This spells it out pretty clearly. As I posted months ago, Israel is
engaged in a creeping absorption of the West Bank which is largely
in place as facts on the ground. The next passive step would be to
simply advance the legal framework and tax framework to cover the
whole region. This article also calls for perhaps a more dramatic
annexation that ends the charade once and for all.
I personally thought the prospect of a fully populated and
geographically intact state of Israel as implausible forty years ago,
but it is already now in the end game state pretty well waiting for
the Arabs to provide a final excuse to consolidate the facts on the
ground.
It is also noteworthy that no bordering state is presently in a
position to mount an attempted intervention with military power. In
fact, Syria is now devolving into a failed State and will likely be
crippled for years. Jordan will likely go the same way the moment
that the ruling family gives it up as will Saudi Arabia. This makes
military adventurism very unattractive. Egypt is presently
attempting to create a new executive branch which the military
intends to ignore while doing their own thing.
The harsh reality that is sinking in in the Middle East is that in
order to have a strong military, you have to have a strong modern
economy and this has been so alien to their world, that they still
fail to address it. Thus the disintegration of Arab dictatorships
has brought about the emasculation of the faux Arab Armies who are
all now slaved to the Western supply tail. With civilian governments
setting up shop and the lack of foreign exchange now or pending, it
will become vastly more difficult to coddle Arab armies.
In fact, the stage is now set to develop allied buffer States who
rely on Israel's military umbrella as an effective defensive
strategy. The existence of Israel's economic engine makes it all
plausible.
Annexation Wins Hands Down over a Two-State Solution
Posted by Matthew
M. Hausman Bio ↓ on Jul 6th, 2012
from
IsraelNationalNews.com.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-m-hausman/annexation-wins-hands-down-over-a-two-state-solution/
It has become an
article of political faith in the West that the creation of an
independent Palestinian state will resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But the two-state paradigm is based on fictional assumptions –
that an ancient Palestinian people occupied the land for thousands of
years until its displacement by Israel, that the conflict is driven
by this displacement, and that Israel usurped ancestral Arab soil.
These false premises
are used to obscure the true nature of the conflict, which is not
really a dispute between Israelis and Palestinians over real estate,
but rather is a war of annihilation being waged by the entire
Arab-Muslim world. The establishment of an independent Palestine will
not facilitate peace because the goal of this war is Israel’s
demise.
A more rational
resolution, and one that makes historical, legal and demographic
sense, would be for Israel to annex some or all of Judea, Samaria and
other areas that were part of the ancient Jewish commonwealth, which
was the only sovereign nation ever to exist between the Jordan and
the Mediterranean.
The
western media relegates any discussion of annexation to the lunatic
fringe, but there is nothing radical about the concept. Indeed, the
San Remo Conference of 1920 and the League of Nations Mandate for
Palestine of 1922 originally contemplated Jewish settlement
throughout the traditional homeland, well before the term
“Palestinian” entered common usage after 1967 as a dissimulative
weapon in the propaganda war against the Jewish state.
After Transjordan was
created on the bulk of Mandate lands under British control, the goal
for the remainder was unrestricted Jewish habitation west of the
Jordan River. This objective was recognized long before the dialogue
was hijacked by the myth of Palestine, a nation that never existed,
and by the canard that Judea and Samaria were historically Arab
lands. No amount of subterfuge can change the fact that Palestinian
nationalism is an artificial construct or that Judea and Samaria were
never lawfully part of any sovereign Arab nation.
Ironically,
commentators who condemn any discussion of annexation as right-wing
extremism conveniently ignore the singular role of Arab-Muslim
rejectionism in perpetuating the state of war with Israel. The
liberal media portrays the Palestinian Authority as moderate despite
a charter that plainly calls for Israel’s destruction and
regardless of its reconciliation with Hamas, whose own charter
screams for jihad and genocide.
