Op-Ed: Jewish Rights in Judea and Samaria

Israel's former UN Ambassador Yehuda Blum on Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria.


To the attention of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry:

The following excerpt, stated in June 1979, is sadly still relevant 34 years later:

“A corollary of the inalienable right of the Jewish people to its Land is the right to live in any part of Eretz Yisrael [Palestine], including Judea and Samaria which are an itegeral part of  Eretz Yisrael.

"Jews are not foreigners anywhere in the Land of Israel. Anyone who asserts that it is illegal for a Jew to live in Judea and Samaria just because he is a Jew, is in fact advocating a concept that is disturbingly reminiscent of the ‘Judenrein’ policies of Nazi Germany banning Jews from certain spheres of life for no other reason than that they were Jews.

"The Jewish villages in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district are there as of right and are there to stay.
“The right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel was also recognised in the League of Nations ‘Mandate for Palestine’ which stressed ‘the historicalconnection of the Jewish people with Palestine and … the grounds for reconstituting’ - I repeat, reconstituting ‘their national home in that country.’

“The Mandatory Power was also entrusted with the duty to encourage ‘close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.’”



Israel’s Government position as expressed by Professor Yehuda Z. Blum, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations at the Louis D. Brandeis Award Dinner of the Zionist Organization of America. (Washington D.C., 11 June 1979)

Eli E. Hertz

 is the president of Myths and Facts, an organization devoted to research and publication of information regarding US interests in the world and particularly in the Middle East. Mr. Hertz served as Chairman of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting

Historians will mock Obama

Op-ed:

 US leader wasted time and energy on forming unneeded western coalition, as if Syria crisis was world war three

President Barack Obama won't get any medals of honor for his handling of the Syrian crisis. Even if he eventually orders a military strike on the Assad regime, historians will mock him.

They will write that in 2012 he set a red line for Syria, which was crossed in 2013, but he made every effort to shirk his obligation.They will write that he organized a limited attack and prayed until the very last minute that it will be rendered unnecessary. His body language projected determination, but his actions projected weakness.

There was no military or constitutional barrier which prevented Obama from striking Syria over a week ago, when the world was still under the impression of the horrible images from the chemical attack on rebel-strongholds near Damascus. US warships in the Mediterranean have at any given moment enough Tomahawk missiles to carry out such a simple mission. There is no shortage of targets either. Two or three salvos would have made it clear to all the crazies of the Middle East that the US keeps its word.

But for Obama, even this bare minimum was too much. He wasted time and energy on forming an unnecessary western coalition, as if this was world war three. Instead of calling IDF chief Benny Gantz and asking for his advice on how to bomb Syria without the scrutiny of the High Court and B'Tselem, the White House phoned everyone else in the world to seek approval for a strike. The largest superpower in the world became small-minded.

According to most reports, Obama was not furious when the parliament in London voted against an attack. In fact, he breathed a sigh of relief. The British refusal gave him the inspiration for the ploy - taking the decision on a strike in Syria to Congress.

Obama purposely complicated the situation to gain another two to three week window which he hopes will present him with an opportunity to avoid a military operation against Assad. He hopes that during this time a compromise offer will surface or that some event will distract the world from the situation in Syria. Who knows, maybe the Israeli government will suddenly decide to build seven and a half apartments in east Jerusalem? Then even the neutral Brits will vote enthusiastically in favor of a strike.

Arutz 7

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Op-Ed: Obama's Legacy

The simmering pressure-cooker of the Middle East finally exploded, couple of years ago  -  you would think John Kerry's recent visit would have been  "on subject" -  well I guess he thinks he was on  subject, but failed miserably....yet another leader failed to get the Palestinian Authority to the Peace table, Kerry probably blames the construction of apartments in Jerusalem, Israels capital city the whole reason for the Middle East mess.
Please...when will someone get real??

op-ed by  Ron Jager

Only Secretary of State Kerry could outdo President Obama in being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And there can be repercussions.

Egypt is coming apart at the seams, with a military coup and on the brink of civil war between the ousted Muslim Brotherhood, cutely called by the White House "the brothers" and the newly installed secular interim government.

In Syria, the civil war has taken the lives of over 100,000 people so far, with the Assad regime getting massive military support from Russia, Iran and Hizbullah ground forces.

