JUDEA AND SAMARIA/ THE WEST BANK – WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? (PART 1)
Quite often, I find myself getting into online arguments with other bloggers and readers from around the world about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the so-called Israeli occupation of the “West Bank”. When taking part in such discussions, I always feel that my answers are inadequate and that such a loaded topic cannot be addressed in a short talk-back comment. One cannot simply erase years of misinformation, outright lies and an almost total lack of public diplomacy from the side of Israel on an issue such as the “West Bank” with one paragraph in someone else’s blog. I have been thinking of writing this post for quite a few months now and keep putting it off. It’s much easier to write about the excitement of election time or the chilling accounts of war in southern Israel. Writing a comprehensive explanation of what is perceived to be one of the core issues of the Israeli-Arab conflict is a lot more complicated and time consuming. Nevertheless, I owe it to my readers and to other bloggers who I get into arguments with to give a full explanation of why I don’t believe in the “Two State Solution” and why I support Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (The “West Bank”). This will take a lot of patience on both sides, mine and yours, because this will not be short. In fact, as I write these opening lines, I already expect this to be only part 1 in a series of seven posts. I don’t know how long it will take me to complete them. Other more interesting and more pressing news may pop up and distract me, but if I do get too sidetracked, please feel free to message me and remind me of my promise.
I have labeled Part 1 as “What’s it all about?”. In this section, I will give a general background of the recent history of Judea and Samaria (by “recent” I mean the past 100 years or so) and we’ll move on from there.
What is the West Bank?
The name “West Bank” refers to the western bank of the River Jordan from a Jordanian perspective. Jordan lies to the east of the River Jordan, but from 1948 to 1967, Jordan occupied what is now known as “The West Bank”, as opposed to the rest of Jordan which is the “East Bank”. Therefore, the term is not geographically exact. It is a politically loaded term. Geographically, the “West Bank” includes the west bank of the River Jordan, which is the Jordan Valley (the western part of it, of course) as well as the hills of Judea and Samaria.
Photo: Public Domain
The name “Judea” is derived from the name of the Israelite tribe of Judah, which lived in the region in biblical times. According to the Bible, the biblical Israelite Kingdom split into two kingdoms after the death of King Solomon. The kingdom of Judah included the tribes of Judah (in the hills of Judea), Benjamin (slightly to the north of Judah) and Shimon (to the south, in the northern Negev), as well as the tribe of Levi, which was dispersed throughout the land. The other tribes formed the kingdom of Israel. Present-day Jews are descendants of the four tribes that lived in the kingdom of Judea. The kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians, as described in the Book of Kings.
Photo: Wikimedia, Oldtidens_Israel_&_Judea.svg: FinnWikiNo, cc by sa
The whole region, which includes all of modern day Israel and Jordan, was renamed Palestine by the Roman Empire. After WWI, the British received the mandate for Palestine, after capturing it from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire (which is now modern-day Turkey). The British had promised in theBalfour declaration of 1917 to give the Jews, who were suffering from persecution in Europe and elsewhere, a “National Home” in Palestine.
- Photo: Public Domain
Photo: Public Domain
However, the British later handed most of the land to Abdullah of the Hashemite tribe from Saudi Arabia in return for his support during WWI, thus forming the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan. The remaining land was earmarked for the “Jewish Homeland”.
Photo: Wikimedia, Seblini, cc by sa
However, the Jews didn’t receive what little was left of the Palestine Mandate. After a series of Arab revolts, the British requested that the UN form a committee (UNSCOP- United Nations Special Committee on Palestine), which decided that the remaining land should be partitioned into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state. The plan was accepted by the UN General Assembly on November 29th1947 and became known as UN Resolution 181.
The Jews of Europe who had recently survived the Holocaust accepted the offer despite the small size of the state. They just wanted and needed a place to call their own. Although the Arabs wound up with the majority of the land, they refused this deal and launched a war against the Jews, in order to finish what Hitler had started.
