EU's Hostile Fixation on Israeli Settlements

Yeah, let them whine! Europe whined about the apartheid in South Africa, and look at where that got them.
You figure they would have learned something by now.

The publication of guidelines by the European Commission on the eligibility of Israeli entities for EU cooperation is the culmination of a concerted policy initiative led by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, directed against Israel's settlements in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] to press the Israeli government into making territorial and political concessions.

This unprecedented and hostile EU fixation with Israel and its settlements is based on a series of long-standing and deliberately misleading and flawed legal and political assumptions regarding the illegality of Israel's settlements and the status of the pre-1967 armistice lines as Israel's border.

Similarly, they negate the very positions supported by the European states that endorsed UN Security Council Resolution 242 from 1967 calling for "secure and recognized boundaries," and negate the EU's own commitments as signatory and witness to the Oslo Accords not to predetermine and undermine specific negotiating issues including the final status of the territories, borders, settlements, Jerusalem, and other issues.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), often cited as the basis for the claim that Israel's settlements are illegal, relates to deportations of over 40 million people subjected to forced migration, evacuation, displacement, and expulsion in World War II. The vast numbers of people affected and the aims and purposes behind such a population movement speak for themselves. There is nothing to link such circumstances to Israel's settlement policy.

The rigid fixation of the EU to assert that its agreements with Israel must reflect the non-recognition of Israel's sovereignty over any territory beyond the 1967 lines stands out in contrast to European policy toward other conflicts.

The EU has many free trade agreements and understandings with countries whose territorial boundaries are in dispute. The EU has been negotiating a free trade agreement with India, yet its applicability to Kashmir is not under discussion. An EU fisheries agreement from 2005 allows European fisherman to operate in Western Sahara, even though the EU does not recognize Moroccan sovereignty in this territory.

The EU Targets the Settlements

Flawed Legal and Political Assumptions

This unprecedented and hostile EU fixation with Israel and its settlements, to the almost total exclusion of the other pressing issues in the Middle East, Europe, and throughout the world, is based on a series of long-standing and deliberately misleading and flawed legal and political assumptions regarding the illegality of Israel's settlements and the status of the pre-1967 armistice lines as Israel's border.

These assumptions are all the more misleading and misguided in that they totally negate or deliberately flout the historic and legal rights granted by the international community, including Europe, to Israel and the Jewish people in a series of international agreements and commitments. The assumptions totally ignore the indigenous rights of the Jewish people in the area, as protected by international declarations.

Similarly, they negate the very positions supported by the European states that endorsed UN Security Council Resolution 242 from 1967 calling for "secure and recognized boundaries". . .

. . . and negate the EU's own commitments as signatory and witness to the Oslo Accords, to honour the content of those accords, and not to predetermine and undermine specific negotiating issues including the final status of the territories, borders, settlements, Jerusalem, and other issues.

As such, the present EU policy, including the commission notice, specifically undermines the negotiating process by taking sides, and by pre-determining the negotiating issues of settlements, Jerusalem and borders. As such, this fixation prejudices and obviates any claim by the EU to impartiality, and precludes the EU from performing any function within the negotiating process.

Israel's Rights Cannot Be Denied

The legality of Israel's settlements stems from the historic, indigenous and legal rights of the Jewish people to settle in the area, granted pursuant to valid and binding international legal instruments recognized and accepted by the international community. These rights cannot be denied or placed in question.

They include the declaration unanimously adopted by the League of Nations, including the major European states, in the 1920 San Remo Declaration, affirming the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People in the historical area of the Land of Israel as well as close Jewish settlement throughout.5 This included the areas of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. This was subsequently affirmed internationally in the League of Nations 1922 Palestine Mandate instrument,6 and accorded continued validity, up to the present day, by Article 80 of the UN Charter which determines the continued validity of the rights granted to all states or peoples, or already existing international instruments (including those adopted by the League of Nations).

The "1967 Borders" Do Not Exist

The "1967 borders" do not exist, and have never existed. The 1949 Armistice Agreements entered into by Israel and its Arab neighbors, establishing the armistice demarcation lines, clearly stated that these lines "are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto." Accordingly, they cannot be accepted or declared to be Israel's border.8

UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) called upon the parties to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and specifically stressed the need to negotiate in order to achieve "secure and recognized boundaries."9 The European state members of the Security Council approved that resolution.