The Obama
administration and European Union remain deaf, dumb and blind to
Palestinian prevarications and incitement, even as they chastise
Israel for not offering ever more unilateral concessions. Arab
provocations are ignored or rewarded, while Israel is labeled
obstructionist, despite the unrequited compromises she has made in
the naive search for peace with those who seek her destruction.
Examples of this
inequitable treatment abound. Israel facilitated Palestinian
autonomy in much of Judea and Samaria, permitted the PA to arm
itself, and fueled a local economy that provides the highest standard
of living in the Arab world, and yet she is accused of
discrimination and economic suppression.
She has afforded her
Arab citizens the same political rights, economic opportunities and
freedom of movement as Israeli Jews (indeed, many live in West
Jerusalem and serve in the Knesset), but stands accused of apartheid.
She compromised her
own security by unilaterally disengaging from Gaza, and yet remains
the target of rancorous attacks from a delusional left-wing that
persists in portraying Gaza as occupied.
She takes great pains
to prevent or minimize civilian casualties when engaging in defensive
military actions, only to be wrongfully accused of targeting
noncombatants.
In contrast, the
Palestinians are barely reprimanded as they reject Israel’s right
to exist as a Jewish state and continue to engage in systematic
incitement and terrorism against Jewish men, women and children.
Moreover, Palestinian national claims are validated uncritically in
the West – even though there was no Palestinian nation at the time
of Israel’s independence and although there was no demand for
Palestinian statehood when Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan occupied
Judea and Samaria from 1948 to 1967.
If the Palestinians
were truly a displaced, indigenous people, they presumably would have
demanded statehood when the Arab powers who today claim only to
support their cause actually controlled the territories to which they
now claim historical title.
If these inequities
show anything at all, it is that those who push the two-state agenda
have no regard for Israeli sovereignty or Jewish historical rights.
Rather, they are preoccupied with creating yet another Arab-Muslim
state and in promoting the false narrative underlying Palestinian
national claims.
Absent any historical
justification for a state of Palestine, such blind advocacy can only
be explained by hatred for Israel and the growing tolerance of
western progressive culture for political antisemitism and the
devaluation of Jewish claims. Indeed, delegitimization of Israel has
become de rigueur in liberal intellectual society, which provides
safe harbor for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (“BDS”) and
anti-Israel “lawfare” movements.
Given the disregard
for Jewish sovereignty that lies at the heart of American and
European efforts to impose a two-state solution, it is clear that
Israel is at a crossroads: Either she can continue participating in a
farcical “peace process” that is heavily weighted against her
national interests, or she can proactively seize the day and craft a
solution that makes sense historically, geographically and legally.
If the inclination of
the Obama administration and EU to denigrate Israel, favor the
Palestinians, and appease Arab-Muslim sensibilities is any
indication, Israel must act on the latter impulse. That is, she needs
to reclaim Judea and Samaria as ancestral Jewish lands and shake off
all vestiges of the societal ambivalence that was engendered by the
Israeli left when it cajoled the nation into the ill-fated Oslo
process, which led only to increased terrorism and diplomatic
isolation, two costly wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and the
disenfranchisement of Israel’s political center.
The Annexation of
Judea and Samaria Makes Historical Sense
Israel has valid
historical claims to Judea and Samaria because they were part of the
Second Jewish Commonwealth. Jews lived there from ancient times
through successive conquests, the Ottoman occupation, and the British
Mandatory period until 1948, when they were attacked and expelled by
combined Arab-Muslim forces that invaded from east of the Jordan.
These lands were
conquered by Transjordan (thereafter called Jordan) and dubbed the
“West Bank,” in much the same way that ancient Judea was renamed
“Palestine” by the Romans in order to obscure the Jews’
connection to their ancestral land by invoking the name of the
ancient Philistines – a people who had long since been swallowed by
the sands of time. Jordan’s conquest of these territories violated
international law and was recognized only by Great Britain and
Pakistan, and its subsequent occupation could never be legitimized
under established legal principles.