Let us not forget that Iran has vowed to continue to enrich uranium, as it gets closer to amassing enough to build a nuclear weapon.

Let us also not forget that the Putin government in Russia continues to ignore America's standing request to extradite the NSA spy Edward Snowden, as did China—as did Hong Kong- as did Bolivia and other nations who have offered asylum to Snowden.

An objective observer might wonder, where is the White House?

Well last week, while Egypt was being torn apart, President Obama was visiting in South Africa, sitting in a hospital waiting room with family members of Nelson Mandela. Obama didn't actually visit Mandela, who had been put on life support weeks ago, so it seems odd that he didn't pack up and get back pronto to the White House.

Only Secretary of State Kerry could outdo President Obama in being at the wrong place at the wrong time. One would assume that America’s foreign policy chief would be up to his neck dealing with these crises. But in case you hadn’t heard, Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t paying much attention to any of those other nuisances in the last few days.

On Wednesday, when all hell broke out in Egypt, Kerry was seen on his private yacht the "Isabella" in Nantucket, and despite initial denials, his office concurred that he had indeed been yachting that day. Evidently Kerry needed some R&R after wasting his time in the Middle East, no not in Egypt, no not in Syria, and no not in Iran but in commuting between Ramallah and Jerusalem attempting to craft an agreement that would finally bring the Palestinian Arabs back to the Middle East peace talks.

In case you have forgotten, they have been boycotting peace negotiations for the last four and a half years, nothing new here. But at the end of his fifth such effortsince taking office in February, Kerry left the region empty-handed again, having failed to convince the Palestinian Arabs to talk, claiming that he is getting closer to success.

The blatantly humiliating nature of these repeated failures brings to mind questions of adequacy and just how dense and clueless the Obama administration really can be.  Subjecting American foreign policy to this kind of mediocrity and strategic ignorance -  Egypt being only the latest - while at the same time conspicuously ignoring other more important and far more urgent problems, says a lot about what matters to President Obama.

It seems as if President Obama, by allowing Kerry to waste his time in futile negotiations, doesn't really care how America is perceived around the world. Rather than focus on genuine crises on which American policy can have an impact, Kerry is obsessively repeating the mistakes made by his predecessors. President Obama came into office claiming that he would raise America’s prestige abroad, yet as one observes the past two weeks and the sheer volume of foreign policy disasters going on all at the same time, it seems that a cloud of incompetence hovers over the White House refusing to leave.
The problem with all of this is that President Obama is acting as if he thinks allowing Kerry to waste his time in this manner has no impact on how America is perceived around the world. It also raises questions about the Obama administration’s ability to prioritize regional conflicts. In case the White House hasn't noticed, the Palestinian Arabs are no longer of interest to the Arab world,  up to its neck in chaos and civil wars and are at most a side show compared to the genocide going  on just north of Israel.

In addition, spending time and effort in preventing apartment construction in Jerusalem only reinforces the feeling here in the Middle East that the Obama administration is out of its depth.

The inevitable conclusion of all this is that it won't stop here, but could escalate into war between Egypt and Israel. Egypt is a failed state and has a failed economy. Only continued foreign subsidy at a rate of ten's of billions of dollars per year can prevent Egypt from imploding and sliding into civil war. So when all else fails, blame the Jews and blame Israel. Nothing simpler than to galvanize the Egyptian public to unite by loathing the Zionist State supported by anti-Semitic rhetoric and sentiment.

Finally, President Obama needs to understand that security around the world and especially in the Middle East cannot be managed effectively and successfully without Russian and Chinese cooperation. Today both these superpowers don't have high regard for Obama, who is perceived as all talk and no action, a novice who always stands down from protecting American interests.

If Obama wants to gain the respect of Russia and China and for that matter, the respect of Middle Eastern Arab leaders, then he must do something that he has refrained from doing since being elected almost 5 years ago, Obama must become a credible threat in the eyes of world leaders.

As Eli Wallach uttered in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:  "When you have to shoot….shoot, don't talk". The time has arrived for Obama to get up and take charge.

source

Op-Ed: Mr. Peres, How Many Lives Did You Cost Israel?

By - Giulio Meotti

2000 victims of a delusionary peace process and the architect, instead of bowing his head in shame, holds birthday parties.