The Geneva Convention Does Not Apply to Israel's Settlements

The EU assumption regarding the illegality of Israel's settlement policy is legally flawed, and ignores authoritative sources regarding the provenance and interpretation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). This article prohibits the mass transfer of population into occupied territory, as practiced by Germany during the Second World War. It was neither relevant, nor was it ever intended to apply to Israel's settlements.

According to the authoritative and official commentary by the International Committee of the Red Cross, published in 1958,10 as well as opinions by prominent international jurists, Article 49 relates to deportations of over 40 million people subjected to forced migration, evacuation, displacement, and expulsion. The vast numbers of people affected and the aims and purposes behind such a population movement speak for themselves. There is nothing to link such circumstances to Israel's settlement policy.11

One may further ask if this is not a misreading, misunderstanding, or even distortion of that article and its context.

Contradicting the Oslo Accords

The Palestinians entered into the various agreements constituting what is known as the "Oslo Accords" in the full knowledge that Israel's settlements existed in the areas, and that settlements would be one of the issues to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. Furthermore, the Oslo Accords impose no limitation on either side regarding planning, zoning, or construction of homes and communities in their respective areas of jurisdiction and control, pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.

The repeated use by the EU of the term "occupied Arab," or "Palestinian territories" to refer to the area of Judea and Samaria has no basis in law or fact. Prior to 1967, there was no Palestinian state in the West Bank, which was under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The area has never been determined to be Palestinian territory. Thus the continued EU usage of the term runs against the very concept of negotiations to resolve the dispute regarding these areas, supported by the EU, to determine their permanent status.

The EU Fixation with Israel's Settlements

The EU fixation with Israel's settlements, and the action presently being taken against Israel pursuant to its directive, is clearly incompatible with the EU's standing as a member of the International Quartet, and serves to neutralize any pretentions the EU might have to serve a useful function in the negotiating process between Israel and the Palestinians.

The EU cannot presume to come with clean hands and claim to be an impartial element in the negotiating process. The EU has taken sides and as such, in its actions against Israel, it is undermining the negotiating process.

Moreover, the rigid fixation of the EU to assert that its agreements with Israel must reflect the non-recognition of Israel's sovereignty over any territory beyond the 1967 lines stands out in contrast to European policy toward other conflicts.

The EU has many free trade agreements and other commercial understandings with countries whose territorial boundaries are in dispute. The EU has been negotiating a free trade agreement with India, yet its applicability to Kashmir is not under discussion. An EU fisheries agreement from 2005 allows European fisherman to operate in Western Sahara, even though the EU does not recognize Moroccan sovereignty in this territory. In Israel, EU policy is likely to be perceived as a case of double standards, according to which Israel is not granted the same rights as other states, in defiance of the principle of sovereign equality.

Finally, the position and actions of the EU against Israel are all the more unfortunate and regrettable in light of the tragic Jewish history in Europe, which cannot be ignored or forgotten. One might have expected that realization of this factor would guide the wisdom and logic of the actions of the EU.

Not according to Nelson Mandela, a man who knows something about opposition to Apartheid.
Heck, Nelson Mandela isn't even European.

When in 1977, the United Nations passed the resolution inaugurating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, it was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period, the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system.

But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of the world.

Factually you are suggesting that Mandela (or anyone who questions Israel's actions in the occupied territories) is an anti-Semite.

Mandela is clear on the topic.

Nelson Mandela wrote:

When in 1977, the United Nations passed the resolution inaugurating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, it was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period, the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system.

But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of the world.

What does "the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine" mean to you?
Mandela made this speech in an international conference of "solidarity" with the Palestinian people suffering under Israeli occupation.

"opposition to Apartheid"

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201362661634861807.html

Whitewashing apartheid with Israel's dirty water
The glaring discrepancy in water allocation from West Bank supplies forces Palestinians to rely on water from tankers.
Last Modified: 01 Jul 2013 10:25

Belen Fernandez

Last week, on June 23, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel attended a ceremony in Jerusalem in honour of a new joint initiative between Israel's Ben-Gurion University and the University of Chicago.

