Sara Blaustein’s Son Mourns a Murdered Mother

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June 5, 2001

You’d never know it from looking at her, but apparently my mother was a dangerous woman. On Tuesday, she was shot to death on her way to what must have been a sinister deed. Why else would she be killed in a horrible manner? If the gunmen who so callously ripped my mother away from me felt that they needed to put a bullet through her head in order to stop her, she must have been quite a dangerous woman indeed.

Oh, she put up a good front, though. On the outside, you’d never know my mother was this scheming devil, like these anonymous shooters seemed to have known. To her husband, she seemed like the loving woman he married fourteen years ago. To her children, she seemed like the stern but nurturing mother of her four kids. To her granddaughters, she was the doting Savta that brought them treats. And to her neighbors, she was a caring friend who would do anything asked of her.

But my question to the shooters is this: If my mother was so dangerous that she needed to be killed in order to stop her, when did she have time to do all of her nefarious planning? Was it before she saw her daughter off to school in the mornings? Perhaps it was between her prayers, recited daily? Or maybe it was when she was on her way to her classes every day, where she learned Holy Scriptures in holy sites.

I lived with my mother for twenty-three years, and she must have had me fooled but good. Here I thought she was a kind woman who delighted in entertaining guests whenever the opportunity arose. A woman who volunteered her time and money to charitable organizations of all sorts. A woman whose loss is being felt in communities spanning from her childhood home in Bensonhurst and the entire New York City area, to the home of her dreams in Israel.

Thousands of people came to her funeral on Wednesday night to mourn for her and weep over her grave, but these thousands of people must have been wrong. The men that drove by and killed her must have been right. Because only a terrible person deserves to be left so unprotected by her government, to allow her to be killed so brutally. And besides, if she were any good at all, wouldn’t her government exact some measure of justice? Of course it would.

But my mother is dead. She was shot by a passing car on the highway. And nothing was done about it. Apparently her killers were right – my mother was a dangerous woman.

Yoni Berg

On behalf of himself and the other mourning children of Sara Blaustein: Adena Mark, Samuel Berg, Atara Blaustein

June 1, 2001

Sara Blaustein: A Man Remembers His Murdered Wife

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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June 5, 2001

My wife, Sara Blaustein, was brutally murdered in a drive-by shooting by Arab terrorists last Tuesday on the road from our home in Efrat to Jerusalem. We had moved to Israel with our 13 year old daughter, Atara, last summer fulfilling our life’s dream of living in the Land of Israel. My wife’s life revolved around her family, which meant more than just her husband and children, but by extension included the entire Jewish world. Anyone who ever needed any kind of charity – be it food, money, volunteering, or any other means of help – never came away from her empty-handed. The driving force of her personality, which was helping others at all costs, made it easy for her to make the transition to life in Israel. She instantly found her niche in the town of Efrat, where she continued to attend to her fellow-man at every opportunity.

My wife and I are among the 200,000 Jewish Israeli citizens of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. Often, we are referred to as “settlers”, which to many connotes some form of fanaticism. Actually, my Sara was a perfect example of a member of our community. She was not an extremist in any way. She was simply another Jewish citizen returning to her national home.

Her outlook on life was that of a true American – she firmly believed in the ideal of justice and equality for all its citizens. Her faith in American values makes her loss all the more tragic, because it was American policy that lead directly to her death.

I was astonished to discover that the United States has a website offering a reward for the capture of any terrorist who acts against American citizens worldwide EXCEPT for acts of Arab terrorism. Such a blatantly racist and anti-Semitic policy was nothing short of an invitation for the gunmen to kill my wife. But more than that, it was a betrayal of the faith she had in the American government, and in the American way of life which she cherished so much.

Adding insult to injury, there was no representative of the United States government at her funeral. When contacted, the embassy claimed that Efrat was out of their jurisdiction, while the American Consul-General refused to send anyone in order not to make “a political statement.” Aside from this being callous, it’s extremely hypocritical. In 1996, the Consul-General at the time, Ed Abington (who now works for Yasser Arafat in Washington) made a condolence call to the Arab village of Husan – minutes away from where my wife was murdered. The Consul-General went to console a family whose son had been killed.

Yet my family, now sitting Shiva, has not merited a visit from our country’s representatives. Why is there political discrimination in American consolation policy between Arabs and Jews?

The juxtaposition of all these things – the lack of US reward for the capture of Arab terrorists, the imposed restraint by the US on Israel from pursuing my wife’s killers, and the lack of common decency by the American government in failing to pay a mere condolence call – leaves me feeling not only abandoned by a cold, unfeeling government which does not seem to care about a murdered American, but also betrayed by a policy which must share in the responsibility for that murder.

Norman Blaustein

June 1, 2001

I Want the United States to Pursue the Murderers of My Son, Yaakov

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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June 5, 2001

I want the United States to pursue the murderers of my son, Yaakov Natan Mandell. He was a United States citizen and needs to be protected by United States law which offers a 5 million dollar reward for capturing terrorists, except for those terrorists here in Israel.

Martin Indyk called me during the shiva and I asked him to visit me. He said that “he wasn’t allowed to.” I asked him to call George Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and have them call me. They never called. They didn’t write or send a letter of condolence.

