Just How Do You Measure The Level Of Democracy In A Terrorist State?

In my last post, I wrote about the Democracy Index for 2017, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Looking at its evaluation of Israel gave an opportunity to contrast 2 very different views of what the index revealed about Israel.

But the Democracy Index also evaluates "Palestine" and Iran, for example

Which raises the question: How do those two jive with this description of "democracy," from the report?

8 Reasons Why Friday's UN Resolution 2334 Is Counterproductive and Just Plain Wrong

In the aftermath of Obama's support for UN Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli, reactions have not been short in coming -- and there are cogent arguments against the resolution.

Beyond what is being said about Obama and his motives or against the United Nations itself and the way the resolution was carried out, the fact remains there are reasons why the UN resolution may have many results -- but none of the ones it claims to support.

Here are some of those arguments being made:

Hamas Terrorists Exploits Arabs in the West Bank As Well As Those in Gaza

When Evelyn Gordon asks Are Palestinian Stabbings Ending?, she points out that the Palestinian stabbing attacks will continue only so long as the perceived reward outweighs the cost.

And the numbers indicate that a turnaround has begun. Thus:

in a poll taken just three months ago, fully 67 percent of Palestinians supported the stabbing attacks, including 57 percent of West Bank residents. Yet in the latest poll, not only did overall support fall to 56 percent but, in the West Bank, 54 percent of respondents opposed the stabbings.

Gordon explains that this cost of the stabbings -- to the West Bank Arabs -- is three-fold:

In Blooper, State Department Spokesman Claims Demolitions in Southern Israel Prevent A Two-State Solution

In southern Israel, the problem of the Bedouin homes there is a complex problem, combining the issue of Bedouin claims with the Western media's willingness to unquestioningly publish them and the European Union to honor them.

Legal Insurrection discusses Negev Bedouin problems – real and imagined and Akiva Bigman discusses in an article for The Tower why the Bedouin's claims to the Negev are outrageous.

A central claim of the Bedouin is that they are indigenous to the Negev, thus deserving of special consideration and rights under international law.

Bedouin village in the Negev. Photo: Nati Shohat / Flash90 

The J Street Version of Israeli History -- Coming To a Jewish School Near You

J Street's activities extend from politics and advocacy -- to education:

J Street University is circulating a map that restores the Green Line and working to get it into synagogues, Hebrew schools, and summer camps. Good for them. Of course, fighting (nonviolently) over maps is preferable to shooting over the borders of the territories they represent, but there’s no substitute for a one-map solution.

Here is the map:

J Street has a lesson plan to go along with the map. I embedded a copy of the lesson plan at the end of the post.

The introduction in the lesson plan introduces what they see as the issue behind maps of Israel today:

Arlene Kushner on Jewish Rights To Judea and Samaria ("West Bank")

From Arlene Kushner:
November 30, 2014

Jewish (and Other) Rights in the Land Today

Let us begin today by looking briefly at the historical situation that immediately followed Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the subsequent War of Independence.  At the end of the war, in 1949, armistice lines (ceasefire lines) were established.  They were similar to, but not exactly the same, as the lines within which the Jews had declared a state in 1948: Israel had gained a bit of territory.  Most significantly, Israel had secured the western part of Jerusalem.  (In the original UN proposal, Jerusalem was to be internationalized.)

 Credit: English-online

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These armistice lines – referred to as the Green Line - were the lines within which Israel remained until 1967. Egypt had taken Gaza, and Jordan had taken the remainder of Mandate Palestine – Judea and Samaria, dubbed “the West Bank” by Jordan.  Jordan, I will note, occupied this land illegally, for it was acquired in a war of aggression.

Text of Petition of 1,000 Jurists to EU's Catherine Ashton That Israeli Settlements Are Legal

Arutz Sheva reports on a petition of 1,000 jurists that Israel's West Bank settlements are legal:

A mammoth jurists' petition delivered to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton states that the EU is wrong in holding that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal, and that the term “1967 lines” does not exist in international law.

The letter is signed by over 1,000 jurists worldwide.

Here is the text of the petition 1,000 jurists sent to EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton:

Mideast Media Sampler 07/30/2013: Does Kerry Know Palestinians Were Supposed To Reject Terrorism 20 Years Ago?