For many years, since the Oslo Accords, Israel became self-hypnotized with the fable of a pacified, normalized, territorially integrated post-Zionist society. The dream of peace seemed close at hand, but then collapsed miserably under Islamic genocidal belligerence—a new, potentially fatal chapter in the story of the Jewish people.

If there is one Israeli leader who bears responsibility for this self inflicted tragedy, it is President Shimon Peres, the architect of a deadly "dream", the man who opposed Israel's going into Jenin in 2002, who opposed killing Yassin in 2004, who opposed bombing Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981, but most important the man who has 2,000 murdered Jews on his conscience.

Mr. Peres, you just hosted dozens of celebrities and useful idiots in Israel for your 90th birthday. I will not be generous like they were. I will remind you and your people why your name will be linked forever to a bloody heritage. And I will not mention the carnage "the settlers" or the ultra orthodox Jews you despise had to pay. I will remind you of a few dates from within the pre 1967 lines, and also some of the secular Israeli victims. Just to let you feel more at home.

It began on October 1994, when Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv was turned into a ribbon of horror. A bus full of poor devout Jews, Russians or Ethiopians who could not afford a car, became a smoking wreck dripping with blood, scattering gray matter on the windows of the homes nearby, leaving a hand lodged in the branches of a tree. There were clumps of long black hair smeared with diesel oil and studded with bits of glass.

Noam Semel, director of the nearby Cameri Theater, heard the explosion and ran down the block to the scene. “I had a feeling that no one was alive. There was smoke and bodies—no screams, no panic, just silence.” Pieces of human flesh landed on terraces and in trees. A hairdresser who had taken the bus to work and suffered blast injuries to her chest and back remembered “a woman without a face.” A plaque hanging on a tree at the Dizengoff bombing site today says: “At this spot, murderers took the lives of twenty-two victims. Their memory will stand forever.”

In March1996, another suicide bomber blew himself up on a crosswalk outside the Dizengoff Center, surrounded by dozens of people including children in costume for a carnival.  On the asphalt were the pulverized remains of a baby stroller. The intersection was covered with mutilated corpses, some of them on fire. In the air was the acrid odor of burned flesh and hair. All the advertising billboards were shredded—Benetton, Sbarro, the guitar of the Hard Rock Cafe—modern icons shattered by totalitarian hatred. At the moment of the explosion, the movie theaters, restaurants, and boutiques were all crowded. One woman screamed, “They’re slaying us all! In a year there won’t be a State of Israel anymore.”

Working his way to a blood stain on the ceiling of Bank Leumi, a volunteer takes out a wad of cotton and delicately mops it up. The Alitalia office on the fourth floor is also devastated. “Only seven bodies have been identified. How will names be matched to the others? They have been reduced to a piteous state,” say the devout emergency responders, who make the rounds like compassionate peacemakers, salvaging the wreckage. They are the guardians of fragments that may be insignificant in our eyes, but will mean everything to those who want to mourn one of the victims. A teenage boy, helped by his parents, climbs to the top of a tree, its bark and leaves burned by the explosion, and places a bouquet of flowers between two bare branches. At the foot of the tree, a mute witness to the horror, people light dozens of candles.

Dana Gutman, aged fourteen, had come to Tel Aviv with three friends for a day of fun. Three of them were killed. They were always explaining to their friends how important the peace process was. Bat-Hen Shahak, fifteen, dressed up for Purim in her mother’s wedding dress. At lunchtime, she called home and asked her father for permission to stay a few more hours. Later that day, he identified Bat-Hen’s body at the forensic institute.

Leah Mizrahi, sixty-one, had gone to Dizengoff Center to buy a present for a bar mitzvah.

Dan Tversky, fifty-eight, was an economics editor at the liberal newspaper Ha’aretz.

Tali Gordon, twenty-five, was politically active in support of the peace process.

Mr. Peres, do you remember the words "anush" (serious), "benonì" (moderate), and "kal" (light)? This is how, during the Oslo war, the injured Israelis were classified at the hospitals. Many children had their faces burned or their hands rendered useless; some had their sight ruined forever. There are trembling elderly people, totally dependent. There are people who went insane and don’t want to live anymore because they are haunted by the sound of the explosion, and they seclude themselves in their homes.