We are being branded war criminals by the UN. Meanwhile the murderers of my son are free–and the United States is not helping to pursue them and bring them to justice.

Koby loved America. He loved baseball and shopping malls and Michael Jordan and Cal Ripken. He still followed sports in America. He had even sent his bar mitzvah invitations to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. We never heard back from them anything, not even a cordial decline.

Living with a War on the Road Near Our Home

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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June 5, 2001

Yesterday three brutal murders rocked our community. Two were from Efrat. Sarah Blaustein, 53 was shot to death while on the way with her family and some hitchhikers picked up in Efrat, to the funeral of Gilad Zar, a civilian security specialist whose job was to travel the roads of Judea and Samaria and to report security infringements. Gilad had been ambushed and shot to death that morning while he was riding the roads and protecting our families.

The Blaustein family had moved to Efrat from New York only eight months ago to fulfill their dream of living in the Land of Israel. Sarah’s brother, a resident of Efrat was one of the influencing factors of their moving to Efrat. Sarah’s daughter, Atara is my thirteen year old daughter, Leora’s classmate. Later in the evening we learned the name of the young woman who was murdered in the car. Leora was on the way to console her friend Atara when she heard on the Israel radionews that the young woman who was travelling with Atara’s mother, twenty year old Esther Elvan, had died in Hadassah Hospital from the wounds that she suffered in that drive-by attack.

Esther was Leora’s youth counselor.

Of all our children, Leora has said the least about “the situation”.

It is difficult to know what is going on in her head. Leora is our only “A” student, sweet, kind, loving, with an immense love of animals, and an innate goodness about her Leora’a paintings decorate our living room.

There is one painting of Leora’s of which I am particularly fond of and it always makes me smile. It is a painting of our family all wearing big smiles on our faces. She painted it when she was eleven years old.

When I look at it I think “all is well in Leora’s world”.

Today, all is no longer well in Leora’s world. Today she will be attending two funerals. One for her classmate’s mother and the other of her most beloved youth counselor, of whom Leora had tearfully told me last night that she had always thought what a beautiful life Esther would have because she is such a good person and makes everybody feel so good about ourselves. “I can’t believe that I’ll never see her again”, she said crying inconsolably.

As a parent it breaks my heart to see the loss of innocence and normal childhood that our children are experiencing. Our oldest daughter, Rivka, had been a babysitter for our friend’s son, Koby Mandell, who was brutally stoned to death together with his friend Yossi.

Their faces and bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. Among the many who came to the funerals were hundreds of children. We are groping in the dark trying to make sense of this catastrophe that has befallen us.

I used to wonder how Jews in Europe continued living where they did after the Nazis rose to power in 1933 when everyday brought more tragedy into their lives. I no longer wonder.

Every Jew in Israel lives in the shadow of an official death sentence that the new Palestinian Authority has pronounced for every Jew.

For that reason, you have heard nary a word of condemnation at any time in the Arabic media of the Palestinian Authority for the brutal murder of any Jew during the eight years of what has been called a “peace process”

Yet the State of Israel was created so that Jews would have a safe haven from the anti- semitism of the world which almost succeeded in the genocide of the Jewish people.

Fifty three years after the establishment of the State of Israel we are now in the position of apologizing for wanting to defend ourselves against a ruthless aversary who train their children from infancy to hate and to celebrate the murder of innocent people for the glory of Palestine.

Over the past eight months we have grown accustomed to horrific realities that would have been intolerable in any other country.

Today, we witness daily murders of people whom we have loved. Our children go to school with orphans whose parents have been killed. Our children have teachers whose spouses have been murdered or return to class to find an empty seat of a classmate who will no longer return to occupy the seat. Our children have attended more funerals than most people attend during an entire lifetime.

We live in Efrat, a fifteen minute drive from Jerusalem and situated between Bethlehem and Hebron. Efrat is a town with lush parks and gardens, beautiful homes, excellent schools, with a population of over 7000 residents consisting of many professionals and people working in the education field. The city of Efrat was purchased legally for a dear price by local Arab landlords in 1983. Contrary to what many people would like to believe, Efrat does not rest on land stolen from Arabs, nor do any of the 144 Jewish settlement communities throughout the West Bank and Gaza strip. All the land in these communities lie on land purchased at full price from Arab landlords or they were constructed on government land (no man’s land that did not have any ownership rights to them).

Not everyone living in Efrat moved there for ideological reasons. Many people have moved to Efrat because of a sense of community here, which seemed until recently to be an idyllic place place to raise a family.

When we moved here in 1985 with two small children and one on the way, we never imagined we would be living in a war zone situation. We are now the parents of six children ranging from 19 months to 19 years. Our three eldest dorm during the week at their schools which are situated in various places in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley. Since September we have equipped them with cell-phones so that we can verify their safe arrival to school. All three have been exposed to shootings on the road from the relative safety of the bullet-proof buses they travel in.