Despite Jordanian
attempts to erase all memory of the Jews’ presence from Judea and
Samaria, the ancient provenance of these lands is evidenced by the
treasure-trove of Jewish holy sites they contain, including, Joseph’s
Tomb in Nablus, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, and Ramat
Rachel near Bethlehem.
The pedigree of the
land is also reflected by the numerous Arabic place names that are
merely etymological renderings of the original Hebrew, which names
evidence Jewish habitation dating from Biblical times. These towns
include: Batir, which corresponds to Beitar, the seat of Bar Kochba’s
rebellion against Rome from 132 to 135 CE; Beit-Hur, an Arabic
corruption of the name Beit Horon, where the Maccabees defeated the
Assyrian Greeks; Beitin, corresponding to the town of Beit El, where
the Prophet Shmuel held court and the Ark of the Covenant was kept
before the Temple was built; and Tequa, the site of ancient Tekoa,
where the Prophet Amos was born and received his prophesy.
Clearly, the Judenrein
status of Judea and Samaria after 1948 did not reflect historical
reality, but rather the slanted surreality created when the combined
Arab-Muslim armies attempted to annihilate Israel and exterminate her
people following the ill-fated U.N. partition vote. Considering that
only the Jews had a continuous presence dating back to antiquity, it
was clearly the Arab population that usurped traditional Jewish
lands, not the other way around.
The Arab-Muslim world,
aided and abetted by the political left, rationalizes this usurpation
of Jewish lands with propaganda grounded in taqiyya –
religiously-mandated dissimulation – to promote the lie that there
was no Jewish presence in these lands before 1967 and that all
subsequent Jewish “settlements” are colonial enterprises.
Israel has Superior
Legal Claims to Judea and Samaria
In addition to the
Jews’ historical connection to Judea and Samaria, Israel’s claim
to these lands is consistent with established legal precedent as
recognized by the San Remo Convention of 1920. Regarding the lands
liberated from Ottoman rule during the First World War, the San Remo
Resolution resolved as follows:
The High Contracting
Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article
22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be
determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be
selected by the said Powers.
The Mandatory will be
responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made
on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the
other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that
nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights
and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
(San Remo Convention
Resolution, Paragraph (b).)
Underlying the San
Remo Resolution’s affirmation of the Balfour Declaration was the
recognition that the Jews are defined by descent as well as religion,
are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and are possessed of the
inalienable right to political and national ascendancy in their
homeland.
The San Remo program
was ratified by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922,
the preamble of which included the following passages:
Whereas the Principal
Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be
responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made
on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty,
and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly
understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the
civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country; and
Whereas recognition
has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish
people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their
national home in that country…
Consistent with this
language, Article 2 of the Mandate clearly set forth the British
obligation to effectuate these goals in accordance with the San Remo
Resolution thus:
The Mandatory shall be
responsible for placing the country under such political,
administrative and economic conditions as will secure the
establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the
preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and
also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the
inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
(League of Nations
Mandate for Palestine, Article 2.)
Regarding the intended
geographical scope of Jewish habitation and settlement, the Mandate
specifically provided that:
The Administration of
Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other
sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate
Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in
cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close
settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands
not required for public purposes.
(League of Nations
Mandate for Palestine, Article 6.)
The Mandate did not
call for a Jewish state with indefensible borders (as did President
Obama when he attempted in his recent State Department Speech to
pressure Israel to accept the 1949 armistice lines as permanent
boundaries). Rather, by recognizing the Jewish right of “close
settlement,” the Mandate contemplated a Jewish state that would
incorporate some or all of Judea and Samaria – and for that matter
Gaza. Indeed, the Mandate specifically recognized the Jews’
connection to their entire homeland, which historically included
these territories.
Certainly, there was
international consensus that the Jews were entitled by right to a
national home in Israel. Jewish rights under the Palestine Mandate
were not recognized in a vacuum, and Arab self-determination was
addressed by the establishment of the French Mandate in Lebanon and
Syria and the British Mandate in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Transjordan.