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

John Kerry rejects a basic premise of the peace process

The past two days has seen the reporting on the beginning of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

First there was the reporting on the Israeli concession that made the talks possible. The New York Times reported Netanyahu agree to free 104 Prisoners:

An Israeli government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said many of those who remained in Israeli jails, like the 104 now chosen for early release, had been involved in particularly gruesome acts.

What Is The Foundation Of An ObamaPeace Between Israel and The Palestinian Arabs

Remember that Kerry's last Middle East negotiations was when he thought he would easily wean away Syria's dictatorship from Iran.
Barry Rubin

Barry Rubin writes that Now We Know The Truth: What's Behind U.S. "Peace Process" Policy.

And what is behind Obama's Middle East peace policy?

One of the key rationales given, as noted in the New York Times, for the excessive attention given to Israel at the expense of the actual flashpoints in the region is that the US cannot afford to ignore Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and wait on the sidelines:

With the Palestinians poised to take their claim for statehood to the International Criminal Court and United Nations bodies, American officials say the two sides were facing a downward spiral in which the Israelis would respond by cutting off financing to the Palestinian territories and European nations might curtail their investment in Israel, further isolating the Israelis.

Rubin analyzes the various points that we learn from this statement.

Israel Puts Its Foot Down and Stands Up To The EU's Arbitrary Guidelines

After the EU released its guidelines for denying funding for groups and organizations with connections with Judea and Samaria (West Bank), suggestions were put forward for what Israel should do in response.

The Jewish Press offered ideas for How the EU Will Reverse Itself, in Three Easy Steps

Arlene Kushner on Israel's Action To Penalize EU In Response To Anti-Israel Guidlines

From Arlene Kushner:
Motzei Shabbat (after Shabbat)

"A Good Move and a Very Bad One"

How refreshing to be able to report on a minister who has taken a stand that reflects a strong Israel:

Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon has ordered a cessation of all cooperation with the EU in area C of Judea and Samaria.  The IDF will neither grant new permits nor renew existing permits for EU construction projects in Area C (where Israel has full civil and military control).

Exceptions Reveal That EU Guidelines Against Israel Have Nothing To Do With International Law

Prof. Eugene Kontorowich

In his latest article, law professor Eugene Kontorovich notes that the new EU guidelines imposing restrictions on Israel in Judea and Samaria in fact have nothing to do with international law -- leading him to explain What the EU rules are about – and what they are not


The EU guidelines are based on the expected errors and misconceptions

• It assumes Israel is "occupying" Judea and Samaria (West Bank)-- this despite the illegitimacy of the Jordanian rule that preceded it.

Latma Video: The EU Explains The Real Reason Behind Its New Anti-Israel Guidelines

This week, Latma presents an EU representative who explains what really is behind its new directive on its recognition of 1967 "borders."

Here is the video:

Arlene Kushner on Israeli and Palestinian Anger At EU Guidelines

From Arlene Kushner:
July 17, 2013:

Will the EU Reverse?

 

Let's wait and see...

Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a satisfactorily firm response to the EU announcement of new "guidelines" on areas past the Green Line (emphasis added):

"I would expect those who truly want peace and stability in the region would discuss this issue after solving more urgent regional problems such as the civil war in Syria or Iran's race to achieve nuclear weapons. As the Prime Minister of Israel, I will not allow the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, on the Golan Heights and in Jerusalem, our united capital, to be harmed. We will not accept any outside diktat about our borders. This issue will be decided only in direct negotiations between the sides."

Read: PM Netanyahu Comments on Intention to Add Conditions on EU-Israel

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Middle East Media Sampler 7/17/13 The EU Issues Guidelines To Define Israel's Borders

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

1) The Union Strikes Back

The European Union (EU) has just released new regulations governing certain dealings with Israel. Starting in 2014, the EU (as a unit, individual states are not governed by these guidelines) will prohibit any dealings with private Israeli entities that liver or operate in Judea and Samaria, what is otherwise known as the West Bank. The idea is to make a distinction to show Europe's seriousness about considering Israel's "occupation" to be in violation of international law.