My daughter, Rivka, who goes to high school in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, tells me that she and her friends traveling on their school buses have adopted the odd custom of sitting on their legs when they pass these Arab villages “so as to arrive with our legs on”. This custom came about following the deliberate bombing of the Israeli children’s bullet-proof school bus in Kfar Darom (the Gaza Strip) in which two teachers were killed and three children from the same family had their lower limbs blown off.

The first time I saw my neighbor, a lawyer who works in Jerusalem, walk out of his house in the morning carrying his briefcase and wearing a bullet-proof vest and helmet, I laughed and saluted. The picture was so surreal. Since then, since twenty people from our communities have been murdered on the roads while traveling in their non bullet -proof cars, the sight of people sporting this new fashion has become more understandable

We have somehow become accustomed to this most outrageous form of existence.

We have become used to hearing the sound of shooting in the air.

Last Thursday, to the sounds of a gunshot battle (that was taking place in the Dagan – Efrat’s furthest northern neighborhood) I was reading to my six year old daughter, Meira, a story from Dr. Seuss. As the shooting became louder, I looked outside my daughter’s window to see what was happening.

From the window I watched the local Yeshiva high school boys carry on with their basketball game. The commercial center was teeming with children out for pizza or just hanging out with their friends. People were visiting the video store, and everyone was carrying out their middle class suburban life style, business as usual, totally oblivious to the sound of loud machine gun fire.

Meira, like many children these days, is having nightmares. Every night when she says her nightly prayers she asks God not to let her have any bad dreams. She has become clingy and though prior to the current situation she had never come into our bed at night, now, she often does. Everyday she asks us if “somebody got killed today”. She worries constantly for her father who travels the roads daily to work to and from Jerusalem.

When it is night time and her father isn’t home yet, she calls him on the cell phone to see if he is all right.

Israel’s Defense Minister, Benjamin Eliezer, was asked yesterday whether Israel’s one-sided cease-fire will continue. “Yes it will”, he answered.

“Until when?”, he was asked. “Until the Nation Of Israel screams out ‘no more’. Open your ears, Benjamin Eliezer. The people of Israel scream of “No More”.

In a seminal tractate of the Talmud known as “Ethics of the Fathers”, we learn that he who has destroyed a single life is rendered as if he has destroyed an entire world. Article written on May 30, 2001, following the murders of Sara Blaustein, Esther Elvan and Gilad Zar

Anatomy of a Ceasefire: How Long Will Israel’s Restraint Last

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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May 27, 2001

Yedioth Ahronoth (p. 5) by Itamar Eichner, Roni Shaked et al. — The unilateral cease-fire declared by Israel will last another few days, despite the continued violent acts by the Palestinians. This was decided yesterday by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

IDF sources contended yesterday: “The cease-fire has not led to any reduction in Palestinian attacks. We are restraining ourselves in the meantime from firing back.”

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also said that “Arafat has not given any order to halt the fire.”

Sources in Sharon’s bureau said last night: “We are giving the Americans a chance to try and make a move. We have to wait a few days, until we see for sure if Arafat is picking up the gauntlet.” Nevertheless, political sources said that if there were to be escalation, “we will consider stopping the cease-fire before the American move is made.” It has been learned that the American administration has asked Jordan and Egypt to use their influence on Arafat to accede to the initiative.

Violence continued yesterday in the territories as well as inside Israel. Shots were fired at the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem last night. The tunnel road was closed to traffic and the IDF returned fire. The police believe that the shots two days ago on the Malha neighborhood have opened a new front. “If the shooting is reaching Malha, there is a also a danger of other neighborhoods being shot at,” Jerusalem commander Mickey Levy said.

There was a shooting attack yesterday in the fields of Kibbutz Givat Oz near Megiddo. Two kibbutzniks driving along the seamline in the kibbutz fields were shot at from close range, but not hurt.

A truck driver from the village of Jatt in the Triangle was abducted yesterday by Palestinians from the village of Yaabed in Samaria and released when they realized he was an Arab. “Two masked men armed with guns got into the truck and ordered him to drive fast in the direction of the territories,” related Dep. Cmdr. Yaki Azulai, commander of the Yiron police. “Only when he showed them his driver’s license and told them he was an Arab, did they change their plans and bring him back into Israeli territory.”

Fighting continued in the Gaza Strip. Two mortar shells were fired in the morning at the Netzarim settlement. No one was injured and no damage was caused. In the wake of this, an IDF force went into Area A to a depth of 200 meters near Netzarim. IDF sources said yesterday that the incursion into Area A lasted “about ten minutes.”

This article ran in Yediot Aharonot, May 25th, 2001

Peres Confirms: Talks Continue with the PLO

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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May 27, 2001

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has once again turned downs offers by European officials for a package deal with Arafat that would mean a simultaneous implementation of all the recommended steps outlined in the Mitchell Report, and in effect immediately resume negotiations. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday that, in effect, Israel is conducting negotiations with the Palestinians.

Peres said: “Israel is holding talks with the Palestinians not only in the area of security but also on diplomatic issues so as to achieve a cease-fire.” Officials in the Prime Minister’s Bureau were surprised by these statements, and a senior official in the bureau said: “We do not know what talks Peres is talking about or exactly who he is speaking with.”

