Netanyahu’s Stealth Building Freeze

When is a building freeze not officially a building freeze? When it is kept unannounced and enforced simply through not signing permits allowing for any building to take place. This is what has apparently been imposed upon Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and has been the case since soon after United States Secretary of State Kerry’s second visit when he first began the latest push to press Israel to make concessions which were presumed necessary to bring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas around to allowing resumed peace talks. From as near as can be assessed, Secretary Kerry has likely promised to force Netanyahu and Israel to meet Abbas’s precondition of applying a building freeze on all lands claimed by the Palestinian Authority. Kerry probably allowed for this building freeze to be an unannounced building freeze so as to allow Prime Minister Netanyahu to deny its existence at least for long enough to persuade Abbas to return to negotiations. Secretary Kerry likely believed that once it became obvious that there was in fact a de facto building freeze that Abbas would proceed with negotiations and forgo his other preconditions. Unfortunately for Secretary Kerry and Prime Minister Netanyahu this scheme was doomed to fail as Abbas cannot agree to rejoin peace talks and remain in power which is the real purpose behind the preconditions.

 

This became evident when thinking that there was no possibility that Prime Minister Netanyahu could convince his newly formed government to allow a building freeze that Abbas implied to Secretary Kerry that if there were to be a building freeze he would consider rejoining the peace talks and forgive his remaining preconditions. Well, Secretary Kerry and Prime Minister Netanyahu came up with an idea that they could put a building freeze in place without announcing one and that they could get Abbas back to the negotiating table before Netanyahu was forced to admit the freeze and pay a political price for imposing a stealth building freeze. The whole plan fell apart when after about a week of the stealth building freeze being imposed President Abbas demanded his preconditions of a wholesale prisoner release, Netanyahu provide a map of his proposed borders, making the Green Line the basis for borders, and hinted at adding the removal of IDF and Israeli security personnel from all area of the West Bank. This was basically the end of any attempt of bringing the two sides together to reconvene the peace process. Unfortunately, this has placed Prime Minister Netanyahu in a very uncomfortable position along with Secretary Kerry. For Kerry to have any credibility or possibility to ply Abbas to return to the peace talks then this stealthy building freeze would have to be kept in place indefinitely and knowing he has Kerry leaning on Netanyahu making the latter’s political life in a sensitive and untenable place, Abbas will just play the old place an offer forwards then alter it as soon as it is met and continuing collecting as many different concession and then pocketing them assuming that having forced these concessions once means that they are things Israel will always be forced to surrender. This is an even more sinister and deceitful scheme than the usual tactic of joining talks playing for juicier offers to pocket for the next round before walking out, otherwise known as the Arafat Bribe Me Ploy.

 

Now it has become evident that there is a stealth building freeze imposed on Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Jewish residents in these areas are losing their patience and have slowly been rising to a point of royally upset. Even a stealth building freeze eventually becomes visible as the cranes, trucks, bulldozers, backhoes, and supply trucks can remain motionless only so long before people start to ask pointed questions which in turn are picked up and asked by Knesset Members, especially the nationalists in the coalition. Eventually this could threaten the viability of the Netanyahu government which would hopefully bring the stealth building freeze to a building frenzy termination. The only real pressure that would have even the slightest possibility of forcing Abbas to return to the peace talks is for Israel to proceed with building on a broad front all across Area C. Then announce that Israel has annexed all of Area C as necessary for the future viability, security and a first step towards establishing defensible borders of the State of Israel. Follow this announcement by requiring any Palestinian Authority residents within Area C to either agree to take compensation for their lands or sign an application for Israeli citizenship along with a loyalty oath in order to remain within the Area C boundaries. Once this needful announcement has been declared, all of the Israeli leadership must stand behind this as an irrevocable truth and established fact. This move should be made immediately after informing Secretary of State Kerry of Israeli intent to take this necessary step as it is beyond any reasonable expectation to force Israel not to act in their basic interests which are valid and permissible under United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. Then, while Secretary Kerry is calling the White House the announcing statement must be released followed immediately by an announcement made before the Knesset with as many Ministers attending as can be persuaded to be supportive and televised to all of Israel. After the announcement there must be no concessions or backtracking from the new borders. Then it should be made evident that all future negotiations with the Palestinians will use these borders as established fact and future discussions will be over the division of Area A and B. Israel should follow this with a concerted and strong campaign claiming their right and the rights of every Jew to be allowed free and safe access to every single holy site within the contested areas and if it should become necessary to extend Israeli jurisdiction and sovereignty over these sights to assure such rights, Israel is prepared and ready to enforce whatever is required to assure these rights. The time of Israel forced to accept the submissive role in the state of affairs between them and the Palestinians has proceeded far too long and needs to be terminated. Israel has the superior legal claim to these lands and need not apologize for her existence or over being the stronger militarily any longer. No other nation or people throughout history have been anywhere near as understanding and quiescent or shown respect in the face of such insult and denigration as has Israel. The times of Israeli timidity need to end and end with a firm resolve and an exclamation of Israeli absolute rights and integral dignity. No more excuses, apologies, regrets or marginalization should be accepted from the Palestinians period. Afterwards, whatever the world decides, the world decides and let them learn to live with Israel which is proud and assertive, no more apologies for Jewish existence, and no more compromise on Jewish rights, and no more surrender of ancestral Jewish lands.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Next Land for Peace After the Palestinian West Bank Theft