Partition Plan of 1947. Photo: Public Domain.
The orange was to be an Arab state, while the turquoise was to be a Jewish state. Jerusalem was to be an internationally ruled city (in white).
The orange was to be an Arab state, while the turquoise was to be a Jewish state. Jerusalem was to be an internationally ruled city (in white).
When the British pulled out of Palestine in May 1948, the Jews declared independence. The Arabs declared all-out war on the newly founded Jewish State. Jordan quickly took over the central section of what had been earmarked for the Arab state. The Jewish leadership realized that the current borders would be impossible to defend and the newly formed IDF (Israel Defense Forces) succeeded in taking control of the Galilee in the north and the sands of Halutza in the south, as well as pushing the Jordanian army back eastward. When a cease fire was finally achieved in 1949, the cease fire lines were marked in green, forming what is known today as “the Green Line”.
Photo: Public Domain
The situation from 1949 to 1967 was that the “West Bank” (the Jordan Valley, Judea and Samaria) were occupied by Jordan. The Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt. Both countries sponsored terrorist attacks from their territories against Israel.
In 1967, Syria, Jordan and Egypt once again attempted to complete Hitler’s work and were once again defeated by Israel in the Six Day War. Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, part of the Golan Heights from Syria and the “West Bank” from Jordan.
Photo: Wikimedia, Raul654, cc by sa
A third attempt to destroy Israel was made by Syria and Egypt in 1973, when they launched a surprise attack at the height of the most holy Jewish holiday, the Yom Kippur fast. Syria succeeded in recapturing the Golan Heights but was eventually pushed back by the IDF even further than before. In Sinai, the Egyptians were repelled as well.
Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and returned the entire Sinai Peninsula. A peace treaty was signed with Jordan in 1994, under which Israel “leases” certain territories from Jordan for the long term. Israel also agreed to supply water to Jordan. The Jordanian border is the River Jordan, which connects the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret, in Hebrew) in the north and the Dead Sea in the south. Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip unilaterally in 2005, uprooting thousands of Jewish settlers who have not entirely been rehabilitated to this day, despite government promises. The Gaza Strip is now an independent Palestinian entity, ruled by the Palestinian terror organization, Hamas, which staged a military coup and took over the strip from the Palestinian Authority shortly after Israel left it. Israel does not allow access to the Gaza strip via sea and air routes, but it does allow supplies in and out of the strip via the land crossings. This is in order to stop weapons from entering the Gaza Strip. Egypt’s land border with Gaza is also open. There are also thousands of illegal tunnels running underneath the border with Egypt, used for smuggling weapons, people and other contraband.
Who is a Palestinian?
Until 1948, “Palestinian” was a word used to describe anyone living in “Palestine”, which included Jordan, as well as Israel. Approximately 80% of Jordan’s population is Palestinian, ruled by the minority Hashemite tribe. Until 1948, “Palestinian” was used to describe Jews as well as Arabs. Even after 1948, the word was used as a geographical term, rather than ethnic. Today, the word “Palestinian” is used to describe Arabs living in the region which used to be ruled by the British Mandate of Palestine. There are Palestinians living in Jordan, Israel, the “West Bank”, Gaza, as well as “refugees” in other neighboring countries, such as Lebanon and Syria. The use of a separate term to describe the Arabs of Palestine was designed to draw attention away from the big picture, and make the conflict look like a case of David and Goliath, in which big, bad Israel steals land from the small, helpless Palestinian people, which is supposedly unconnected to the big Arab nation which populates the entire Middle East.
Who is not a Palestinian?
