Vol. 16, No.

13

August 16, 2016

Ten False Assumptions Regarding Israel

Amb. Alan Baker

Israel is inundated with one-sided international resolutions, declarations, peace
plans, and advice from governments, international organizations, leaders, pundits,
and elements within the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities.
Most of the above rest on widely-held, false and mistaken assumptions regarding
Israel, its leaders, government, policies, and positions held by the vast majority of the
Israeli public.
These false and mistaken assumptions need to be addressed:

1. Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank territories (Judea and

Samaria) will provide Israel with security and international
acceptance. Wrong.

Prior to Israels entry into the territories in the 1967 war, the Arab states made
every effort to attack and weaken Israel militarily and diplomatically.

The Arab and Iranian attempts today to challenge Jewish history in the Biblical
land of Israel and in Jerusalem and the legitimacy of the State of Israel as a
Jewish state still resonate in the international community, most recently in
UNESCO.

The Palestinians are committed to eventually establishing their state over all of
mandatory Palestine and they indoctrinate their children this way.

Children killing an Israeli soldier, Hebron school, April 18, 2016

The most recent, absurd initiative by the Palestinian leadership to prosecute

Britain for issuing the 1917 Balfour Declaration proves the deeply-rooted
Palestinian rejection of the existence of Israel.

From Israels establishment in 1948 and up to present day, Israel has been, and
continues to be the only UN member state denied its UN Charter-guaranteed
right of sovereign equality.

Clearly, withdrawal from the territories now under these conditions would
threaten Israels security.

2. Israels occupation of the territories is illegal and a violation of

international law. Wrong.

Israel entered the territories in 1967 after being attacked by all its neighbors,
acting in self-defence against an offensive and aggressive war.

Occupation of territory during an armed conflict is an accepted and recognized

legal state-of-affairs in international law and practice.

Israel has committed itself to abide by the international humanitarian and legal
norms for the administration of such territories. Israels administration of the
territories is under strict judicial supervision by Israels Supreme Court.

The territory was never under Palestinian rule or sovereignty, and when it was
under Jordanian control there was no intention by Jordan to turn it into a
Palestinian state.

The oft-used term in UN resolutions occupied Palestinian territories has no

legal basis or validity whatsoever. It is not supported by any legal, historical or
other binding document, and its use prejudges the outcome of a still pending
negotiation.

It is an accepted fact that the issue of the future of the territories is in dispute.
Israel entertains valid, widely acknowledged and long-held historic and legal
claims regarding the territories.

Signed agreements between the Palestinian leadership and Israel have

established an agreed framework for settling the territorial dispute through
negotiation of their permanent status.

Pending agreement between Israel and the Palestinians regarding the

permanent status of the territory, no external, third-party political
determination or resolution can establish that that the territories belong to the
Palestinians.

3. The Palestinian leadership is united and popularly supported.

Wrong.

The Palestinian leadership is far from united. There is a total, irreconcilable

disconnect between the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank areas
of Judea and Samaria, and the Hamas administration in Gaza. The leadership is
seen as incorrigibly corrupt. President Mahmoud Abbas is in the 11th year of his
four-year term. The Authority lacks internal credibility, accountability, and
popular support.

This situation undermines any confidence in a viable and united governance and
representation of the Palestinians. It neutralizes any capacity to enter into and to
implement any international commitment or obligation.

4. The Palestinian leadership is moderate, willing to negotiate and to

live in peace with Israel. Wrong.

The Palestinian leadership, is far from moderate, by any standard. Even without
Hamas incitement, it engages in an officially-sanctioned policy of denormalization vis--vis Israel. The leadership often praises, memorializes, and
encourages Palestinian terrorists.

Palestinian Chairman Abbas, PA Television, September 16, 2015. (Palwatch)

The Palestinian leadership refuses to resume negotiations, and refuses to meet

or to enter into any dialogue with Israels leaders. It blocks contacts between
Palestinians and Israelis at the diplomatic, professional, and people-to-people
levels. This policy runs counter to Palestinian commitments in the Oslo Accords
to encourage development cooperation and people-to-people dialogues at all
levels.

The Palestinian leadership initiates and openly supports boycotts, divestment,

and sanctions (BDS) aimed at the delegitimization of Israel in the international
community on international and regional organizations, international tribunals,
and the UN and its specialized agencies.

While Israel has expressed its willingness for the principle of two states for two
peoples, the Palestinian leadership consistently refuses to accept the concept of
Israel as the democratic nation state of the Jewish People.

5. Israel's settlements are illegal and violate international law.

Wrong.

