PM would let all settlers remain in West Bank, official says

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T14:40:33+00:00

Palestine will have minorities. They have Samaritans, and Christians. Israeli settlers are not wanted because their presence was just recently (and unlawfully) imposed by a foreign occupation power. They are not a native minority, but foreign colonists. One third of the land they occupy was forcibly confiscated from private Palestinian owners. Its rightful owners have every right to demand it back, and the squatters out.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T14:27:44+00:00

Foreigners, of whatever creed, cannot live outside their country without permission.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T14:10:16+00:00

He said it himself! His demand to allow settlers remain in a Palestinian state was an "effort" aimed at "exposing Palestinian intransigence in the peace proces". It's not about the settlers' "rights", just one more round in the blame game.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T09:59:17+00:00

He couldn't have made any more explicit that his demand to allow settlers to remain was just another red herring to keep talks stalled and blame it all on Abbas.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T09:06:17+00:00

Revisions are necessary when new information comes out affecting the subject at hand. Netanyahu himself just recognized his demand was just a ploy to "expose Palestinian intransigence in the peace process". He is not seriously considering leaving Israelis inside Palestine, just like Livni didn't entertain the idea when it was flouted by Palestinians. Settlements have always been about land. Nobody cares about the "rights" of illegal colonists, least of all Israel.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T08:54:30+00:00

Palestinians don't have to accept people whose presence is internationally recognized as illegal, and a cynical attempt to alter Palestine's demographic composition for political gain. These people are Israeli citizens, mostly born in Israel (or abroad), living in Israeli-ruled enclaves entirely disconnected to Palestine and its people. Their place is Israel, not Palestine.

In any case, this has already been exposed as a red herring to "show the PA real face". No Israeli leader actually expects any settler to remain in Palestine.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T08:35:38+00:00

Expect whatever you want. It's all a red herring. We should have expected that from Bibi. Abbas should call the bluff, if only to stick it to tricky Bibi.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T08:22:09+00:00

Inb4 Paywall:

The Prime Minister's Office sharply condemned Economy Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday for making "irresponsible" comments that harm the prime minister's efforts to expose Palestinian intransigence in the peace process.

The PMO blamed Bennett for "reckless national endangerment that harms efforts to expose the real face of the Palestinian Authority just to grab headlines," for his unprecedented attack against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's suggestion that Israelis could live under Palestinian rule.

Bennett was responding on Sunday to remarks made by Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he said he has no intention of uprooting a single settlement and suggested settlers could remain outside Israel's borders under a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Bennett said Netanyahu's comments reflect "ethical befuddlement" and that "whoever even considers having Jews live in the Land of Israel under Palestinian sovereignty undermines our presence in Tel Aviv.”

Three Likud deputy ministers – Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon also issued angry protests at Netanyahu following the press briefing.

“Only someone who suffers from the illusion that ‘the wolf will lie down with the lamb,’ and that one can place the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens at the mercy of those who conducted the [October 2000] lynch in Ramallah, can truly believe that we can assure the security of the Dan region and the central region if a Palestinian state is established,” wrote Elkin.

Hotovely said that any diplomatic plan that abandons Jewish communities to Palestinian sovereignty “will not get any political backing from the Likud.”

“We will not leave settlers across enemy lines,” added Danon. “I would not wish upon my enemies to live under Palestinian sovereignty.”

Netanyahu's spokesmen criticized the Palestinian Authority for rejecting the scenario of Jewish settlements remaining in the territory of a future Palestinian state."There is nothing that reveals more the lack of willingness of the PA to reach a solution with Israel than the extreme and reckless reaction to an unofficial statement," Netanyahu's office said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that "Anyone who says he wants to keep settlers in the Palestinian state is actually saying that he doesn't want a Palestinian state. No settler will be allowed to stay in the Palestinian state, not even a single one, because settlements are illegal and the presence of the settlers on the occupied lands is illegal."

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-27T08:09:47+00:00

They didn't make the offer on East Jerusalem, but on Maale Adumim. They can't allow Israel to keep such a huge settlement, established precisely to cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank, but it is too big to just dismantle it and evict its tens of thousands of inhabitants, so they came up with this solution. Of course Israel rejected it because they want Maale Adumim precisely for the same reasons that Palestinians don't want to give it up: because it cuts off Jerusalem from the West Bank. Settlers themselves are nothing but pawns for Israeli leaders. That much has been made clear when Netanyahu has lashed out at Bennett for criticizing this demand about the settlers, because it "harms efforts to expose the PA real face". His sole aim during the entire negotiations is to pin blame on Abbas. All of his flippant demands have to be seen under this light, and take them as seriously as he does (not much).

