French
German
Hebrew
Noruegan
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Polish
Portuguese
In 1993, those who promoted the Oslo process portrayed the opposition to “land for peace” as a “settler minority” locked in to their ideology and their real estate.
This “settler isolation” approach was best elucidated by PR expert Yekutiel Federman, once the owner of the Dan Hotel Chain, sponsor of Abie Nathan’s Voice of Peace and funder of PEACE NOW.. on the pages of the now defunct-Al HaMishmar. the former Mapam-Meretz daily newspaper, in October 1993. Federman advised the Rabin-Peres government to “isolate the 3%” of the population who live in Yesha, and to attack them personally.
Prime Minister Rabin therefore referred to ‘settlers’ as propellers whom he would let spin their propellers and whom he promised to ignore.
For 23 years, the Yesha Council, the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria & Gaza, has adhered to Federman’s Peace Now strategy.
Even now. In well funded demonstrations against the destruction of Amona, the Yesha Council mobilized only those Jews living in Judea and Samaria, without inviting anyone else to the speak at their rallies, as if the wanton demolition of a thriving community was only the problem of Amona and the Jews who live Judea and Samaria.
At no time did the full page Yesha ads for Amonah include Jews who were not Rabbis or residents of Judea and Samaria.
Nor did the Yesha Council reach out to Jewish landowners within the green line who may suffer the consequences of the Amona precedent .
In other words, playing into the hands of Oslo advocates, the Yesha Council would not to stress that the Amona precedent represents a threat to all of the people of Israel, and not only to Judea and Samaria.
Haggai Segel, writing in Makor Rishon on September 23, 2016, reported on court judgments which can still be enforced against thousands hundreds of Jewish homes within the green line where absentee Arab landowners still lay claim to their land that Jews took possession of, between 1950 and 1952. Even more important, the Adalah Arab rights organization has hired a team of lawyers to help absentee land owners lay claim to these lands.
In other words, Yesha could transform homeowners within the green line into allies, yet they will not do so.
The unkindest cut of all: the refusal of the Yesha council to play the human rights card.
At no time does the Yesha Council appeal to protect the fundamental human rights of a family who has lived in a home for years to not be thrown into the street in the cold of winter, because that parcel of land was allocated by King Hussein a generation ago to his subjects.
That Israeli Basic Human Rights Law should be invoked, based on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which all democratic governments are adherents.
Given the legal precedents from Israeli court cases and from court cases around the world, any Israeli government decision to expel people from their homes, even in the context of a diplomatic move, would represent a wanton violation of basic human rights and civil liberties that are protected under Israeli and international human rights law.
Clause 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, declare that it is illegal for sovereign governments to expel their own citizens from their homes, their private properties or from their farms.
Instead, the leaders of the Yesha council opted to adopt the Peace Now strategy, to isolate and destroy themselves.
MK Yair Lapid, when he was Israel Minister of Finance, asked why that the government of Israel paid the PR expenses of the Yesha Council. Now we know why.
