Middle East Politics

Fearless said:
They do when it suits them. Their own application of article 80 of the UN Charter states is wishy washy at best - OK for the likes of Namibia in 1971 but not Israel it would seem....

Judge El Araby of the International Court of Justice in regard to the legal status of the West Bank in the Israeli security barrier advisory opinion:

“,,, the international legal status of the Palestinian Territory merits more comprehensive treatment”…

“A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on one or more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently sidestepped….”

“The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain”
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Fascinating that you should take that particular section of Judge Elaraby's opinion. Anyone reading it on its own might take it as that Elaraby disagrees with the Court's Opinion on the issues we have been debating (namely whether the territories are occupied and whether Geneva IV applies).

But in fact Elaraby starts his separate opinion with the following words:

"I would like to express, at the outset, my complete and unqualified support for the findings and conclusions of the Court."
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And then of course, following the section that you posted above, Elaraby undertakes a comprehensive review of the status of the territories. What was the gist of it Fearless?

Now, one cannot fail to draw the conclusion that you either purposely attempted to mislead myself or any readers by taking Elaraby's quote out of context OR you lifted this from somebody else that has actually read Elaraby's opinion. Somebody who intended to mislead the reader by taking Elaraby's quote out of context. Aren't you just a little ashamed?
 
berbatrick said:
So is your claim that the West Bank was always Israeli territory?
Do you think your claim is supported by the people who were living there pre-1967, or pre-1949, or 47, etc.?
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No. My claim is the Court needed to examine the effect the legal status of the West Bank has on the laws of occupation in order to conclude whether or not Israel is an occupying power.
 
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Super Hans said:
Once again, there was no assumption. It cited the Fourth Hague Convention. Right there in the highlighted part. "under customary international law...territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army"

Well I'm sure that anyone reading this will take Chairman Woodie's legal expertise over the 15 judges of the ICJ.
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Less experienced legal minds, myself included, criticise and debate the substance of court judgments all the time. Welcome to democracy Super Hans!
 
Super Hans said:
Now, one cannot fail to draw the conclusion that you either purposely attempted to mislead myself or any readers by taking Elaraby's quote out of context OR you lifted this from somebody else that has actually read Elaraby's opinion. Somebody who intended to mislead the reader by taking Elaraby's quote out of context. Aren't you just a little ashamed?
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Quite the opposite.

If you re-read my post, I was merely demonstrating the inconsistencies of the ICJ, embodied in El Araby. Your reply mirror's both his error and your willingness to believe that I conspired to deceive you on the back of myself being deceived. Do you think I would have posted “The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain" otherwise?

Point being, that while El Araby does indeed suggest that the case demands greater historical scrutiny, he then goes on to lay the blame with the 'mandate', where he states that the "sidestepping" began. The irony here cannot be lost - if El Araby had taken taken his own advice, he would have noted that the clear terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (San Remo Conference: articles 94 and 95 of the resulting Treaty of Sevres) were not ratified under paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations - unlike the Mandates for Syria and Mesopotamia. I'll refrain from boring you with the details of each, but do google them. The ICJ have fooled you by taking international law out of context. Not me.

And no, I feel no shame at all.
 
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Chairman Woodie said:
Less experienced legal minds, myself included, criticise and debate the substance of court judgments all the time. Welcome to democracy Super Hans!
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Let's not presume he welcomes democracy, given he supports the Palestinian cause that's led by a man whose in his tenth year of a four year term.
 
Mozza said:
Shows how Israel is an apartheid state, the Palestinians work for the jewish before being booted back into their ghetto
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Not in this case, those Palestinians are free to take Israeli citizenship but the vast majority choose not to. As residents of East Jerusalem they are free to travel and work all over the country. What you're implying applies to West Bank Arabs.
 
