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Emet m'Tsiyon

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Another Broken Promise Made to Jews -- Part III

After the fierce Jewish underground struggle from 1944 to 1947, the British announced that they were going to give up the mandate and the government of the country, while arming Arab League states that clearly announced their intention to go to war against any Jewish state when the British left. The UN on 29 November 1947 recommended --on the grounds of a special commission's proposal-- to divide or partition Israel, "Palestine" in UN parlance, into a Jewish state and an Arab state with an internationally ruled enclave comprising Jerusalem and the Bethlehem area. The Partition Plan recommended taking away from the Jews parts of the land already assigned to them under international law.

Although the Partition Plan resolution [UN GA 181] was only a recommendation, it was unjust to the Jews, having just survived the Holocaust, in that it divided the internationally designated Jewish National Home and allocated part of it to an Arab state and part to international rule.
Moreover, the Arab nationalist movement generally and the Palestinian Arab leadership in particular had been pro-Nazi, pro-German from 1933 on. The chief Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin el-Husseini [al-Husayni] spent most of the war years in the Nazi-fascist domain in Europe. He made radio propaganda broadcasts directed at the Arab world, helped recruit Muslims for special Muslim SS units, and took part in the Holocaust by urging Germany and its satellites not to let Jews leave the Nazi-controlled regions, thus holding them in place for mass murder. He urged that Jewish children be sent to Poland where he knew that the Nazi death camps were located. He was never prosecuted as a Nazi war criminal, as he should have been, and was acclaimed as the leader of the Palestinian Arabs again after WW2 when he was enabled to return to the Middle East.   

The Partition Plan was especially unjust in the Jerusalem regionwhereaJews had been the majority in the city of Jerusalem since the mid-19th century.  The Partition Plan was totally rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and by the Arab states at the time of the UN GA vote, although the PLO curiously referred to UN GA res. 181 as a possible expedient that could be used for Palestinian Arab political purposes, in its 1988 declaration of a state at Algiers. That declaration did not at all recognize Israel but clearly --in the Arabic text-- claimed the whole country for a Palestinian Arab state. Thus the 1988 declaration could be seen as tantamount to a declaration of war against Israel.

The Six Day War led to Security Council res. 242 which called for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces  from territories occupied in the recent conflict." However, 242 did not call for withdrawal from all"territories occupied" or specify or delineate which territories were "occupied." Israel had occupied the Sinai Peninsula, part of Egypt. Leaving Sinai was withdrawing from occupied territory. But since Judea-Samaria and the Gaza Strip were part of the never revoked Jewish National Home, then it can be deduced that they were not in the status of "occupied territory" in 1967, nor now. However, many world powers suffer from a convenient amnesia when it comes to obligations and commitments to the Jews.  The original Jewish National Home decision of San Remo and the League of Nations in 1922 and various supporting acts afterwards have been conveniently forgotten and it is widely assumed that Judea-Samaria and the Gaza Strip are "occupied" by Israel.

The same motives led to a post-1967 reinterpretation of Geneva Convention IV:49, particularly 49:6. This latter clause forbids transfer of population into an occupied territory. Whereas this clause and indeed of Article 49 were inserted into the post-WW2 Geneva IV, to prevent repetition of Nazi acts of deporting and transferring of population --chiefly Jews-- into Poland to the death camps and forced labor camps, the post-1967 reinterpretation was meant to harm Jewish rights and lives. Article 49, like Geneva IV generally is meant to protect civilians  in war from specified illegal acts, such as transfer, which Geneva IV:49:1 defines as "forced transfer and deportation" and the connotation of compulsory migration logically carries over to the whole of Article 49. Moreover, the very word "transfer" is a transitive verb and that therefore implies that transfer is something imposed on people, something involuntary.

However, the post-1967 reinterpretation is changed to mean migration of any sort.  Hence, the new interpretation, promoted not only by Arabs but by the International Committee of the Red Cross, a semi-official Swiss government agency, entrusted with interpreting the Geneva conventions, forbids even voluntary and eager migration into territory designated "occupied". Rather than protecting the persons upon whom transfer is imposed, the new interpretation pretends to protect existing residents of allegedly "occupied" territory. Which is not the same thing as Geneva IV:49:6 originally meant to do. Hence, even if Judea, Samaria & the Gaza Strip were "occupied" by Israel, international law would not forbid voluntary Jewish migration to those areas except under malicious, tendentious and partisan reinterpretations of Geneva IV:49:6.

There is no reason not to see this reinterpretation as an anti-Jewish act, meant to prevent Jews from voluntarily, even eagerly coming to live in parts of the ancient Jewish homeland designated by international law as parts of the Jewish National Home. Moreover, Jews were living in the Gaza Strip and in Judea-Samaria before the UN partition recommendation of November 1947 and the first refugees in the ensuing war, started by the Arab side, were Jews driven out of their homes in south Tel Aviv and parts of Haifa as well as parts of Jerusalem. occupied by Transjordan [later Jordan] in the Israeli War of Independence. The new interpretation of Geneva IV:49:6 forbids Jews from going to live in places inhabited by Jews up to 29 November 1947 or, in the case of Hebron, up to August 1929.

The above is part of the background to the 1993 Oslo accords. These ill-fated agreements provided that certain issues in dispute between Israel and the PLO were to be left for "final status negotiations." These issues included settlements, Jerusalem and borders. The Oslo 2 Accords of 1995 ruled out any unilateral acts to change the status --implicitly the legal status-- 
of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Obviously, by declaring itself a state without the agreement of Israel and by setting as a precondition for negotiation on final status issues, that Israel prevent and forbid and stop all "settlement activity," the PLO/PA has violated the Oslo Accords. Likewise, by going to the UN, whether the General Assembly or the Security Council, and asking for recognition as a state, the Palestinian Authority/PLO is violating the accords. There is more to be said about the latest violations, encompassing not only the Judeophobic and mendacious Palestinian Authority/PLO but many Western states and other countries. For that wait for Part IV of this article.

Sources:
F-J Armorin, Des Juifs Quittent l'Europe, preface de David Rousset [Paris: La Jeune Parque 1948] 
Menahem Begin, The Revolt 
Jacques Derogy, 100,000 Juifs a la mer [Paris: Stock 1973]
Ernst Frankenstein, Justice for My People [New York: Dial Press 1944]
Frank Gervasi, To Whom Palestine [New York: Appleton-Century 1946]
Louis Golding, The Jewish Problem [Harmondsworth: Penguin 1938]
Alex Grobman, The Palestinian Right to Israel [Noble, OK: Balfour Books 2010]
Itzhak Gurion, Triumph on the Gallows [Brooklyn, NY: 1950] 

Ira A Hirschmann, Life Line to a Promised Land [New York: Vanguard 1946]
Samuel Katz, Days of Fire [London: W H Allen 1968]
Jon & David Kimche, The Secret RoadsThe "Illegal" Migration of a People [New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy 1955]
Albert Londres, Le Juif errant est arrive [Paris: Albin Michel 1930]
Leo W Schwarz, The Redeemers, A Saga of the Years 1945-1952[New York: Farrar Straus and Young1953]
Pierre van  Paassen, Forgotten Ally [New York: Dial Press 1943]
--sources also include books by Gilbert, Wasserstein, and Ziff listed in Part I.

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