The Sharon government has built 61 new apartments in the settlements in its tenure and contrary to its declarations, says MK Mossi Raz of Meretz, according to a Construction and Housing Ministry document. “It is time the Labor Party came to its senses and found out whether their presence in the government is not merely a fig-leaf for continuing the provocative building in the settlements.”

Shefi Gabai adds: Arafat met yesterday with Egyptian President Mubarak and briefed him on his talks with President Jacques Chirac in Paris and the results of the Mitchell Report. Immediately following his meeting with Mubarak, Arafat flew to Amman to meet with King Abdullah of Jorda.

This article ran in Maariv on, May 25th, 2001

Are Israel’s Settlements Legal?

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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May 27, 2001

Assuming the Middle East conference actually does take place, its official task will be to achieve peace between Israel and its Levantine neighbors in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War in 1967, sets out criteria for peace-making by the parties; Resolution 338, passed after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, makes resolution 242 legally binding and orders the parties to carry out its terms forthwith.

Unfortunately, confusion reigns, even in high places, about what those resolutions require.

For twenty-four years Arab states have pretended that the two resolutions are “ambiguous” and can be interpreted to suit their desires. And some European, Soviet and even American officials have cynically allowed Arab spokesman to delude themselves and their people–to say nothing of Western public opinion–about what the resolutions mean. It is common even for American journalists to write that Resolution 242 is “deliberately ambiguous,” as though the parties are equally free to rely on their own reading of its key provisions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until “a just and lasting peace in the Middle East” is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces “from territories” it occupied during the Six-Day War–not from “the” territories nor from “all” the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from “all” the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the “fragile” and “vulnerable” Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called “secure and recognized” boundaries, agreed to by the parties.

In negotiating such agreements, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.

Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which provided (except in th case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation Lines separating the military forces were “not to be construed in any sense” as political or territorial boundaries, and that “no provision” of the Armistice Agreements “Shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions” of the parties “in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem.” In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai, which had never been part of the British Mandate.

For security it depended on patrolled demilitarization and the huge area of the desert rather than on territorial change. As a result, more than 90 percent of the territories Israel occupied in 1967 are now under Arab sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that some Israelis take the view that such a transfer fulfills the territorial requirements of Resolution 242, no matter how narrowly they are construed.

Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with the principles it sets out. It was, however, negotiated with full realization that the problem of establishing “a secure and recognized” boundary between Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace-making process. The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate. An independent Jordan or a Jordan linked in an economic union with Israel is desirable from the point of view of everybody’s security and prosperity. And a predominantly Jewish Israel is one of the fundamental goals of Israeli policy. It should be possible to reconcile these goals by negotiation, especially if the idea of an economic union is accepted.

The Arabs of the West Bank could constitute the population of an autonomous province of Jordan or of Israel, depending on the course of the negotations.

Provisions for a shift of populations or, better still, for individual self-determination are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere. All these approaches were explored in 1967 and 1968. One should note, however, that Syria cannot be allowed to take over Jordan and the West Bank, as it tried to do in 1970.

The heated question of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank during the occupation period should be viewed in this perspective. The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to “close settlement” in the whole of the Mandated territory. It was provided that local conditions might require Great Britain to “postpone” or “withhold” Jewish settlement in what is now Jordan. This was done in 1992. But the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, “the Palestine article,” which provides that “nothing in the Charter shall be construed.. to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments…”

Some governments have taken the view that under the Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the rights of civilians under military occupation, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal, on the ground that the Convention prohibits an occupying power from flooding the occupied territory with its own citizens. President Carter supported this view, but President Reagan reversed him, specifically saying that the settlements are legal but that further settlements should be deferred since they pose a psychological obstacle to the peace process.

In any case, the issue of the legality of the settlements should not come up in the proposed conference, the purpose of which is to end the military occupation by making peace. When the occupation ends, the Geneva Convention becomes irrelevant. If there is to be any division of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan, the Jewish right of settlement recognized by the Mandate will have to be taken into account in the process of making peace.

This reading of Resolution 242 has always been the keystone of American policy. In launching a major peace initiative on September 1, 1982, President Reagan said, “I have personally followed and supported Israel’s heroic struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years ago: in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.”

Yet some Bush administration statements and actions on the Arab-Israeli question, and especially Secretary of State James Baker’s disastrous speech of May 22, 1989, betray a strong impulse to escape from the resolutions as they were negotiated, debated, and adopted, and award to the Arabs all the territories between the 1967 lines and the Jordan river, including East Jerusalem. The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be “foreign” territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan, and Jordan’s attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally recognized and has now been abandoned. The two parcels of land are parts of the Mandate that have not yet been allocated to Jordan, to Israel, or to any other state, and are a legitimate subject for discussion.

The American position in the coming negotiations should return to the fundamentals of policy and principle that have shaped American policy towards the Middle East for three-quarters of a century. Above all, rising above irritation and pique, it should stand as firmly for fidelity to law in dealing with the Arab-Israeli dispute as President Bush did during the Gulf war. Fidelity to law is the essence of peace, and the only practical rule for making a just and lasting peace.

