This is the second article in a 5-part series on Middle East peace running this week. For yesterday's first article, on Obama's new style, click here.
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President Barack Obama's new diplomacy in the Middle East, emphasizing dialogue and negotiation, requires that he and the rest of the international community look not only at Israel, nor even just at the Palestinians, but also at the wider Arab world. As the American President said at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility."
At present, the world has to question not only why the Arab states are not fulfilling their responsibilities, but also whether their actions suggest they are playing a double game - calling for a Palestinian state while consistently taking steps to block it.
After all, at this time last year the United States called on Arab governments to assist in the relaunching of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations through their own small "normalization" gestures towards Israel. None of these actually took place, raising the question again: are the Arab states really committed to peace and reconciliation with Israel? And aren't they in fact troubled by the idea of a prosperous, secular, democratically-oriented and well-educated Palestinian state in their midst?
Saudi Arabia in particular might view such a state as a threat to its fundamentalist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, and a Palestinian society with women as full partners too "liberal" and "decadent." Especially in an age of widespread media coverage through satellite television and the internet, such a prominent example of successful Arab moderation might simply cut too close to home.
Indeed, Palestinian refugees still languish in refugee camps or are, at best, second-class citizens in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and beyond. Hate for Israel and Jews generally is still being passed along to the next generation. Economic support from the rest of the Arab states to the fledgling Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is virtually non-existent. It seems, too, that the Saudis would rather buy agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa than buy fruits and vegetables from the lush West Bank. As Thomas Friedman recently wrote, "For those Arabs who have fallen in love with the idea of Palestinians as permanent victims, forever engaged in heroic 'armed struggle' to recover Palestinian and Arab dignity, [Palestinian Prime Minister] Fayyad's methodical state-building is inauthentic. Some Arabs - shamefully - dump on it, and only the United Arab Emirates has offered real financial help."
All of this is especially disheartening given recent studies indicating support increasing among both Israelis and Palestinians for a two-state solution based on the "Clinton Parameters" put forward in 2000. The terms of such a resolution to the conflict aren't all that different from the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, except that the Arabs - primarily Saudi Arabia - keep insisting on a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border lines before any negotiation can even begin.
The Saudis reiterated this ridiculous position again last year, which is obviously a non-starter for any Israeli government. Withdrawal from the West Bank can only occur as part of a negotiation and not as a precondition to negotiation. You simply cannot put the cart before the horse.
There is, however, still a need to bring the Arab states into the peace process, just as there is still a need for them to do their part in support of a more stable Middle East. A few positive indications have in fact surfaced recently.
After visiting the White House in early July, Saudi King Abdullah affirmed his support for comprehensive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon. Moreover, press reports earlier this summer speculated as to whether Saudi Arabia and Israel were cooperating on the Iranian nuclear issue, including Riyadh allowing Jerusalem over-flight rights in the event of an Israeli air strike. There are signs that the Arab states are beginning to realize that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to the entire region, and not just to Israel. Put another way, a fundamentalist Shia theocracy with nuclear weapons is obviously more of a threat than Israel, who has presumably had nuclear weapons for 50 years and yet chose not to use them even during two full-scale wars.
As the United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Washington said publicly last month, "We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. I am willing to absorb what takes place [after the bombing of Iran's nuclear program] at the expense of the security of the U.A.E."
Taken together, it is my belief that these are encouraging signs - the Arab world and Israel should be able to separate their differences over the Palestinian issue from their mutual interest in stopping Iran from going nuclear. As is always the case, however, we can't know for sure whether the Saudis in particular are playing one game in public while they undermine regional stability in other, more private ways.
That is why a regional peace conference under American auspices, involving Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas, would be a useful exercise. There is no real substitute for diplomacy and face-to-face negotiations. At the very least it would permit the world to see the real Arab position on the Palestinian and Iranian issues, and force these Arab governments to take a public stand. A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a region free of Iranian nukes are worthy goals that should be able to withstand public scrutiny in every Middle Eastern capital.
It is high time that the Arab world's professed desire for peace is matched by responsible action, and not more of the same equivocation.
As early as the beginning of February 1948, two months prior to the commencement of the takeover of Arab villages, David Ben-Gurion told JNF leaders: The war will give us the land. Concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace-time concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war.10 [Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 [, p.120.]
In a similar vein, he asked Yosef Weitz (1890-1970), Director of JNF Lands Department/Development Division, whether the JNF was ready to buy 'from him' land at P£25 a donum. To which Weitz replied that they will buy if the land is Arab owned and if they receive the deed of property and possession. Of course, he could not provide it. On May 13, 1948, just before the state of Israel was declared, Ben Gurion offered to 'sell' a massive 2 million donums of land to the JNF for £0.5 per donum. He was trying to sell land his forces did not yet occupy to raise money for arms.
