How Jews Living in West Bank Affect the Palestinians

We hear so much noise about the areas known historically as Judea, Samaria and Benyamin which were recently retagged as the West Bank in order to make them sound less Jewish. We hear about the need for the Palestinian Authority to be granted full autonomy of an independent nation with complete control over this West Bank as well as Gaza. Part of the problem with this presentation is that the Palestinians have two completely separate, mutually exclusive, actively competitive, viciously antagonistic governing agents with Hamas controlling and ruling over Gaza while the Palestinian Authority Fatah organization controlling and ruling over Area A the West Bank. Hamas is led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh while the Palestinian Authority leader is President Mahmoud Abbas. Since the two factions split after the Hamas violent coup which placed them in control of Gaza in June 2007, all efforts to reunite the two groups have utterly failed. Part of the problem is that Hamas is based in Islamic religious governance while the Palestinian Authority is aligned with Fatah which is secular socialist governance and such philosophies are very much similar to oil and water, they do not mix well. The power struggle between these two groups drips with the avarice and hatreds such that the resultant atmosphere is not conducive to healthy economic policies therefore depressing economic growth potentials due to crippling corruption. The situation has resulted in totally failed governance in almost every category which has become completely reliant on foreign generosity lurching from one financial catastrophe to the next. Such poor governance constantly leads to the need to plead to the world for emergency funding. This has resulted in high unemployment for the Palestinian Arab people living under the direct controlling rule of either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority in either Gaza or Area A in the West Bank. Yet there is one group who has 100% employment as the Palestinian Authority places every Palestinian terrorist or criminal who has been sentenced to prison in Israel, whether they are members in the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, or any other terror related group, where they receive some of the highest salaries which are directly proportional to the number of Israelis they were able to maim and murder. This would almost be the guaranteed condition over the entire areas of Gaza and the West Bank should the entirety of these areas be placed under solely Palestinian governance.

 

Should anybody desire to find a more optimistic and promising atmosphere where the overwhelming majority of the people are employed and making significantly higher salaries resulting in a higher standard of living, one need not leave the West Bank, one simply needs to visit the areas where modern governance encourages economic ventures and the size and scope of government is limited. These areas are not under either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians living in these areas are largely employed with comparatively no unemployment when compared to the Palestinians living in Area A. The major difference in the condition for these Palestinians is they live among Israeli settlers. Much of the world decries the supposed conditions under which Palestinians are forced to live in areas where they share the lands with the Israeli settler who are mostly Jewish. There are so numerous different origins of the Israelis living in Samaria and Judea that any attempt to stereotype them as just religious Jews is not only pointless but in complete denial of reality. The Jews who have chosen to live in what the world refers to as the West Bank consist of religious and secular Jews, Israeli Arabs both Christian and Muslim, Secular Jews, Zionist Jews, Jews seeking a more relaxed atmosphere in which to live, farmers, people working locally as well as many whose work is in Tel Aviv who commute, IDF soldiers, physicians, nurses, computer programmers, entrepreneurs, and people from every walk of life one can find. There is a major Israeli University in Ariel called, oddly enough, Ariel University.

 