This article ran in “The New Republic”, on October 21, 1991

Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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May 27, 2001

…The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created. The Mandate for Palestine differs in one important respect from the other League of Nations mandates, which were trusts for the benefit of the indigenous population.

The Palestine Mandate, recognizing “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country,” is dedicated to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonjewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The Mandate qualifies the Jewish right of settlement and political development in Palestine in only one respect. Article 25 gave Great Britain and the League Council discretion to “postpone” or “withhold” the Jewish people’s right of settlement in the TransJordanian province of Palestine-now the Kingdom of Jordan-if they decided that local conditions made such action desirable.

With the divided support of the council, the British took that step in 1922.

The Mandate does not, however, permit even a temporary suspension of the Jewish right of settlement in the parts of the Mandate west of the Jordan River.

The Armistice Lines of 1949, which are part of the West Bank boundary, represent nothing but the position of the contending armies when the final cease-fire was achieved in the War of Independence. And the Armistice Agreements specifically provide, except in the case of Lebanon, that the demarcation lines can be changed by agreement when the parties move from armistice to peace. Resolution 242 is based on that provision of the Armistice Agreements and states certain criteria that would justify changes in the demarcation lines when the parties make peace.

Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British government resigned as the mandatory power. This is incorrect. A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed. The authority responsible for the trust appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its purpose. Thus in the case of the Mandate for German South West Africa, the International Court of justice found the South African government to be derelict in its duties as the mandatory power, and it was deemed to have resigned. Decades of struggle and diplomacy then resulted in the creation of the new state of Namibia, which has just come into being. In Palestine the British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international community. But its rules apply still to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an independent state.

Jordan attempted to annex the West Bank in 1951, but that annexation was never generally recognized, even by the Arab states, and now Jordan has abandoned all its claims to the territory.

The State Department has never denied that under the Mandate “the Jewish people” have the right to settle in the area. Instead, it said that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the protection of civilians in wartime. Where the territory of one contracting party is occupied by another contracting party, the Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviets before and during the Second World War-the mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor, or colonization, for example.

Article 49 provides that the occupying power “shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

But the Jewish settlers in the West Bank are volunteers. They have not been “deported” or “transferred” by the government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population the Geneva Convention was designed to prevent.

Furthermore, the Convention applies only to acts by one signatory “carried out on the territory of another.” The West Bank is not the territory of a signatory power, but an unallocated part of the British Mandate. It is hard, therefore, to see how even the most literal-minded reading of the Convention could make it apply to Jewish settlement in territories of the British Mandate west of the jordan River. Even if the Convention could be construed to prevent settlements during the period of occupation, however, it could do no more than suspend, not terminate, the rights conferred by the Mandate. Those rights can be ended only by the establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the territories into an old one.

As claimants to the territory, the Israelis have denied that they are required to comply with the Geneva Convention but announced that they will do so as a matter of grace. The Israeli courts apply the Convention routinely, sometimes deciding against the Israeli government. Assuming for the moment the general applicability of the Convention, it could well be considered a violation if the Israelis deported convicts to the area or encouraged the settlement of people who had no right to live there (Americans, for example).

But how can the Convention be deemed to apply to Jews who have a right to settle in the territories under international law: a legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed “to alter in any manner” rights conferred by existing international instruments” like the Mandate? The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.

Another principle of international law may affect the problem of the Jewish settlements. Under international law, an occupying power is supposed to apply the prevailing law of the occupied territory at the municipal level unless it interferes with the necessities of security or administration or is “repugnant to elementary conceptions of justice.” From 1949 to 1967, when Jordan was the military occupant of the West Bank, it applied its own laws to prevent any Jews from living in the territory. To suggest that Israel as occupant is required to enforce such Jordanian laws-a necessary implication of applying the Convention-is simply absurd. When the Allies occupied Germany after the Second World War, the abrogation of the Nuremberg Laws was among their first acts.

The general expectation of international law is that military occupations last a short time, and are succeeded by a state of peace established by treaty or otherwise. In the case of the West Bank, the territory was occupied by Jordan between 1949 and 1967, and has been occupied by Israel since 1967.

Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 rule that the Arab states and Israel must make peace, and that when “a just and lasting peace” is reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war. The Resolutions leave it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.

The controversy about Jewish settlements in the West Bank is not, therefore, about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights. Is the United States prepared to use all its influence in Israel to award the whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new Arab state, and force Israel back to its 1967 borders? Throughout Israel’s occupation, the Arab countries, helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories, so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the West Bank is “Arab” territory could be made more plausible. Some in Israel favor the settlements for the obverse reason: to reinforce Israel’s claim for the fulfillment of the Mandate and of Resolution 242 in a peace treaty that would at least divide the territory.

For the international community, the issue is much deeper and more difficult: whether the purposes of the Mandate can be considered satisfied if the Jews finally receive only the parts of Palestine behind the Armistice Lines-less than 17.5 percent of the land promised them after the First World War. The extraordinary recent changes in the international environment have brought with them new diplomatic opportunities for the United States and its allies, not least in the Middle East.

