The Israeli supreme court's brusque dismissal of Benjamin Netanyahu's "compromise" to avoid demolishing a West Bank settler outpost that even Israelis acknowledge is illegal spotlights the deep divisions within Israel about the ongoing settlement enterprise.
Awkwardly, it comes at precisely the moment when Netanyahu is seeking to marshal a united front to discredit the international inquiry ordered last Thursday by the United Nations Human Rights Council into the settlements' implications for the human rights of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Clearly, despite the Obama administration's veto last year of a Security Council resolution mandating a halt to settlement construction in the territories seized from Jordan in 1967, the issue will not go away. Israeli opponents of the costly and contentious colonization campaign will continue to contest it in the courts, and the international community will continue to challenge the creeping annexation of what remained after 1949 of Arab Palestine.
The outpost of Migron, which now counts 60 mobile homes housing 300 zealous settlers a few kilometers from the Palestinian Authority's seat at Ramallah, has been unusually controversial even in the Israeli government. Months after the housing ministry funded infrastructure work for the settlers in 2003, a year after they occupied the site, Conservative prime minister Ariel Sharon vowed to dismantle the outpost. He didn't.
After court skirmishes in which the government acknowledged the settlement's illegal construction on privately owned Palestinian land, prime minister Ehud Olmert in early 2008 promised the high court that it would be demolished by August. It wasn't.
This history triggered the high court's unprecedented order last August for the outpost's removal by April 1, 2012. A thousand policemen were mobilized to face down 200 enraged settlers and tear down the three permanent structures in September, but the mobile homes and their occupants remained. But rather than remove them, the Netanyahu government proposed a three-year extension, promising the settlers that in place of the Migron outpost "a new neighborhood will be built for 200 families, and maybe more, for the glory of the state of Israel," in the words of Cabinet minister Benny Begin.
The court spurned the plan Sunday but gave the government four months more to clear the site. The high court now faces a fundamental test of its authority -- and the very real possibility that Israel's hard-right government will defy the court. Many Israelis fear that the looming confrontation will be, more fundamentally, a test of Israel's commitment to democracy and the rule of law -- a test their settler-enthralled government seems determined to fail.
If Netanyahu is prepared to defy Israel's own law and courts on the settlement enterprise, we cannot be surprised that he summarily dismisses protests in the international community, even those pressed by his country's biggest protector. But even by his standards, his vow to stonewall the U.N. Human Rights Council inquiry was unusually fierce.
Having persuaded only one country, the United States, to oppose the U.N. fact-finding panel in the 36-1 vote, Netanyahu announced Thursday that his government would sever all contact with the Human Rights Council and with the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Indeed, he directed Israel's U.N. ambassador in Geneva to not even take her telephone calls.
In justification, Netanyahu recycled the regular refrain of the Israeli right -- that the United Nations and its "hypocritical council with an automatic majority against Israel" can claim no moral authority to judge his country. But in adamantly vowing to bar the U.N. panel from both Israel and the Palestinian territories, he uncomfortably assumed the same stance of defiance of a Human Rights Council inquiry as Bashar al-Assad.
There is no worry about the panel being able to undertake its inquiry. Israeli human rights groups have long documented the settlements' impacts on Palestinians, and much critical evidence is already on public record. Just as the council's Syria commission was devastatingly credible in its report, despite being barred from on-site visits, the settlements inquiry can be credible despite Netanyahu's obstruction.
Only two of the eight European members of the council, Austria and Belgium, voted to launch the inquiry, infuriating the Israeli governing coalition that treats European silence as de facto legitimation. But the Israeli right cannot count on European docility forever on the issue of settlements in the occupied territories; even its fondest ally, President Bush, acknowledged the settlements' centrality in the Quartet "road map" a decade ago.
With Israel's own courts beginning to chip away at the omertà surrounding settlements in the Israeli debate just as the world assesses them in human rights terms, the issue now acquires an almost existential dimension for Israelis: what kind of state, what kind of peace?
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There's something slightly, shall I say, illogical about that, no?
Yes seems this issue of Settlements, has become much more serious and, as you put it: "an almost existential dimension for Israelis: what kind of state, what kind of peace?"
Then too, perhaps..... the Israeli Supreme Court saw an article by India's Shoma Chaudhury titled: The Ayodhya Verdict (re land claims, religion, demolition, jurisprudence) that gave it some more food for thought.
As JFK said: These problems are Man made, therefore they can be solved by Man and Man can be as big as he wants."
Or may we add: Man can be as little as some others may want.
We hope things work out well for everyone.
It's so time to resolve this.
The Arabic names of villages are often named for the natural resources, mountains and springs of the area. Zionists changed the names.
I'm waiting for a story about the march on Jerusalem, which is more interesting, as it's one more non-violent protest where people are calling for the peaceful marchers to be shot where they stand.
LOL.
I'll believe *that* when I see it.
And still you whine about it.
Paul Larudee
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-larudee/global-march-to-jerusalem_b_1382499.html
What about "thou shalt not steal" do these settler thugs fail to understand?
