No One Has Been Deported
No One Has Been Transferred
Some claim the settlements are illegal, but there is no clear legal precedence
that would establish that they are illegal and while many of Israel's opponents
speak of them as if their illegality was some universal accepted truth, that
allegation is far from clear nor is it a credible truth. No international law
has been abrogated.
"The case for the illegality of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank
rests largely on a single source: article 49(6) in the fourth Geneva Convention
of 1949. This article states that an occupying military power "shall not deport
or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it
occupies." Yet, as several international jurists have pointed out, not only has
Israel "deported" or "transferred" no one to the settlements, whose inhabitants
are there of their own free will, it is by no means clear that Israel was ever,
legally, in the position of being an occupying power."
(Halkin)
"This is because, in 1967, Israel had as good a claim as anyone to the
West
Bank, which in effect belonged to no government. The Jordanian annexation of
the area, while acquiesced in by the same Palestinian leadership that had
rejected the 1947 U.N. partition resolution, was unrecognized by most of the
world, and Jordan itself had refused to make peace with Israel or to consider
their joint border more than a temporary cease-fire line. A reasonable case
could thus be made that, as the sole sovereign state to have emerged from
British-mandated Palestine, Israel had not only the right but the duty to act
as the West Bank's civil administrator pending determination of the area's
status."
(Halkin)
"The conventional wisdom is also wrong in asserting--a frequently made
claim--that continued settlement activity on the part of Israel is a violation
of the 1993 Oslo accords. The plain fact of the matter is that nowhere in that
agreement was there any reference to the settlements, apart from a single
paragraph stating that--along with Jerusalem, refugees, and "other issues of
common interest"--their fate was to be settled in final-status negotiations.
This was hardly an oversight. The Palestinians wanted a settlement freeze and
fought for one at Oslo; if they did not get it, this is only because in the end
they accepted the Israeli refusal to agree to one. In repeatedly demanding one
anyway over the ensuing years, it is they, not the Israelis, who have gone back
on the document they signed."
(Halkin)
At the Khartoom Conference in 1967 when ARABS stated emphatically their
opposition to any reconciliation with Israel - to NO resolution of any peace
accords with Irael. The THREE NOS were and still are:
NO to peace with Israel
No to recognition of Israel
No to negotiations with Israel
Neither has the PLO Charter ever been changed which vows the destruction
of
the State of Israel... YET, Wolfowitz and George Bush are also advocating for a
hostile Palestinian state, the removal of the settlements and pressure on
Israel to restrain it's response to terrorism. NONE of these conditions would
be acceptable to America. America invades other sovereign nations, it ignores
international accords when it suits us and America settled a territory
belonging to Mexico and 1/3rd of it's size which was annexed by the United
States.
Read it all at:
http://pnews.org/art/12art/1IsCollective.shtml