But what is most interesting is the completely impossible situation under which the Jews and Palestinian Arabs face living close to each other with all the serious relationship problems which are the constant fare in the mainstream media coverage of the Jewish settlers living beyond the Green Line. For the best example of how all of this has an effect, all one need do is visit Ariel University, Barkan Industrial Park, Shahak Industrial Park, and the other industrial parks, farms, vineyards, wineries, business parks, and other businesses and witness a bit of the truth about the Israeli controlled areas of Judea and Samaria. What becomes evident very quickly is that there is no distinction between Jews, Muslims, Christians and those of other religions, Jews and Arabs, Asian ancestry and European ancestry, or religious and secular. Approximately half of the employees along with their supervisors and management in both large and small industrial enterprises are West Bank Arabs employed there right next to West Bank Jews. The same goes for students and professors to a great extent at Ariel University. Throughout the main settlement areas of the West Bank the Jews and Palestinian Arabs live and work together in harmony without any trouble, violence, oppressions or any of the myriad of misconceptions that spring from a media more interested in forcing the issue of the oppressor Jews dispossessing the unfortunate Arab victims of Jewish hegemony. The fact that the Palestinian Arabs who live and work among the Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria have a much higher standard of living is a little secret of which the mainstream media refuses to inform the world. The fact that the rule is cooperation and an improved life for those Palestinians fortunate to reside in the developed mixed Jewish and Arab areas and that the terrorism and violence are the exception must be suppressed as there exists an entire industry based upon the Jewish oppressions of the Arabs. The problem is people living and working in harmony just does not sell newspapers or newscasts anywhere near as well as explosions and violence. The real truth is that the standard of living for the Palestinian Arabs throughout Gaza and the West Bank was among the fastest growing GDP of anywhere in the world from 1973 through 1992. Then, starting in 1993 when Yasser Arafat returned and the very same Palestinians were placed in a semi-autonomous self-ruled areas under the Palestinian Authority the GDP and standard of living reversed and has continued to drop ever since. The wonderful and hopeful truth which the media insists does not exist is that where Palestinian Arabs live together in relative harmony and mutual tolerance with Jews in Area C of the West Bank, sharing the advantages of the rule of law and entrepreneurial opportunity live better lives than their Palestinian brothers living in Area A and Gaza where the leadership is under the Palestinian Authority or Hamas which consist of dictatorial regimes. If people throughout the world truly wish the best of possibilities for the Palestinian people, perhaps they would be better able to decide where to place their efforts after taking an actual investigation of the separate Areas in the West Bank and Gaza and ask the Palestinians who reside within and amongst the Jews in Area C and those living in Palestinian autonomous areas of Area A and Gaza and then decide which group lives a more productive and preferred life. Finding the truth would definitely be an eye-opening experience which would likely deliver a viewpoint not covered by the mainstream media and actually actively hidden by the mainstream media.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The President’s Echo Chamber

There will likely be accolades and great fanfare to inform the American people back home over how well President Obama’s speech in the Israeli capital city of Jerusalem was received by those attending. Never mind that only a very select few members from the Israeli government were allowed to attend and that the President refused an invitation to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and return the gracious respect shown the United States Congress at every available opportunity by Prime Minister Netanyahu who gladly accepts every opportunity to address American legislators. The news reports will likely not include that not only did President Obama choose to speak solely to university students but he also insisted that one Israeli University specifically be refused any slots to have their students attend the speech. The singled out university is Israel’s newest, Ariel University. There was no reason given but if this is mentioned at all it will be assured that the fact it is Israel’s only university in the “occupied territories” and thus it would be inappropriate for the President of the United States to allow students from a university that is on occupied lands to attend. There are a few things about Ariel and its university that you will not hear. Some of these items in which it stands apart from the other universities are that it has the highest number of Palestinian students attending; the highest number of Arab professors; is in Ariel which is a city of over 20,000 people; Ariel is a mixed community of Jews and Arabs living side by side in peace; the city is home to an industrial plant in which Jews and Arabs, both Israeli and Palestinian, work side by side; and Ariel was one of the first cities to be considered as included in the lands Israel would retain until President Obama gave his sanctification to the idea of complete withdrawal to within the 1949 Armistice Lines in a speech meant to blunt any discussions with Prime Minister Netanyahu which was given as the Israeli Prime Minister was boarding his flight to the United States.

The coverage of President Obama’s speech will likely cover in great detail how he received numerous standing ovations, that his statement that the only path to peace for Israel was to make difficult but necessary concessions to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians was one of the best received parts of the speech, and there will be the emphasis that the speech was held in western Jerusalem, Israel’s half of their capital city. This is all quite true but leaves out a few interesting and essential facts. These were not a random set of students but were hand-picked by the President’s team. Almost all of them were leaders in the tent protests which occupied downtown Tel Aviv among other cities two summers past. These students are members of groups so far to the left of the political spectrum that even Tzipi Livni and Shelly Yachimovich, leaders of two of Israel’s left to center-left political parties and Shelly Yachimovich is even the opposition leader in the new Israeli government, would not think of allying with them as they represent sectors of Israeli society well outside political acceptance, and those allowed to cover the President’s speech were also left to a selected group. This will be the sole venue in which President Obama will make any speech other than a short acceptance speech at a State dinner where Israeli President Peres will be awarding President Obama the Presidential Medal of Distinction, Israel’s highest civilian award. This is a reciprocal granting of awards as President Obama had similarly honored President Peres. The only other public speech other than short sound bite type responses such as the one given at the reception at the airport and likely one at the official departure ceremony was a speech given to an equally selective group of Palestinian youth as part of President Obama’s trip to Ramallah. That speech also was not broadcast and for the most part the Israeli public will not be able to hear any of President Obama’s full speaking engagements. This is a definite departure from protocols between the two allies and is a definite departure from visits to Israel by Presidents Bush and Clinton as well as from the usual high profile appearances President Obama has given in Europe and numerous other nations he has visited. Some might wonder what it is that President Obama is avoiding by not speaking to the Israeli public as a whole or even giving the common courtesies to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