2cents said:
Not in this case, those Palestinians are free to take Israeli citizenship but the vast majority choose not to. As residents of East Jerusalem they are free to travel and work all over the country. What you're implying applies to West Bank Arabs.
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But can't get permits to build on their land. Can't own certain land. Can have their citizenship revoked and be forced into the West Bank. Not free to travel and work, go away too long and they may never get permission to return. 2nd class citizens
 
fcbforever said:
Maybe you should google Apartheid then and do a comparison to the situation of Palestinians in Israel.
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West Bank Palestinians are like the black South Africans, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are like the Indians of South Africa, better off the still not true citizens. The Jewish Israelis are like the white south africans. Israel is not a democracy. Israel is an apartheid state
 
Mozza said:
West Bank Palestinians are like the black South Africans, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are like the Indians of South Africa, better off the still not true citizens. The Jewish Israelis are like the white south africans. Israel is not a democracy. Israel is an apartheid state
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Sure sure. No wonder there’s no peace with people like you on both sides.
 
Raoul said:


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Oh ffs :lol::lol::lol:

The Saudis can't even handle a few sandal-wearing, klashinikov-wielding teenagers in Yemen, what good to they think they'll do to the Iranians?

Besides if any of this escalated they'll just do what they do best, get on their knees and beg Uncle Sam to intervene on their behalf while wiping their lips.
 
Mozza said:
But can't get permits to build on their land. Can't own certain land. Can have their citizenship revoked and be forced into the West Bank. Free to travel and work. 2nd class citizens
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It's nice to see you concede that your "booted back to their ghetto" claim is, in this case, untrue.

The rest of your post, of course I'm fully aware that there are some discriminatory laws which apply even to non-Jewish citizens, although nothing comparable to Apartheid South Africa; but it's not clear which of those laws you list apply to which Arabs? I personally know an Arab guy from East Jerusalem, non-citizen, who is currently building a holiday home for his family in Netanya.

Since the annexation of East Jerusalem, the Arab population have had, in theory, the option to take Israeli citizenship, which most of them have at this point declined to take up. Those who have taken it have the exact same rights as the other Arab citizens of Israel, while the rest have a status of permanent residency which is more limited (mostly in political terms), but more than applies to the West Bank Arabs. The process of applying for citizenship is by no means perfect; most of the problems are due to the way the same standards which apply to any foreigner seeking citizenship are also applied to the Palestinians of East Jerusalem who, I think we can agree, are deserving of some kind of special status. And for sure, there is discrimination as well. On top of that, there is the reality of Israeli bureaucratic procedure which can be painfully slow by Western standards.
 
2cents said:
It's nice to see you concede that your "booted back to their ghetto" claim is, in this case, untrue.

The rest of your post, of course I'm fully aware that there are some discriminatory laws which apply even to non-Jewish citizens, although nothing comparable to Apartheid South Africa; but it's not clear which of those laws you list apply to which Arabs? I personally know an Arab guy from East Jerusalem, non-citizen, who is currently building a holiday home for his family in Netanya.

Since the annexation of East Jerusalem, the Arab population have had, in theory, the option to take Israeli citizenship, which most of them have at this point declined to take up. Those who have taken it have the exact same rights as the other Arab citizens of Israel, while the rest have a status of permanent residency which is more limited (mostly in political terms), but more than applies to the West Bank Arabs. The process of applying for citizenship is by no means perfect; most of the problems are due to the way the same standards which apply to any foreigner seeking citizenship are also applied to the Palestinians of East Jerusalem who, I think we can agree, are deserving of some kind of special status. And for sure, there is discrimination as well. On top of that, there is the reality of Israeli bureaucratic procedure which can be painfully slow by Western standards.
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Only painfully slow of your Palestinian. The Jewish get their settlements subsidised by the state. If they leave east Jerusalem for too long they risk never being allowed back in. Having the same rights as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship isn't the same as having the same rights as Jewish citizens of Israel, hence a racist state
 
Mozza said:
Only painfully slow of your Palestinian.
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I've lived there as a non-citizen, I can confirm it is painfully slow generally.

Mozza said:
West Bank Palestinians are like the black South Africans, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are like the Indians of South Africa, better off the still not true citizens. The Jewish Israelis are like the white south africans. Israel is not a democracy. Israel is an apartheid state
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Have you considered that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is best understood on its own terms, in its own context, and that drawing direct and firm analogies with a conflict in another part of the world which arose under a completely different set of circumstances is more likely to confuse than clarify the fundamental issues at stake?
 