Hailing the Peres-Emanuel presence as an instance of "rare political star power", the Chicago Tribune explains:

"The two schools soon will begin funding a series of research projects aimed at creating nanotechnologies that address water shortages in arid climates. The project's goal is to find new materials and processes for making clean, fresh drinking water more plentiful and less expensive by 2020."

Among Israel's qualifications in the business of dealing with water shortages is, of course, its legendary success in "making the desert bloom" via the removal of Palestinians that began in the 1940s.

Indeed, Peres himself wrote in his 1970 book David's Sling: The Arming of Israel:

"The country was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlement, and Israel's cultivable land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness."

The expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel no doubt assisted somewhat with the cultivation of the "empty desert" myth. Blooming projects have presumably also benefited from Israel's diversion of various regional bodies of water.

Water apartheid

A 1993 article in The New York Times outlines two competing visions of Israeli water policy:

"What Arabs depict as Israel's disproportionate use - even theft - of water, Israelis portray as the result of foresight, technological advances like computerised irrigation and good management in securing and exploiting supplies."

Of course, "theft" would appear to be an accurate description of Israeli practices such as usurping Palestinian springs for the benefit of illegal settlers in the West Bank.


Spotlight
Gaza Crisis
As for managerial deftness in the exploitation of supplies, consider this Reuters report from 2009: "Amnesty says Israel curbing water to Palestinians." Citing Amnesty International's calculation that per capita water consumption in Israel was four times higher than in the Palestinian territories, Reuters quotes an Amnesty official's concern:

"Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality, subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford."

For one thing, the glaring discrepancy in water allocation from West Bank supplies leaves Palestinian residents of the territory reliant on water from tankers that are "forced to take long detours to avoid Israeli military checkpoints and roads off-limits to Palestinians".

According to a 2012 Oxfam briefing paper, tankered water is up to five times more costly, "further erod[ing] Palestinian farmers' and herders' profits, and reduc[ing] their ability to pay for essentials such as food, health care, and education for their children".

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-apartheid-more-sophisticated-south-africas-says-new-book/12581

Israeli apartheid "more sophisticated" than South Africa’s, says new book

David Cronin The Electronic Intifada 1 July 2013
130701-dadoo-osman.jpg
Cover of new book Why Israel?
Why Israel? It is a question that every Palestine solidarity campaigner has probably been asked.

Usually, the question is posed as a diversionary tactic. Why excoriate Israel when more people are being killed in Syria than in Gaza?

Suraya Dadoo and Firoz Osman’s book Why Israel? cites numerous reasons to justify focusing on crimes committed in the name of Zionism. Every Zionist believes in the oppression of the Palestinians, the authors state. So an apologist for Israel has no moral authority to champion freedom anywhere.

Zionists like to moan that their opponents are trying to hold Israel to higher standards than other states. Yet it is Israel itself which pretends to have higher standards than its neighbors.

Israel purports to be an enlightened democracy that recently welcomed an A-list of Hollywood celebrities to a 90th birthday celebration for Shimon Peres, its president. Strip away that glamorous veneer, however, and you will find a vicious form of apartheid.

Dadoo and Osman are well-placed to identify what constitutes an apartheid state: they are from South Africa. In their book, which spans more than 630 pages, they draw plenty of parallels between how Israel treats the Palestinians and how blacks were treated in South Africa under white rule.

Many things they underscore are critically important, yet not widely-known.

Cherry-picking international law

How often does the mainstream media remind us that Israel’s approach to political prisoners mirrors that of apartheid South Africa? Both states decided to cherry-pick which parts of international law to respect; both refused to sign a protocol to the Geneva Conventions requiring that resistance fighters should not be treated as criminals when they are jailed.

How often are we encouraged to be outraged by how Israel’s inhumane laws keep families apart? Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza are denied the right to live in Israel, even if they wed Israeli citizens. Apartheid South Africa, too, imposed restrictions on who the country’s inhabitants could marry by forbidding interracial relations.

How often are we informed that Israel has declared itself to be in a “state of emergency” every year since its inception in 1948? This declaration is used as a pretext to prevent freedom of expression and assembly and to forbid Palestinians from entering “closed military areas.” Apartheid South Africa, too, was fond of issuing diktats on the grounds that it was in a “state of emergency.”