(image courtesy of Elder of Ziyon)

The EU Anti-Israel Guidelines May Pressure Israel, But Also Undermine The EU's Own Attempt At Creditibilty

With the upcoming European Union guidelines banning the financing of and cooperation with Israeli institutions in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights -- Jennifer Rubin writes that  Once again, it’s the E.U. vs. Israel

This is an old story for the European Union — it strives for relevance but its anti-Israeli tendencies make it particularly unsuited to play any constructive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. EU-affiliated organizations back phony NGOs that operate in Israel for the purpose of delegitimizing the Jewish state. Government officials freely banter about anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic tropes.

Video: 10 Unknown West Bank Facts

From Stand With Us, 10 Unknown West Bank Facts

Here is the video:

Arlene Kushner on Israel's War of Pre-emption Against Syria and Hezbollah

From Arlene Kushner:
May 16, 2013:

Dead Serious

The NYTimes ran a piece yesterday in which it directly quoted a "senior Israeli official" -- who according to the JPost had contacted the Times (emphasis added):

"Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah.  The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region.

"If  Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate."

Read: 'Israel determined to stop Syrian weapons transfer'

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Video: Latma Sings "A Day Will Come" When Israel Will Exercise Its Rights To Judea and Samaria

Here is an excerpt of this week's Latma, where Latma presents a song produced for Women in Green, about Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

Here is the video:

"Peace Now" Makes A Land Grab Of It's Own

"Peace Now," the internationally funded foreign agent in Israel see (see 'Peace Now' Could Teach Hamas A Thing Or Two), has made its latest move on behalf of its paymasters to disrupt and discredit Israel.

Peace Now on Tuesday submitted a complaint to Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz accusing the government of conducting a "systematic and institutional land grab" in the West Bank by building most of the settlements on land owned in part by individual Palestinians.

The complaint followed publication of a report by Peace Now entitled "Breaking the Law in the West Bank," in which the organization charged that about 40 percent of the land occupied de facto by the settlements was privately-owned Palestinian land.

Despite the obvious biases of Peace Now, the government is looking into the accusation. Meanwhile, the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is getting ready to respond and Council head Benzi Lieberman said they will produce a report of their own to debunk the Peace Now allegations. Lieberman said they plan to hold a press conference in the coming weeks to expose the inaccuracies in the Peace Now report.

Of course, that delay gives Peace Now the time they need for the results of their report to sink in.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

According to the report, Palestinians own almost 40% of all the land on which the settlements were built. This includes 86.4% of Ma'aleh Adumim, 44.3% of Givat Ze'ev, 47.7% of Kedumim and 35.1% of Ariel.

There are four types of land ownership in the West Bank - state-owned land, "survey" land, whose ownership is in dispute between the state and Palestinians, land owned privately by Palestinians and land owned privately by Jews.

Until now, the common understanding has been that since 1979, when the High Court of Justice overruled a military order to seize land for military purposes in order to establish the civilian settlement of Alon Moreh, all subsequent settlements were to be built on state-owned land.

Etkes told reporters, "for the first time, we can prove this isn't true.

Responding to Peace Now's claims, Yisrael Medad, a volunteer spokesman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, disputes the methodology of the report.

Among the points that Medad makes:

• While the report claims that only 1.47% of the land at Karnei Shomron is Jewish-owned, in actuality almost all the area of the community is Jewish-owned as is the land at Etz Efraim community--indicating that Peace Now is discounting land purchases made by Jews.
  
  
• There are Arabs who have sold land but then claim otherwise because they don't want to be murdered for selling land to Jews.
  
  
• The pictures on the Peace Now website of the land supposedly owned by communities on the West Bank are misleading: "There is a vast difference between the area displayed and the actual area zoned at various government ministries and civilian administration offices. The boundaries are arbitrary, usually delineated by patrol roads which do not reflect on the actual property definitions."
  
  
• The State of Israel appropriated private land until 1979. Karmiel was built this way and even the Ein Kerem neighborhood of Jerusalem benefited from such classifications. But Since, then, however, no Arab private land has been used for the Jewish communities.
  
  
• The Arabs have claimed for 50 years that they own 93 percent of the land which became the State of Israel--of which 43% was privately owned. The remainder of the land was identified then as the Sultan's Land. According to this claim, Jews owned but 7%. Peace Now has resurrected this claim.