2cents said:
I've lived there as a non-citizen, I can confirm it is painfully slow generally.
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Its all relative. Slow for Jewish, non existent for Palestinians.



Have you considered that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is best understood on its own terms, in its own context, and that drawing direct and firm analogies with a conflict in another part of the world which arose under a completely different set of circumstances is more likely to confuse than clarify the fundamental issues at stake?
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Why would it be confusing when it's fits so perfectly. Israel is an apartheid state like South Africa
 
Mozza said:
Why would it be confusing
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Because the way the conflict plays out has, does, and will differ significantly to the way the conflict in South Africa did, due to the essential differences between them. For example, the BDS movement was launched on the ostensible basis that the situation resembles South Africa so closely that the same type of program applied in Palestine should yield the same end result. Anyone who believes this to be the case will be confused as and when the movement produces different results. It's the type of confusion that can only be resolved in two ways - either you keep repeating the same "Israel is evil, Israel is racist, Israel is an Apartheid state" mantra over and over and over again while banging your head of the wall and explain the differences away due to some nefarious external factors such as the "Israel lobby", or else you dig deep into the details of the history and dynamics of the conflict to try to genuinely understand why the different actors have behaved the way they have.

In the example above anyone who chooses the latter option will find that the differences need to be explained in terms of: the basic historical development of each community in question; the fact that the Jews went to Palestine under entirely different circumstances to the movement of whites to South Africa; the entirely different historical and spiritual relationship of the Jews in Palestine with the land to that of the whites in South Africa; the different nature of the way Zionism sees the Arabs to the way the whites in South Africa saw black Africans; the differences in the culture of the Arabs in Palestine to the black South Africans; their differing responses to the arrival of foreign settlers in their lands; their relationship to the peoples living in neighboring lands; and the way all these factors affect each other, and on and on and on.

This is not to say that no analogies may be drawn, even in the case of South Africa. I'm not someone who really cares if you want to use "Apartheid" to describe the conflict, I think using it renders it almost meaningless since it draws such a wide net which would render literally dozens of states around the world as "Apartheid". Personally, it's enough to say that Israel is, in many ways, an illiberal state. But whatever, if you interpret "apartheid" in such a broad sense, that's fine. For me, given the international circumstances in which the conflict developed, I find the conflicts in places like Sri Lanka, Kurdistan and Kashmir to be more helpful. But ultimately the devil is in the detail, and this conflict is so unique and emotive in many ways that it deserves an extra effort at understanding/empathy from anybody who decides to engage with it even in a consciously partisan manner.
 
2cents said:
Because the way the conflict plays out has, does, and will differ significantly to the way the conflict in South Africa did, due to the essential differences between them. For example, the BDS movement was launched on the ostensible basis that the situation resembles South Africa so closely that the same type of program applied in Palestine should yield the same end result. Anyone who believes this to be the case will be confused as and when the movement produces different results. It's the type of confusion that can only be resolved in two ways - either you keep repeating the same "Israel is evil, Israel is racist, Israel is an Apartheid state" mantra over and over and over again while banging your head of the wall and explain the differences away due to some nefarious external factors such as the "Israel lobby", or else you dig deep into the details of the history and dynamics of the conflict to try to genuinely understand why the different actors have behaved the way they have.

In the example above anyone who chooses the latter option will find that the differences need to be explained in terms of: the basic historical development of each community in question; the fact that the Jews went to Palestine under entirely different circumstances to the movement of whites to South Africa; the entirely different historical and spiritual relationship of the Jews in Palestine with the land to that of the whites in South Africa; the different nature of the way Zionism sees the Arabs to the way the whites in South Africa saw black Africans; the differences in the culture of the Arabs in Palestine to the black South Africans; their differing responses to the arrival of foreign settlers in their lands; their relationship to the peoples living in neighboring lands; and the way all these factors affect each other, and on and on and on.