The United States is joining the chorus of virtually the entire world in the song to sweetly lull Israel into a stupor which is necessary for them to surrender the entirety of the gains from the Six Day War in Judea and Samaria for the formation of a Palestinian Arab State. The song has sweet words which make the future after the next great sacrifice to complete the surrender begun by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Gaza by adding the so-called West Bank such that the central heart of Israel can share in the heavy metal rain of rockets, mortars, and death from the ballistic terror which is sure to soon pour out of the surrendered lands just as they poured forth from the skies of Gaza onto Sderot, Ashod, Ashqelon, Beer Sheva, Dimona and the farms, kibbutzim and towns bordering Gaza. President Obama has loosed Secretary of State Kerry with the holy mission to grant the Palestinians the high ground overlooking the heart of Israel while the Administration sings platitudes about their undying support for Israel as the Jewish State within the 1967 Lines living side-by-side with the Palestinian State in peace and security. The backup chorus for this production is supplied by the backers of the Arab Plan, the authors of said plan, Saudi Arabia, the European Union with Lady Ashton singing the lead solo, the United Nations with special choral harmony provided by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and numerous nations from every corner of the globe.

 

But fear not as this is simply the first act in the decommissioning of the Jewish State of Israel and the second act has made their initial appearance. Thousands of Bedouins marched through the city of Beer Sheva in the northern Negev region of Israel this past Thursday. In order to assure that there were no doubts as to their desired message, they were waving Palestinian authority flags and carrying signs demanding the return of the Negev as their holy and ancient homelands. What is very interesting about the Bedouin tribes residing and tending their flocks of sheep in Israel compared to their brethren throughout the Middle East and parts of Northern Africa is that throughout the world the Bedouin Tribes are referred to as a migratory and nomadic people while the Bedouins in Israel are defined by the United Nations as an indigenous peoples. This is no accident or oversight or typo, it is intentional with an eye to the future when the world will demand that Israel return the Negev Desert to its indigenous and ancient people, the Bedouins. The Bedouins have been setting facts on the ground building small villages and towns on lands which have been assigned for their use but also have spread to areas of State owned land and even onto farm lands owned by Israeli farmers who end up pushed off their land unable to fight the more populous Bedouin families who simply move in and then threaten the farmers treating them as trespassers. Fortunately the Knesset had come up with an ingenious solution; they are working on legislation to turn much of the lands claimed by the Bedouins which belong to the State into new Bedouin lands in a bribe to establish these new areas and have the Bedouins in return promise not to settle more lands. It is rumored that the Bedouins simply nodded staring blankly and returned to their daily business. The honest truth is there are activists from Europe and extreme leftist Israelis who are working with the Bedouins and aiding them in similar manner as they have assisted the Palestinians by encouraging the Bedouins to take more land and simply disregard any agreements, treaties or laws which may inconvenience their takeover of the Negev Regions in southern Israel.

 

Thus far this has simply been an inconvenience but has the potential to become a tragedy for the Jews and non-Bedouin Arabs living in southern Israel. Already there are a fair number of Bedouin camps and towns being constructed in order to surround Beer Sheva, Dimona and other Israeli towns in the Negev. If this problem is permitted to grow in scope it will very soon come to threaten the Israeli possession of the southern half of their country and an area which many had believed to be an area for future growth as Israel’s population grew. Instead the Bedouins are at the beginning stages of imitating the Palestinian methods for usurping areas of land and making their case to the world that these are their historic homelands. If Israel does not take measures to end this war by attrition and stealthily usurping land piecemeal, then the Israelis will be facing a world sympathetically demanding the Negev be returned to its natural and ancient owners and that the Apartheid attitudes of Israel to the blighted Bedouins who they are causing to be oppressed and denied their rights. This is coming though not likely to make the headlines for the immediate future but in a couple of years whether the Palestinians have been granted their state or not. This will be the second attack in the piecemeal destruction of Israel by breaking off a peripheral area slowly drawing and quartering the nation of Israel as if it were a peasant who was sentenced to death by some medieval European nobleman. Talk about the four horsemen.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel Need Not Sacrifice to Entice Palestinians to Talk Peace

