Tuesday, February 23, 2016

WHY ISRAELI RULE OF GOLAN IS LAWFUL -- AND WISE


By Peter Berkowitz
February 19, 2016
For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/hh8tkxq

TEL AVIV—In exercising its right of self-defense in the Six Day War, Israel seized from Syria the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau that looms over northeastern Israel, rising sharply from the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee to a height of more than 3,000 feet. Since June 1967 a powerful consensus has prevailed in the international community, including the United States, that the Golan is occupied territory.

The Syrian civil war, which has been raging for almost five years, has done little to disturb the consensus. But the chaos in Syria has weighty legal and political ramifications that should impel the international community to revise its understanding of the Golan’s status.

Modern Syria, which was born in 1946, has ceased to exist. Bashar al-Assad—who hails from the minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia Islam—retains the title of president of Syria though he now controls less than 25 percent of his former country. Despite recent advances by government troops, the Islamic State and other Sunni Islamists continue to dominate much of the territory Assad once governed.

Assad’s quest to retain power has produced carnage of epic proportions. When the dictator moved to crush the anti-regime, pro-democracy protests that broke out in Syria in early 2011, the country’s population numbered approximately 22 million. Since then violence has taken at least 250,000 lives, with more recent reports putting the figure significantly higher. Between 1 million and 1.5 million people have been wounded. More than 5 million refugees have fled to neighboring countries and to Europe. The Economist estimated in September 2015 that an additional 7 million people have been forced from their homes but remain within Syria’s official borders. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes that more than 13 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Few informed observers think that a functioning nation-state can be reconstructed out of the warring Alawite, Shia, Sunni, Kurd, and Druze factions into which Syria has collapsed. The termination, shortly after they began in early February, of peace talks in Geneva suggests that much blood is still to be spilled.

Foreign funds and fighters sustain the killing. With much of the Syrian army having crumbled, Assad is propped up by Shiite Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon; the newly cash-flush Iranians who are pocketing $100 billion or more as a result of the U.S.-brokered deal over their nuclear program; and the Russians, whose air power has inflicted punishing blows on Assad’s enemies. Saudi Arabia continues to support Sunni rebels.

In these dramatically transformed circumstances, Israel has the strongest legal claim to the Golan Heights. Its political claim is stronger still.

Until the Six Day War, Syria used a heavily fortified Golan as a platform to fire at Israeli villages below. Damascus also permitted the Palestinian Liberation Organization to use the Golan as a staging ground for terrorism. In the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, Israel offered to negotiate the status of all the territories it had seized—which included the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Syria, along with Israel’s other Arab neighbors, emphatically rejected the offer.
  
It addition to approximately 20,000 Jewish Israelis, the Golan is home to about 20,000 Druze, who speak Arabic and practice their own distinctive religion. The Golan Druze reside in four towns in the northernmost part of the territory. Unlike the Druze living in the Galilee region of pre-1967 Israel who are citizens and serve in the army, the vast majority of Golan Druze declined Israeli citizenship. Since the Syrian civil war, however, they increasingly view life in Israel as preferable to the alternatives. Today it is rare to see a picture of Assad in a Golan Druze restaurant or store, although they still hang in private homes.

At a restaurant on the edge of the town of Majdal Shams, which lies at the foot of the snow-capped Mount Hermon, a veteran Golan Druze tour guide explained to me that there were two main reasons for his community’s historic support for Assad. First, the president of Syria has provided protection for Syrian Druze against Islamic State jihadists, who see the Druze as infidels. Also, the Golan Druze fear that should Israel strike a deal with Syria, Assad would punish them. He noted, however, that younger Druze are increasingly open in their preference for Israel.

He also stressed that his people generally regard the question of who should rule the Golan as a matter for Syria and Israel to decide. And then, with a shining smile, my Druze companion—who was already in his mid-twenties when Israel took the Golan in 1967 and so has living memories of life under Syrian authority—added that he was quite confident that there is not another group in Israel, including the Jews, who have life as good under the Israeli government as do the Golan Druze.

