Ik bezocht vanmiddag een seminar georganiseerd door het Haagse Institute of Social Studies en het ICCO onder de titel: 'Palestinian Refugees and International Law:Prospects for resolving the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. Ik was verzocht kort enkele feiten te vertellen naar aanleiding van mijn bezoek aan Palestina. Ik had dit voorbereid:
'As a journalist I try to stick to the facts. Some historical facts. According to the UN Partition Plan of 1947 Israel was given about 53 percent of Palestine and the Palestinians were promised the remaining 47 percent of their own land to build a state there. During the war of 1948 Israel occupied about 25 percent of the land given to the Palestinians. What was left was 22 percent, containing the Westbank and Gaza. Since the war of 1967 Israel occupies this 22 percent. According to the UN bureau Ocha, which monitors the occupied territories, Israel has taken about 40 percent of the Westbank, being settlements, roads, military bases, nature reserves, etc. So what is left for a possible Palestinian state is about 14 percent of the 47 percent. 14 percent is less than a third of the land they got from the United Nations. These are facts about which there is no discussion in Israel. Everybody who is informed agrees that these are facts. They are all well documented.
Since 1988 the Palestinians accept the 22 percent as the maximum for their own state. They accept the loss of 25 percent of the land they got from the UN. Now, the question is, are they going to accept 14 percent of their land, a loss of 40 percent of the Westbank? Are they willing to accept dozens of little Bantustans, between which they cannot travel freely as a state? To put it differently: are the Palestinians willing to accept a gross violation of international law? Because everything Israel does with the occupied territories is illegal.
In June this year Prime Minister Olmert stated that Israel will decide at the very latest in 2010 where the final borders of the Jewish state will be situated. 2010. The question is: why does it take the state of Israel such a long time, at least 6 decennia, to decide where its borders lie?
History gives the answer. In 1938, Ben Gurion, later on the first prime minister of Israel, made it clear that he supported an establishment on parts of Palestine only as an intermediary stage. He wrote: ‘[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state – we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.’ In a letter to his son in 1937 he wrote: ‘No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning… Our possession is important not only for itself… through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state… will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country.’ In October 1938 Ben Gurion wrote to his children that ‘I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.’ A year earlier he told a group of American Jewish labour leaders in New York: ‘the borders [of the Jewish state] will not be fixed for eternity.’ Soon after the UN Partition Plan of 1947 Ben Gurion urged his party to accept the partition because it would never be final, ‘not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements.’ When Pinhas Rozen, who later became the first Justice Minister, demanded that Israel’s Declaration of Independence should cite the country’s borders, Ben Gurion objected, and both exchanged the following points:
Rozen: ‘There’s the question of borders, and it cannot be ignored.’
Ben Gurion: ‘Anything is possible. If we decide here that there’s to be no mention of borders, then we won’t mention them. Nothing is a priori [imperative].’
Rozen: ‘It’s not a priori, but it is a legal issue.’
Ben Gurion: ‘The law is whatever people determine it to be.’