Once again a United States President has tasked his Secretary of State with forging that ever elusive Arab-Israeli Peace. Let’s be honest, there is no difference between the so-called Palestinian Arabs and the Arabs living in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Tunisia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or any other Arab community. If we were dealing honestly we would not allow the recent use of the term Naqba to refer solely to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 because it has an earlier reference from the promise to make a Jewish State through the founding after World War I of the French and British Mandate. This too was called the Great Naqba but not because of the intent to make a Jewish State in the future, that would come later. There was a far more immediate catastrophe deserving of the title Great Naqba. With the formation of the French Mandate over the lands which would become Syria and Lebanon minus the Golan Heights and mountains surrounding Mount Herman and the British Mandate over the lands which would become Jordan, Israel, Gaza, Judea, Samaria (West Bank), Golan Heights, and the mountains surrounding Mount Herman, it split the areas which under Ottoman rule were called Greater Syria. The French Mandate took the areas referred to as Syria and the British Mandate took the areas referred to as Southern Syria. The French referred to their Mandate Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, as Syrian Arabs which met with their approval. The British referred to their Mandate Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, as Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish residents simply as Palestinians. It was the splitting off the British Mandate from central Syria placing a boundary between their Arab populations and Damascus which was a pilgrimage destination for the Arabs in these areas. They also rejected being called Palestinians and demanded to retain the label as being Syrians. Later during World War II the British formed a corps fighting in North Africa and the Middle East named the Palestinian Brigade which was made up almost entirely of Jews from the lands surrounding Jerusalem, Hevron, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Akko, Jericho, Tiberius and the other towns and cities from the Jordan River valley to the Mediterranean Sea. The largest Arab Units formed during World War II served the Nazis in the Balkans and were commanded by the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el Husseini. There were also Arab revolts during World War II by Iraqis who had intended to join allying themselves with Germany but were eventually retaken by the British. Iran also allied with the German Nazis and were so enamored with the idea of the Aryan Master Race they changed the name of their country from Persia to Iran, which means Aryan.

 

Between World War I and through the period of World War II there were repeated uprisings by the Arabs of the British Mandate against the Jews. One of the particularly serious episodes spread through Hevron and Jerusalem with much of the Jewish areas in Hevron being burned down or otherwise damaged. To avoid any more difficulties for the British troops stationed in the Mandate areas the British in their infinite wisdom forced all the Jews out from Hevron and resettled them largely in Jerusalem. Many of these Jews who were driven from Hevron have had their descendants attempt to return to Hevron and reclaim their lands and homes after the Six Day War and the return of Hevron to Jewish control. In a totally futile attempt to placate the Arabs and prevent further uprisings the British made an offer to the Zionists. They promised if the Zionists would allow the lands east of the Jordan River to be used to make a state for the Palestinian Arabs population then the British promised that all of the lands west of the Jordan River would remain undivided and be used for the Jewish State. The Zionists deciding that it was best to take the guarantee of the lands west of the Jordan River as a guaranteed border for their state would be better than attempting to form a state in the entire of the Mandate lands. They also realized that there were virtually no Jews residing east of the Jordan River anyways and the few who lived on the east bank could be resettled readily on the west bank and thus Transjordan was formed and is today known as Jordan. That was the first sacrifice which relinquished all claims to 78% of the British Mandate for a guarantee that they would receive the remaining 22% of the lands and they would be indivisible in perpetuity.

 

During the debates in the United Nations over the founding of the Jewish State the Zionists agreed to sharing what had been guaranteed indivisible by the major powers and organizations of the world even if the vast majority of the lands they would receive was the Negev Desert and the majority of arable lands were to be made into a second Arab state out of the British Mandate. The Arabs refused to accept the division because they could not agree to allow any Jewish state whatsoever. Despite the sacrifice at the point of declaring the state of Israel so as to live in peace with their Arab neighbors, Israel was forced to defend herself against the combined armies from six Arab countries and numerous assorted militias at the dawn of the Jewish nations first day of existence. When the fighting ended the Israelis once again accepted the boundaries which were still less than the full amount promised twenty years earlier at the founding of the Hashemite Kingdom. The Arab League refused to accept the boundaries and insisted that the lines dividing the warring armies at the hour the truce was established be merely a set of Armistice Lines and never ever be utilized to determine a border in the future.