Soviet military aid apparently is no longer available to the Arabs for the purpose of making another war against Israel. The intifada has failed, and the Arabs’ bargaining position is weakening. It now may be possible to take long steps toward peace. But to do so, the participants in the Middle East negotiations-the United States, Israel, Egypt, and the PLO-will have to look beyond the territories.

This article appeared in The New Republic on April 23, 1990

Arafat’s Appointed Mufti Endorses Suicide Attacks

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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May 27, 2001

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in the Arabic Department in Bar Ilan University and a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies told IMRA that Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, who was appointed by Yasser Arafat to be the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, endorsed suicide attacks in his weekly sermon from the Al Aksa Mosque broadcast live on May 25th at 1:00 p.m. on the PA’s Voice of Palestine radio station.

“Sabri told the story of the Mu’ta Battle of 630 between the Moslems and the Byzantines. Ja-far Ben Abi Talib infiltrated the Byzantine lines alone, knowing that he would be killed. They cut his right hand and he continued to fight with his left hand. They cut his left hand and he continued to fight with other parts of his body and they then killed him. When the Moslems found his body they found that he had 50 stab wounds on his body – all on the front of his body, which demonstrated that he did not try to escape.”

“This is thought of as suicide?”, asked Ekrima Sabri, “this is martyrdom”

Kedar explained that the meaning of the story is that someone who goes into battle knowing with certainty that he will die is not committing suicide but instead martyrdom. “I see this as Ekrima Sabri explicitly permitting suicide attacks,” Kedar noted.

Kedar sees Ekrima Sabri’s statement as the Palestinian Authority’s official answer to the debate taking place in the Moslem world over whether one may take part in a suicide attack.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director
IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
Email: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: www.imra.org.il

Arafat makes poison gas accusation aganst Israel

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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May 27, 2001

President Arafat at the Ministerial Meeting of OIC; Israel uses depleted uranium, poison gases and radioactive material in war to exterminate the Palestinians; no compromise on return of refugees their homes

President Arafat addressing the Ministerial Meeting of OIC.

Why this absolute incapacity in the UN Security Council in the face of this war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel against our people?

Doha, Qatar, May 26th. Wafa,

President Yasser Arafat described the Israeli unleashed assault, as a destructive war of aggression aimed at exterminating our people.

H.E. wondered about the absolute incapacity in the UN Security Council in the face of this war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel against our people? Who imposes this complete silence on the UN Security Council? Is it double standards and the total bias in favour of aggression and the aggressors at the cost of international norms and laws and at the cost of the victims of our people, our land and our Christian and Islamic holy places that fall under the Omari concordat, which we are fully commeted to it and respect it?

H.E. said We are for a just, full and comprehensive peace in our region and on all Arab tracks. We are for the peace of the brave for the sake of our children and their children. In the wake of these circumstances, dangerous military escalation and the current situation, we do not find what is better than the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the recommendations of the Mitchell Commission, particularly its recommendation for a final and complete freeze on settlements.

H.E. The President added that the government of Israel continue to evade all resolutions of the international legitimacy. In this attempt, Israel is being covered and protected by the rejection to let the UN Security Council adopt a resolution on international forces or observers to proveide for international protection to our people in the face of this total Israeli aggression against our homeland, people and holy places.

Hereby is the full text of the speech of President Arafat to the Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Doha Qatar Today:

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Glory to (God)
Who did take His Servant
For a Journey by night
From the Sacred Mosque,
To the Farthest Mosque,
Whose precincts We did
Bless,- in order that we
Might show him some
Of Our Signs: for He
Is the One Who heareth
And seeth (all things)
Sadaqa Allahu Al Azhim
Your Highness Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al – Thani,
President of the Islamic Summit, Prince of the fraternal State of Qatar,
Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Peace, God’s mercy and blessings be with you from the Holy Land whose precincts God did bless, from Al Quds Asharif, Holy Jerusalem, the place of the nocturnal journey of our Prophet Muhammad, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, and the place of nativity of our lord Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.

Peace, God’s mercy and blessings be with you from steadfast Palestine and from the people of Palestine, who irrigate with their blood their holy land with Al Aqsa Intifada in defense of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, the Holy Mosque of Jerusalem (Haram Sharif), the Church of Nativity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all the Christian and Islamic Holy Places. The spark that ignited this aggression against our people and holy sites was the visit made by Sharon, with agreement of Barak, to the Haram Sharif (the Holy Sanctuary). Following Sharon’s visit, the Israeli army opened fire on the worshipers at the Haram Sharif, despite our calls on Barak not to permit this provecative vist.

Peace be upon you from the land blessed by God, the first of the two Qiblas and the third after the two holy Mosques. It is the land that is being exposed to the conspiracy of judaization, and Zionist settlement with the aim of uprooting our history that goes deep in time and existence. It is the great international conspiracy that made our homeland, territory, history and holy places free to grab in contravention of any human justice or international legitimacy. The masses of our Palestinian people, who are in garrison to the Day of Judgement, as our gracious Prophet had said, are irrigating with their blood the land of Palestine, its plains, mountains, historic and holy places. How many are the heinous massacres perpetrated by the Israeli occupiers at the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque against the worshipers as they were praying in the presence of God during the month Ramadan “in which was sent down the Quran, as a guide To mankind, also clear (Signs) For guidance and judgement (Between right and wrong)”, at the Holy Ibrahimi Mosque, at the Prayer at dawn where the treacherous bullets of the settlers and the Israeli occupation army sawed the souls of innocent people as they were worshiping God to protect their land and holy places. In addition, there are the monstrous massacres against our unarmed people carried out by missiles and bombs shelled from the F-16 war planes, the Apache helicopters, tanks and artillery, their missiles and internationally prohibited bombs, including depleted uranium, poison gases and radioactive material used against our Palestinian people, their institutions and facilities, their homes, farms and factories.

