By MELANIE PHILLIPS—
There is consternation in Israel over the EU’s malicious decision to boycott individuals or institutions situated over the ‘Green Line’ between Israel and the disputed territories. This would presumably include boycotting, for example, the Hebrew University which is just over that line or, even more grotesquely, Jewish residents in Jerusalem’s Old City – where ancient Jewish settlement far predated the arrival of a single Arab, dating as it does since King David who built it as the capital of the kingdom of the Jewish people.
The EU says Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line are illegal under international law. Nothing new there – so do the UN and associated bodies say so. But they are simply wrong.
International law in general is known to be highly contentious and far from authoritative, since it is anchored in no single jurisdiction and arguably therefore constitutes nothing other than international politics by another name.
In any event, the charge that Jewish residence over the Green Line is illegal first rests on the application to this situation of the wrong treaty; and second, totally ignores the treaties which gave the Jews the right to settle anywhere in these territories.
To take the second point first. The San Remo Treaty of 1920, in which the victors of the First World War parcelled out the remnants of the defeated Ottoman Empire, created a geographical area called Palestine along both sides of the Jordan River.
Article 6 of the Palestine Mandate signed by the League of Nations in 1922 stipulated ‘close Jewish settlement’ on the land west of the Jordan River. The river served as the boundary because that year the UK created a new Arab country, today known as Jordan, by unilaterally bestowing the land east of the river onto the Hashemite dynasty and thus giving some three quarters of Palestine away.
That Mandate treaty obligation to settle the Jews in Palestine from the river to the sea has never been abrogated and endures today. The 1945 UN Charter, Chapter XII, Article 80 explicitly says that nothing within it shall ‘alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties’.
Now to the main argument mounted by the ‘illegalisers’. This rests on their claim that the Israeli settlements breach Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. But this article does not apply to the settlements. Written in the shadow of the deportation of European Jews to their deaths in Nazi Europe, it prohibits
‘individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or that of any other country, occupied or not…The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’
But none of the Israelis living beyond the Green Line have been transferred or deported, forcibly or not; they all chose voluntarily to live there. (The only force ever used against these residents was in fact when Israel forcibly transferred them from Gaza into Israel in 2005.)
Moreover, the Geneva Convention applies to actions carried out on the territory of a ‘High Contracting Party’ with a sovereign claim to that territory. But the areas in question over the ‘Green Line’ never belonged to any sovereign power. As remains the case to this day they merely constitute no-man’s land, having never been allocated to any ‘High Contracting’ sovereign state. The only treaty obligations ever made in respect of these areas was in fact to the Jews, who were promised ‘close settlement’ of the land in which they were included.
Furthermore, Israel’s ‘occupation’ of these areas is legal twice over – since it merely gained them in a war of self-defence in 1967, and is thus legally entitled to hold onto them until the belligerents stop waging war upon it. Which they still have not.
As for the ‘Green Line’ itself, this is not a legal border. It has no significance other than where the cease-fire line was drawn in the war of 1948-49 when the Arabs tried to destroy the newly restored State of Israel. Indeed, the Armistice Agreements of 1949 stated that the demarcation lines were ‘not to be construed in any sense’ as political or territorial boundaries’, and were not in any way to prejudice the parties’ claims in ‘the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem.’
Which ‘prejudice’ is of course, precisely what the EU is now busily imposing. Indeed, by effectively corralling Israel behind the 1949 armistice line it is forcing it back behind what has been called the ‘Auschwitz border’, since this line leaves Israel militarily indefensible against attack.
This is an act of malevolence. But the fault in large measure surely lies with Israel. For although some may find this incomprehensible, Israel does not make to the world the one case that matters – why Israelis are fully entitled under international law to build their homes in these territories; and exactly how Britain, the EU and the UN have grossly mis-stated and misapplied that international law.
Instead, Israel merely protests that the EU move will inhibit a peace settlement. Which it undoubtedly will. But it will do so principally by upending law, truth and justice – a case Israel never makes in public, thus allowing the irrational hatred of Israel in the west, fed by racist lies and propaganda, to spread its poison unchecked.
The reason it does not properly make this case is partly through the epic dysfunctionality of the Israeli political class (which could fill many volumes). It is partly through Israel’s isolation in the face of the bully-boys of the western diplomatic world. But it is also through Israel’s bleak and despairing judgement that the international community, composed of those who historically and presently were and are driven by obsessive hatred of the Jewish people and which finds expression for that hatred through vehicles such as the UN and EU, will always do the bidding of those who wish to destroy the Jews and is therefore impervious to reason and morality.
