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On Monday, the Israeli government announced that the commission, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levi, and charged with responding to the 2005 Sasson Report (on the government of Israel’s complicity in West Bank settlement expansion), had issued its findings. Here’s Adam Horowitz writing about it on Monday:
Earlier this year Benjamin Netanyahu formed an Israeli government panel to judge on the legality of the settlements. The panel was headed by former Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy and was intended to respond to the 2005 Sasson Report on government complicity with the settlement project (and possibly head off an impending UN study into the settlements). Today, the “Levy Committee” issued its findings and among other things declared that Israel is not an occupying force in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
From Haaretz:
With regard to Israel’s legal status in the West Bank, the Levy Committee declared that Israel is not an occupying power. The panel arrived at that conclusion after considering two conflicting legal approaches on the question.
The first approach, presented by elements generally identified with the left, holds that Judea and Samaria are “occupied territories” under international law, ever since they were captured from the Jordanian kingdom in 1967.
According to this approach, as a military occupier, Israel is subject to international restrictions governing occupation, first and foremost the Hague Regulations with regard to the laws and customs of ground warfare, and the Fourth Geneva Convention with regard to protecting civilian populations in times of war.
Under these covenants, an occupier must manage the area and maintain order while taking care of its security needs and the needs of the civilian population until the occupation ends. There is a prohibition against damaging private property, and the occupier is also banned from moving any of its own population to settle in the occupied area.
The committee also heard conflicting legal opinions, submitted by elements identified with the right, such as the Regavim movement and the Binyamin Regional Council. They presented the position that because Judea and Samaria were never a legitimate part of any Arab state, including Jordan, Israel is not an occupying power.
As such, the conventions dealing with management of occupied territories and their populations are not relevant to Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria.
With regard to the Geneva Convention and its Section 49, which forbids an occupier from transferring any of its population to settle in the occupied area, the right-wing groups argued that this section was formulated after World War II and was aimed at preventing the forced transfer of populations, a situation that isn’t relevant to Judea and Samaria.
Members of the panel accepted the legal opinion presented by the right. They explained that the generally accepted concept of occupation relates to short periods in which territory is captured from a sovereign state until the dispute between the two sides is resolved. But Judea and Samaria have been under Israeli control for decades, and it is impossible to foresee a time when Israel will relinquish these territories, if ever.
Late Tuesday, the Israeli government provided an English language translation of the eight-page report. It has been reprinted at this link.
The report does not contain the word “Palestine.” It consistently refers to the Occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.” Nor does the report specifically mention Palestinian people.
Reactions to the report have been fairly predictable, even if its far-reaching conclusions were somewhat surprising. The Netanyahu government, as of this writing, has not made an official response to the report’s validity.
Writing Monday in The Atlantic on-line, commentator and staunch Zionist Jeffrey Goldberg observed:
What this means, if implemented, is simple: The Israeli government would treat West Bank land as if it were land in Israel proper (pre-1967 Israel). Now, of course, if Israel were to treat the land of the West Bank as part of Israel, it would necessarily follow that it would have to treat the people who live on that land as Israeli citizens, extending them full voting rights, just as it extends citizenship to people who live in Israel proper, regardless of ethnicity. So: The natural consequence of this notion, if it is carried through to law, would be to extend voting rights to the Palestinians of the West Bank. This would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy, but the right-wing in Israel seems more enamored of land-ownership than it does of such antiquated notions as, you know, Zionism.
Of course, you don’t hear too many voices on the right in Israel clamoring to extend full Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians. The right-wing wants the land, but not the people. What the right doesn’t understand is that this arrangement would be a non-starter, for political and moral reasons. Then again, the right doesn’t understand very much, so why would it understand this?
He is right that the Israeli far right “doesn’t understand very much,” at least in terms of acknowledging the presence of 2.4 million Palestinians in “Judea and Samaria.”
