, a territory designated as a national home for the Jewish people, who had a “right of possession” to it during Jordanian rule while they were absent from the territory for several years due to a war imposed on them, and have now returned to it.”
Additional developments and facts further reveal that there is liberation and not Israeli “occupation.”
In 1988, Jordan publicly relinquished any claims to Judea/Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. The 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty recognized the Jordan River (not the “green line”) as the international boundary. In other words, Judea/Samaria is on the Israeli side of the border. This further reconfirms that Israel is clearly not occupying land of a foreign sovereign.
The Oslo Accords (which is now null and void) (1993-1995), signed by the PLO, acknowledge Israel’s territorial jurisdiction over “settlements.” Oslo never spoke of a Arab-Palestinian state and in Prime Minister Rabin’s last speech, he spoke of establishing “less than a State” for the Arab-Palestinians and not giveaway of any part of Jerusalem.
Moreover, a nation cannot be considered to be an “occupier” of land over which it does not exercise governing control. Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states that a foreign power is only considered to be an occupier “to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory.”
Israel has relinquished governing control in all of Gaza and 40 percent of Judea/Samaria. The Oslo Accords (which is now null and void) provided land within Judea/Samaria to establish a Arab “Palestinian Authority.” And, in 2005, Israel unilaterally evacuated 10,000 Jews from Gaza and Northern Samaria.
As a result, 97 percent of Arab-Palestinians are living in these territories, under Arab-Palestinian rule. These territories are governed by Arab-Palestinians, with their own legislatures, courts, TV, radio, newspapers, police, hospitals, school system and municipal services. These Arab-Palestinian governmental agencies are largely corrupt, brutal and hate-mongering. But they are their own, not Israel’s. In short, Israel no longer runs Arab PA-controlled areas.
Israel remains enmeshed with Arab-Palestinians only with respect to security issues, and that’s only because the Arab-Palestinians continue to wage war on Israeli civilians — with exponentially increased rocket assaults and terror tunnels from Gaza since 2005, and continued terror assaults from Judea/Samaria. Israeli forces must foil dozens of such assaults each month. Thus, Israel is forced to maintain checkpoints in Judea/Samaria to prevent terrorist attacks from terrorist cells based in the Arab Palestinian Authority. And since Israel’s unilateral evacuation of Gaza in 2005, Israel has had to make three significant military incursions into Gaza to try to stop Hamas’ incessant rocket fire on Israeli civilians, and to destroy Hamas’s terror tunnels. But that’s not “occupation”; that’s war to stop terror, and its attendant mess and tragedies.
Further, Israeli “settlements” (Rebuilt and new Jewish communities and cities) are liberated Jewish territory, not an “occupation” since they are on sovereign Jewish land, legally designated for “close Jewish settlement” under the Mandate. Nor are settlements an “obstacle to peace.” Israeli rebuilt communities “settlements” comprise only about 2 percent of Judea/Samaria. Since 1993, Israeli building has occurred only within existing “settlements” borders. There has not been a single new Jewish community built while the Arabs have built at ten times the Israeli rate in Judea//Samaria and much of it illegally.
Moreover, even if Israel was an “occupying power,” settlements would still be perfectly legal — because only “forcible” transfers by an occupying power are prohibited. Here, Jews returned to Judea/Samaria voluntarily — and there has been no forcible transfer of Arabs out of these areas.
But Israel is not an “occupying power” under the Fourth Geneva Convention (as Israel-haters falsely claim). The Fourth Geneva Convention is inapplicable because it is a specialized treaty among the “high contracting parties.” The treaty solely applies to wars between the countries who signed this treaty — and the Arab Palestinian Authority and Israel are not signatories. Israel is also not an “occupying power” under the Convention because, as explained above, Israel has the sovereign right to Judea/Samaria; Judea/Samaria is not the territory of another sovereign country that signed the treaty, and Jordan withdrew its claims to Judea/Samaria.
The False Claims of “Israeli Occupation” Are a Pretext for Terrorism and Ethnic Cleansing of Jews
So, then, why do the Arab-Palestinian Authority, Hamas and their supporters continue to perpetuate the Israeli “occupation” calumny? What is behind the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel as an illegal “occupier” and “colonizer” of Arab “Palestinian lands”? Why do they falsely label the areas that Israel has the sovereign right to as “occupied Arab-Palestinian territories”?
Why do Arab-Palestinian leaders continue to say anything — no matter how absurd and false — to deny Israel her legally guaranteed rights? Why did Arab PA dictator Mahmmoud Abbas, in his UN speech last week, falsely argue that the 1917 Balfour Declaration’s promise to the Jews of a national home in Palestine inflicted “a grave injustice on the Arab-Palestinian people” because Palestine was “inhabited by the Arab-Palestinian people” and was “among the most progressive and prosperous countries” back in 1917 — when in fact there were no “Arab-Palestinian people” and there was never a country of Arab Palestine, in 1917 or ever?
