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Anaxagoras -> RE: Israel (10/11/2012 6:37:31 PM)
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ORIGINAL: vincentML
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Military infrastructure takes up another 1%. Settlements are 2% or less. B'Tselem once admitted they were just 0.99% but pro-Palestinians exaggerate the percentage by talking about roads etc.
From what I read in Wiki, which I will cite below, Israel commenced the settlements in the WB after the 1967 War with two major justifications: self-defense and authority vacuum. The settlements are maintained by military 'necessity'.
There are a number of arguments and declarations deeming the settlements illegal. You can sort them out in the linked article. I will state just one here:
After the Six Day War, in 1967, Theodor Meron, legal counsel to the Israeli Foreign Ministry stated in a legal opinion to the Prime Minister,
"My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."[79]
This legal opinion, forwarded to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, was not made public at the time, and the Labor cabinet progressively sanctioned settlements anyway; this action paved the way for future settlement growth. In 2007, Meron stated that "I believe that I would have given the same opinion today."[80]
I don't recall the legal issue being raised Vincent but just to say the argument above doesn't convince. Article Six of the British Mandate makes it clear close settlement of the Jewish populace is permitted. Article 80 of the UN Charter enshrines prior international agreements unless the relevant parties agree to alter them subsequently, and the Fourth Geneva Convention was developed with reference to the vast transfer of populations by states during WWII. Voluntary populace migrations are an entirely different matter.
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As to your 1%, 2%, 3%, 4 . . . the Wiki article offers this reply:
According to B'Tselem, more than 42 percent of the West Bank are under control of the Israeli settlements, 21 percent of which was seized from private Palestinian owners, much of it in violation of the 1979 Israeli Supreme Court decision.[48]
B'Tselem has made up a great deal of nonsense http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-btselem-witch-trials/ in its time so any claims it makes have to be scrutinised. I simply referred to them in the CAMERA report to placate the Israeli-bashers on here. Many Palestinians farmed on public land. Most of Palestine constituted such land, which was referred to as Miri under the Ottoman Empire. The Mandate explicitly designated waste land and this land for Jewish habitation but most of it is still in public ownership in any case.
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As to your statistics from the dated CAMERA report that claims of settler violence are overblown, from the Wiki article:
In mid-2008, a UN report recorded 222 acts of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and IDF troops compared with 291 in 2007.[139] This trend reportedly increased in 2009.[140] Maj-Gen Shamni said that the number had risen from a few dozen individuals to hundreds, and called it "a very grave phenomenon."[139] In 2008–2009, the defense establishment adopted a harder line against the extremists.[140] This group responded with a tactic dubbed "price tagging," vandalizing Palestinian property whenever police or soldiers were sent in to dismantle outposts.[141]
I find it rather amusng that you claim an article from last year is "dated" but then cite older statements. As I said before, simple facts don't "reach" you because you simply don't want to know, hence your nonsense about Israel starting the Six Day war! There may well have been a rise in settler violence but the point was comparing it to Palestinian violence on the other side - and I am referring to Palestinian civilian activity rather than terror organisations. Consider if you will the butchery of a family last year, including a three-month old child. Consider if you will the repeated attempts to light fires to kill and devastate vast swathes of property. The 2010 fires were deliberately set because they started in three locations simultaneously but three Palestinian youths were released due to insufficient evidence. That event killed 40+ civilians and caused a billion+ in damage. Perspective, Vinny!
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There is a problem when you say Jews in the West Bank should be 0%. Lets ignore the fact that they have very ancient ties to the region (e.g the Cave of the Patriarchs is their second most important religious site) and have been repeatedly massacred and ethnically cleansed from the area (e.g. Hebron on several occasions since the 17th Century). The PA insists a Palestinian state would be Judenrein so the settlers have to go.
Anax, you make several emotional appeals in your presentations. The appeal to ancient ties and repeated massacres since the 17th C are of general interest but imo do not apply to the current situation which arises out of the 1967 War. But hey, I'm not a lawyer; I only play one on CM. Let's not ignore however the massacre of Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1999.
Who ignored that massacre, and who is ignoring the massacres on the Palestinian side in the same region over the years? It seems you are by only mentioning whats convenient.
It is crap to say the repeated massacres are of no relevance because the conflict is a near continuous chain of such events. The last massacre occurred in 1929 and was seared into the memory of many people at the time. Britain prevented the return of Jews a few years later, and Jordan performed other expulsions of Jews in the West Bank from 1948/9. Thus in 1967 some settlers took over a hotel, and the intensity of public opinion in Israel forced the authorities to look after them, and later give them a disused military base.
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Secondly, you accuse the B'Tselem of being anti-Israel when the organization was formed in Israel by prominant Israelis.
Thirdly, the use of the term 'Judenrein' is emotionally loaded. Please!
Fourthly, the report in CAMERA which tallies the number of Israeli killed vs the number of Palestinians killed fails to point out that the Israelis were possibly illegal migrants on Palestinian land. So, I question the equivalence of the statistics, although I am not sayiing one life is worth more or less than another.
Lastly, the amount of land occupied by Israeli settlers and IDF you say is about 2%. But if we look at the map we see that Area C is a very large portion of the WB under the control of the IDF.
There is a strong anti-Israel (post-Zionist) cultural strain within Israel and B'Tselem are a huge part of that. They are regarded as vicious demagogues my the majority of Israeli's.
Judenrein is judenrein. You might like to know the Palestinians have a substantial culture of Holocaust denial. Abbas, a supposed moderate in the West, actually wrote his thesis on that very thing! The Palestinians seek a state without any Jews in it. Its funny how you bang on about Christian anti-Semitism but justify that bullshit when it comes to these people.
Your map is incorrect since fails to distinguish illegal outposts from recognised settlements. Israel controls Area C of the West Bank but within that only 2% is taken up with settlements. Area C was to be administered by Israel under the Oslo Accords which the PLO signed up to as the Palestinian's legitimate representatives at the time. This was to be part of a process for the development of a Palestinian state, and BTW the settlements were to be a final status issue of those talks. Sadly Oslo II ended in terrorism by guess who?
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So, if I am permitted one more question how can you justify the Israeli position as settlers and military occupiers of the WB?
Have a good night [:)]
I can answer the above but, with respect, you have asked lots of questions in a rather faux naif fashion. The answers take time to justify and I'm not CM's Mark Regev so won't be doing this much more. You've been saying the above a lot and TBH your sarcasm is getting a wee bit tiresome. There is a reason why it is considered the lowest form of wit. [X(]
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