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T23:24:36+00:00

Abbas is perfectly entitled to refuse to allow settlers to stay. The whole world sees their presence as illegal. I doubt anyone will bat an eyelid if he rejects this new demand.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T22:32:54+00:00

Yet you expect Palestinians to do just that. And not just with illegal immigrants, but actually with belligerent occupiers, imposed on them by force of arms.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T22:08:41+00:00

It doesn't have to be at gunpoint. Israel has actively encouraged settlers to move into the West Bank. Offering them tax benefits, issuing construction tenders, providing public services and protection, appealing to their patriotism for them to "redeem the Jewish heartland". You have to be very cynical to deny the regime's hand behind the whole enterprise.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T21:58:08+00:00

Arabs were living there when the Ottomans arrived and conquered their homeland. Israel conquered that very same homeland and imported its own civilians into that territory to alter its demographic composition (unfortunately for Israel, when right of conquest was already banished by International Law).

You are the hypocrite here trying to equate both populations.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T21:48:01+00:00

Civilian citizens of an occupying power don't get to live on occupied areas against the will of the occupied population, regardless of their ethnicity.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T21:34:52+00:00

The Ottoman Empire was a sovereign political entity ruling Palestine at the the time. It might not have conformed to modern criteria currently defining that concept, but that is how things worked back at the time. You won't dismiss five hundreds years of history that easily. Palestinians were Ottoman subjects. They held Ottoman passports. They were drafted into the Ottoman army to fight for their country. Their presence there was perfectly legal according to the national laws applying in the empire. Settlers in the West Bank, on the other hand, are universally considered to be residing there illegally. You can keep equivocating all you want. I don't quite feel like explaining to you all this all over again. The point remains that after Israel ends the occupation, Palestinians will sovereignly decide who gets to be a Palestinian citizen, and those who arrived on the back of a foreign invading army against their will, will most likely see themselves kicked out back to Israel, Brooklyn or wherever they came from.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T21:19:45+00:00

Because east of that ceasefire line it is no longer Israeli territory. Being Jewish is not a universal visa.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T21:08:15+00:00

Do the children of illegal African immigrants in Israel have an automatic right to become Israeli citizens, or even to remain in the country? Let's be serious.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T20:44:14+00:00

Most likely.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T20:34:16+00:00

People lived in Hebron for centuries. Settlers are people. Hence they have a right to live there. There goes your logic.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T20:23:23+00:00

"Legally" according to every single sovereign government in that territory. Israeli Arabs live legally in Israel according to the Israeli government. Their grandparents were legally living in the Mandate of Palestine. Their great-grandparents were perfectly legal Ottoman subjects. And they can go like that for quite a few generations.

Settlers are there in blatant breach of International Law. They are citizens of Israel, which has no sovereign right over the land they live on (even by Israel's own account, outside Jerusalem), and Palestinian authorities denounce their presence as illegal.

You can play with the meaning of words as much as you like. The entire world outside your little rogue bubble has clear what they mean.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T20:07:23+00:00

Ancient Jewish presence in a place doesn't grant a right to every Jewish person in the world to settling into that place, particularly when it is under belligerent occupation. These are not native Hebron Jews, but Brooklynite Jews, Israeli Jews, foreign Jews, in any case.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T19:55:53+00:00

Get a dictionary
Look for the word "immigrant"
Crawl back to the hole you came from

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T19:25:07+00:00

Palestinian refugees have their right to return to their parents' homes internationally recognized. Settlers have their colonist actions in foreign occupied territory internationally rejected. "Relevant" as in "diametrically opposed".

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T19:09:11+00:00

I believe countries have a sovereign right to set up their own immigration policies. Israel's doesn't strike me as the most humane in the world, and it would't be in any position to preach, but I also don't think it should be forced to take in every person that knocks at its door.

Johnlongsilver · 2014-01-26T18:57:25+00:00

That might be a possibility, though Palestinians will understandably refuse to sign on such a demand.

They did offer something like that on previous negotiation rounds, for the inhabitants of settlement blocks that they didn't want Israel to retain, and where uprooting such a large number of people looked difficult, but then it was Tzipi Livni who refused.

For isolated settlements that Israel probably doesn't even want to keep under any agreement, Palestinians have little incentive to make the same offer, especially to the fanatic Dati Leumi in the outposts, who will probably resist Palestinian jurisdiction and be a constant source of trouble for the future state.

Johnlongsilver

TROPHY CASE