This expansionism was maintained in the years to come. It should be noted that 60 percent of the Israeli soldiers who were killed in action in 1948, were killed in offensive actions in areas which were given by the UN not to the ‘Jewish state,’ but to the Palestinian state. According to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who wrote the book ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,’ the Zionists had to expel the Palestinians because otherwise the creation of a Jewish state would have been impossible. At that time there were more than a million Palestinians living in what is now Israel and only 600.000 Jews. Almost none of the 760.000 Palestinians who were driven out were allowed to return, and they lost all their property. Israel refuses to let these refugees return and refuses to compensate them. All in violation of international law and UN resolutions. All these years this extremism has been supported by the western powers. And Israel knows this. Nahum Goldmann, for many years president of the World Jewish Congress, stated that the military victory of 1948 had a marked psychological effect on Israel: ‘It seemed to show the advantages of direct action over negotiation and diplomacy… The victory offered such a glorious contrast to the centuries of persecution and humiliation, of adaptation and compromise, that it seemed to indicate the only direction that could possibly be taken from then on. To brook nothing, tolerate no attack, cut through Gordian knots, and shape history by creating facts seemed so simple, so compelling, so satisfying that it became Israel’s policy in its conflict with the Arab world.’ And the Christian world, responsible for the persecutions which culminated in the holocaust, accepts this extremism. Again: These are facts about which there is no discussion among experts. Everybody who is informed agrees that these are facts. They are all well documented by - among others - the respected Israeli historians Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe. All these facts explain why Israel is the only country in the world that has not decided were its borders lie. Dunam for dunam is the expression among Israeli Zionists, acre for acre they are stealing the land of the Palestinians. The wall is only a recent illustration of this, but not yet the final example. In the meanwhile the hidden ethnic cleansing of Palestine doesn’t stop. Make the live of the Palestinian population as miserable as possible and they will finally have no other option than to leave. That’s Israel’s policy, as any UN-employee in the field will tell you.
In 1949, after the war, Ben Gurion said that: ‘now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defence. As for setting the borders – it’s an open-ended matter.’ And it still is an open-ended matter, because, again, in violation of international law the West is actually supporting the Israeli expansionism. Even after the International Court of Justice in The Hague came to the conclusion that the wall, and the building of settlements are illegal and have to be dismantled immediately. The International Court of Justice, the highest legal authority in the world, added to this the following: ‘all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall [and] are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction.’ Still, Israel is supported by the West on a political, diplomatic, economic and even military level and so the borders remain an open-ended matter, even after the General Assembly of the United Nations demanded that Israel complies with the ICJ advisory opinion, a resolution which was supported by an overwhelming majority of the world community, among them all European Union members. An open-ended matter, even after the UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard warned that ‘the Quartet and the road map process to which it is committed are not premised on the rule of law or respect for human rights… and the road map runs the risk of repeating the failures of the Oslo process which likewise took no account of human rights considerations.’ To be more precise: the International Court of Justice rejected in its advisory opinion the contention of Israel – supported by the United States and the European Union – that the issue of the wall was of a political rather than a legal nature and therefore could be resolved through negotiations between the two parties. In the meantime the Netherlands is an important transit station for weapons to Israel, according to a report which was published beginning October 2007.
It must be clear that fundamental issues of international law are here at stake. Does the West accept international law or doesn’t it accept international law. It’s that simple. Nations cannot accept part of international law and ignore the rest because it is politically convenient. It is just as absurd as acting as if a woman is partly pregnant. Professor Vaughan Lowe of Oxford University and chief advocate for the Palestinian cause at the ICJ proceedings stated that the most important consequence of the advisory opinion was that it: ‘established that the rights and duties of Palestine, and of Palestinians, are regulated by law and are not simply a matter for political negotiation. Palestine and Palestinians do not simply have claims and interests over which they must negotiate with Israel. They have legal rights. They do not have to bargain for these rights. They do not have to make concessions in return for recognition of those rights. They have those rights now and they are entitled to have those rights observed.’ Thus said this international law expert. In spite of all this the grave violation of the rights of the Palestinians goes on, unhindered, even supported by the West. In the meantime, according to Israeli polls, 40 percent of the Israelis support a further ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land, an ethnic cleansing like the one in ’48 and ’67. One of the deputy prime ministers of Israel in the current government, the minister of so called Strategic Threats, openly calls for such a forced transfer. And still, the West supports in practice this extremism.
Recently, Ray Dolphin, who works as a consultant for the United Nations in Jerusalem and who wrote the book The West Bank Wall. Unmaking Palestine said to me that if the west doesn’t respect international law by ignoring to do anything against the illegal wall and the illegal settlements the West not only destroys the power of those Palestinians who believe in the rule of law, still an overwhelming majority, but the West will also help the people who see violence as the only instrument to stop the occupation, which - to give only one example - led in 2006 to the killing of 120 Palestinian children by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers, according to Amnesty International. A very brutal occupation which lasts already for 40 years and by which the Palestinians are outlawed. Ray Dolphin literally said: ‘By ignoring international law you are giving Palestinian people no hope of solving this long-lasting occupation peacefully.’ We have to bear this in mind. We, the people from the democracies and the rule of law, we, the so called free people of the West, we ourselves create the contra-terror by supporting the daily terror against the Palestinian population.'
