Monday, March 02, 2009

One Fact; One Dubious Opinion

The UK Guardian reports:

There are currently nearly 500,000 settlers living in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

All settlements are illegal under international law...


One fact. One opinion.

Finally, someone gets his data correct.

Some 300,000 in Judea and Samaria and 200,000 in the neighbors of eastern Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem the Arabs consider "occupied" as does the US State Department. Most Israelis would be shocked, though, to find out that West Jerusalem is also considered by the State Department not to be under Israel's sovereignty - they still dream of some internationalization/corpus separatum arrangement from 1947. As was noted,

...the [US] consul in Jerusalem reported April 9 [1949] that Prime Minister Ben Gurion had told him that "Jerusalem is to Jews what Rome and Paris are to Italians and French respectively."


and also there:

Moshe Shapira, the original [sic. should be "first'] Israeli immigration minister: "For us, the State of Israel without Jerusalem is an amputated state: True, we agreed to a state without Jerusalem in 1947; but we merely waited until an opportunity arose to rectify the situation."


And as for that "international law" bit, well, you know what I think.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think the fascist sentiment is minimal among Jews just as among most types of humans. However and sadly, fascists tend to be the loudest and most sentimental and can if left unchecked can wield great power to commit atrocities, e.g. most recent Ruanda and Darfur.

I think in an ideal world the whole Israel-Palestinian affair is fairly settled and the Simon Wiesenthal institute is busy preventing incidents such as mentioned above.