• According to Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate:

  the Administration of Palestine... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency... close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.

  As a result, the vast majority of the area in Judea and Samaria are lands under the direct control of the State--this is an issue expanded upon later in this post.

More than being a question of needing clarification, the Peace Now report contains factual errors-- as outlined in CAMERA's critique of the Peace Now report.

Peace Now admits that they are unfamiliar with the data that was leaked to them that was “updated to the best of our knowledge through 2004.”Likewise, they do not know for sure neither the authenticity nor accuracy of the information. A fact that did not stop them for using and publishing the data.

Peace Now brags that the data they received "served as a reference for attorney Talia Sasson when she prepared her government-mandated report on the outposts – a report which has been widely publicized and discussed"-- these were apparently unauthorized outposts, built without the necessary permissions from the proper authorities. However, contrary to Peace Now’s claim, in reality Ms. Sasson found that that the use of these private Palestinian land for outposts was not due to the theft of land, but instead to errors in the maps.

The errors in the Peace Now report are the result of mistakes in the crucial definition of terms.

According to the report:

Since 1967, Israel has made use of Ottoman legislation dating back to the middle of the 19th century in order to declare land to be “State land.” According to that law, all lands are considered "State Land" unless proven otherwise. To formally register land as private property, one must cultivate it for at least ten years. If the land is not registered, one would be considered the owner as long as he cultivates it and pays taxes on it. If the land is not cultivated for three successive years, it may become the property of the Ottoman State, i.e. "State Land".

While the phrase "has made use of" implies underhanded exploitation, the fact is

Israel was and is obligated under international law, in particular the Hague Regulations of 1907, to maintain the legal system in the territories, and to respect, "unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country." Thus it was not, as Peace Now clearly implies, an Israeli subterfuge ("Israel has made use of Ottoman legislation") to apply the pre-existing Ottoman – as well as British and Jordanian – laws in the West Bank.

A second error Peace Now makes in the very same paragraph is in their mistaken claim that land must be cultivated for 10 years. According to the Ottoman land law that is used there is a category of land known as mulk--private land, where ownership is not related to cultivation and would revert to state ownership only if the owner died intestate.

A third error made in that same paragraph is that land which is cultivated for 10 years does not become private Palestinian land as Peace Now mistakenly claims. Instead, land acquired through cultivation is considered according to the Ottoman Code as at best miri land--land in which a person acquires a limited right of use. Contrary to Peace Now, such land remains the property of the state, and its reversion to the state is not limited to a failure to cultivate. Miri land is by definition state land.

A fourth error is the Peace Now claim that while prior to 1968 the land registration was open to Palestinians but not since. CAMERA quotes from a court case that proves that is not true

A fifth factual problem is a category of land which the Peace Now report neglected to mention altogether. Under the Ottoman Code, there is a category of land known as mewat ('dead land') which is applicable to the West Bank--unallocated or waste areas outside of inhabited areas which can be cultivated by special effort. Such development requires prior permission from the State. CAMERA quotes from a British Mandate source that clarifies:

Practically all the unoccupied land of Palestine is mewat and cannot be occupied without the permission of the Government.

CAMERA finds that:

much of what Peace Now is terming “private Palestinian land” is in fact state land because it is mewat, and has been considered so for generations. The land on which Ma’ale Adumim was built, for example, was more than a mile and a half from the built up area of the closest Arab village, Al ‘Ayzariyah; the land was also rocky and on a ridge, and had therefore never been inhabited or cultivated. It was therefore clearly mewat land which belonged to the state and not to any private owners. [emphasis added]

Thus, land which was once in the category of miri but later was abandoned or fell into disuse would lose even its limited rights--but Peace Now considers this land to still be private Palestinian land.

CAMERA concludes based on the Ottoman Code in effect and other documentation that:

There can be no doubt, however, that the majority of land that Peace Now calls “private Palestinian land” is in fact mewat, or waste land, and therefore permanently in the public domain, with not even rights to cultivate.

Peace Now's report is riddled with factual error and omission of key law. One can only hope that as the facts come out they will be given the same exposure as the Peace Now report.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Peace Now and West Bank and Gaza and Yisrael Medad and CAMERA.