There was no separate
mandate for the “Palestinians” because they had no independent
national existence, as evidenced by the lack of any historical record
of an ancient Palestinian presence in the land and by the absence of
any cultural or societal institutions that are the hallmarks of
nationhood.
Palestinian
nationality is a knowing contrivance, as even Yasser Arafat
acknowledged in his authorized biography, wherein he stated:
“The Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.”
Or, in the words of the late Zahir Muhse’in, who said:
The Palestinian people
does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means
for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. For our Arab
unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians,
Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical
reasons do we speak today about the existence of Palestinian people,
since Arab national interest demand that we posit the existence of a
distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.
In contrast, both San
Remo and the Mandate for Palestine evidenced universal recognition of
the Jews’ historical rights in their homeland.
This recognition of
Jewish national rights was ratified by the United States on June 30,
1922, when both Houses of Congress issued a joint resolution
unanimously endorsing the Mandate and the goal of reestablishing the
Jewish national home. The Congressional resolution stated in relevant
part:
Resolved by the Senate
and House of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,
it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should
prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and
religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately
protected.
(Joint Congressional
Resolution No. 360, the Lodge-Fish Resolution.)
Despite the Jews’
willingness to accept an area comprising less than their traditional
homeland, the Arab world refused to accept any expression of Jewish
sovereignty and scorned all proposals providing for a modern Jewish
state. The U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 was rejected by every
Arab-Muslim nation simply because it provided for Jewish autonomy.
There was no consideration of Palestinian claims because Palestinian
nationality had not yet been invented. In fact, the Arabs altogether
rejected the term “Palestine” to describe lands under mandatory
control because, as stated by Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi to the Peel
Commission in 1937:
“There is no such
country [as Palestine]. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists
invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for
centuries part of Syria.” This was the prevailing Arab view at the
time.
In light of the
resounding Arab-Muslim rejection of the 1947 partition plan, it
cannot be relied on as legal precedent to validate Palestinian claims
to Judea and Samaria, or for that matter to Jerusalem or Gaza.
Moreover, Israel’s right of ownership cannot be impugned simply
because she came into modern possession of these lands during
wartime. Under internationally recognized legal principles, the
seizure of land from belligerent nations during wartime gives rise to
legitimate and lawful ownership.
In weighing the
lawfulness of land acquisitions during wartime, it is important to
distinguish belligerent nations from their victims. The laws of war
have long recognized that a country that seizes territory while
defending itself from unprovoked aggression has legitimate claims of
ownership to lands captured from the aggressor nation. There is no
dispute that the Arab nations started the wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973
with the expressed goal of destroying Israel and committing genocide.
There is likewise no
dispute that in attacking Israel these nations violated Article 2,
Section 4 of the U.N. Charter, which provides: “All Members shall
refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence of
any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of
the United Nations.” Consequently, Israel was acting within her
legal rights when she captured Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Golan,
Sinai, and Gaza during the Six-Day War.
Just as relevant is
the fact that Judea and Samaria were never part of a sovereign nation
at any time after the Roman conquest, but rather constituted
unincorporated territories that ultimately were occupied by Jordan in
derogation of international law. Furthermore, substantial portions of
both had been designated under the Mandate for inclusion in the
Jewish state. Thus, when Israel took control of these lands in
1967, she was not only liberating them from the illegal occupation of
a belligerent nation that had attacked her without provocation, but
was in fact enforcing Jewish national rights recognized under the
Mandate. Israel’s stewardship of Judea and Samaria is therefore
legally defensible. Despite disingenuous attempts by the U.N. to
render Israel’s actions unlawful by the passage of ridiculously
unbalanced resolutions ex post facto, Israel has legitimate grounds
under recognized legal principles to support the annexation of Judea
and Samaria and the expansion of so-called settlements.