And how often are told that Israeli propagandists use almost identical techniques to those employed by apartheid South Africa? During the 1980s, Israeli journalists were brought to South Africa on all-expenses-paid trips on the understanding that they would help whitewash apartheid. Israel and the lobby groups dedicated to defending it offer the same kind of junkets to reporters, subject to the same provisos today.

Challenging lies

A key reason why you should read this book is that it provides activists with ammunition for challenging Zionist lies. When the term “apartheid” is applied to Israel, a common riposte is to brag that Israel is so kind towards its Palestinian citizens (“Israeli Arabs,” as Zionists call them) that it allows them vote and stand in elections. This situation contrasts with that of apartheid South Africa, where the black majority was completely disenfranchised.

Dadoo and Osman demonstrate that such arguments are specious. Denying the right to vote, they point out, is not explicitly mentioned on a list of what constitutes racial discrimination included in the United Nations’ Apartheid Convention from 1973. That convention also makes clear that a state doesn’t have to mimic white-ruled South Africa in all respects to be guilty of apartheid.

In an especially perceptive passage, the authors write: “Israel’s version of apartheid is more sophisticated than the South African version. South African apartheid was rudimentary, petty, primitive — literally black and white, clear separation, no rights. Israel’s apartheid is more hidden with the deceptive image of ‘democracy.’ Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote. However, in every other area they are discriminated against by law and policy.”

Comprehensive

Though rigorously researched and accompanied by copious footnotes, this book relies slightly too much on secondary sources for my liking. Rather than paraphrasing the numerous writers and journalists whose work they have studied, Dadoo and Osman tend to paste excerpts from other publications.

With the exception of some references to the Media Review Network, which the duo represent, we are not given a direct insight into the authors’ own experiences. As a result, the book is not as engaging as it had the potential to be.

If you have only recently become active in the Palestine solidarity movement and require a primer on the comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa, then this wouldn’t be the first source of information I would recommend. Ben White’s book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide and the documentary Roadmap to Apartheid by Ana Nogeuira and Eron Davidson are both more concise and digestible.

Those seeking a comprehensive overview of all the important issues relating to Palestine would be well-advised, on the other hand, to check out Why Israel?

Few, if any, of the essential facts have escaped its authors’ attention.

Israel continues to build illegal settlements and the wall, controls Gaza, denies Palestinian refugees their right to return, grows produce and sets up industrial zones on stolen Palestinian land. Only international pressure can deliver a just peace for Palestinians.

As Governments have failed to hold Israel accountable, it is up to people of conscience in civil society worldwide to heed Palestinian calls for protection and justice. Only international pressure can make Israel cease its violations of international law and human rights.

Why boycott?

It lets the Palestinian people know that they are not forgotten and the justice of their cause is recognised.

It sends a signal that the world will not sit by whilst Israel flouts UN resolutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and other international laws – Israel cannot be allowed to act with impunity.

It enables decisions made in their everyday lives by people outside Israel and Palestine to refresh and reinforce their opposition to Israeli policy.

It exerts moral pressure on the British Government by giving expression to the desire to move towards a more ethical foreign policy.

It provides an excellent way of stimulating public debate, offers a focus for leafleting and discussion, as well as exerting moral and economic pressure on Israel to comply with international legislation and principles of justice.

Apartheid was weakened by a similar international movement of solidarity that succeeded in branding South Africa as a pariah state. Despite obvious differences between these two forms of oppression, this antecedent provides an inspiring model

Finance Minister Yair Lapid said: "This decision is another in a long line of decisions that isolate Israel. Time is not in out favor, and every day that Israel does not engage in peace talks is a day in which our international status sustains more damage."

Labor Chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich also responded to the EU's decision to ban agreements with Israel which include settlements, saying that "the increasing diplomatic isolation is causing harm to the country and the market, and poses a strategic threat no less severe than the one posed by the sophisticated weapons aimed at us.

Yachimovich, the opposition leader, also called on the prime minister to hold peace talks with the Palestinians as soon as possible, with the real intent of reaching a final agreement, "not for the sake of the Europeans, the Americans or the Palestinians, but for Israel.