News of the EU’s act of existential spite against Israel broke on the fast of Tisha b’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple (you know, that Temple, the one that stood in Jerusalem all those centuries ago before any Arabs existed, let alone any Green Line) along with the seemingly never-ending list down through the ages of all those prosecuting their uniquely murderous and baseless hatred of the Jewish people.
Some coincidence. To that list of infamy, the EU can now add its name. For shame.
Brilliant, succinct, legally factual and above all a rigorous RATIONAL argument.
The hand of the ghastly, anti-Semitic Catherine Ashton is clearly behind this latest attack on Israeli sovereignty; she who, with no knowledge of any foreign language except English, lords it over the Foreign Ministers of the individual nations of the EU as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Under the Treaty of Lisbon, this post is combined with the post of Vice-President of the European Commission.
May God help Israel. Ashton is on record (photographed) waving a V for Victory sign, arm-in-arm with former Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, January 6, 2011. See:
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/how-the-eu-will-reverse-itself-in-three-easy-steps/2013/07/17/
This then is the ‘power’ behind the pro-‘Palestinian’ EU’s latest attempt to de-legitimise Israel. An imposter masquerading behind the title ‘labour politician’. I use the word advisedly; no constituency in the UK ever ELECTED Ashton to any position in parliament; she is a PLACEMENT – an ex-communist, who between 1977 and 1983 worked for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) now known to have accepted funding from the Soviets.
Her so-called ‘political career’ did not begin until 1999 when she was created a Life Peer by Tony Blair’s Labour Government. Under that government she became “the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills 2001” and subsequently Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and Ministry of Justice 2004. She was elevated to the Privy Council in May 2006.
“The ‘Privy Council’ formally advises the Sovereign on the exercise of the Royal Prerogative, and together (as the Queen-in-Council) they issue executive instruments known as Orders in Council, which amongst other things are used to make Regulations. The Council by itself also has a delegated authority to issue Orders of Council, which are mostly used to regulate certain public institutions….. ”
All this is relevant in the context of the ‘dumbing-down’ of British education during the period 1997-2010, a process under which the Blair government substituted mediocrity for excellence and instituted denigration of British history. It should also be remembered that the Blair government deliberately set out to “invite” unfettered immigration from the Islamic 3rd world into GB. To achieve their aim of de-legitimisation of National Identity. Taken together, these two ideological positions enabled a treasonous ‘collective’ which included Ashton to ensure the indigenous English and all law-abiding, integrated immigrants of that
nation, will find themselves members of a minority Muslim state by 2050.
Catherine Ashton was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Queen’s Privy Council in Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet 2007. As well as Leader of the Lords, she held responsibility in the House of Lords for equalities issues, and she was instrumental in steering the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon (aka removal of national sovereignty) through the UK’s upper chamber.
I have never given any credit to ‘conspiracy theories’ BUT it is no coincidence that, with such a history – ideologically far-left and internationalist, utterly devoid of any experience of parliamentary or diplomatic protocols, and unable to understand without a translator ANY foreign language (particularly Arabic) – it is not fantastical to assert, this despicable ideologue has used her position in Europe to damage the State of Israel at every opportunity. All on record … too numerous to list here.
PS: Apologies. Paragraph 7, last line should, of course read: ‘ … that nation [England] will find
ITSELF a MAJORITY Muslim state by 2050.’
What do you expect from any European country? 21 countries participated in murdering their own Jews, once a Nazi always Nazi. I have not been to Europe in 40 Years and don’t miss them at all.
They exchanged the talented and hard working Jews to Muslims in welfare. Good luck despicable
Europeans!
Holocaust survivor
Bless Israel
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.” Psalms 122:6
What can we expect from the antisemitic EU. Their history follows them and within a few short years at the pace they are going they will be calling themselves the “EU Caliphate”. Perhaps they are already in this camp. Our prayers need to be with Israel now more than ever. It is the last bastion of democratic civilization in the entire Middle East & God will not forgive those who interfere with His plans for His people. There are too many real partners that Israel can trade with who would appreciate their expertise who would be glad to partner with them and stop investing with the broken down EU.