Mr. Peres, do you remember in 1997 when a suicide bomber blew himself up amid the tables at Cafe Apropos in Tel Aviv? A twenty-eight-year-old Palestinian walked into the cafe but couldn’t find an empty table inside, so the waitress showed him to a place on the terrace. Beneath his shirt he wore a belt, eight inches wide, with six loops for the six sticks of dynamite. A wire was threaded through his pants to the control switch. Moments after he sat down, he pushed the button to detonate the bomb. Three women were killed. One image was replayed again and again on television: a distraught policewoman cradling an injured baby outside the ravaged cafe. She was six months old and her mother had died in the explosion.  The white umbrellas were covered with blood and bits of brain.

Mr. Peres, I can go on with this sad narrative forever. You know that you and your failed leadership bear political, moral and military responsibility for all these slaughtered Jews, sacrifices to your delusional Oslo. Mr. Peres, the only good thing about your "dream" was that it once and for all proved that land for peace is a lie. A deadly lie. A death leap.

Mr. Peres, you have been proven absolutely wrong by the hundreds of bodies of dead Jews.

It is a travesty that the post-Holocaust Jewish people had to pay such a price because of you. I will continue to remind you.

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Op-Ed: The Two-State Solution Was Tried 91 Years Ago

The searing tragedy is that the two-state solution may presage for the Jewish people another Final Solution.

In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Mandate over the geographical territory known as Palestine with the express intention of reconstituting within its territory a Jewish National Home.

The territory in question stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the eastern boundary of Mandatory Palestine, which was a border that would separate it from what was to become the future state of Iraq.

 The League of Nations created a number of articles, which were in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29th, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: article number 25.

 At first, the sudden addition of this article was not a cause for alarm, but gradually it became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921/22 to tear away all the territory of geographical Palestine east of the River Jordan, and give it to the Arab Hashemite family; the territory to become Trans-Jordan and led by the emir Abdullah.

Britain presented this gift to Abdullah, the son of the Sherif of Mecca, as a consolation prize for its awarding of the Hedjaz territory and Arabia, which included Mecca, to the rival Saud family: That vast territory is now Saudi Arabia.

British officials also claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, even T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) later described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as "a side show of a side show." The Jewish Nili underground, along with the pro-Zionist Christian Colonel Meinertzhagen, gave the British and Anzac forces far more valuable assistance in defeating the Ottoman Turks than ever did Lawrence’s Bedouins.

This was the first partition of Palestine and created a brand new entity 91 years ago covering some 35,000 square miles or nearly four-fifths of the geographical territory of Palestine. Immediately, Jewish residence in the territory was forbidden and it became in effect judenrein - the German Nazi term for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from a territory.

This betrayal by none other than Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary at the time, was a devastating blow to the Jewish and Zionist leadership, which now saw the promised Jewish homeland reduced to the remaining narrow territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan - an area barely 40 miles at its widest.

Shortly after, in 1923, the British and French colonial powers also divided up the northern part of the Palestine Mandate. Britain stripped away the Golan Heights (ancient biblical Bashan) and gave it to French occupied Syria. Interestingly Israel has now possessed the annexed territory for longer than Syria occupied it – 46 years to Syria’s 44 years.

The Balfour Declaration issued by Lord Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, never envisaged that the Jordan River would be the eastern boundary of the reconstituted Jewish homeland. Indeed, the Zionist leadership had put forward in February 1919 its first submission that the eastern boundary would run well east of the Hedjaz railway. The incorporation of the railway would be an economically essential requirement for the Jewish community living east of the River Jordan as well as providing it with vital security.

The squabbling by the French and British colonial powers over the final frontiers of the Palestine Mandate had earlier led the London Times to urge Paris to accept sensible and rational frontiers in both the north and east of Jewish Palestine. As early as September 19th, 1919 it had thundered in an editorial:

"The Jordan will not do as the eastern frontier of Palestine ... Palestine must have a good military frontier east of Jordan ... Our duty as Mandatory is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling state but one that is capable of vigorous and independent life ... "

But Jewish aspirations inevitably were dashed as a new British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, took the place of Lord Balfour. This new British official, within weeks of succeeding Balfour, made it clear that Britain was intent upon separating Transjordan from Palestine: the first two-state solution.