Your Highness Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al – Thani,
Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Affairs,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is the eighth consecutive month of this unjust war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel, its army and settlers against our people, our land, our Palestinian Authority, and its apparatuses, installations and security forces. It is a destructive war of aggression that aims at uprooting our people from their land, and the extirpation of our history and holy places from this Holy Land, whose precincts God did bless. It is an aggressive war aimed at the extermination of our existence from our homeland, the only homeland that we have, and from our lands, the land of the nocturnal journey of Prophet Muhammad, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, and the land of the nativity our lord Jesus Christ, peace upon him. They try by all means to obliterate and destroy our Islamic And Christian holy places, and judaize our Holy Jerusalem.

The Government of Israel lays siege to our people for the eighth consecutive month, bombards cities, bulldozes land, demolishes factories and installations, destroys bridges and residential areas and kills children while they are in the bosoms of their mothers and fathers. Which conscience in this world can remain silent in the face of killing the child Muhammad Durra? Which conscience in this world can remain silent while the shells penetrate the body of four months old child Iman Hijjou as she was sucking the breast of her mother? Did she threaten the Israeli security with her missiles and tank bombs in order to kill her?! as they and their media with the help of some foregn medias spread lies all the time!!.

Yes, indeed, this is a destructive war of aggression aimed at exterminating our people, destroying their existence, entity and holy places without giving due consideration to human rights and international legality. Our people are facing this destructive war and these crimes and massacres perpetrated by the Government of Israel over fifty years. Will the world forget the massacre of Deir Yassin or the massacre of Dawaymeh, of Lod and Ramla in 1948? Will the world forget the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps? Will the world forget the massacres at the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque, the Holy Ibrahimi Mosque and the other crimes and massacres? During the last eight months we lost in the blessed Al Aqsa Intifada 600 martyrs and more than 28 thousand injured among them huge numbers of children, women and elderly!

Our Palestinian people, who are in garrison to the Day of Judgement, in Holy Jerusalem and in its precincts, call upon you and upon all brothers, friends and the international community, to stop this destructive Israeli war of aggression which is sawing every day the lives of our children and people. These souls do not find in the international community anyone who stands up in the face of aggressive Ito tell her: Enough killing the Palestinian people, who have the right, as all other peoples in the world, to live in freedom, dignity and independence on the territory of their homeland, in their independent state and in their Holy Jerusalem, the eternal capital of independent Palestine.

Why this absolute incapacity in the UN Security Council in the face of this war of aggression waged by the Government of Israel against our people? Who imposes this complete silence on the UN Security Council? Is it double standards and the total bias in favour of aggression and the aggressors at the cost of international norms and laws and at the cost of the victims of our people, our land and our Christian and Islamic holy places that fall under the Omari concordat, which we are fully commeted to it and respect it?

Your Highness Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al – Thani,
Excellencies the Ministers of Foreign Affairs,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

The history of these Islamic meetings at the level of the summit and at the level of foreign ministers is connected to this great conspiracy against our people, our homeland, Palestine, Holy Jerusalem and our Christian and Islamic holy places. Despite the important decisions adopted by the recent Islamic summit, convened in the fraternal State of Qatar, to stop the aggression and to protect our holy sites, the Israeli aggressors become more obstinate. They continued their aggression against our people, homeland and holy places because they are not afraid of punishment be imposed on them, be they political or diplomatic or economic, to force them to stop their aggression. Frankly, I say, the Israeli aggressors enjoy complete protection of and total support for their aggression from the dominating and hegemonic forces in the international community. Regrettably, the Israeli aggressors continue to receive the protection even though we have accepted the resolutions of the international legitimacy and agreed that they be the road to achieve just peace which will guarantee for us our national rights, full and complete, in our homeland and holy places and in our holy Jerusalem. The conspiracy however was unmasked and appeared in its most ugly face. The Israelis continued judaizing Holy Jerusalem, especially what they announced recently that Sharon received the architectural designs to build a synagogue in the courtyard of the Haram Sharif as a basis for building the Temple as they claim. In addition, they continued building more settlements and expanding already existing ones in- and outside Holy Jerusalem, instead of vacating them in compliance with the resolutions of international legitimacy which call for the Israeli withdrawal from all our occupied territories, and which consider these settlements as illegal actions.

Our Palestinian people hold fast to their land, holy Jerusalem and their holy places. They will not forsake any iota of dust of their homeland. They will not give up any of the resolutions of international legitimacy. They will not surrender the right of return of the Palestinian refugees which they have in fulfillment of UNGA Resolution 194 which stipulate the right of refugees to return to their homeland and homes from which they were unjustly displaced at the point of the gun.