Sampling far right reactions to the report in Israel and the US, here are a few of the comments from Israel National News (Arutz Shiva):
It is now time (if not past time) for the Israeli government to fully annex Judea and Samaria as well as to assert full control over ALL JERUSALEM particularly Har Habayit. The Arab anti Semites now in control (and destroying Jewish artifacts) MUST BE THROWN OUT with ALL necessary force (at least as much as they now use on Jews who even appear to be silently praying at Judaism’s holiest site).
and:
The tiny nation is only a small fraction of the size it will be some day soon. Almighty God has promised the Jews that Israel will stretch from the Nile River westward to the Euphrates River. Our God can NOT and will NOT ever break a promise!!!!!!!
and:
Didn’t the San Remo Resolution of 1920 make it not only legal to settle but say that the International community is obliged to help the settling?
Comments at the article on the Levy Commission report on the Christian Broadcasting Network site proclaim:
God said “I will punish them that divide up my land”, this includes the USA. The land of Israel is the only land in the world given to a people directly by God. That is why Satan and his demons are fighting so hard to get it. It goes all the way back to the Creation. It is all so perfectly tied. God is so awesome in His Wisdom.
and – appropriately in hard caps:
ISRAEL, IF GOD CONDEMNS YOU THEN YOU SHOULD WORRY. YOU SHOULD WORRY IF YOU ARE ACTING AGAINST HIS ETERNAL WORD. US CONDEMNING YOU, THERE IS NO REASON TO WORRY. 500 YEARS AGO, THERE WAS NO US. ONLY THE LORD YOUR GOD, HIS WORD AND ISRAEL, HIS PEOPLE. STAND FIRM ISRAEL. THE LORD IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR PROTECTION, NOT THE US. YOU’RE ANSWERABLE AND RESPONSIBLE FIRST TO YOUR LORD GOD, HIS WORD AND SECOND, YOUR PEOPLE. THE OTHERS, COME LAST. BLESSING.
Meanwhile, back in the reality-based world, reactions vary. The Palestinian Authority views the report dimly:
Officials in Ramallah on Wednesday slammed the Netanyahu government’s plans to accept the conclusion of the Levy Commission report on Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.
“We will not sign any peace agreement if there is a [single]settlement on Palestinian Land,” Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rodier said.
The Levy report concluded Israel is not an occupying power in Judea and Samaria, and that Jewish communities in the region are therefore legal under international law.
“Israel has no right to be on Palestinian lands,”Rodier said, adding the PA rejected the Levy report in no uncertain terms.
The New York Times slammed the report in a Tuesday editorial:
[T]he commission’s recommendations are bad law, bad policy and bad politics. Most of the world views the West Bank, which was taken by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 war, as occupied territory and all Israeli construction there as a violation of international law. The world court ruled this way in 2004. The Fourth Geneva Convention bars occupying powers from settling their own populations in occupied lands. And United Nations Security Council resolution 242, a core of Middle East policy, calls for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”
The Times editorial notes further:
If [the Levi Commission report's] conclusions are not firmly rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there is likely to be new international anger at Israel. That could divert attention from Iran just when the world is bearing down with sanctions and negotiations to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. It would also draw attention to a dispiriting anomaly: that a state founded as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people is determined to continue ruling 2.5 million Palestinians under an unequal system of laws and rights.
On Wednesday’s Democracy Now, Jonathan Tobin, Senior Online Editor of Commentary magazine, and Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, had a spirited debate on what the report represents, and could bring in its wake:
The issuance of this report will not serve to diminish Palestinian efforts to gain UN recognition, in spite of the report’s content’s seeming eradication of Palestine itself.
It will not deter the new United Nations Human Rights Commission team from gaining information for their report on ongoing human rights violations by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank.
It will probably help gain allies for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, now in its eighth year, and scoring major victories worldwide almost daily.
15 Comments
Accepting the Levy commission and granting full rights to all people occupying the land would be an interesting solution.