In many ways the President’s trip will receive longer and more in depth coverage back home in the United States than he will within Israel. One might be tempted to call President Obama’s visit the Obama stealth tour as he will pass through Israeli and barely be seen and definitively not heard. One might try to be surprised by this treatment of an allied nation but the path traveled by President Obama and Israel has not exactly been a walk in the park. One might rather refer to it as a cross between an adventure hike and a five kilometer run and a game of hide and seek. The one identifying trait of President Obama’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s interactions is that it almost spears to have been a game of tag with each one attempting to make the other one “it” and otherwise avoiding contact as much as possible. Unfortunately for Israel, Netanyahu has appeared to have been “it” for the majority of the time as Obama has appeared to have been avoiding him when the two were in the same town or even appearing at the same venue. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been refused meetings with President Obama at a minimum of when both appeared at the United Nations speaking on consecutive days and at an AIPAC Convention where they spoke on consecutive days. The one plus that can be taken from President Obama’s trip was that he did finally include Israel in his itinerary.

The number one question is what can be made of all the peculiarities evidenced in President Obama’s schedule? Taking into account that everything in the Middle East is examined, torn apart, interpreted, and subject to inquisition style questioning attempting to find the hidden meanings and conspirational properties which can be hidden within; Israel’s Arab neighbors will definitely derive many implications which will all point to President Obama placing Israel at arm’s length with a dash of disapproval from the fact that the President refused to address the Knesset. They will find similar meaning from the lack of public appearances made by the President. The withholding of places for students from Ariel University will be an indication that the President recognizes the Palestinian claims to all of the contested lands and as reinforcing Obama’s speech calling for the 67 lines to serve as the start point for negotiations over final borders. The complete lack of condemnation or even mention of the Gaza rocket attack from within Hamas territories on the Israeli town of Sderot which occurred prior to his speech or even his trip to Ramallah will be seen as complicit approval of such terror attacks or at least not an abject rejection of such attacks. There will also be found an equality of respect for the Palestinian people as there was for the Israelis as the President also had a private address with Palestinian youths. Not being quite as proficient at conspiracy theories, though I have been accused of having believed many, I am sure that this list is far from complete and with time the reaction from the Arab and Muslim worlds will become more evident. The one prediction that can be made is that the Palestinians can feel empowered by President Obama’s actions as can much of the Arab world especially the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliates. The first real consequences will be drawn when we can review the results from Secretary of State Kerry’s scheduled talks with Prime Minister Netanyahu for Saturday where Secretary Kerry will likely making certain that whatever points President Obama expected or even insisted of Israel have been understood and the proper and correct actions explained in full. What is up to interpretation is exactly how much weight can be placed on the fact that Secretary of State Kerry has scheduled his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Jewish Sabbath. One might find some level of insult or simply infer that the message is that the administration does not care if Israel is comfortable with the state of things and simply expects compliance and obedience from Israel and nothing more. Then again, it might just be an oversight from the most calculating Presidency in the recent history of the United States.