Your Highness, Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al – Thani,
Excellencies, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs,

The issue of Palestine is your issue. The issue of Jerusalem and its holy places are your issue and your holy places. There is no way to save Holy Jerusalem from the dangers of judaization and the cancerous settlements creeping on the Holy City except by your firm, solid and full – of – faith stand, as an Arab and Islamic nation, in the face of this wicked aggression and dangerous aggressors as well as in the face of those who protect the Israeli aggressors from international legality, and the legality of human rights and the United Nations.

The danger is imminent. It is grave. Henceforth it can not be stopped by statements of denunciation, condemnation and censure. There is no way but to take a firm stand that puts aggression and the aggressors in shackles, and that ensures the right of our people to live in their homeland free from occupation, settlements, racist aggression and military escalation. The Government of Israel is pressing on in these practices because it thinks that by force and omnipotent power and by the most modern weapons of destruction, murder and annihilation it will be able to subdue our people, judaize their Holy Jerusalem and annul their right to independence, sovereignty and a free and dignified life in their homeland. It forgets that our people are omnipotent giants who will not be disparaged or resign, and who will continue their steadfastness and sacrifices until a young boy or girl will be able to hoist the flag of Palestine, on behalf of our nation, on the walls of Jerusalem, the minarets of Jerusalem and the Churches of Jerusalem. They see it far, we see it near. We say the truth. “And to enter your Temple As they had entered it before, And to visit with destruction All that fell into their power.” (Sadaqa Allahu Al Azhim).

Your Highness, Brother Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al – Thani,
Excellencies, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs,

Our steadfast, persevering and mujahid people pin great hopes on you. You are their support. You are the Arab Islamic bulwark on whom they depend in their jihad and sacrifices, in their patience and perseverance in making sacrifices. Our people await an Islamic Arab stand as well as a stand from all believing Christians, the Non-Aligned countries and from all friends the world over. They are awaiting this stand that will give them support, encouragement and solidify their steadfastness in the face of the Israeli war machine, and its ongoing escalation against our people and holy places. They are awaiting a stand that supports their steadfastness in the face of the Israeli actions of destruction caused to our people, to their towns, villages and refugee camps, as well as in the face of bulldozing our green lands, the demolition of our factories and installations and vital facilities, the demolition of our infra- and supra-structures; the economic and financial siege, the holding of our tax revenues, the siege imposed on supplies and medicine and the prohibition of our workers to work whose number exceed 360 thousand workers, and in the face of the other forms of siege and starvation.

Dear Brothers,

We are for a just, full and comprehensive peace in our region and on all Arab tracks. We are for the peace of the brave for the sake of our children and their children. In the wake of these circumstances, dangerous military escalation and the current situation, we do not find what is better than the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the recommendations of the Mitchell Commission, particularly its recommendation for a final and complete freeze on settlements. We have agreed to freeze settlements and stop their expansion after the Oslo agreement with our late partner Rabin, who was assassinated by these extremist Zionist forces, who do not want peace or any agreement but want military escalation, and to bring our Palestinian people and our Arab and Islamic nation to their knees, and to judaize the Christian and Islamic holy sites, as they are doing in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour. There is an international consensus on this initiative and the report of the Mitchell Commission which was established as a result of the Sharm Sheikh meeting in which the USA, the European Union, the Secretary General of the UN, Egypt and Jordan participated. Why do we not follow upon this to put a mechanism of implementation by convening a new conference of Sharm Sheikh in which the Russian Federation, the other co-sponsor of the peace process can participate and in which representatives of the Islamic Summit, the Committee on Jerusalem and other international forces are present. Why do we not exert all international efforts so that they be accepted and implemented by Israel, which tries to rid itself from all agreements and commitmensigned by the various Israeli Governments? The government of Israel continue to evade all resolutions of the international legitimacy. In this attempt, Israel is being covered and protected by the rejection to let the UN Security Council adopt a resolution on international forces or observers to proveide for international protection to our people in the face of this total Israeli aggression against our homeland, people and holy places.

Our people pin great hopes on you and on your stand. They are fully confident that Holy Jerusalem and beloved Palestine are held in trust by you, and that you will not jeopardize this trust that God, Al Mighty, has put in you til the Day of Judgement.

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,
We will, without doubt,
Help Our apostles and those
Who believe, (both)
In this world’s life
And on the Day
When the witnesses
Will stand forth,
Sadaga Allahu Al Azhim.

Israel Behind the News

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Sara Blaustein: A Man Remembers His Murdered Wife

I Want the United States to Pursue the Murderers of My Son, Yaakov

Living with a War on the Road Near Our Home

Anatomy of a Ceasefire: How Long Will Israel’s Restraint Last

Peres Confirms: Talks Continue with the PLO

Are Israel’s Settlements Legal?

Historical Approach to the Issue of Legality of Jewish Settlement Activity

Arafat’s Appointed Mufti Endorses Suicide Attacks

Arafat makes poison gas accusation aganst Israel

Column from the Director