It would probably be followed by the largest extirpation of the Palestinians ever.
Ali Abunimah totally disemboweled Jonathan Tobin. Tobin is no less than a sociopath. He has no qualms about looking right in the camera and spewing lie after lie in support of his bigoted/extremist ideology.
By the way, great post! Recc’d.
A good discussion on Tobin’s Democracy Now failure is here at Mondoweiss.
Also, B’Tselem’s response to the Levy Commission report is the most detailed I’ve yet read. Here’s a link.
The possibility of a two-state solution is now formally dead, which does what to the Camp David accords.
We now have a claim that amounts to a formal declaration of apartheid.
The US got away with this kind of behavior in the 19th century, but that was before the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And those right-wingers are as much sick fucks and some of the US right wing.
*as*
Another excellent post, ET. As Synoia says, once this goes into full force, expect to see a surge of ethnic cleansing. Since the Jewish settlers seem to see the Arab Palestinians as little more than vermin, killings will probably spike with no legal retribution.
BTW,ET, did you hear anything on your letter about netanyahu?
I doubt things will get that bad quickly. Just a slow acceleration of racism, apartheid and isolation.
I doubt I will until after the August recess.
When the Times writes that international anger over this report “could divert attention from Iran just when the world is bearing down with sanctions and negotiations to curb Tehran’s nuclear program,” they’re saying this like it’s a bad thing. In this respect, I consider the Levy report a godsend, and from an atheist, that’s a rave.
The Israeli right wing and their crazed US supporters are an easily derided distraction. The real problem is mainstream media and supposed liberal and progressive defenders of most of what Israel does. They smugly assert their superiority over the right-wing nutcases and condemn the establishment of “illegal” hilltop settlements, thus tacitly asserting that there must be such a thing as a legal settlement. And of course, the New York congressional delegation, mostly proud members of the Progressive Caucus, spew Bolton-worthy threats at Iran with no fear of reprisal from the supposedly liberal constituencies they coddle.
The Levy Commission report forced the Times to make a rare reference to Geneva 4′s proscription of population transfer into (as well as out of) an occupied territory. The existence and content of the 4th Geneva Convention is among the most censored facts in the US sphere of discourse. I welcome the cognitive dissonance the report is generating among the non-crazy supporters of Israel’s venal policies and behavior.
If I were an ancient despot desirous of rumbling with my neighbors, I’d first need to create a group to blame for all my failings.
Of the thousands of Biblical admonitions, the only one that the religious right around the world harps on is the extermination of–a veritable holocaust against–gays.
Yet the ones most vocal have routinely turned out being, or having kids, gay.
And, history’s most “milestone” control freaks have been gay.
Hitler, famously feminine, his Jewish prophet friend a likely gay lover–perhaps even resentful of his own.
JFK’s killers–substantially gay fascists, with Jack Ruby the predictable Jewish face put on the act.
If you need to fault gays, you have them–those hypocritical ones–the control freaks.
“It so happens that killing a man is not the greatest evil that one can do that man. The Nazis were specialists, not only in murder and physical torture, but also in man’s degradation and debasement, in the extermination of his hope, his attachment to life and his faculty of reasoning.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Fu%C4%8D%C3%ADk_%28journalist%29
And now judging for control for “divide and conquer” is particularly more important, not to simply Israelis and Palestinians, but to us in the U.S., because this is the pretense for the war on our liberties at home.
The Israeli police tactics have become a major import which apparently will only be neutralized after a sufficient number of lawsuits are filed against municipal police departments.
Immigrants are the obsession, when it’s not gays, all so puppets can deliver the goods for puppet masters. Those puppet masters suffer from the same mental infirmities as to the combatants in Israel/Palaestine: transference of fear / false fault, mollification, and simple arrogance–and a love affair with plutocracy with
on the part of some.