The succeeding history of the remaining one fifth of the original territory promised to the Jewish people by Lord Balfour and the British government was one of continuing betrayal as each successive Mandatory administration displayed pro-Arab and anti-Jewish policies.

During its administration up until 1947, Britain severely restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land while turning a blind eye to massive illegal Arab immigration into the territory from neighboring Arab states.

Britain's sorry record of appeasement of the Arabs, at the expense of Jewish destiny in the remaining territory, culminated in the infamous 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to just 75,000 souls for the next five years. This onerous and draconian policy, coming as it did on the eve of the outbreak of World War 2, was a death blow to millions of Jews attempting to flee extermination by Nazi Germany.

Britain's mismanagement of the Mandate finally led to the United Nation's Partition Plan of 1947. The Jewish Agency reluctantly accepted this additional dismemberment of what was left in Mandatory Palestine of the promised Jewish National Home.

They did this in order to provide a refuge for the surviving Jewish remnants of the Holocaust and for the growing numbers of Jewish refugees being driven out of their homes throughout the Arab world. In contrast, the Arab regimes rejected the Partition Plan. Then, as now, they worked against the existence of an independent Jewish state.

Israel was officially re-born as a sovereign nation in 1948 and its 600,000 Jews fought to survive the massive Arab onslaught, which was intended to wipe out the Jewish state.

In 1948, Trans-Jordan, renamed the Kingdom of Jordan since 1946, had joined the other Arab nations in invading the Jewish state, illegally occupying the eastern half of Jerusalem and annexing the Biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, renaming it the West Bank. Only Britain and Pakistan recognized Jordan’s occupation.

The war ended in tortuous armistice lines where the fighting stopped resulting in an Israeli border a mere nine to fifteen miles wide at the most densely populated area, which stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordanian occupied West Bank. Israel's late Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, described these dangerously vulnerable armistice lines as the Auschwitz borders.

Nineteen years later the Arab states declared again their imminent intention to destroy Israel. In the June 1967 Six Day War Israel liberated Judea and Samaria from Jordan in a defensive war. Israel offered to give away the newly liberated West Bank to the Hashemite regime in Jordan and the Gaza Strip to its erstwhile Egyptian occupiers in return for a full and lasting peace.

But the Arab League, meeting in Khartoum in August, 1967, delivered the infamous three No's: No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel. Subsequent peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have remained frigidly cold with both Arab countries refusing to enter any semblance of a true and lasting peace.
It is within the narrow territory remaining for the Jewish state, if one includes Judea and Samaria, that the world now demands the establishment of yet another Arab state. Hamas controlled Gaza would be included in this future state to be called Palestine; a state which has never existed before by that name in all of recorded history - certainly not as an independent Arab state.

Gaza has already been given to the Arabs in a monumental Israeli error and the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians have turned it into a terror base from which they have launched a lethal missile blitz against Israel numbering to date over 15,000 deadly missiles.

Israeli leaders should never have accepted even one missile fired from Gaza at its citizens in southern Israel. To let thousands fall with relative impunity for so many years led the world to believe that it was acceptable. After all, if Israel wasn't interested in safeguarding its own civilians, why then should the world be. It was accepted as business as usual.

The disputed 'West Bank', which is the ancient biblical heartland of Israel, is now the territory U.S. Secretary of State, John Forbes Kerry, just like his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, is pressuring Israel to give away to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. This is the present day so-called two state solution and will dismember what is left of Israel and drive some 350,000 Jewish residents from their towns and villages. Why? Because just as in Jordan, Jews will not be permitted to live within Arab territory, while Arabs can remain free to live within Israel.

It is instructive to remember that upon the granting of the Palestine Mandate to Great Britain, an eminent British celebrity and supporter of Zionism, Josiah Wedgwood, addressed a Jewish crowd of thousands at the Royal Albert Hall in London in which he urged the audience to stand up for Jewish rights in its homeland.

According to the late Shmuel Katz in his groundbreaking biography of the great Zionist leader, Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, titled The Lone Wolf, Wedgwood said:

"... This lesson I want the new Jewish nation to learn and to get by heart: Stand up for your rights. Let us have more of the spirit in the Jewish movement of my good and gallant friend Jabotinsky."