These allegations are based on a misreading of the relevant international laws

and the reciprocal commitments between Israel and the PLO.

The prohibition on the transfer of population into territory occupied during war,
set out in the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, was specifically drafted in order
to prevent a recurrence of the mass forcible population transfers that occurred
during the Second World War. In the case of Israels settlement policy, there are
no forced expulsions or coerced settling.

This has no bearing on, or relevance to Israels settlement policy, which enables
the legitimate utilization of non-privately-owned land pending the permanent
settlement of the dispute. Use of non-privately-owned public land for settlement
or for agriculture is fully consistent with accepted international norms as long as
the status of the land is not changed pending its final negotiated outcome.

As such, Israels settlements cannot be seen to be a violation of international

law. Any determination of such is based on a selective, politically biased
viewpoint taken outside the accepted international practice.

Notwithstanding the divergence of views on the legality of Israels settlements,

according to the Oslo Accords, this issue is an open negotiating issue between
the Palestinians and Israel.

Pending attainment of a negotiated settlement, the Oslo Accords place no freeze

or restriction on either Israel or the Palestinians to engage in planning, zoning,
and construction in the respective areas under its control. To the contrary,
planning, zoning and construction are specifically permitted.

Accordingly, arbitrary and unilateral predetermination as to the legitimacy of

settlements, and any call for their removal prior to an agreement between Israel
and the Palestinians are inconsistent with the agreements and constitute
prejudgment of a negotiating issue.

The claim that the settlements are the source of the conflict holds no logic. The
Arab-Israel conflict existed long before the establishment of any settlement, with
efforts by the Arab states in 1948 to prevent the establishment of the state of
Israel and their ongoing efforts since then to bring about its demise.

6. Jerusalem belongs to the Arabs. The Jews have no rights or claims

to it. Wrong.

The Palestinian leadership manipulates history and denies Jewish history and
heritage in Jewish holy sites in its presentations to international organizations
such as UNESCO. They cannot alter the historic fact that Jerusalem has, from
time immemorial, been the epicenter of the Jewish religion and heritage. It also
plays a major role in the history of Christianity. This is acknowledged in the
Quran, the Old and New Testaments and in the writings of historians.

Attempts by the Palestinian leadership to generate incitement and violence

through false accusations regarding the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem have no
basis and will not alter the fact that the issue of Jerusalem is an agreed
negotiating issue between Israel and the Palestinians pursuant to the Oslo
Accords.

Any assumption or expectation that the Israeli public may be pressured into
supporting demands for a unilateral withdrawal from Arab areas of east
Jerusalem outside of a negotiated and agreed-upon framework is misplaced and
has no basis in fact.

7. The Israeli leadership and government are inflexible, extreme and

oppose peace. Wrong.

The intense hostility towards Israels democratically-elected government is

misplaced and insulting to the Israeli public.

The tendency, especially in Europe and in international organizations, to accept

outrageous Palestinian allegations against Israel, often old anti-Semitic canards,
is nothing more than submission to cynical manipulation. Such allegations
deliberately abuse the bona fides and sense of political correctness prevalent
among Western countries and societies.

This comes at the expense of genuine objective, historic, legal and factual
analysis.

Well-meaning and sincere European and American politicians, communityleaders and organizations together with international and regional organizations
appear to feel that they are better-able and equipped, more-so than Israels
elected leaders and the Israeli public, to know what is in the better interests of
Israel.

The Israeli public, whose voters and their elected officials face the threats of
hostility and terror on a daily basis, have deep political awareness and are fully
capable of determining the fate of Israel.

The assumption that international pressure will bring about the downfall of
Israels democratically-elected government belies the strength of Israels
democracy and undermines the Wests democratic principles.

8. The present status quo between Israel and the Palestinians is

unsustainable. Wrong.

The present situation of political stalemate between the Palestinians and Israel is
not the result of Israeli defiance, as claimed by some Western leaders,
governments, and commentators.

Israel has repeatedly expressed its willingness to resume the negotiation process
immediately. Israel is committed in the Oslo Accords and has made it very clear
that it has no intention of carrying out any unilateral action aimed at changing
the status of the territories.

The present status quo is determined by the fact that the Palestinian
leadership consistently refuses to return to a negotiating table. It prefers to
indulge the international community with its victimhood and to generate
negative initiatives aimed at denying Israels character as the Jewish State, and
delegitimizing Israel.

Palestinian leadership prefers to conduct diplomatic warfare through boycotts

against Israel and legal proceedings against Israels leaders in international and
national courts.

The one-sided imposition of politically oriented solutions is not an acceptable

mode of changing the status quo.

