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What are the 'necessaries' for a lasting peace agreement?
By Charley Reese
Commentary
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on July 30, 2000
Israel and President Clinton bear full responsibility for the failure of the
Middle East peace talks.
I
srael deserves blame because it refuses to obey international law. And Clinton
deserves blame because he acted as though he was a member of the Israeli
negotiating team.
Many people may be surprised to know that the Palestinians have international
law entirely on their side. Israel has no legal claim to East Jerusalem and the
West Bank whatsoever. Actually, Israel has no legal claim to West Jerusalem,
but the Palestinians have already conceded that along with 68 percent of their
country.
The United Nations Security Council resolutions call on Israel to return the
lands it captured in the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem. The U.N. Security
Council, with the concurrence of President Jimmy Carter's administration,
declared Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem to be null and void.
Carter was successful at his Camp David summit because he had the intestinal
fortitude to pressure the Israelis to return all of the Egyptian territory they
had captured. Clinton was a failure because he tried to browbeat the
Palestinians into giving away even more of their own land.
To understand this stuff, it's essential to know the history. First, Jerusalem
has not been the capital of Israel for 3,000 years as many now proclaim. There
hasn't been an independent Jewish state in Palestine for anywhere close to that
long. The last independent Jewish entity in Palestine ended in 63 B.C. when the
Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem. And Jerusalem, by the way, was in
existence long before King David captured it in 1000 B.C. Nor did Jews
continuously rule the area up to the Roman conquest. They were conquered for
various periods by the larger powers in the area. The Encyclopedia Britannica
is a good source for a history of Jerusalem and Palestine.
>From 63 B.C. to 1948 A.D., there was no independent Jewish state in Palestine.
The country and Jerusalem were under a succession of rulers -- Roman,
Byzantine, Arab, Turkish and British. And some of those rulers reigned for
several centuries.
In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution dividing Palestine into
Jewish and Arab areas. Jerusalem was set aside for international
administration. After Israelis did what they deny the Palestinians have a right
to do -- unilaterally proclaim themselves an independent state -- there was
war. The Israelis expanded the territory originally assigned to them, including
West Jerusalem, and at the same time created the first wave of Palestinian
refugees. A good account of this period can be found in Bitter Harvest, 4th
edition, by Sami Hadawi, a Palestinian scholar.
The formula for peace is simple. One, Israel must return the West Bank, Gaza
and East Jerusalem and recognize Palestinian sovereignty over those areas. Two,
it must acknowledge responsibility for the refugees and make some arrangement
for compensation or return. That's the Palestinian bottom line. That's what the
United Nations says must happen, and Israel continues to say no. Politicians
can try to disguise these basic facts, but nevertheless those are the
"necessaries" for a peace agreement that would have any chance of lasting.
Alas, the Palestinians have had history and international law on their side
while the Israelis have had a huge army and the American government on their
side. But what's right doesn't seem to matter because force still trumps words
on paper.
The talks failed because Clinton had the nerve to think that he could create a
legacy for his failed presidency by trampling on the Palestinians.
[Posted 07/29/2000 5:28 PM EST]
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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