 

In early June of 1967 Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran for all shipping to or from the Israeli southern port of Eilat which was a casus belli under International Treaty and Laws and with their ally Syria massed troops on Israel’s northern and southern borders. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened a war of genocide to drive the Jews into the sea repeating the threat for days. Israel responded to the existential threat and attacked Egyptian airfields. An immediate thrust by both Syrian and Egyptian armies was met and repulsed and though the Israeli Defense Force was advancing on both fronts the Arab news reports were claiming a great victory was in progress. Jordanian King Hussein declared war on Israel opening a third front despite Israeli pleading that the Jordanian leader reconsider informing Hussein that the reports of Egyptian and Syrian forces closing on Tel Aviv were false. King Hussein believed the Egyptian and Syrian reports figuring that the Israelis were attempting to deceive him and deny him a share of the glory and spoils of war. By the end of the Six Day War Israel was in control of the entire Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Gaza, Judea and Samaria (West Bank). Israel made peace with Egypt in March of 1979 sacrificing the entire Sinai Peninsula and offering the return of Gaza which Egypt refused thus leaving Gaza under Israeli control. The return of the Sinai Peninsula was a significant sacrifice for peace made by Israel. Israel and Jordan also made peace in October 1994 and Israel offered to return the areas gained from Jordan during the Six Day War which Jordan refused thus leaving Judea and Samaria under Israeli control. Syria and Israel have yet to make peace and an armistice enforced by the United Nations still exists.

 

Even when discussing the Israeli Palestinian peace negotiation the Israelis have done the vast majority of sacrificing. Israel removed every single Israeli from all of Gaza along with all Israeli Defense Force troops and bases surrendering complete control to the Palestinian Authority. Those who claim Israel never released control over Gaza because of the naval blockade claiming that Gaza has never been totally free of Israeli influence are misrepresenting the facts. Israel withdrew in August 2005 and there was no blockade or any other Israeli influence imposed after the disengagement. Israel had no naval blockade and had even surrendered their monitoring to the European Union of the Philadelphia Corridor which is the boundary between the Sinai and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Currently the Egyptians are responsible for monitoring the Philadelphia Corridor which is circumvented quite adequately through the existence of an extensive tunnel smuggling system. The Israeli Naval blockade was not implemented until after Hamas took control of Gaza after winning the Palestinian elections in 2006. The Israeli blockade has been ruled legal and justified by the United Nations and is recognized as lawful under the auspices of International Laws. A further sacrifice by Israel was the implementation of the Oslo Accords which allowed the establishment of self-rule for the majority of the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has total economic, security, and civil autonomy over Area A within the areas of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and economic and civil autonomy with shared security control over Area B. Only Area C is under Israeli civil, economic and security control which still allows those Palestinians who reside there to remain in their homes and farming their land and tending their flocks. Area A which is under complete Palestinian Control there are no Jews permitted to tread within its boundaries without Palestinian Authority permission. Somehow this situation has been distorted to represent total Israeli oppression of the Palestinians residing anywhere in Judea and Samaria. There is also a claim that the Israelis do not permit Palestinians to have any basic rights in the Area under Israeli control. This deceit is finally being corrected as politicians who have accepted invitations to inspect the reality in Area C have revealed the truth that Palestinians are working side by side with Israelis in the industrial parks and attending Ariel University right along with Israeli Jews and the two peoples are living side by side in peace and prospering.

 

The last example of Israeli sacrifice is one that goes beyond any of the sacrifices depicted in this article. The Israelis allowed for the Muslim Waqf to continue to manage and take charge of affairs for the Temple Mount. In return for this privilege the Waqf has overseen the destruction of millenniums of artifacts with heavy construction equipment and severe restriction placed on Jews when they are allowed to visit the Temple Mount, the holiest place on Earth for Jews. The most unkind restriction is not being allowed to pray while visiting the Temple Mount. Even appearing to pray is sufficient provocation for the Waqf officials to ban a Jew from being permitted entrance on the Temple Mount. The Waqf passed an edict defining all of the Temple Mount to be part of an all-inclusive Mosque complex defined to be an integral part of the al-Aksa Mosque. One may wonder if this definition includes the Christian Churches and other structures as well as the ancient Synagogue’s remains at the periphery of the Temple Mount which was destroyed by the Crusaders in 1099 as Jerusalem was being cleansed of Muslims and Jews.  Still, not simply exercising control over the Temple Mount and allowing for continued Islamic jurisdiction over the entirety of these holy grounds is very probably the most significant sacrifice made by Israel, especially as this sacrifice was made in the name of Jews everywhere.

 

Beyond the Cusp