This is not to say that no analogies may be drawn, even in the case of South Africa. I'm not someone who really cares if you want to use "Apartheid" to describe the conflict, I think using it renders it almost meaningless since it draws such a wide net which would render literally dozens of states around the world as "Apartheid". Personally, it's enough to say that Israel is, in many ways, an illiberal state. But whatever, if you interpret "apartheid" in such a broad sense, that's fine. For me, given the international circumstances in which the conflict developed, I find the conflicts in places like Sri Lanka, Kurdistan and Kashmir to be more helpful. But ultimately the devil is in the detail, and this conflict is so unique and emotive in many ways that it deserves an extra effort at understanding/empathy from anybody who decides to engage with it even in a consciously partisan manner.
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While I agree with the sentiment that the situations in Israel and South Africa are different (what two situations ever could be identical?), there are enough similarities to justify the Apartheid analogy in the West Bank, in fact I think Israel has probably learned from Apartheid South Africa to a degree (Israel was one of Apartheid South Africa's few allies back in the day).

1. There are 2 distinct systems of law in the same area, Israeli civil law for the settlers, far harsher military law for the Palestinians. Conviction rate is over 99%.
2. Roads for Jews only.
3. The bantustan analogy. The cantonisation of the West Bank is similar to the bantustans in South Africa. Black South Africans were stripped of South African citizenship and moved to the bantustans. This of course was a method of ensuring a white majority, similar to Israel's motives, and in the way that Israel has managed to create its own kind of Chief Buthelezi-style puppet government.
4. Administrative detention - Similar to South Africa's 90 Day Act that could be renewed indefinitely.
5. Restrictions on freedom of movement - similar to South Africa's pass laws.
6. (Not the West Bank but) Israel injected 130,000 Ethiopian Jews with birth control without their consent, eerily similar to South Africa's Project Coast.
7. The imprisonment of Marwan Barghouti is similar to Nelson Mandela given Barghouti's popularity among Palestinians. Even Ehud Barak thought locking up Barghouti was madness.

It's interesting that you say "literally dozens of states around the world" could be described as Apartheid. Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem has stated:

"Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa."
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In fact there are plenty of prominent and respected Israeli figures, including at least two prime ministers and the former head of Shin Bet, that have described it as Apartheid.
 
2cents said:
Because the way the conflict plays out has, does, and will differ significantly to the way the conflict in South Africa did, due to the essential differences between them. For example, the BDS movement was launched on the ostensible basis that the situation resembles South Africa so closely that the same type of program applied in Palestine should yield the same end result. Anyone who believes this to be the case will be confused as and when the movement produces different results. It's the type of confusion that can only be resolved in two ways - either you keep repeating the same "Israel is evil, Israel is racist, Israel is an Apartheid state" mantra over and over and over again while banging your head of the wall and explain the differences away due to some nefarious external factors such as the "Israel lobby", or else you dig deep into the details of the history and dynamics of the conflict to try to genuinely understand why the different actors have behaved the way they have.

In the example above anyone who chooses the latter option will find that the differences need to be explained in terms of: the basic historical development of each community in question; the fact that the Jews went to Palestine under entirely different circumstances to the movement of whites to South Africa; the entirely different historical and spiritual relationship of the Jews in Palestine with the land to that of the whites in South Africa; the different nature of the way Zionism sees the Arabs to the way the whites in South Africa saw black Africans; the differences in the culture of the Arabs in Palestine to the black South Africans; their differing responses to the arrival of foreign settlers in their lands; their relationship to the peoples living in neighboring lands; and the way all these factors affect each other, and on and on and on.

This is not to say that no analogies may be drawn, even in the case of South Africa. I'm not someone who really cares if you want to use "Apartheid" to describe the conflict, I think using it renders it almost meaningless since it draws such a wide net which would render literally dozens of states around the world as "Apartheid". Personally, it's enough to say that Israel is, in many ways, an illiberal state. But whatever, if you interpret "apartheid" in such a broad sense, that's fine. For me, given the international circumstances in which the conflict developed, I find the conflicts in places like Sri Lanka, Kurdistan and Kashmir to be more helpful. But ultimately the devil is in the detail, and this conflict is so unique and emotive in many ways that it deserves an extra effort at understanding/empathy from anybody who decides to engage with it even in a consciously partisan manner.
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It'll play out in the same manner as South Africa, the Palestinians free and 1 state, you can pretend there's other solutions but there aren't. The Jewish will have to learn that they can't oppress the Palestinians forever.

