US policy and the legal status of Israel’s West Bank settlements. Why it matters - by Douglas J. Feith

For thousands of years, Jews could and did live in the West Bank, a part of the ancient Jewish homeland. From 1948 until 1967, Jordan prohibited Jews from living there. And for the last half-century, Jews have been living there again. Yet President Jimmy Carter’s administration decided that the anomaly was the norm. It asked itself whether Jews should be allowed to live in the West Bank, and it chose to find its answer not in the broad sweep of history or in a comprehensive legal analysis, but in the odd 19-year period when Jordan banned Jews from living in the territory.

Douglas J. Feith..
JNS.org..
27 January '20..

What was the context of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent declaration about the legality of Israeli West Bank settlements? And why does it matter?

Palestine is a region that Christians commonly called the Holy Land, and Jews traditionally called the Land of Israel. The West Bank is the area within Western Palestine that Jordan conquered in the 1948-49 War of Independence and then lost to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Jews have lived in Palestine since the days of the Bible. The Romans called the land Judea and then changed its name, which was how it came to be known as Palestine.

The land was conquered many times.

For our purposes, it’s enough to note that the Turks conquered it in 1517. They owned it and the surrounding territory for 400 years. Throughout that period, Jews lived in Palestine, including in what is now called the West Bank.

Then, in World War I, the Turks joined the German side and were defeated by the Allies. In that war, Palestine was among the enemy lands that Britain conquered.

The British then ruled Palestine for three decades, until 1948. In that period, they banned Jews from settling in Eastern Palestine, but they allowed Jews to live in Western Palestine, including the area now called the West Bank.

In 1948, Britain relinquished control over Western Palestine, and Israel declared independence. Its Arab neighbors launched a war to destroy it. In that war, the Kingdom of Jordan (then known as Transjordan) conquered the West Bank and claimed to annex it. Jews were no longer allowed to live in the West Bank.

But 19 years later, in 1967, Jordan joined another Arab war against Israel. In that war, Israel conquered the West Bank. Jews then created the various towns and villages that are commonly called “settlements” and are our subject today.

So, for thousands of years, Jews could and did live in the West Bank, a part of the ancient Jewish homeland. From 1948 until 1967, Jordan prohibited Jews from living there. And for the last half-century, Jews have been living there again.

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Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush Administration. This article is adapted from remarks delivered at a January 23, 2020 conference in the U.S. Capitol organized by the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET).

Israel Does Not Commit War Crimes. Period. - JPost Editorial

Israel needs to say categorically that enabling Jews to live in the West Bank is not a war crime.

JPost Editorial..
22 December '19..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/War-crimes-611794

Israel does not commit war crimes.

That is the message Israel needs to send the world, in light of the recommendation on Friday by the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to investigate Israel regarding alleged war crimes stemming from 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza; settlement activity since then; and the IDF’s response to weekly riots along the Gaza border fence.

Israel does have soldiers who have committed crimes while in action – as do all countries involved in active military campaigns. And when this happens, the country’s military and civil courts deal with the cases and hold those involved responsible.

Bensouda, in what seems like little more than a fig leaf, wrote that there is also a “reasonable basis” to believe that Hamas and “Palestinian armed groups” committed war crimes. As if there is any doubt that the indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets on Sderot, Ashkelon and communities nearby – or purposefully setting alight thousands of dunams of agricultural land and forests – is anything but a war crime.

But it is obscene for Bensouda to place Israel and terrorist organizations on equal footing. Unlike Hamas – and what Bensouda called in sanitized language “Palestinian armed groups” – Israel does not intentionally harm civilians in Gaza or anywhere else.

Yes, civilians are harmed in Gaza by IDF actions, but they are not the target.

In 2015, a blue ribbon panel of former top military leaders and generals from eight democratic countries wrote a report after conducting an investigation into Operation Protective Edge. Their conclusion: Israel’s conduct in the conflict “met and in some respects exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nations’ militaries... The IDF not only met its obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict, but often exceeded these on the battlefield at significant tactical cost.”

Furthermore, Israel needs to say categorically that enabling Jews to live in the West Bank is not a war crime.

Jews living at the site of the biblical Shiloh, or in the shadow of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, are not committing war crimes. One can argue the political wisdom of their living there, and one can say that making peace with the Palestinians is more difficult because they live there, but to say that a Jew living in Judea – the cradle of Jewish civilization – is a war criminal, is ridiculous.

Judea, Samaria and what those 107 Democrats got wrong - by Stephen M. Flatow

The letter claims that the new US policy could “lead to a more entrenched conflict.” More entrenched than a 100-year-long Palestinian Arab war against Jews and the existence of a Jewish state?

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
27 November '19..

The letter from 107 Democratic members of Congress declaring that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and much of Jerusalem, are illegal is wrong on so many levels that I wonder if even most of the signatories themselves understand the implications of what they signed.

Members of Congress are busy men and women. I get that. They don’t have time to carefully read every request that comes across their desks. They can’t familiarize themselves with every nuance of the issue under consideration. They often must rely on their senior staff to provide guidance. If that’s what happened here, then they received very poor guidance indeed.

Most of the letter consists of predictable slogans and irrelevancies. For example, it warns against “settlement expansion into the occupied West Bank,” which is irrelevant because the new U.S. policy refers to existing Jewish communities and has nothing to do with whether or not they “expand.”

The letter also claims that the new U.S. policy could “lead to a more entrenched conflict.” More entrenched than a 100-year-long Palestinian Arab war against Jews and the existence of a Jewish state? More entrenched than the Palestinian Authority’s refusal even to negotiate with Israel? More entrenched than an entire generation of Palestinian Arab youth being raised—in the aftermath of the Oslo accords—on hatred of Jews and glorification of terrorism?

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Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism,” now available on Kindle.