The Truth of Worsening British Israeli Relations

Israeli Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz and British Foreign Secretary William Hague were at loggerheads this past week over the reason that the British people appear to be souring towards Israel. Yuval Steinitz told the Daily Telegraph on Thursday that there is a growing “animosity” towards Israel within the British Isles. He mentioned the main areas of contention as emanating from the British media, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and academics with many supporting the BDS Movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions). Yuval Steinitz described these emotional animosities as a form of “disguised anti-Semitism.”

 

British Foreign Secretary responded claiming, “Israel has lost some of its support in Britain and in other European countries over time – this is something I’ve often pointed out to Israeli leaders – because of settlement activity, which we condemn.” Hague told Sky News, “We strongly disagree with settlements on occupied land. Israel is a country we work with in many ways but we do disapprove of settlements.” He concluded adding that, “We want to see both Israelis and Palestinians really commit themselves to the peace process while there is still a chance of a two-state solution.”

 

These two opposing views need to be rectified and the truth uncovered as they are typical of the divide between the two sides of the Israel Palestinian debate, the Zionists and the anti-Zionists. Probably the best way to attack this issue is to actually look into the history, all of the history which will reveal that the British should know better than any other nation the promises made to the Jewish people and how those solemn promises were broken, compromised, broken again, and finally have been completely negated and forgotten by even the same peoples whose names appear as a primary guarantor of these promises. Well, maybe not all the history but we’ll cover the history since the start of World War I. Going into World War I the Ottoman Empire held the lands of the Middle East as well as Northern Africa and Iraq. The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and the rest of the losing side in World War I. The Ottoman Empire had been slowly weakening in the century or two before World War I and was being propped up by Czarist Russia and a general lack of interest in starting any conflicts which allowed the Ottoman Empire to continue to limp along. After their defeat in World War I it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire had completely collapsed so the lands were divided up between two of the European victors which started a brief colonialist period. Of course Turkey was reduced to its current borders and was all that was left of the Ottoman Empire. Egypt was placed under British sovereignty with Egypt gaining their independence in 1922. Britain was also awarded the Iraqi Mandate from which Iraq gained their independence in 1932. Libya remained an Italian possession administered by Britain and France and finally received its independence on Christmas Eve of 1951. Algeria had been and remained a French colony wining its independence in 1962.

 

This leaves the main areas of the Middle East which are of concern with the history of promises, declarations, conferences and treaties concerning Israel. The area which today makes up Syria and Lebanon were placed under the French Mandate while the areas making up Jordan, Israel, and the contested lands claimed by the Palestinians and Israel made up the British Mandate. Upon this division of the area which the Arabs referred to as greater Syria there was a great commotion among the Arabs who were within the borders of the British Mandate. These Arab populations had two significant problems with being placed under the British Mandate while Damascus was relegated to the French Mandate. The British Mandate Arabs were greatly troubled that they no longer had easy access to Damascus which they viewed as their main Muslim holy city in the area previously known as Greater Syrian Province of the Ottoman Empire. They also demanded that they be referred to as Syrian and refused to accept the title of Palestinian Arabs. They had no problem with the Arab part but vehemently refused to accept the use of Palestinian instead of Syrian Arabs. The Arabs in 1920 when the two Mandates were formed dividing Greater Syria into a northern French Mandate for Syria and a Southern British Mandate for Palestine was referred to as Year of the Catastrophe (Am al-Naqba) which protested both their divisions from Damascus and being referred to as Palestinian rather than Syrian. This original use of the word Naqba to protest being labeled as Palestinian really does make its current use protesting the failure of the combined Arab Armies to destroy Israel immediately after the declaration of independence in 1948 quite strange and almost a complete reversal as they now demand recognition as being the Palestinian state.

 