How Israel became an apartheid state doesn't matter, just that it is one and it can't continue as it is.
 
Super Hans said:
there are enough similarities to justify the Apartheid analogy in the West Bank
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Super Hans said:
It's interesting that you say "literally dozens of states around the world" could be described as Apartheid.
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For the West Bank, I agree that the form it has taken definitely bears comparison with SA and is quite unique today (another useful comparison might be Tibet or perhaps Western Sahara, I know very little about those two situations), although the essential reasons why it has taken that shape are different and significant in terms of how I see the nature of the conflict...

Super Hans said:
1. There are 2 distinct systems of law in the same area, Israeli civil law for the settlers, far harsher military law for the Palestinians. Conviction rate is over 99%.
2. Roads for Jews only.
3. The bantustan analogy. The cantonisation of the West Bank is similar to the bantustans in South Africa. Black South Africans were stripped of South African citizenship and moved to the bantustans. This of course was a method of ensuring a white majority, similar to Israel's motives, and in the way that Israel has managed to create its own kind of Chief Buthelezi-style puppet government.
4. Administrative detention - Similar to South Africa's 90 Day Act that could be renewed indefinitely.
5. Restrictions on freedom of movement - similar to South Africa's pass laws.
6. (Not the West Bank but) Israel injected 130,000 Ethiopian Jews with birth control without their consent, eerily similar to South Africa's Project Coast.
7. The imprisonment of Marwan Barghouti is similar to Nelson Mandela given Barghouti's popularity among Palestinians. Even Ehud Barak thought locking up Barghouti was madness.
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With 1 (which I've acknowledged previously in the thread); the way for the Palestinians to combat this and 3 is to campaign for equal rights within the Israeli system, which would involve a certain recognition of Jewish claims and rights in Palestine that they have up to this point refused to grant, but which the ANC did not hesitate to extend to white South Africans.

Until they genuinely test the Israelis with that proposition (and they might never do so), we cannot know for sure what the response will ultimately be, since up until now the two major Palestinian political factions have been unable to come up with anything better than a status for Israeli Jews that resembles the tolerated minority they were prior to the modern age; and they have the support of Palestinian society in general on this (the exception which may be raised is the participation of the Palestinian leadership in the Oslo Process; however, I'm not someone who believes that Arafat could ever have signed on to what was basically surrender in Palestinian and the wider Arab-Islamic world's eyes). This in turn is one of the factors shaping the general Israeli approach to the Palestinians, and also applies to...

2 and 5 - there are no "Jew only" roads; there are roads that West Bank Arabs may not use. Prior to the First Intifada, they were open to everyone, and generally speaking there were far less restrictions - there were check-points and curfews but no forced segregation, and Tel Aviv's Jews could go have lunch in a Gaza seafood restaurant while Jenin's Arabs could visit their family in Nazareth. Since the intifadas and the Oslo process, Jewish or Arab citizens of Israel, or anyone else of whatever religion or ethnicity (tourists, migrants workers, etc.) may still use them, although Jewish citizens may not use the other West Bank roads (I'm not 100% sure if Arab citizens can use them). So unlike SA these travel restrictions are not based on race, but on a political status which remains unresolved (that of the West Bank Arabs), and in some cases on specific security concerns.

4 and 7 are similar to stuff that happens in many analogous conflicts, e.g. the imprisonment of Öcalan in Turkey, internment in Northern Ireland. Definitely ugly stuff in many ways, that's the nature of these things (btw it appears that Mandela received some training from the Mossad in Ethiopia in the early 60s). I'm not sure what the relevance of 6 is to this discussion if true (the story has been heavily contested in Israel).