Beyond the Cusp

Argument Against Claims Israel Occupying Palestinian Lands

In a recent article discussing how Prime Minister Netanyahu should respond to any pressures from President Obama if he should demand or simply pressure Israeli leadership to provide a schedule for the withdrawal of Israelis from Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, my advice was that Prime Minister Netanyahu should “refuse to give the withdrawal even the dignity of discussion.” A comment posted in reaction to the article Rumor Obama Will Demand Timetable for Israeli Withdrawal West Bank Looking Credible insisted that I withdraw the word ‘dignity’ from my article. But they were not finished with my dressing down as they went on stating, and I quote the whole of the comments exactly as written, “I think you should remove the word dignity. Regardless of your views, which seem to be(this is not an absolute statement) pro-Israeli at any costs, there is still the case of an occupation that never ends. Occupation is not a picnic, it’s a horror trip, no matter how much we try to doll it up. And refusing discussion of any kind is the worst advice anyone can receive. Israel is a super-power, not some half-starved wannabee state with Katuscha fireworks, stop pretending that it isn’t. Unfortunately, anyone who doesn’t support the occupation regime(policy) is immediately set upon, whether friend or foe: the world does not support it – it’s wrong and unbecoming of the Jewish/Israeli people. Talking/Dialogue is always the right way forward, and anyone who says otherwise, is a warmonger.” Well, let us look at the reality according to treaties, agreements and other pertinent items and see if I truly must be considered a warmonger.

The crux of the commenter’s argument is bound to the opinion that Israel is in occupation of lands which belong to some other nation and that Israel is the militarily superior power in the region possessing immense military and in comparison we see, and I quote, ‘some half-starved wannabee state with Katuscha fireworks.’ Apart from the misrepresentation of the presumed limited firepower possessed by the Palestinian terror forces who, in addition to the presumably harmless Katyusha fireworks, which are actually dangerous and potentially deadly rockets and not merely harmless fireworks, also have rockets capable of carrying payloads of up to a one ton warhead with a range capable of reaching the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from their launching grounds in Gaza. Should one actually be fully honest they would also need to include the rocket stores held by Hezballah in Lebanon which will someday very likely be loosed on Israel which include scud rockets provided by Syria and Iran which are capable of being armed with chemical or biological warheads supplied by Syria’s President Bashir Assad. The representation of the forces allied against Israel as being represented solely by the Palestinians, or even including Hezballah, is a misrepresentation as the reality is that Israel’s enemies include numerous other Arab and Muslim countries some of which are still in a state of war with Israel. What is commonly ignored is that of the countries who declared war on the nascent state of Israel in 1948 only Jordan and Egypt have made a technical peace with Israel. That means that Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, and the entirety of the Arab League nations remain in a state of war with Israel. In addition to these countries which continue to hold themselves as in a state of war with Israel since her founding in 1948, we must add the name of Iran as they have declared themselves in a state of war with both Israel and the United States but have simply chosen to not turn from their declared cold war into an active hot war. Stating that the entire conflict between the Arab and Muslim world and Israel consists of just the Palestinians is ignoring the larger threats which are very real and will be acted upon should the situation ever appear to favor these forces being able to defeat Israel. Should these other nations decide to renew active warfare with Israel we can assume with a fair amount of confidence that Egypt and very likely Jordan will renege on their peace treaties with Israel and join the assault. So, the truth is that Israel’s adversaries when viewed in their true entirety are armed with far greater sized military forces than Israel could ever dream of fielding.

But what can be said about this so-called occupation? I believe my commenter is referring to the misconception that Israel is in occupation of the Palestinian people and refusing to permit their constituting their country of Palestine. For Israel to be in occupation of a nation called Palestine it would have been necessary for Israel to have been at war or in a state of hostilities with a country called Palestine and have defeated them and taken over their recognized lands. But Israel has never been at war with a country named Palestine; not now and not even in antiquity. Israel did have a period where there was a state of war between the Israelis (also known then as the Hebrews) with the Philistines from the nation of Philistine. This conflict has been settled history for over three-thousand-years and the Philistine people melted into the pages of history and no longer are a recognized people. The Palestinians, despite modern mythology, are Arab peoples originating from Syria, Egypt, Iraq and small numbers from other Arab nations. The mislabeled West Bank was given this false name by Jordan after they conquered Judea, Samaria and the eastern half of the city of Jerusalem during the 1948 war of annihilation declared by several Arab nations who intended to completely erase the newly formed Jewish State from existence. Israel, through a miracle from Hashem, managed to survive this onslaught but lost some lands which included Judea, Samaria and the eastern half of the city of Jerusalem lost to Jordan, the Golan Heights lost to Syria, and the Gaza Strip lost to Egypt. Egypt never claimed Gaza so there was no international decision as to whom Gaza actually belonged. Syria claimed the Golan Heights and was recognized as rightfully possessing the land. Jordan claimed what they called the West Bank to obscure the Jewish roots of the actual names of the lands they held. The rest of the Arab world did not recognize the Jordanian claim and neither did the majority of nations. The only countries which recognized the Jordanian claim were Great Britain and Pakistan. So, Jordan was seen as an occupying force when they held what they called the West Bank.