Meanwhile, Israelis across the political spectrum realize that had a return of the Golan been negotiated, Islamic State jihadists would now control the plateau. The Golan Heights, moreover, does not raise the difficult questions for Israelis posed by the West Bank and its restive population of approximately 2.8 million Palestinians, because the Golan Druze are a small community pleased with their condition and entitled by law to full Israeli citizenship.
   
Following World War II, international law prohibited the acquisition of territory by force, even in the case of a defensive war. The general tendency is to preserve existing boundaries.

What happens, however, when the party with the claim favored by international law disintegrates? The precedents are few and ambiguous. However, James Crawford’s authoritative work, “Brownlie's Principles of Public International Law,” 8th edition, declares that “title prevails over possession, but if title is equivocal, possession under claim of right matters.” Syria’s disintegration renders title over the Golan equivocal.

Israel’s territorial claim arises in part from the principle of “effective occupation,” which provides that territory can be acquired through the exercise of sovereign power on a peaceful and extended basis. Israeli law has applied to the Golan for almost 35 years and Israel has exercised authority in a manner that suits all the residents of the territory.

Moreover, public international law favors stability, order, and peace; it aims to avoid resolutions that expose individuals to death or injury. Accordingly, it should prefer Israeli sovereignty over the Golan to the grim alternatives for the Golan Druze: the tyrannical rule of Shiite Islamist Iran’s puppet Assad, or the tyrannical rule of Islamic State Sunnis.

The international consensus that the Golan belongs to Syria no longer fits the facts and the law. Nor does it coincide with America’s interest in checking the spread of Islamist violence throughout the Middle East and in bolstering a democratic ally. At the first opportunity—unlikely to come before the next president’s inauguration in January 2017—the United States should affirm Israel’s lawful and just exercise of sovereignty over the Golan Heights and urge the international community, particularly U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East, to do the same.

Peter Berkowitz, a member of the board of the National Association of Scholars, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Video of the week: Israeli and Syrian Call for Safe Zone -  http://tinyurl.com/j528z2v


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Thursday, February 18, 2016

"What do we really know about Israel"

This week we have a totally different “Article of the week”.  Test your knowledge and enjoy this delightful quiz

It's an online quiz checking how much we all actually know about Israel: See below.


It comes from a study done by Brandeis University called the Israel Literacy Measurement Project demonstrating that most US college students really know nothing at all about Israel.

Video of the week: Alan Dershowitz Addresses Israel-haters http://tinyurl.com/zeyhe6f


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Thursday, February 11, 2016

ISRAEL'S ARABS: A TALE OF BETRAYAL

                    
By Khaled Abu Toameh, 11-02-2016
For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/z8eynab

During the past two decades, some of the Israeli Arab community's elected representatives and leaders have worked harder for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip than for their own Israeli constituents.

These parliamentarians ran in elections on the promise of working to improve the living conditions of Israeli Arabs and achieving full equality in all fields. However, they devote precious time and energy on Palestinians who are not citizens of Israel. They vie for the distinction of being the most vitriolic provocateur against their country.

Such provocations make it more difficult for Arab university graduates to find jobs in both the Israeli private and public sectors.

The big losers are the Arab citizens of Israel, who have once again been reminded that their elected representatives care far more about non-Israeli Palestinians than they care about them.

The uproar surrounding a recent meeting held by three Israeli Arab Members of Knesset (parliament) with families of Palestinians who carried out attacks against Israelis is not only about the betrayal of their country, Israel. It is also about the betrayal of their own constituents: the 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel.

Knesset members Haneen Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalka managed to accomplish several things at once with this controversial meeting. They certainly seem to have provoked the ire of many Jewish Israelis. Perhaps they violated the oath they made when they were sworn into parliament: "I pledge to bear allegiance to the State of Israel and faithfully to discharge my mandate in the Knesset."