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2. After Creating the State of Israel (1948 - )
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Looting, Looting, and More Looting
"1949, The First Israelis" ~ By the Israeli historian-journalist Tom Segev. see: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story680.html
"During the war and afterwards PLUNDERING AND LOOTING were very common. "The only thing that surprised me," said David Ben-Gurion at a Cabinet meeting, "and surprised me bitterly, was the discovery of such moral failings among us, which I had never suspected. I mean the mass robbery in which all parts of the population participated." Soldiers who entered abandoned houses in the towns and villages they occupied grabbed whatever they could. Some took the stuff for themselves, others "for the boys" or for the kibbutz. They stole household effects, cash, heavy equipment, trucks and whole flocks of cattle."
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There goes the neighborhood.
In July 1948, some JNF officials floated a proposal by which the JNF would buy "surplus land" in the abandoned (i.e. depopulated) villages. JNF officials believed that any Palestinian refugee families allowed to return could survive on smaller estates than they previously had tilled through the use of "modern", intensive Jewish farming techniques. "Excess land" was that portion of village farmland deemed to be in excess of what this new, intensive agriculture would require. The idea was dropped when JNF officials felt assured that they could prevent the return of the refugees and take their property without the penalty of international law.
As Israeli conquest of Palestine proceeded and inhabitants expelled, more Palestinian land became available to JNF. Some of the first JNF acquisitions of refugee land were leases it obtained. On August 16, 1948, the JNF established a Subcommittee for the Cultivation and Maintenance of Abandoned Lands to manage such properties. Thirteen days later, the JNF formally requested to lease 193,500 donums of 'abandoned' land from the Ministry of Agriculture.
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2.......
In November 1948, [the JNF] leased 154,000 donums for one year from the Ministry of Agriculture. The JNF then sublet the land to Jewish colonies. It continued to lease land into 1949, …Weitz continued to press for expanded JNF control over refugee property. He wanted legal JNF ownership of the land, not merely leases. He was anxious to open up the lands for Jewish immigrants, and expressed his impatience shortly after the JNF acquired its first refugee land from the state in 1949:
…“Of the entire area of the State of Israel only about 300,000-400,000 donums...are state domain which the Israeli government took over from the mandatory regime. The JNF and private Jewish owners possess under two million donums. Almost all the rest belongs at law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country. The fate of these Arabs will be settled when the terms of the peace treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbours are finally drawn up. The JNF, however, cannot wait until then to obtain the land it requires for its pressing needs [settlement of new immigrants]. It is, therefore, acquiring part of the land abandoned by the Arab owners, through the government of Israel, the sovereign authority in Israel.11 [Walter Lehn and Uri Davis, The Jewish National Fund . London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1988, p. 132, p. 347, fn 385.]
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2...
JNF was free to discriminate against Arabs in favour of Jews. Its charter mandated that all land that it purchased would be "inalienable", i.e. to be held by the JNF on behalf of the Jewish people in perpetuity. Because the JNF could not sell land it acquired, it leased land to Jewish settlements and individual Jews on the condition that it would not be re-let to non Jews and that only Jewish labour be used on the land - the policy of 'Hebrew labour'.
JNF felt strongly that refugee land should not merely be expropriated but duly purchased. This was to sever the refugees' legal title to the land forever. A November 1948 article in Karnenu ("Our Fund"), the organ of the JNF head office in Jerusalem, noted that: "the [JNF] will compensate owners of land which will be required for public development, and any land passing from private Arab ownership to the Jewish National Fund will be paid for". The article stated that since the JNF could not actually pay the refugees, the compensation funds would be deposited with the Israeli government, which "will act as trustee holding such funds against legitimate claims of Arab owners whether they remain abroad or return". What JNF really needed was a reasonable legal cover for the division of spoils between JNF and the state of Israel.
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2. After Creating the State of Israel (1948 - )
JNF said it dispatched two men who served on the Committee for Abandoned Arab Property to Paris to seek out refugees interested in selling their land in Israel. But Israeli cabinet ordered JNF to stop buying land directly from Palestinians.
Following the UN Resolution 194 of 11 December 1948, which endorsed the refugees' right of return, Ben Gurion told Weitz and Danin on 18 December 1948 that "the JNF would buy land only from the State. There was no need to buy land from Arabs".
