Official emblem for the International Anti-Apartheid Year. The UN General Assembly in resolution 32/105 B, adopted on 14 December 1977, proclaimed the year begining on 21 March 1978 as the International Anti-Apartheid Year. 1/Jan/1978. UN Photo. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/ |
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/10/the-anti-balfour-declaration.htmlJul 10, 2012
Wonder what it feels like to have
inadvertently put yourself between a rock and a hard place? Just ask
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Monday the Levy Committee, which
he appointed last January, issued its report that was supposed to
examine the question of Israeli “state lands” in the occupied
Palestinian territories, but has far exceeded its mandate. The most
significant aspect of the report is its blunt assertion that Israel is
not “the occupying power” in the occupied territories. Its consequent
outrageous legal recommendations all reflect that logic; it recommends
that all Israeli settlements, including “unauthorized” outposts built
on private Palestinian land, and every promise ever made by any official
to any settlers, should be formalized.
Here’s
Netanyahu’s quandary: Israel either is, or is not, occupying the
occupied territories–and the report could well force him to take a
clearer stand on that issue. If he accepts its recommendations in full,
even if they are not fully implemented, he will in effect be accepting
the notion that there is no occupation in the occupied territories. This
would reflect rhetoric from his own Foreign Ministry,
particularly Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, not to mention many
Israeli policies that have treated the occupied territories as part of
the Israeli state when convenient to its purposes.
When systematic ethnic discrimination is intended to be maintained
rather than temporary, it is is a crime under international law...READ MORE
However,
Netanyahu can’t make the decision solely based on Israel's policies,
because they do not reflect a clear view of the territories' legal
status. In fact, many policies have carefully fudged the question and
cultivated an atmosphere of ambiguity about the occupation. A large
body of Israeli laws, court rulings, policies and, above all, treaties
(including those with Egypt, Jordan and the PLO) all either explicitly
or implicitly recognize the territories as occupied. So, of course,
does a veritable mountain of international law including UN Security
Council resolutions and the ruling of the International Court of Justice on Israel's West Bank separation barrier.
And, as David Kretzmer, a noted Israeli legal scholar, observed,
"If Israel is not an occupying force, it must immediately relinquish
ownership of all private lands seized over the years for military use,
taken with authority as the occupying force in an occupied territory,
and restore the lands to previous owners.”
Finally, there is the obvious corollary to any formal acceptance that
the occupied territories are not, in fact, occupied: that Israel views
them as de facto and de jurepart of its state. Full acceptance of the recommendations of the report would amount to announcing the de facto annexation
of the occupied territories. That, too, has its own obvious corollary:
Israel is already neither demographically Jewish nor democratic in
character. Rather than administering a temporary occupation, it is
presiding over a separate and unequal system that discriminates between
Jews and Arabs in huge parts of its territory.
In
this sense, the report might be seen as an anti-Balfour Declaration: a
political statement, which, if implemented as written, would ensure
that Israel can no longer continue in a meaningful sense to be a
“Jewish state,” except by systematic ethnic discrimination against
large parts of its population.
There's a word for such a system: Apartheid. Only by distinguishing
between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel proper can
Israel sustain its objections to any application of this term to its
polity. Accepting the Levy Committee's report would, in effect,
dissolve any such distinction and render Israel practically defenseless
against the indictment that it is an apartheid state. The long-term
legal, political and diplomatic ramifications for Israel are
incalculable.
*BALFOUR DECLARATION (dated 2 November 1917) His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the
civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine
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