One thing, however, they have accomplished without question is acting against the interests of Israeli Arabs.

Zoabi, Ghattas and Zahalka met with Palestinian families who are not Israeli citizens and do not vote for the Knesset. As such, none of these families voted for the three Knesset members or the Arab List party to which they belong. Of course, as part of a democratic government, any member of the Knesset is free to meet with any Palestinian from the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Jerusalem.

It is worth noting that not all Arab Knesset members are involved in fiery rhetoric and provocative actions against Israel. However, there is good reason to believe that some Arab Knesset members deliberately engage in actions and rhetoric with the sole purpose of enraging not only the Israeli establishment, but also the Jewish public.

This meeting was the latest in a series of actions by Arab Knesset members that have severely damaged relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel. Such actions have one clear result: colossal injury to Arab citizens' efforts for full equality.

During the past two decades, some of the Arab community's representatives and leaders have worked harder for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip than for their own Israeli constituents.

These parliamentarians ran in elections on the promise of working to improve the living conditions of Israeli Arab voters and achieving full equality in all fields. However, they devote precious time and energy on Palestinians who are not citizens of Israel. 
Their spare moments are spent vying for the distinction of being the most vitriolic provocateur against their country.

Instead of acting against the interests of the Palestinians -- by pretending they were sitting in a Palestinian parliament and not the Knesset -- there are alternative scenarios. These Arab Knesset members could be serving as a bridge between Israel and Palestinians living under the jurisdiction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Decisions such as the one to join a flotilla "aid" ship to the Gaza Strip -- which was more a poke in Israel's eye than any attempt to help Palestinians -- turn the Jewish public against the Israeli Arab public, who are then viewed as a "fifth column" and an "enemy from within."

Such provocations make it more difficult for Arab university graduates to find jobs in both the Israeli private and public sectors. The deeds and rhetoric of these Knesset members have ensured a continuing gap between Arabs and Jews inside Israel.

Thanks to some Arab Knesset members, many Jews no longer see a difference between an Arab citizen who is loyal to Israel and a radical Palestinian from the Gaza Strip or West Bank who seeks to destroy Israel.

Of course, Arab Knesset members have the right to criticize the policies and actions of the Israeli government. But such criticism ought to be leveled from the Knesset podium and not from Ramallah, Gaza or on board a ship carrying a load of Israel-haters and activists.

Just to be clear: this is not a call for banning Arab Knesset members from meeting with their Palestinian brethren from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. Rather, this is a call for Knesset members to consider carefully their aims and the tone in which they are carried out.

The recent meeting in question began with a moment of silence for specific dead -- that is, the Palestinian attackers who murdered and wounded several people. Jewish Israelis are likely to have particular feelings about this choice of opening.

Things could have been different. Arab Knesset members could have used the meeting to issue a call for an end to the current wave of stabbing, vehicular and shooting attacks, which began in October 2015. They could have demanded that Palestinian leaders, factions and media outlets cease brainwashing young men and women, and cease urging them to murder Jews -- any Jews.

The Palestinian families who met with the three Arab Knesset members have nothing to lose. Nor do the other Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For them, these Knesset members are probably doing a better job representing them than the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

The big losers are the Arab citizens of Israel, who have once again been reminded that their elected representatives care far more about non-Israeli Palestinians than they care about them.

Thus far, only a handful of Arab Israeli voices have had the courage to criticize their representatives in the Knesset. Yet it is precisely these citizens who need to punish their failed Knesset members, not the Israeli government or any parliamentary committee or court. The power is certainly in their hands.

If the Israeli Arab majority continues to waffle, allowing its leaders free reign, Arab Knesset members will lead their people only to nothing.

Video of the week: POWERFUL WORDS FROM ISRAELI-ARAB REPORTER http://tinyurl.com/hdd8rta  



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