One month after Ben Gurion told Weitz not to buy land directly from Palestinians, the two sides finally concluded a major deal by which the JNF would 'purchase' 1 million donums of refugee land for £I 11 million (£I = Israeli Lira = £P = Palestinian pound = Sterling £ pound = $4.03) on 27 January 1949, although the actual price, payable in installments, would be determined by a joint state-JNF committee and would vary according to location and type of land. In addition, the JNF agreed to pay an additional £I 7,250,000 to the state and the Jewish Agency to assist in settling immigrants on the land. The JNF insisted that the land be legally transferred to it within one year of signing the contract in order to assure the JNF right of ownership.
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2. After Creating the State of Israel (1948 - )
Region Dunams
Jerusalem corridor 2,000
Northern Negev desert 250,000
Coastal Plain 150,000
Sharon Plain 150,000
Sub TOTAL 552,000
Incl. Hula Baysin and near Baysan
1,101,942
Source: Granott Agrarian Reform, pp. 107-111
Table 1: List of Refugee Land 'Sold' to JNF in January 1949 ("The First Million")
However JNF's report to the 23rd congress of the WZO in 1951 stated the amount at 1,109,7769 donums: 1,085,607 (rural) and 24,162 (urban).
American Jews were crucial in providing funds with which the JNF could 'purchase' land. Between 1910 and mid-1948, American Jews donated, through United Jewish Appeal, a total of $85,760,732. British, Canadian and South African Jews contributed a further $9 million.
An unlikely source of vital funding was provided by American banks. The Bank of America National Trust and Saving Association of San Francisco gave JNF a loan of $15 million. The Bank of America provided the loan on June 9, 1949. It is unusual for a bank to extend a loan for a British entity (JNF) to establish settlements in a foreign country (Israel) on a land that neither JNF nor Israel legally own.
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2. After Creating the State of Israel (1948 - )
Execution of the deal with the state and the JNF's usage of the land took some time. Between signing the deal on January 27, 1949 until March 31, 1954, the state had legally transferred only 35.9 percent of the land, or 396,149 donums. For its part, the JNF had put only 770,271 donums of the land it 'bought' in completely depopulated villages to use by the end of 1952.
A second sale was finalized on October 4, 1950 involving the transfer of an additional 1,271,734 donums by the Custodian of Absentee Property on behalf of the Development Authority to the JNF, 99.8 percent of which (1,271,480 donums) was rural land. Granott later placed the amount at 1,278,200 donums. The amount of £I 66 million was said to have been paid over a ten year period. There are claims that the JNF never actually paid the amounts it owed under the two deals.
Usage Donums
Completing construction of new settlements 500,000
Expanding existing settlements 500,000
Afforestation 160,000
Various agricultural purposes 100,000
Settlement housing 16,200
Urban housing 2,000
TOTAL 1,278,200
Source: Granott Agrarian Reform, pp. 108, 111
Table 2: JNF-Usage of the "Second Million" Donums of Refugee Land 'Purchased' in 1950
The 7-part quotation is from: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html#3.2. After Creating the State of Israel (1948 - )
"Einstein denied any superior rights for Jews, calling for "complete equality" for Palestinian Arabs as the "most important aspect" of Jewish policy: "The most important aspect of our policy must be our ever-present, manifest desire to institute complete equality for the Arab citizens living in our midst ... The attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people."Only cooperation with Arabs, led by "educated, spiritually alert" Jewish workers, he wrote, "can create a dignified and safe life."
What saddens me is less the fact that the Jews are not smart enough to understand this, but rather, that they are not just smart enough to want it." "
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Out of the mouths of brainiacs...
Actually, he was smart enough not to take the job. It would have taken a greater intelligence than Einstein's to work out this problem.
"The Hamas government has sent mixed signals about its willingness to recognise Israel. It has certainly made enough gestures to recognising the June 1967 borders, such that you can negotiate with them. But the real question is: what has been the Israeli position? Has any Israeli government, or official, or mainstream political party ever recognised a Palestinian state in the June 1967 borders? And the answer is, flatly, no.
-* It is not complicated. *- The position of Hamas was that any recognition had to be mutual. I think that is perfectly legitimate. Why should recognition be one-sided? Why should they have to recognise the Israeli state, but the Israeli state not have to recognise the right of the Palestinians, not to any state, but to a state within the pre-July 1967 border? No Israeli government has done that. If the Israeli government does not do it, then I agree with Hamas: they should not do it."
From: Interview: Norman Finkelstein – 12.15.2006 | The iWitness
180 rule.
Just sayin'.
The Balfour declaration, the UN partition plan only represented the facts on the ground.
Jewish immigration to Palestine was and is as valid as Arab immigration is to Europe and the U.S. today. People who complain that jews immigrated into Palestine tend to support Mexican immigration into the United States.
Saying that Huff is still the best when compared to other sites that are completely one sided.