The French Mandate for Syria eventually led to the formation of the modern states of Syria and Lebanon who would become completely independent in 1943 with all French forces removed by the end of 1946. Syria was established to continue as an Arab state while Lebanon was intended to be controlled and under the rule of Arab Christians remaining in that form through the end of the Twentieth Century. The entire of the British Mandate for Palestine was intended to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration for the formation of a Jewish Homeland. Some have posited the notion that the sole reason that Israel was formed was due to the Holocaust, but that is impossible as it clashes with the fact that the Balfour Declaration was written in 1917, well before the Holocaust or the rise of Nazi Germany. The Balfour Declaration was formalized and codified by the League of Nations when establishing the British and French Mandate systems. In 1922 Britain issued the first of the White Papers. This one is often referred to as the Churchill White Paper. In this agreement the Zionist received promises that in exchange for their conceding the Mandate lands east of the Jordan River for the establishment of an Arab entity that the remainder of the Mandate lands west of the Jordan River would be reserved and indivisible for the future Jewish State. There were subsequent commissions and White Papers which mostly dealt with numbers of Jews allowed to immigrate each year, usually made in response to Arab violence in order to calm the situation. Such solutions never seemed to install a proper and lasting peace but that did not prevent the British from their constant attempts to pacify Arab anger. After World War II the Arabs were in a somewhat weakened position with the British as they had sided with Germany during the war. This situation did not persist and the British simply wished to be free of the entire problem. The United Nations General Assembly proposed a division of the Mandate lands west of the Jordan River into equal Arab and Jewish states with full British support despite their promises to the Zionist Agency. The Zionists accepted this proposed split feeling that any homeland was preferable to their current situation but the Arab League refused the proposed formation of two states as they refused to recognize any land being made into a Jewish State. The Zionist Agency and other Jewish groups declared their independence on May 14, 1948, and the combined armies of seven Arab countries (Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and militias and additional troops from Yemen and the Palestinian Arab militias) attacked the nascent Jewish state of Israel on the morning of May 15, 1948.

 

The genocidal intent of the war was made evident in the Arab leadership proudly claiming that this was to be a war of annihilation and that not a single Jew would be spared. When the Armistice was initiated, Israeli troops controlled over two-thirds of the lands west of the Jordan River. The Arab forces held on to some of the lands from the Mandate lands west of the Jordan River with Syria holding the Golan Heights, Jordan holding Judea, Samaria and portions of Binyamin (aka the West Bank), and Egypt held the Gaza Strip. Syria annexed the Golan Heights and this was recognized by most countries, Egypt never annexed Gaza and just ruled it as a semiautonomous colony, and Jordan annexed what they called their West Bank but this was recognized by all of two countries, Britain and Pakistan. When the combined armies of Syria and Egypt massed on Israeli borders threatening to once again hold a war of annihilation and Egypt cut off access through the Straits of Tiran, thus having committed a casus belli making war inevitable. During the first day’s fighting Jordan declared their intent to join the war reacting to the Egyptian and Syrian transmissions reporting on their glorious victories and the routing of the Israeli army and approaching Tel Aviv. The Israelis pleaded with Jordan not to enter the conflict telling them that the Egyptian and Syrian transmissions were lies and propaganda and that the reality was the Israelis were winning and winning convincingly. The Jordanians took the Israeli pleading as proof that Israel was losing and doing so badly and they first launched their attack into Western Jerusalem. By the end of the War after six days the Israelis held the Golan Heights and were on their way towards Damascus, held all of Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem holding everything west of the Jordan River, and held Gaza and the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Since then Israel pulled back to the Golan Heights on the Jordanian front, made a peace with Egypt and returned the Sinai Peninsula while Egypt refused to reoccupy Gaza and made peace with Jordan who surrendered all lands west of the Jordan River.

 

Subsequent to the Six Day War in 1967, there has been an additional war with Syria and Egypt in 1973 and two wars with Lebanon due to Fatah and Hezballah terrorism across the Israeli northern border. During the nineteen years for which Egypt and Jordan held between them Gaza and the West Bank there had been absolutely no mention or attempt to form a Palestinian state. Such an idea came only after Israel liberated these lands in 1967. The reason the Arab League stated for not recognizing the Jordanian annexation of the area they named the West Bank after the war in 1948 was because to have done so would have also meant recognizing borders for the state of Israel. Since the Arab League refused to recognize the existence of Israel they stated they could not recognize any Jordanian border with a state of Israel which does not exist. This makes their desire in the Saudi Plan to recognize borders for a Palestinian state which also denotes borders for Israel a real change of heart. There are other events which also never seem to be recognized such as the over three-quarters of a million Jews who were evicted and thrown from their properties, homes, businesses, and lives from one Arab nation after another from 1948 on through 1959 many of whom were absorbed into Israel. There have been other absorptions such as the Russian Jews from the old Soviet Union, the Ethiopian Jews brought out from wars and famines in Ethiopia, the gathering of the Menashe Tribe of Jews from India and the initial ingathering of the survivors of the Shoah in Europe. There are likely to be more ingatherings above the steady flow of Jews returning home making Aliyah from all over the world. There are those who predict, and we agree, that there is likely soon to be such from much of Europe and there are others who see the same eventuality to occur with the Jews of the United States. As we often end articles, let us just say, time will tell.

 

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