Despite current narratives being circulated by leading figures in the Palestinian Authority, Jesus was not a Palestinian, at least not ethnically, although the Romans were already calling this corner of the Earth Palestine. He was a Jew. King David and Moses definitely were not Palestinians. The biblical Philistines were most certainly not Palestinians. They were a sea-going people originating in the vicinity of Crete. The modern day “Palestinians” bear no ethnic connection to any people living here more than a few hundred years ago. Modern Palestinians are descendants of Arab tribes which migrated here from the Arab Peninsula, from Syria and from Egypt during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
The obstacles to peace
Israel traded the Sinai Peninsula for peace with Egypt and withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, why doesn’t Israel achieve peace by leaving the ”West Bank”?
If it was as simple as that, there would have been peace years ago and I would have nothing to write about. But nothing is that simple. This is the question I will attempt to answer in the next six parts of this series.
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Egypt, Gaza, Golan Heights, History, Israeli-Arab conflict, Palestinian Authority, Syria, west bank
JUDEA AND SAMARIA- PART 5: AN ILLEGAL OCCUPATION OR A LAND DISPUTE?
In parts 1-4 I discussed Israel’s historical and religious connections to Judea and Samaria as well as security concerns which make Judea and Samaria strategically important to Israel’s continued existence. But all of that is irrelevant, you may claim, if Israel is illegally occupying these territories.
The prevalent view in the international community is that Israel illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, taking it away from the Palestinians during the 1967 Six Day War. This view draws support from a report written by Talya Sasson, a member of the extreme-Left party Meretz, written for PM Ariel Sharon in 2004, regarding the legal status of settlements in Judea and Samaria. Until recently, the Talya Sasson report was the only formal Israeli document expressing a legal opinion on the status of settlements in Judea and Samaria.
But there is another view, which I will discuss in this post and it is vitally important for Israel’s case. In 2012, PM Benjamin Netanyahu appointed a committee, headed by deputy chief justice, Edmund Levi, in order to investigate the legal status of settlements in Judea and Samaria and whether it is possible for settlements which are considered illegal to become legal. The other members of the committee were former Tel-Aviv district court judge Tchiya Shapira and former Israeli ambassador to Canada, Dr. Allen Baker. The committee handed in its report in 2012.
The report is 90 pages long and it opens with a discussion of the relevance of the question at hand: If Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is an illegal occupation, the question of the legal status of settlements in these territories is moot. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t be writing this post.
The Levi report discusses the international laws set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49, regarding the administration of civilian population in territories occupied during an armed conflict between two countries, in the period of time until the occupation ends or any other arrangement is reached.
However, Judea and Samaria were not taken from a country with a legitimate claim over them. They were taken from Jordan, an occupying power itself, which has since removed its own claim to these territories. Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria during Israel’s war of independence in 1948. Before that, the sovereign power there was Great Britain. The land had been offered to the Arabs living in the mandate of Palestine, as part of the UN Partition Plan, but the plan was never accepted by the Arabs, and therefore has no legal standing. Israel has its own legitimate claim to Judea and Samaria.
Section 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva convention states that:
The Levi report quotes the International Committee of the Red Cross’s interpretation of this (the ICRC is responsible for the implementation of the convention):
Prof. Eugene Rostow discusses the example of Judea and Samaria in the American Journal of International Law, vol. 84, 1990, p. 719:
Prof. Julius Stone writes (as quoted in the Levi report):
The Levi committee adopts the Rostow’s and Stone’s interpretation of Article 49(6).
The report then goes on to outline the legal history of the sovereignty over Judea and Samaria in order to prove that it is not, in fact, occupied land, and therefore regardless of what interpretation we accept of Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Article has no bearing on the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria:
Step 1- The Balfour Declaration:
On November 2nd, 1917, Lord James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, published a declaration in a letter sent to Lord Rothschild:
Lord Balfour. Photo: Public Domain.
The same commitment was expressed in the declaration of the San-Remo peace conference at the end of WWI, reinforcing the Balfour declaration:
The Levi report stresses that the San Remo declaration recognizes civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population in Palestine, but not their national rights [My own emphasis in the text].
Step 2- the Mandate for Palestine
The Mandate for Palestine. Photo: Public Domain.