Since 1988 the Palestinians accept the 22 percent as the maximum for their own state. They accept the loss of 25 percent of the land they got from the UN. Now, the question is, are they going to accept 14 percent of their land, a loss of 40 percent of the Westbank? Are they willing to accept dozens of little Bantustans, between which they cannot travel freely as a state? To put it differently: are the Palestinians willing to accept a gross violation of international law? Because everything Israel does with the occupied territories is illegal.
In June this year Prime Minister Olmert stated that Israel will decide at the very latest in 2010 where the final borders of the Jewish state will be situated. 2010. The question is: why does it take the state of Israel such a long time, at least 6 decennia, to decide where its borders lie?
History gives the answer. In 1938, Ben Gurion, later on the first prime minister of Israel, made it clear that he supported an establishment on parts of Palestine only as an intermediary stage. He wrote: ‘[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state – we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.’ In a letter to his son in 1937 he wrote: ‘No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning… Our possession is important not only for itself… through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state… will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country.’ In October 1938 Ben Gurion wrote to his children that ‘I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.’ A year earlier he told a group of American Jewish labour leaders in New York: ‘the borders [of the Jewish state] will not be fixed for eternity.’ Soon after the UN Partition Plan of 1947 Ben Gurion urged his party to accept the partition because it would never be final, ‘not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements.’ When Pinhas Rozen, who later became the first Justice Minister, demanded that Israel’s Declaration of Independence should cite the country’s borders, Ben Gurion objected, and both exchanged the following points:
Rozen: ‘There’s the question of borders, and it cannot be ignored.’
Ben Gurion: ‘Anything is possible. If we decide here that there’s to be no mention of borders, then we won’t mention them. Nothing is a priori [imperative].’
Rozen: ‘It’s not a priori, but it is a legal issue.’
Ben Gurion: ‘The law is whatever people determine it to be.’
This expansionism was maintained in the years to come. It should be noted that 60 percent of the Israeli soldiers who were killed in action in 1948, were killed in offensive actions in areas which were given by the UN not to the ‘Jewish state,’ but to the Palestinian state. According to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who wrote the book ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,’ the Zionists had to expel the Palestinians because otherwise the creation of a Jewish state would have been impossible. At that time there were more than a million Palestinians living in what is now Israel and only 600.000 Jews. Almost none of the 760.000 Palestinians who were driven out were allowed to return, and they lost all their property. Israel refuses to let these refugees return and refuses to compensate them. All in violation of international law and UN resolutions. All these years this extremism has been supported by the western powers. And Israel knows this. Nahum Goldmann, for many years president of the World Jewish Congress, stated that the military victory of 1948 had a marked psychological effect on Israel: ‘It seemed to show the advantages of direct action over negotiation and diplomacy… The victory offered such a glorious contrast to the centuries of persecution and humiliation, of adaptation and compromise, that it seemed to indicate the only direction that could possibly be taken from then on. To brook nothing, tolerate no attack, cut through Gordian knots, and shape history by creating facts seemed so simple, so compelling, so satisfying that it became Israel’s policy in its conflict with the Arab world.’ And the Christian world, responsible for the persecutions which culminated in the holocaust, accepts this extremism. Again: These are facts about which there is no discussion among experts. Everybody who is informed agrees that these are facts. They are all well documented by - among others - the respected Israeli historians Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe. All these facts explain why Israel is the only country in the world that has not decided were its borders lie. Dunam for dunam is the expression among Israeli Zionists, acre for acre they are stealing the land of the Palestinians. The wall is only a recent illustration of this, but not yet the final example. In the meanwhile the hidden ethnic cleansing of Palestine doesn’t stop. Make the live of the Palestinian population as miserable as possible and they will finally have no other option than to leave. That’s Israel’s policy, as any UN-employee in the field will tell you.