Personally I'd love to see a one-state/equal rights for all emerge in a peaceful Palestine - who the feck wouldn't? The idea of Jerusalem being divided again in some way is horrific, no decent person could want to see that happen. I'd love to see a united, peaceful and egalitarian Middle East in general. But I'm realistic about the nature of the contrasting visions for the future held by Israeli Jews and Palestinians respectively and I think that both still believe they can achieve these visions with force. For me it is the clash of Zionism AND Palestinian nationalism (a combination of local and pan-Arab nationalism which has become Islamized since the 1980s) which has driven the course of the conflict and prevented (and will continue to prevent for the foreseeable future) the outcome I'd like to see.

Mozza said:
It'll play out in the same manner as South Africa, the Palestinians free and 1 state, you can pretend there's other solutions but there aren't. The Jewish will have to learn that they can't oppress the Palestinians forever.

How Israel became an apartheid state doesn't matter, just that it is one and it can't continue as it is.
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I haven't claimed there is a solution (not a peaceful one anyway). And if you want to claim stuff like historical context is irrelevant that's fine, just don't then use it to explain Palestinian actions.
 
2cents said:
I haven't claimed there is a solution (not a peaceful one anyway).
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Sorry to snip, but an honest question...

Do you think a peaceful solution would be more or less likely if Israel was to abide by international law and respect SC resolutions?
 
DenisIrwin said:
Sorry to snip, but an honest question...

Do you think a peaceful solution would be more or less likely if Israel was to abide by international law and respect SC resolutions?
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No more or less.
 
2cents said:
I haven't claimed there is a solution (not a peaceful one anyway). And if you want to claim stuff like historical context is irrelevant that's fine, just don't then use it to explain Palestinian actions.
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Palestinian actions are driven by the same needs as anyone, to be free and to be safe in their home. Israelis have the same motivation, their solution of subjugating the Palestinians won't stand
 
antihenry said:
What does America's sovereignity have to do with the status of Jerusalem?
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Every country has a sovereign right to determine where it establishes an embassy. Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Usually countries with diplomatic relations open an embassy in the capital.
 
2cents said:
It's the type of confusion that can only be resolved in two ways - either you keep repeating the same "Israel is evil, Israel is racist, Israel is an Apartheid state" mantra over and over and over again while banging your head of the wall and explain the differences away due to some nefarious external factors such as the "Israel lobby", or else you dig deep into the details of the history and dynamics of the conflict to try to genuinely understand why the different actors have behaved the way they have.
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That's a good description of what's happening a lot in this thread, and what should happen instead, but rarely does. In this it's only a tiny subsection of a global issue, of course.
2cents said:
For me it is the clash of Zionism AND Palestinian nationalism (a combination of local and pan-Arab nationalism which has become Islamized since the 1980s) which has driven the course of the conflict and prevented (and will continue to prevent for the foreseeable future) the outcome I'd like to see.
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I'd add that this conflict is heavily internationalized in so many ways that outside forces have become a major driving force too. It's pretty crazy: We have the 'international community' with its many hostile factions, the UN, hundreds of NGOs and interest groups, global media, and last but not least the huge but disparate International of Islamic and Western antisemites, who imagines this as a monumental battle between good and evil. A multitude of local and global actors with contradicting agendas, many of them quite obsessed, and everyone influencing the proceedings in one way or another.
 
Synco said:
That's a good description of what's happening a lot in this thread, and what should happen instead, but rarely does. In this it's only a tiny subsection of a global issue, of course.

I'd add that this conflict is heavily internationalized in so many ways that outside forces have become a major driving force too. It's pretty crazy: We have the 'international community' with its many hostile factions, the UN, hundreds of NGOs and interest groups, global media, and last but not least the huge but disparate International of Islamic and Western antisemites, who imagines this as a monumental battle between good and evil. A multitude of local and global actors with contradicting agendas, many of them quite obsessed, and everyone influencing the proceedings in one way or another.
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Great post. Its the one true conflict that is literally, geographically and spiritually of Biblical proportions.
 
Fearless said:
Great post. Its the one true conflict that is literally, geographically and spiritually of Biblical proportions.
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Not completely sure how to read this. The more it's tongue-in-cheek, the more I'd agree. The more literal it's meant, the more I'd count it as a rather ideological interpretation. ;)
 
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