Sadly, Israeli governments have become notoriously fearful of rejecting outright the deadly trap inherent in the so called two-state solution. Their muted responses have merely encouraged world leaders to repeatedly breathe new life into the discredited plan. The searing tragedy is that the two-state solution may presage for the Jewish people another Final Solution.

Perhaps the Secretary of State prefers to remain oblivious to the stark fact that the Arabs, whom he embraces and who today call themselves Palestinians, are as committed as their parents and grandparents before them to destroy the Jewish state. The fact is that this is not a dispute over borders; this is a religious war and the Arabs, so long as the overwhelming majority remain Muslim, will never accept the existence of a non-Muslim state in territory previously conquered in the name of Allah - whatever the size or shape of its borders. Indeed, if Israel shrank to just one down town city block in Tel Aviv, the Muslim Arabs would still call for “holy war” against it.

Some years ago, Muhammad Dahlan, speaking on behalf of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, declared on PA TV that the PA will not recognize Israel - one of the primary demands made upon the Palestinian Arabs in the Oslo Peace Accords. Indeed, Dahlan admitted that the only reason they meet with Israelis at all is in order to continue receiving the immense flow of international funds that the U.N., the EU and successive U.S. Administrations pour down the proverbial Palestinian rat hole.

Is John Kerry who has even suggested providing $4 billion more to the Palestinian Authority – this after giving over a billion dollars to the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt - aware of this Arab charade? Or does he dismiss it and care not for the absence of a sincere and honest Palestinian Arab peace partner and the inevitable plight of the 350,000 Jewish residents who will become displaced refugees by enacting the next two-state solution. Perhaps he cares little for the resulting takeover of Judea and Samaria by Hamas and the inevitable missile blitz that will be launched by the Palestinian Arabs upon the rest of Israel.

Incidentally, what irony when the homes of Peace Now members living in Tel Aviv become daily targets of missiles launched from the very areas they campaign for their fellow Jews to be expelled from.

One wonders if Secretary Kerry knows that 91 years ago an original two-state solution was enacted in infamy. If he does, it is unlikely that he cares - anymore than the rest of the Obama Administration or State Department cares.

And what of those Jewish Americans who support the Secretary of State and President Obama and who will be responsible in helping to destroy Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel. Will they have a conscience or feel shame for the calamity they create

By Victor Sharpe

related -
Kerry and the Peace Idiots Ride Again

Kerry's Embarrassing "Peace Process" Obsession

Op-Ed: Four Views on Israel's Concerns with the 1967 Lines

When working on reviving the defunct Arab Peace Initiative, why is Israel so concerned about the demand to return to 1967 lines?

The Fallacy of the "1967 Borders" – No Such Borders Ever Existed

- Amb. Alan Baker

With ongoing and increasing intensity, the Palestinian leadership is fixated on advancing a concerted policy vis-à-vis the international community and public opinion, demanding recognition of what they claim to be the "1967 borders," and acceptance of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state within those borders. There are no provisions in any of the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians that require withdrawal to the "1967 borders." There were never any geographic imperatives that sanctify the 1967 lines.(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

"Land Swaps" and the 1967 Lines

- Amb. Dore Gold

Several months after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, the UN Security Councildefined the territorial terms of a future peace settlement in Resolution 242, which over the decades became the cornerstone for all Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Resolution 242 made clear that Israel was not expected to withdraw from all the territories that came into its possession, meaning that Israel was not required to withdraw from 100 percent of the West Bank. Moreover, neither Resolution 242 nor any subsequent signed agreements with the Palestinians stipulated that Israel would have to pay for any West Bank land it would retain by handing over its own sovereign land in exchange. (Weekly Standard)

See also The Long View in Israel Against the 1967 Lines

- Amb. Dore Gold

Israel's greatest strategic minds have long opposed the 1967 lines.(Los Angeles Times)

The Arab Peace Initiative: A Primer and Future Prospects

- Dr. Joshua Teitelbaum

While several aspects of the Arab Peace Initiative represent significant and positive developments in the official, collective Arab view of the future of Israel in the Middle East, Israel should refrain from accepting the initiative as a basis for peace negotiations because it contains seriously objectionable elements.(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/

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