Security Council
Resolution 242 does not Require Israel to Surrender Judea and Samaria
Although U.N. Security
Council Resolution 242 is often invoked to demand that Israel
withdraw and accept borders based on the 1949 armistice lines, it
actually says nothing of the kind. Resolution 242 specifically
recognizes that Israel was attacked by Jordan, Egypt and Syria in
1967, and Resolution 242 specifically recognizes that Israel was
attacked by Jordan, Egypt and Syria in 1967, and calls on the parties
to that conflict to negotiate a “just and lasting peace” based on
“secure and recognized borders.” Implicit in this language is the
recognition that Israel’s capture of Judea and Samaria, and also
Golan, Gaza and Sinai, was legal under international law. If it were
not, the resolution simply would have demanded that Israel return all
lands captured from her attackers. That is, there would be nothing to
negotiate and no imperative for deviating from the 1949 armistice
demarcations known as the “Green Line.” It is significant that
Resolution 242 does not characterize the Green Line as permanent.
Perhaps even more
significantly, nowhere does Resolution 242 require Israel to withdraw
from “all” of “the” territories captured from Jordan, Egypt
and Syria. As was explained by the late Eugene Rostow, a former U.S.
Undersecretary of State who participated in the drafting of
Resolution 242, the exclusion of the adjective “all” and the
definite article “the” was intentional and indicative of the
essential meaning.
Resolution 242, which
as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and
1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows
Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until ‘a
just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ is achieved. When such a
peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces ‘from
territories’ it occupied during the Six-Day War – not from ‘the’
territories nor from ‘all’ the territories, but from some of the
territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the
Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
. . .
Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from ‘all’ the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the ‘fragile’ and ‘vulnerable’ Armistice Demarcation Lines [‘Green Line’], but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called ‘secure and recognized’ boundaries …
. . .
Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from ‘all’ the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the ‘fragile’ and ‘vulnerable’ Armistice Demarcation Lines [‘Green Line’], but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called ‘secure and recognized’ boundaries …
(“The Future of
Palestine,” Rostow, Eugene V., Institute for National Strategic
Studies, November 1993.)
Furthermore, the black
letter of Resolution 242 applies only to incorporated “states,”
not to amorphous groups of people known as “Palestinians,” who
did not constitute a state involved in the conflict and who, thus,
were not mentioned in the resolution. Although Resolution 242 does
mention the issue of refugees, the term as used therein refers to
individual Jews and Arabs who lost their homes during the war in
1948, not to a displaced Palestinian nationality that never existed.
The Palestinians as a group had no national interest in the land; and
to the extent that Jordan conveyed to the Palestinians its interest
in Judea and Samaria as part of the Oslo process, it must be
remembered that Jordan never possessed lawful title in the first
place.
Demographic Reality Favors Annexation
Nearly 60% of Judea
and Samaria rests within “Area C,” which has a Jewish population
exceeding 300,000 and is currently under Israeli control. (The Oslo
Accords established three administrative divisions, known as Areas A,
B and C.) In contrast, the Arab population there is calculated only
in the tens of thousands.
There are also more
than 200,000 Jews living in greater Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond
the Green Line. Consequently, despite Arab-Muslim and left-wing
propaganda warning of an Arab demographic time bomb, Jews actually
comprise the majority in the territories under Israeli control and
are not likely to be dispossessed. There is no doubt that these
territories were historically Jewish, and that the Arab-Muslim
population accrued largely through immigration during the late
Nineteenth Century and the British Mandatory period.
There is a two-thirds
Jewish majority when Israel and the territories she controls are
combined; and based on increasing Jewish and declining Arab
population trends, the Jewish majority is likely only to increase in
the future. Moreover, the Jewish population in Israel proper is
growing as well. As noted by demographer Bennett Zimmerman in a
Jerusalem Post interview back in 2007: “for the first time since
1967, Israel has a stable 2-1 Jewish majority . . . [and] a
two-thirds Jewish majority in Jerusalem.” The demographic
threat appears therefore to be nothing more than politically
motivated propaganda, particularly as it relies on conjecture,
surmise and doubtful census statistics that overstate the Palestinian
population by as much as half.