I’m not a theologian or a psychiatrist. These are my approximations on my own best efforts basis. I really see none of this measuring one-half as hair-brained as someone saying there’s a God and “he’s” a private one.
Much to our surprise though, because of the above dynamics, as I suggest at least, our fate comes down to what to do about a really very small group of ultra religious individuals in Israel who happen to hold meaningful political sway.
A lawyer, I offer a direct discussion with these people as to inconsistencies.
It is forbidden in the Jewish state for women to read from Torah scrolls or wear prayer shawls at Judaism’s most holy place.
http://pages.citebite.com/h3l1j3y9piql
What’s the sense in that? The Jewish / Christian / Muslim Bibles are filled with key Jewish women, who, were they alive today, I’m guessing would think pretty lowly of this ultra religious group’s leaders. Hmmm. I’d guess: presumptuous,
self-important. My Dad was a psychiatrist (backtracked to internal med/really liked doctoring,) so I DO have additional ideas as to this, but I’ll leave it at what I’ve said.
This group not long ago said Jews of the Diaspora who do not aliyah (relocate to Israel) are no longer Jewish.
Now there’s a giant hogwash inconsistency if I’ve ever heard one.
Central to the Jewish, then Christian, then Muslim Bibles is God being revealed by history.
Guess what: our present situation seems to suggest a revelation of morality, of sorts, possibly. Acually, simultaneously in science and history in the physical sense (event streams, and time is distance, so this creates the thought of how a moral lesson can also be a travel through space lesson.)
There is no history, no moral lesson, absent the Diaspora. The man who says these people are not Jews is singly tiny like the mosquito compared to the people who have lived that history.
That history started with the suggestion of a relation that also has distinct parallels in our modern understanding of psychology that are entirely suddenly parallel with morality’s most important admonitions, including not to judge.
That has always been to control.
Just to complete a picture, what with my having, on the side, sort of a hobby, a theory in science, morality and history, imagine that, for instance, the Kaifeng Jews are indeed the Lost Tribe of Israel.
Then, because the Eastern religions, upon close inspection, are in fact identical to the Western, and, it’s to be noted, a Vatican envoy found during a earlier century that the head of the Chinese Jewish Congregation was also the Emporer’s Official Master of
Confucianism, we potentially have a full meta-experiment all simultaneously in science, morality and “history.”
To complete the thought only most broadly, it would have to be conveyed. It would have to conclude now with Isaac and Ishmael casting aside the fault and the arrogance just enough for the proof of this to be provided.
My guess, for reasons, would be the personage references reflecting free/equal/love(Moses/Mohammed/Christ,) Mohammed of course having been a distinct man, educated by a woman (Kadija) who would become his wife, reflect the approximate counter-part to fault / arrogance. It happens, my theory suggests, for reasons, information can enjoy stages of life, and, now consistent with theories presented
by others in physics dramatically more qualified than myself in that area, I consider it entirely possible it’s expected by my theorized conveyors that we might witness evidence of that (my theory’s not apocalyptic, but quite the contrary says an enlightenment in morality, science and history might bring with it a revolution in
technology, particularly in space travel.)
FDL: I simply do not spam. Where this might get a little suggestive of that, it’s never beyond doing the favor of demonstrating Jews and Muslims are natural half-brothers.
It’s the religions that purport to hold our future. It’s been problematic so far. However, I propose representatives from all of them re-unite half brother so our obviously related conveyors can save us from our technology having gone way beyond our politics, and so we can replace fault/arrogance with free/equal/love.
It seems a sure-shot, if any of this should be the least bit valid, that this demonstration of free/equal/love is intended to occur at what now appears having been the “Golden Gate,” the Temple Mount.
And for God’s sake let the women read from the Torah and wear prayer Shoals.
My theory says no human’s fault. His idea:
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/gaddis/hst210/sept9/Akhenaten%20bust.jpg
Well, OK then.
That’s right! It was slow in 1948 too. /s