by Israel Hayom Staff
Habayit Hayehudi leader: Israel should annex settlements, establish facts on the ground to dispel the notion that a two-state solution is still viable • Deputy Foreign Minister Elkin: Most European diplomats are wedded to the idea of Palestinian state.
Economy and Trade Minister
Naftali Bennett
|
Photo credit: Moshe Shai  |
Israel should discard the two-state solution
when it comes to the conflict with the Palestinians and instead seek to
"live with the problem," Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett
(Habayit Hayehudi) said on Monday in a conference sponsored by the Yesha
Council in Jerusalem.
The Yesha Council, an umbrella body of Jewish
communities in Judea and Samaria, invited several government officials
to speak at the conference, which focused on Israel's public advocacy
efforts on the world stage.
Bennett reiterated his stance that Israel
should annex -- "as quickly as possible" -- virtually all the areas that
were not handed over the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords,
including the Jewish communities and a handful of Palestinian towns. He
further advocated that Israel devise "aggressive" new plans to
drastically improve the economic well-being of both the Jewish and Arab
inhabitants of Judea and Samaria.
Bennett said that Israel must continue its
settlement activity in Judea and Samaria "in full force, because only
facts on the ground would make everyone understand that it is an
unrealistic proposition to have a Palestinian entity in the Land of
Israel."
"The notion of having a two-state solution
established in the Land of Israel is now at a dead end; never in Jewish
history have so many people talked so much and expended so much energy
in something so futile," Bennett told the audience, stressing that
Israel could not be called an occupier because it was on its own
historic homeland.
He stressed that the sheer number of Jewish
residents in Judea and Samaria meant that the two-state solution was no
longer viable. "More than 10 percent of all Israelis live beyond what
was known as the Green Line [Israel's pre-1967 border with Jordan];
anyone walking in Judea and Samaria knows that what was negotiated in
Annapolis and in Oslo was just divorced from reality," he said. He noted
that the pursuit of peace in such conferences and negotiating sessions
has ultimately resulted in many deaths. Sometimes, a Western-style peace
accord is beyond reach, he noted, expressing fear than many more would
die before people abandon their "quest for a perfect solution."
Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin (Likud)
said most European diplomats he meets are wedded to the idea of a
two-state solution. Reacting to Bennett's comments, he said, "Not a
single foreign minister in Europe would agree with what Bennett said,
not even with 10% of what he said; dozens of European foreign ministers
have met with me recently and all they talked about was the two-state
solution."
Last week, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud),
considered a hawk on the Palestinian issue, said the government would
never endorse a two-state solution. "If you will bring it to a vote in
the government -- nobody will bring it to a vote, it’s not smart to do
it -- but if you bring it to a vote, you will see the majority of Likud
ministers, along with Habayit Hayehudi, will be against it,” Danon told
The Times of Israel. Danon further said that Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's support for a two-state solution is tactical because such a
prospect had zero chance of materializing. Danon's comments triggered a
media firestorm and prompted Netanyahu to distance himself from Danon's
statements. Justice Ministry Tzipi Livni (Hatnuah) even called Danon's
view "Danonism."
Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10063
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
1 comment:
Naftali Bennett is head of Israel's Jewish Home party. Its members were beguiled by the Oslo peace process. After a long detour in chasing a fantasy two state solution, they apparently have come to think as I do. It is time to determine whether efforts spent by Jews at this "peace process"can better be spent in cultivating our garden in all of Palestine west of the Jordan River. We have learned that the peace process is a charade just as Major-General Ion Pacepa, a defector from the Soviet bloc reported to us many years ago. See: "Soviet Russia, the Creators of the PLO and the Palestinian People" http://www.think-israel.org/brand.russiatheenemy.html
First we must, because of our Jewish ethics, answer two questions: 1. Is it moral? and 2. Is it lawful under International as well as Canon Law?
These are some of the more basic questions we must ask. The very first is: If you "occupy" your own home, i.e., if you are not in "belligerent occupation" of someone else's lawful home, is that immoral or unlawful? Thodor Meron, a government lawyer under the Labor Party, assumed we were in "belligerent occupation" of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. But that would be the case only if they had previously been occupied by a legitimate sovereign. Military belligerent occupation occurs when a belligerent state invades the territory of another sovereign state with the intention of holding the territory at least temporarily. That legal doctrine is based on Article 43 of the 4th Hague Convention of 1907 that assumes that land being occupied has a legitimate sovereign. They were illegally occupied by Jordan in after an aggressive war in 1948. No Arab country recognized Jordan's sovereignty on territories in the West Bank. Only two countries in the world recognized it -- Britain and Pakistan.
So the answer to that question is an easy "no" answer. It is perfectly moral for Israel to occupy this area. I have been occupying my own home for 46 years. Israel's occupation is just as moral as my own.
I have therefore turned my efforts to examine the question of the lawfulness of Jews in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem under International Law. That question is "whose home is all of Palestine west of the Jordan River under International Law? I have found that question was placed in issue and was resolved many years ago following WWI and not by the UN Partition Resolution No. 181 in 1947 as many believe. The result is displayed in an article that having reviewed much history and law is far too long for this comment. You can find it at http://www.think-israel.org/brand.allegedoccupation.html entitled: Roots of Israel's Sovereignty and Boundaries in International Law: In Defense of the Levy Report. It shows the conclusions of several lawyers as well as my own, each of us, independently, reaching the same answer on questions of Jewish Sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. (Some of us took slightly different paths along the way.) First it was recognized, at the end of WWI, by 52 nations as a "Jewish National Home". These were the 51 Nations who were members of the League of Nations, and the United States that had declined to become a member. Then, the Jews, having, by 1950 met the tacit standards originally set for statehood, these same nations under Article 80 of the UN Charter, under undisputed history and the legal doctrines of "acquired rights" and "estoppel" must recognize it as a reconstituted Jewish State.
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