In addition, analysis
of the Arab population shows that it is not composed of a uniform
cultural group with common roots in the land. The population in
Gaza, for example, is largely Bedouin in origin with no
long-standing, sedentary history in the land. In contrast, the
population in Judea and Samaria was always more village- or
town-centered and is descended from immigrants from other parts of
Arab world and the former Ottoman Empire. Thus, the Palestinians do
not comprise a singular cultural stock, but rather reflect the
heterogeneous make-up of the wider Arab-Muslim world, which is home
to disparate and often clashing, religious, ethnic, and cultural
groups and minorities.
Indeed, the Arab world
is a diverse hodgepodge containing various ethnic groups, such as
Arabs, Copts, Kurds, Berbers, Turks, Maronites, Armenians, and
Circassians, as well as assorted religious groups, including Sunnis,
Shiites, Alawites, Christians and Zoroastrians. Though these groups
are often at odds, they have been forced together into modern states
that were arbitrarily created by the European mandatory powers. The
boundaries of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, for example, were
drawn to include ethnic and religious groups that have been enemies
for generations and who continue to persecute and slaughter one
another.
The European powers
never understood the ethnic and religious complexities of Mideast
society during the mandatory era, and today attempt to enforce a
dysfunctional dynamic on Israel without regard for the ethnic,
cultural and religious differences among those who now call
themselves Palestinians.
Considering the irreconcilable intricacies of Mideast culture, and the suspect motivations of the progressive west in attempting to force the creation of a Palestinian state, Israel would be better served by annexing those territories that are integral to her security and continuity as a Jewish state. That is the only reality that will insure her survival.
Considering the irreconcilable intricacies of Mideast culture, and the suspect motivations of the progressive west in attempting to force the creation of a Palestinian state, Israel would be better served by annexing those territories that are integral to her security and continuity as a Jewish state. That is the only reality that will insure her survival.
Formal or Passive
Annexation
Although the subject
of annexation was made taboo by the political left in Israel and
abroad, it has recently become an acceptable topic for discussion.
This should not be surprising because Israel has already annexed some
of the territory – i.e., Jerusalem and the Golan – that she
liberated while defending herself in a war started by Egypt, Jordan
and Syria. Jerusalem was formally annexed shortly after the 1967 War,
while the Golan was informally incorporated through the extension of
Israeli civil law there in 1981.
The concept of
incorporating land by either method, or a combination of the two, has
been the subject of growing interest – and not only from the
settler movement. Those favoring formal annexation believe it would
manifest the reality that Israel already controls those territories
that are necessary for her survival. Others advocate the formal
integration of Judea and Samaria and the extension of Israeli law to
the Jordan Valley. Still others advocate de facto annexation by the
extension of Israeli civil law throughout Judea and Samaria and the
institution of economic incentive programs to integrate the Israeli
and territorial economies.
Issues to be determined would include whether to provide Arab inhabitants of the territories with the opportunity for citizenship, grant them permanent resident status, or compensate them for moving elsewhere. However, given that the original intent of San Remo and the Mandate was to restore to the Jews their ancestral homeland, and that an Arab state in Jordan was created on three-quarters of the territory under the Mandate, Israel arguably has no legal or ethical obligation to extend any citizenship benefits, particularly to those who reject her right to exist as a Jewish state.
Regardless of the
methods to be employed, Israel certainly has valid historical and
legal claims to Judea and Samaria. How she chooses to express those
claims are matters to be determined by her and her alone. The
international community has shown that it has no intention of
supporting Israel’s historical rights or legal interests, but seeks
instead to force the creation of a Palestinian state at the expense
of those very rights and interests.
Therefore, Israel can
rely only on herself to craft a solution that makes legal, historical
and moral sense, and which assures her security and continuity as a
democratic, Jewish state.
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