At the end of WWI, the lands which were formally controlled by the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East were distributed between Britain and France as a “Mandate”. The Mandate for Palestine states:
The mandate was accepted in August 1922 by the League of Nations, thus anchoring the rights of the Jewish people to build its national home in the lands of the Mandate for Palestine, which included what is today Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Jordan.
Map of the Mandate for Palestine- includes “Palestine” and “Trans-Jordan”. Photo:BBC.co.uk
Step 3- Partition:
In November 1947, the UN voted to accept a plan, laid out by its own committee to partition the land west of the Jordan River (What is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza; the lands east of the Jordan were given to the country of Trans-Jordan in 1923) into two countries, a Jewish country and an Arab country. This plan was never carried out and therefore never took hold in international law, because the Arab countries rejected the partition plan and declared war in order to prevent it. The result of this war is that in the lands held by the Jews, a Jewish state was formed, Israel, while the lands captured by Jordan (Judea and Samaria) and Egypt (Gaza) were controlled by them.
The Partition Plan, which was never carried out. Photo: screenshot, youtube, Danny Ayalon
The armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan from 1949 clearly states that the armistice lines (also known as The GREEN LINE) shall in no way be considered to be the recognized international border between the countries. Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria in April 1950. The annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan was never accepted as legal. Israel captured Judea and Samaria in a defensive war in 1967 (the Six Day War) and in 1988 Jordan relinquished its claim to the area.
Therefore, the status of Judea and Samaria returned to its previous status, i.e. as land on which the Jewish people may reconstitute their national home, according to the Balfour declaration, the resolution made by the League of Nations and the Mandate.
Israel never saw itself as an occupying force in Judea and Samaria and therefore was not required to fulfill Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel, however, never formally annexed Judea and Samaria for political reasons, in order to allow future negotiations to settle the status of the lands.
Israel allowed Jews to settle freely within Judea and Samaria and therefore, even if Article 49(6) was relevant, it was not broken. The Levi report concludes, therefore, that the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are in accordance with international law.
In the next 77 pages, the Levi report then goes on to discuss the various questions of jurisdiction, procedure, land ownership, documentation of land ownership (which is almost non-existent and therefore leads to many cases of Palestinians making false claims of land theft), and questions such as whether adding new neighborhoods to existing settlements constitutes new settlements. All of these issues are important but are irrelevant to the subject of this post, which is the legal status of Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria. A full English translation of the first section of the report (which I have outlined above) and the recommendations (as published by the committee) exists in The Elder of Zion blog. The complete text is available online, but only in Hebrew. It can be foundhere (PDF).
It is important to point out that the nationality name, “Palestinian” is derived from the name of the land, “Palestine” (a name given to the region by the Roman Empire, more than 2000 years ago) and not vice versa. The grandparents of the people who are today called “Palestinian” were simply called “Arab” until 1948. The “Palestinian” national identity was conjured up in order to differentiate between Arabs living in other countries who had already fulfilled their aspirations for national independence and Arabs living in the lands west of the Jordan, who had not achieved national independence. This was in order to build a competing claim to Israel’s claim to the land. If “Arabs” were to present claims to the land, they could be easily dismissed, because the Arab nation already has many countries of its own. The “Palestinian” nation, however, has none, or one, if we consider that Jordan is just as Palestinian as Israel, Judea and Samaria are, being part of what was once the British Mandate for Palestine.
The question of whether a national identity which was forged only after 1948 is a “valid” national identity is an important one. What constitutes a “valid” nationality? Is any group which feels it has its own national identity entitled to its own country? A well-known verse from an Israeli song says:
This is an important philosophical question, which I shall not go into in this post, because the issue of this post is only the legal status of Judea and Samaria.
To sum things up so far:
- In 1917, the Balfour declaration promised the Jewish people a national home in Palestine. This promise was repeated in the San Remo conference of 1920. Both declarations provided civil and religious rights to the non-Jewish population of Palestine.