It is very gratifying that intelligent people in Israel see the injustice of further land theft and are willing to negotiate a fair border. Not so, Netanyahu who is only buying time to make the annexation of all but a few scattered Palestinian population centers (ghettos or open air concentration camps by any fair description) a fait accompli.
The settlers are people who deep down inside hate Israel or at least an Israel that is capable of existing in a humane and peaceable world.
If Israel can ignore its own court's rulings the ICC stands even less chance of any decision it arrives at being acted on, since Israel does not recognise ICC jurisdiction.
Okay so now we have establish that the land is owned meaning that it can be stolen.
The International Court of Justice and the international community has said that these settlements are illegal, and no foreign government supports Israel's settlements ... The United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel's construction of settlements constitutes violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement
That is why I adamantly oppose this idea of "land swaps." Whether they end up being a reality as part of a deal is not the issue. It is the very use of the term itself that encourages the building of additional illegal settlements by these extremists, and it serves to reward their past illegal behavior.
If you want to take away the main incentive to build more of these settlements, declare that there will be no "land swaps" involving settlements built illegally on the occupied territories. Otherwise, you are aiding and abetting the building of further illegal settlements, "unauthorized" or otherwise, as well as condoning those illegally built already.
In light of the massive dispossession already imposed upon the Palestinians, supporting/condoning Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories is not a formula for peace.
Thank you for the kind words.
Israel had a record breaking tourism month this past February and a record breaking tourism year in 2010.
Keep it up, BDS is a huge boon to Israel!
The howls of protests from the Israeli government, combined with the growing list of groups working with the BDS campaign, speak volumes as to its growing effectiveness.
But I do agree with you that we should "keep it up."
Actually, having been sitting and waiting for his counterpart, Mr. Netanjahu has offered the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to talk about everything. This is over and beyond the terms of reference of the peace talks that commenced in the Madrid peace conference in 1991.
The terms of reference then, agreed by all parties to the Arab Israeli conflict, were UN Security Council Resolution 242.
Let us note, 242, true to international law, does not call for the setting up of an additional state between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea, nor does 242 even make use of concepts such as "Palestinians" or "Palestine".
Indeed, 242 does expect the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to retreat from "territories" - neither "all" nor "the" territories - which Israel has fulfilled a long time ago. But, it expects the IDF to do so only to "secure and recognized boundaries" and not to any particular line not determined in negotiations by the parties.
By contrast, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), contrary to international law, even refuses to accept Israel's RIGHT to be, to exist as the independent nation-state of the Jewish people. And, of course, it refuses to accept a peace treaty as the end of the conflict and the end of all future demands.
About as useful as arguing with a brick.
That's true. Then I wonder why all these Israeli politicians are talking about a two state solution or they accept PNA as the representative of the "Palestinians". Because according to you that seems to be against 242. Are all those Israeli politicians against 242? And if so, are you going to criticize them for acting against your personal beliefs?
Israel is creating more enemies of America every day.
The world sees Israel is USrael. Justly so.
If the Us doesn't want WW III and permanent tensions in the Middle East, it needs to stop supporting Israel now.
We have been an integral supporter of Israel's crimes against humanity, torture, and war crimes (even against the US as in the USS Liberty incident. Google it.) for over 63 years.
If the US used the same standards for Israel as with Al Qauda, we would have bombed Tel Aviv and the Knesset within hours of the USS Liberty incident.
All settlements must be abandoned immediately. The excuses have gone on for decades too long.
If not, the US must abandon Israel by the end of the year or admit openly its complicity its Israel's crimes against humanity, accepting the consequences of those actions like an adult.
The world sees the US and Israel as one in these crimes against humanity. The only people who are fooled are some Americans.
Journalists are not free to travel and report from the West Bank and Gaza. The only reason for this is to keep our USrael's crimes less public. It's long past time for honesty and respect for international law.
They do have a problem with right wing religious fanatics who are on an apparent suicide mission...and they have the support of some very extreme right wing Christian fundamentalists in the USA.
There is more freedom speech and expression of opinion in israel on this than there is in the USA and even allowed here at Huffington Post.
If Israel wants peace, it must start by allowing all journalists free and open access to all of Gaza and the West bank to report what they see without any form of censorship. Israel has very strict official censorship laws about certain forms of criticism. That is official policy.
It was hard to find much reporting on the hundreds of thousands of protesters in the Israeli streets not too long ago. "Courtesy censorship" in the interest of keeping advertisers is as bad in this country as official censorship.
Israel is represented by its government. The government is extremist. That is the problem.
Even though the vast majority of Americans want out of Afghanistan TODAY, they have no power to do anything. We have a warrior government. That is the real and true face of America that the world has to deal with.
For example, it is now a crime to advocate any sort of boycott in Israel, and it can be enforced theough private civil suits. There is also the Nakba Law and the recent efforts to strip MKs of their privileges if they voice any opposition to Israeli policies...
In all, the trend is very bad.