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Saturday, June 2, 2012

Occupation? Israel's Involvementa in Judea and Samaria Isn't This

Nadene Goldfoot
Looking at the facts may be hard as they are so flavored with political involvement that they are almost hard to decipher today.  The fact is that Israel was attacked by all the neighboring states in 1967 and won.  The many against the littlest on the block is what occurred.  It wasn't a fair fight nor was there even a logical reason to attack.  It was out of greed and misplaced  egotistic righteousness on the attackers' parts. In fact, it was downright coveting, that sin listed in the Ten Commandments that many think is out of date.

In winning, Israel took over the West Bank, a name given to Judea and Samaria by Jordan, who had occupied the area without any legal basis in 1948 when Israel was created a state legally through the UN.  Israel did not take land from a state called Palestine.  It was taken from Jordan who occupied it illegally in the first place from 1948 to 1967.  Actually that area had been supposed to be a part of the future Jewish state under the British Mandate, and they in turn had the Mandate because the Ottoman Empire had it and lost it at the close of the 1st World War, and they had lost it to the Allies because the Ottoman's had sided with Germany who was defeated, but then the only people noticing this little fact are a few Israelis and a smattering of other caring historians.

"Occupation" is often used as a political word.  The people who use it do not understand the general or legal meaning of the term.  By using "occupation" it reduces complex situations of competing claims and rights to Right and Wrong.  Today it's freely used when talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which implies that Israel bears ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinians and is used in an extreme derogatory manner.  This denies Israel's right to even defend itself against the continual Palestinian terror.  It takes away the Palestinian's responsibility for their own actions and the consequences thereof.  It's another assault on Israel's legitimacy, as if Israel didn't follow enough of the rules to be re-established after its 2,000 year hiatus.  It has nothing to do with Israel's status as an occupier under international law, which I'm sorry to say, is not being followed by the U.N. itself.

Israel maintains that Judea and Samaria are "disputed territories" under international law.  This does not stop them from developing and settling its own ancestral homeland.  What had become absolute untended and wild wasteland, left alone for Israel's absence of  2,000 years, was sacred land to the Jews, land of historic and valued meaning.  It was only when Jews had returned to their brothers who had never left the "Palestine" area-in reality Judah and Israel but renamed by the Romans to remove the stigma or fact that it had been the Jewish state, did the nomadic Arabs come around hoping to get jobs.  They had no interest in building another state themselves.  When Mark Twain visited in the 1860's it was an utter wasteland.  One should read his "The Innocents Abroad"  when he traveled to "Palestine" in 1867.  When he visited Jerusalem there were only 14,000 people living there: " Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of Protestants of which there were 100.  Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the cresecent-flag itself abound."   page 240.

Today we still hear the obligatory call of "OCCUPATION' from Judea and Samaria even though  they were placed under the Palestinian Authority (PA-meaning Fatah through Abbas) on September 28, 1995.  Israel had then withdrawn its military forces and today one cannot call it "occupied" by Israel.  The agreement did include the presence of Israeli troops in the area.  That was a part of the Agreement, but that this presence can not longer be looked upon as the O word-OCCUPATION.  Let's face it.  The Arab people living there are constantly fed a diet of hatred for the Israelis by their leaders, no less.  They have not ended their attempts and successes of killing Israelis.  Thus the need for this policing of terrorism.  If it didn't happen there would be no need.

The miracle of this all is that Judea and Samaria were originally to be a part of the Jewish Homeland, decided upon on November 2, 1917: England was in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  It was given international ratification.  This was laid down in the preamble.  Therefore, the British Mandate was to carry this out, but everything got under the control and pressure of politics going on under the surface and once again the Jews were screwed.  They wound up settling for far less.  Another miracle came along under the guise of a slaughter of little Israel and who knew the little land of milk and honey could conquer all those armies?  Our rose garden in Eden is full of thorns, though, one of which is the UN who cannot bring themselves to accept Israel today.  Probably they never thought they'd last for 64 years in the first place.  But they have and in doing so are trying more than any other country would to be be fair to those that hate them and desire their blood.

Occupation?  Are the people locked up inside a ghetto as the Jews had been treated in Italy's  past?  No!  Since 1967 Israel had an Open Bridges policy allowing movement of people and goods between the administered areas and Arab countries.  People traveled overseas freely through Israel's airports and harbors.  Open bridges over the Jordan River permitted regular trade with the Arab countries and free movement of persons either way.  People had family reunions, work and study advantages.  In 1972 people in the administered areas visiting Arab states were over 100,000.  Every summer residents got permission for visitors from Arab states to stay with them for up to 4 months.  152,000 arrived, with some asking to remain and most went on to visit---yes---even Israel.  There were more than 40,000 Arabs joining their families by the end of 1971.  An arrangement with Egypt was an exchange of people, so that 3,1000 Palestinian Arabs had been brought back.  Any problems?  Only the ensuing terrorism against Israel that doesn't make any sense at all.

Resource: http://emetnews.org/analysis/why-is-israels-presence-in-the-territories-st
http://emetnews.or/analysis/occupation-whose-occupation.php  by Moshe Sharon
Book: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, copyright 2009 by Seven Treasures Publications
Facts About Israel, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem by division of Information.  

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