In the absence of a viable diplomatic process today, the current status quo is
sustainable.

9. Islamophobia is parallel to anti-Semitism. Wrong.

The tendency in the international community to link anti-Semitism with

Islamophobia as two equal phenomena of racism is totally wrong. This tendency
regrettably emanates from exaggerated political correctness on the part of many
Western countries and communities.

Anti-Semitism has been a tragic phenomenon conducted solely against Jews for
thousands of years, causing massacres, pogroms, expulsions, public torture and
executions, lynching, forced conversion, destruction of synagogues,
enslavement, confiscation of belongings, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust.

Anti-Semitic themes are a staple of Palestinian and Arab media, school curricula,
cartoons, and sermons.

Palestinian cartoon after the murder of five rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue, November 2014.

The aim of anti-Semitism has been to exterminate and bring about the total
genocide of the Jewish People as a race.

Anti-Semitism cannot be compared or linked to Islamophobia, which emanates

from the fear of Islam as a result of fanatical Islamic movements and the terror
generated by them. It bears no relation whatsoever to any philosophy
advocating genocide of Muslims.

In this context, de-legitimization of Israel is seen by most Western states, as a

new version of anti-Semitism.

10.Israel is a racist state that violates human rights and practices

apartheid. Wrong

This claim is repeated by Palestinian leaders and left-wing propagandists

throughout the world. It was initially advocated by Yasser Arafat and adopted by
NGO groups at discredited 2001 UN Conference on Racism at Durban.

It is indicative of an evident lack of understanding of the racist nature of the

phenomenon of apartheid and an even further and deeper misunderstanding
of the character of Israel as an open, pluralistic and democratic society.

The comparison of Israel to South Africa under white supremacist rule has been
utterly rejected by those with intimate understanding of the old Apartheid
system, especially South Africans. The aim of such propaganda, in addition to
delegitimizing the very basis of existence of the State of Israel, is to cynically
manipulate the international community and to encourage imposition of an
international sanctions regime against Israel modeled on the actions against the
former apartheid regime in South Africa.

Israel is a multi-racial and multi-colored society, and the Israeli Arab population
actively participates in the political process. Israeli Arabs enjoy complete equality
and freedom of expression. They elect their own Knesset members and Arab
judges serve in the Supreme Court. Israeli Arabs serve as heads of hospital
departments, university professors, diplomats, and senior police and army
officers.

Each religious community has its own religious court system, applying Sharia,
Canon, and Jewish law respectively.

Unlike those Arab and other states in which one religion is declared the state
religion, or Western countries where Christianity is the predominant religion, or
Moslem countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia where certain areas, towns, and
roads are restricted to Moslems only, and where women are treated as
second-class citizens and gay people as criminals, Israeli law regards Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity as official religions and constitutionally ensures complete
freedom and equality to all.

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Israel Miss Universe pageant 2013 and the winner, second from the left, Yityish Aynaw, an Ethiopian
Israeli (African Sun Times)

Incitement to or practice of racism in Israel is a criminal offence, as is any

discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex or gender. Israeli schools,
universities, and hospitals make no distinction between Jews and Arabs.

Whether in day-to-day political and social discourse, or whether in the international and
local media, the above canards appear repeatedly and consistently.
Communities, especially Jewish communities throughout the world, Christian
congregations, students and academic staff, parliamentarians, publicists, as well as all
well-meaning people in general, are being cynically targeted and manipulated in order
to generate artificial narratives through repetition of lies and through distortion and
perversion of truth.
It is to be hoped that this manipulation will be seen in its true light and will be rejected.
***
Amb. Alan Baker is Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem
Center and the head of the Global Law Forum. He participated in the negotiation and
drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, as well as agreements and peace
treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. He served as legal adviser and deputy
director-general of Israels Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as Israels ambassador to
Canada.

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This Jerusalem Issue Brief is available online at:

http://www.jcpa.org
Alan Baker, ICA Director; Lenny Ben-David, Managing Editor. Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs (Registered Amuta), 13 Tel-Hai St., Jerusalem, Israel; Tel. 972-2-561-9281, Fax.
972-2-561-9112, Email: jcpa@netvision.net.il. In U.S.A.: Center for Jewish Community
Studies, 7 Church Lane, Suite 9, Baltimore, MD 21208; Tel. 410-653-7779; Fax 410-6538889. Website: www.jcpa.org. Copyright. The opinions expressed herein do not
necessarily reflect those of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs.
The Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) is dedicated
to providing a forum for Israeli policy discussion and debate.
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