In 1949, after the war, Ben Gurion said that: ‘now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defence. As for setting the borders – it’s an open-ended matter.’ And it still is an open-ended matter, because, again, in violation of international law the West is actually supporting the Israeli expansionism. Even after the International Court of Justice in The Hague came to the conclusion that the wall, and the building of settlements are illegal and have to be dismantled immediately. The International Court of Justice, the highest legal authority in the world, added to this the following: ‘all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall [and] are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction.’ Still, Israel is supported by the West on a political, diplomatic, economic and even military level and so the borders remain an open-ended matter, even after the General Assembly of the United Nations demanded that Israel complies with the ICJ advisory opinion, a resolution which was supported by an overwhelming majority of the world community, among them all European Union members. An open-ended matter, even after the UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard warned that ‘the Quartet and the road map process to which it is committed are not premised on the rule of law or respect for human rights… and the road map runs the risk of repeating the failures of the Oslo process which likewise took no account of human rights considerations.’ To be more precise: the International Court of Justice rejected in its advisory opinion the contention of Israel – supported by the United States and the European Union – that the issue of the wall was of a political rather than a legal nature and therefore could be resolved through negotiations between the two parties. In the meantime the Netherlands is an important transit station for weapons to Israel, according to a report which was published beginning October 2007.
It must be clear that fundamental issues of international law are here at stake. Does the West accept international law or doesn’t it accept international law. It’s that simple. Nations cannot accept part of international law and ignore the rest because it is politically convenient. It is just as absurd as acting as if a woman is partly pregnant. Professor Vaughan Lowe of Oxford University and chief advocate for the Palestinian cause at the ICJ proceedings stated that the most important consequence of the advisory opinion was that it: ‘established that the rights and duties of Palestine, and of Palestinians, are regulated by law and are not simply a matter for political negotiation. Palestine and Palestinians do not simply have claims and interests over which they must negotiate with Israel. They have legal rights. They do not have to bargain for these rights. They do not have to make concessions in return for recognition of those rights. They have those rights now and they are entitled to have those rights observed.’ Thus said this international law expert. In spite of all this the grave violation of the rights of the Palestinians goes on, unhindered, even supported by the West. In the meantime, according to Israeli polls, 40 percent of the Israelis support a further ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land, an ethnic cleansing like the one in ’48 and ’67. One of the deputy prime ministers of Israel in the current government, the minister of so called Strategic Threats, openly calls for such a forced transfer. And still, the West supports in practice this extremism.
Recently, Ray Dolphin, who works as a consultant for the United Nations in Jerusalem and who wrote the book The West Bank Wall. Unmaking Palestine said to me that if the west doesn’t respect international law by ignoring to do anything against the illegal wall and the illegal settlements the West not only destroys the power of those Palestinians who believe in the rule of law, still an overwhelming majority, but the West will also help the people who see violence as the only instrument to stop the occupation, which - to give only one example - led in 2006 to the killing of 120 Palestinian children by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers, according to Amnesty International. A very brutal occupation which lasts already for 40 years and by which the Palestinians are outlawed. Ray Dolphin literally said: ‘By ignoring international law you are giving Palestinian people no hope of solving this long-lasting occupation peacefully.’ We have to bear this in mind. We, the people from the democracies and the rule of law, we, the so called free people of the West, we ourselves create the contra-terror by supporting the daily terror against the Palestinian population.'
2 opmerkingen:
Ik las dat Israël het enige land ter wereld is dat (nog steeds) zijn grenzen niet heeft vastgesteld.
Prima verhaal Stan! Raakt precies de essentie van deze schrijnende kwestie. De stilzwijgende steun van onze eigen en andere Europese regeringen voor Israels misdadige politiek is schandalig.
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