It’s because proclaiming “illegal occupation” promotes the Arab Palestinian Authority’s and Hamas’s goals of ethnically cleansing all Jews from the lands that the Arab Palestinian Authority seeks to seize, and “justifies” terrorism. Indeed, Mahmmoud Abbas asserted in his UN speech last week that Israel’s “occupation breeds incitement and violence.” Calling any residual Israeli presence, anywhere, within areas that the Arab PA or Hamas deems to be “occupied Arab-Palestinian territories” serves as justification to engage in terror, promote international efforts to indict Israel, promote violence over peace, educates the children to hate and commit terror and violence and transform Arab-Palestinians terrorists into “freedom fighters,” and avoid negotiations with Israel for real peace.
It is for these reasons that the Arab PA continues to seek UN affirmation that all of Judea/Samaria and Gaza and the old city of Jerusalem is Arab “Palestinian land” and “occupied” — rather than even using the neutral term “disputed.” As Mahmmoud Abbas put it in 2012, “We want to establish that the Arab-Palestinian territories that were [taken] in 1967 including Jerusalem [are occupied], since Israel has a different approach. It says that the territories occupied in 1967 are disputed territories. In other words, up for negotiations.”
And it is for these reasons that Hamas — and many statements from the Arab PA — insist that all of Israel is “occupied Arab land.”
In fact, Israel is in its own land and does not occupy another foreign sovereign’s territory.
Thus, Ambassador Friedman merely spoke the truth when he used the term “alleged occupation.”
Simply put, Israel is in its liberated land there is no Israeli “occupation” in Judea/Samaria/Jerusalem and Golan heights.
[ Morton A. Klein, National President, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) | Published: October 9, 2017 ]
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the Jordan River
If you read the 1917 Balfour Declaration (Which
emulated Napoleons 1799 letter to the Jewish community in Palestine promising
that The National Home for The Jewish people will be reestablished in
Palestine, as the Jews are the rightful owners). Nowhere does it state an Arab
entity west of The Jordan River.
The San Remo Conference of April 1920 which incorporated The Balfour
Declaration into International Law with no boundary restrictions it does
not state an Arab entity west of The Jordan River, confirmed by Article 95 in
the 1920 Treaty of Sevres which was signed by all the Allied Powers and the
Treaty of Lausanne.
The Mandate for Palestine Jordan
River . It specifically states a Jewish National Home in
Palestine Palestine Palestine Palestine Jordan River .
As a matter of historical record, The British reallocated illegally over 77% of Jewish Palestine to the Arab-Palestinians in 1922 with specific borders andJordan Gulf of Aqaba which was not part of the allocation to Jordan
As a matter of historical record, The British reallocated illegally over 77% of Jewish Palestine to the Arab-Palestinians in 1922 with specific borders and
The United Nations resolutions are non binding
with no legal standing it does not create an Arab Palestinian state and it has
no authority to change the April 1920 San Remo treaty or modify the terms of
the Mandate for Palestine which has the force of international law in
perpetuity.
No where in any of the above
stated agreements does it provides for an Arab entity west of the Jordan River . The U.N. and General Assembly resolutions are
non-binding with no legal standing, same applies to the ICJ. The Oslo Accords
are null and void as state by Mahmmoud Abbas at the U.N.
It is time to relocate the
Arabs in Israel Jordan Israel
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YJ Draiman
P.S. Possession is nine tenths of the law – Israel
Political Rights in Palestine Land of
Israel Palestine Palestine
The Jewish people’s war
of survival was not won when Hitler lost. It continues to this day, against
enemies with more effective tools of mass murder at their disposal.
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now.
Occupation? Whose Occupation?
Summary ... There is liberation and not 'occupation'. Forty-five years after the League of Nations Declaration in San Remo in April 1920, Israel retrieved its rightful possession of the territories assigned to the Jewish people as a national home. How her possession of her own homeland can be called the "occupation of Arab-Palestinian territories" is beyond explanation. What is tragic is that some of the Jews themselves have adopted this usage and made it a cornerstone of their own national policy.
The word "occupation" has been used for many years now to describe the rule of Israel in Judea and Samaria (known as the "West Bank") and the Gaza district which Israel took from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and from Egypt respectively in the course of the defensive Six Day War in 1967. In the distorted language of the media and of politicians, both in Israel and in most parts of the world, these two territories are deceptively described as "the occupied Arab-Palestinian territories" as if Israel occupied a country called "Palestine" in 1967 and took Arab-Palestinian [sic] lands. Sadly, very few of the media consumers in the West and the East are aware of the lie behind the usage of these terms.