That begs a question; whose lands did Jordan occupy when they claimed the lands of Judea and Samaria along with the eastern half of Jerusalem? Jordan was occupying Israeli lands as the lands from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea were the recognized borders for Israel when the Arab League refused the partition plan refusing to establish an Arab state side by side with Israel in 1948. So, as Jordan was occupying Israeli lands after the 1948 war, when Israel reestablished control over Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem they were liberating these lands and reestablishing their rightful ownership. By International Law the Arabs who were residing in the areas of Judea and Samaria along with eastern Jerusalem who moved there after the end of the 1948 War along with any residents who took the Jordanian offer of citizenship would be returned to their country of origin and would be resettled in Jordan. Those who resided on these lands before the 1948 War would be eligible to petition for Israeli citizenship and if accepted be Israeli citizens and if refused could remain on the lands as legal foreign residents where they would own their land and would be permitted limited rights including being allowed to seek employment and if doing so to pay taxes, they would not be granted full citizenship and would not be granted the vote. Israel is not occupying any lands as they liberated what were previously their lands from Jordanian occupation. Even the presumed granting the Jordanian rights to the land to the Palestinians are meaningless as Jordan never rightfully owned these lands.

The final argument over the rightful ownership of the lands of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem we need to look back at the history of treaties and other legal documents and edicts. The original division of the lands was declared in the Balfour Declaration which set aside lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the border with Iraq for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people. The League of Nations ratified the Balfour Declaration and codified it as an International Agreement including setting up the Mandate system from which many of the countries in the Middle East were formed. These included but not limited to Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman. The Jewish homeland was initially including everything from the Mediterranean Sea and the border with Iraq. The British decided to renege on this agreement and approached the Zionist leadership and made them an offer which they were not in any position to refuse as the English were a world power and the Zionists were a committee and some settlers without any military might. The agreement was written out in the Churchill White Papers taking the area of the British Mandate Lands from the Jordan River to the Iraq border and founded Transjordan which is known today simply as Jordan. That removed seventy-eight-percent of the lands originally intended for the Jewish State. The British and the member States of the League of Nations promised that the remaining twenty-two-percent of the Mandate Lands, including all from the Jordan River west to the Mediterranean Sea, were to be held sacrosanct and indivisible for the Jewish homelands. The founding of the United Nations included in its Charter in Article 80 the full recognition of the Mandates and all that was formed from these lands which had been tasked to France and Britain to dispense and establish nations. The only treaty which pertained to the lands of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem subsequent to the United Nations Charter was the Jordanian Israeli Peace Treaty in which Jordan recognized the return of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem to Israeli control. As an afterthought and in recognition of Yasser Arafat and his efforts against Israel, the King of Jordan claimed that he had actually deeded the lands of the West Bank to the Palestinian people to establish their own State in the treaty with Israel. No such denotation is written in that peace treaty where it states that the lands which Jordan referred to as the West Bank, also known as Judea, Samaria and eastern parts of Jerusalem, were ceded back to Israeli control.

One is not a warmonger to claim that the contested lands rightfully belonging to Israel. The Arab League could have established an Arab country on half of the lands in 1948 but instead opted to use an attempted war of genocidal aggression to erase the Jewish State and murder its peoples. The combined Arab armies were, blessed be Hashem, unsuccessful and only managed to steal some of the lands. Among the stolen lands are the contested lands that my commenter believes belong to a mythical people who populated a nation called Palestine which was subsequently conquered through Israeli reactions to aggression, as if it existed and had lost a war of aggression against Israel. Even if this were a reality, Israel would still be entitled to retain the lands under International Law which allows any State which gains lands responding to the aggressions of another State is entitled to retain those lands. So, even if the lands belonged to Jordan or anybody else, since the war in which they fell to Israeli control was brought upon Israel and she fought a defensive war against efforts of aggression, then Israel still retains the lands and there is no occupation. No matter how one approaches the ownership of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, International Laws and agreements and treaties all grant Israel sovereignty over the lands if she so chooses to exercise her rights under International Laws and Agreements.

Beyond the Cusp