- In 1921, the League of Nations approved the British Mandate for Palestine, with the aim of forming a Jewish homeland in the land which then included all of today’s Israel, West Bank and Gaza. The land east of the Jordan was given to the kingdom of Trans-Jordan.
- In 1947, the UN proposed partitioning the land west of the Jordan into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs refused the partition plan and declared war in order to prevent it.
- At the end of the war, the armistice lines between Jordan and Israel were dubbed the “Green Line”, and were considered to be temporary borders and in no way legally binding. Jordan annexed the lands it had captured west of the Jordan (Judea and Samaria) in 1950, although the annexation was never recognized as legal.
- After Jordan relinquished its claim to Judea and Samaria, the land went back to its previous status, i.e. as earmarked for a Jewish homeland.
- Therefore, Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is not an illegal occupation.
- Even if it were an illegal occupation, Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention would not apply, because Israel’s settlements were not built through the forced transfer of populations, but rather by Jews voluntarily moving into Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinians are demanding that negotiations be held on the basis of Israeli withdrawal to the “1967 borders”, in other words, a full retreat of Israel to the “Green Line”, which as I have shown above, is not a border at all, but rather a temporary armistice line from 1949 between Israel and Jordan which, in fact, ceased to exist in 1967. They state that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria/ the West Bank constitutes an illegal occupation, and that therefore Israel must withdraw.
The Israeli Left largely ignores the fact that the term “occupation” refers to land, rather than to people, and stresses that we have no interest in controlling the Palestinian population or in keeping them “under occupation”. They maintain that if we continue controlling the Palestinian population, we must either give them full citizen rights, which would endanger the Jewish majority in Israel, thereby cancelling the “Jewish homeland”, or become an apartheid state. They also take for granted that if in a final peace agreement with the Palestinians Israel retains control over parts of Judea and Samaria (“settlement blocs”), Israel will be obligated to hand over other pieces of land equal in size. Spoiler alert: I find that this dichotomist view ignores the fact that the Palestinians already have full civil and religious rights under the Palestinian Authority and avoids thinking “out of the box” for creative solutions. But that’s a discussion for Part 6 or 7.
The Israeli Right maintains that Israel cannot be an occupying force in its own homeland. Therefore, and based on the arguments laid out in this post, Judea and Samaria are not occupied land, but rather disputed land. Disputes must be solved through negotiations and the Palestinian demand to begin the negotiations only after Israel has agreed to a full withdrawal is absurd.
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I have shown now that Israel has an historic connection with Judea and Samaria (Part 2). The Jewish people lived there in the time of the Bible, long before anyone had even heard of Palestinians or even Arabs. The Jewish people have a religious connection to Judea and Samaria (Part 3). The Jewish holy sites are all situated in Judea and Samaria. Israel’s security needs require control over Judea and Samaria (Part 4). And finally, Israel has a strong legal basis on which to base its claim to Judea and Samaria.
All of this is important to the discussion, but still does not answer the question of the Palestinian’s rights or how Israel can achieve peace. I will discuss the Palestinians’ intentions and rights as well as the prospect of peace in posts 6 and 7.
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Further information:
For a short (6 minutes) video recap of the main points made in this post by Israel’s previous deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, click here.
For a slightly longer (45 minutes) video of a lecture on the subject by Professor Eugene Kontorovich to Yeshiva students, click here.
This article from NRG (the website of Israeli newspaper Maariv), discusses Professor Eugene Kontorovich’s findings of a double standard by the international community when regarding “settlements”. While the international community demands that Israel uproot settlers living in disputed lands, settlers in other land disputes and even in occupations are required to do no such thing. The article is in Hebrew and can be found here. If I have time, I’ll translate it later. Until that happens, non-Hebrew readers can try running it through Google Translate and see what happens (I just tried it and the result is almost tolerable. You’ll be able to get the general idea).
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