First, let us review the simple facts about this "occupation." Israel took and liberated the "West Bank" - Judea and Samaria from Jordan and not from a non-existent Arab "Palestinian" entity; and liberated and occupied Gaza that was held by Egypt. Both countries had occupied these territories during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and had ruled them illegally. The Jordanians even annexed territory to the west of the Jordan and called it the "West Bank." Egypt established its administration in Gaza. Both these areas were, therefore, in Arab hands for 19 years, but nobody, during these years of Jordanian and Egyptian occupation, even thought about the establishment of a Arab Palestinian State in them, although such a state could have been established easily and recognized, even by Israel.
Moreover, the Jordanian occupation of the "West Bank" - Judea and Samaria and the Egyptian rule over Gaza were never recognized internationally for the simple reason that these two countries occupied territories that, according to international agreements, international decisions and international law, belonged to the Jewish National Home. In fact, the only title to these territories belonged and still belongs to the State Of Israel.
The legal position of the whole of Palestine without boundary restrictions was clearly defined in several international agreements.
The most important is the one adopted at the San Remo Conference (following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the first world war), which decided, on April 24, 1920 to assign the Mandate for Palestine under the League of Nations to Britain. An agreed text was confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922 and came into operation in September 1923.
In the preamble to this document it is stated that "... the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." (without boundary restrictions). The declaration of November 2, 1917 is the famous Balfour Declaration and in this document, it was given international ratification.
Moreover, in Article 2 of the document, the League of Nations declares that "The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble."
In the preamble it was clearly stated that "recognition has hereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." (without boundary restrictions).
It was on this basis that the British Mandate was established. Britain violated the terms of the Mandate and betrayed its duty and far from keeping to its undertakings did everything to jeopardize the establishment of the Jewish National Home and finally decided, in 1947, to end its mandate unilaterally, leaving Palestine on May 15, 1948.
Meanwhile the UN (which had inherited the League of Nations) decided on the partition of Western Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, but this decision of November 29, 1947 [UN General Assembly Resolution 181] (non-binding) was not only rejected out of hand by the Arabs, but seven Arab armies invaded Palestine to put an end to the young State of Israel which had been established on May 14, 1948.
The 1948 war ended with an armistice. A line was drawn on the map which delineated the position of the fighting armies on the two fronts in the east and the south at the time of the ceasefire. This is the "Green Line." It is not a border and neither Israel nor the Arabs regarded it as more than what it was: a line defining the positions of the respective armies at the end of one phase of the hostilities; it could be moved to either side if war was to be resumed, as actually happened in 1967. As an outcome of the 1948 war, parts of the Jewish National Home in Palestine were left occupied by Jordan and Egypt, since the only title to these territories belonged to the Jewish people, in other words to Israel, not to the Arabs and definitely not to the Arab "Palestinians" who were not even mentioned at the time.
The 1967 war created a new situation in the field: the armistice line from 1948-49, which had been drawn in green on the maps, was moved as an outcome of this war further east to the River Jordan, and in 1994 was ratified as an international border by the peace agreement with Jordan. In the south, the Green Line was moved as a result of Israel's victory over the Egyptians and in 1979 was recognized as an international border in the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. There is no Green Line any more! It was abrogated by a new war and ultimately was turned into a "mauve line" by the peace agreements. Those who sanctify the Green Line worship an illusionary image. They have created a "Arab Palestinian People" and a "Arab Palestinian State" behind this sacred line but they are not interested in the welfare of the "Arab-Palestinians" as much as in creating the conditions for the elimination of the Jewish national home.
Forty-five years after the League of Nations Declaration in San Remo on April 1920, Israel liberated and retrieved some of its rightful possession of the territories assigned to the Jewish people as a national home. How her possession of her own homeland can be called the "occupation of Arab-Palestinian territories" is beyond explanation. What is tragic is that some of the Jews themselves have adopted this usage and made it a cornerstone of their own national policy.
All these facts are well known, but tend to be conveniently forgotten. It is therefore necessary to repeat them at least as frequently as the lies about the false "occupation" are endlessly repeated.
The same can be said about the demand to return to Syria the liberated "occupied" Golan Heights (which was part of the Mandate for Palestine and the British gave it to the French) as the "price for peace." In this case too the facts are well known but must be ceaselessly repeated. Syria lost the Golan Heights as an outcome of two wars which it initiated and waged against Israel in 1967 and 1973, and after many years in which it used the Golan as a big military base for perpetrating endless acts of aggression against innocent Israeli villages in the Jordan Valley. Having lost this territory through aggression, Syria cannot have it back, just as Germany cannot have back the territory that it had lost in the war.
One last word about occupation. If there is any occupation which is historically relevant to the Middle East and North Africa it is the Islamic one. By the power of the sword, the armies of Islam broke out of Arabia in the seventh century, occupied vast territories, subjugated peoples, destroyed cultures and languages in the name of [the god of Islam] and in the service of His Prophet, and they are now poised to occupy Europe.
[ Moshe Sharon | Published: July 29, 2010 ]
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