22 thoughts on “722,000 Israelis Live Beyond Green Line – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
task-attention.png
Comments are published at the sole discretion of the owner.
 

  1. Richard: “and cede almost all territory outside the 1967 borders to a Palestinian state,”

    That “almost” absolutely screams.

    If you use a waffle word like that with this crowd, they will use it to take the whole. It’s called giving an inch and losing a mile.

    1. “If you use a waffle word like that with this crowd, they will use it to take the whole.”

      That comment is the very definition of chutzpah.

      Israel is not entitled to one inch of territory over the Green Line. It simply is not “their territory” to “cede” to a Palestinian state.

      That Richard asumes that Israel can keep some of that territory – indeed, any of that territory – is a common conceit.

      And it is a conceit because that would involve the PLO to cede that territory *to* Israel, and not vice versa.

      The PLO has already been down that road, in 1991, when they agreed that Israel can keep all of the territory that the Haganah seized in 1948-49.

      That is a concession of monumental proportions, utterly dwarfing any offers ever put forward by Israel.

      So what did Israel do?
      It pocketed that concession and then continued the occupation.

      “It’s called giving an inch and losing a mile.”

      People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Denis.

    2. As far as I’m concerned, Israel could give back every square inch of pre 67 territory. But since various agreements bet Israel & the Palestinians are predicated on retaining some territory in return for Israel ceding some its Negev to Palestine, I don’t see that as a problem as long as the Palestinians agree as well.

      1. “I don’t see that as a problem as long as the Palestinians agree as well.”

        Sure. No argument from me.

        Anyone can cede their own territory in exchange for, well, whatever trinket and pile of blankets takes their fancy.

        But the point that I was making is that it must *be* your territory before you can cede it, and if it ain’t then it ain’t yours to “cede” to anyone.

        The territory that those Israeli settlements are on is not Israeli territory, however much Israel might want it and however much it might “expect” to get it.

        That’s why all that hasbarah nonsense about how it’s A-OK to continue construction in settlements that “Israel expects to keep” is nonsense.

        Sure, the PLO can concede those settlements to Israel, but it will want something of equal value in return.

        But the mindset of zionism is that it already “owns” that territory, and is actually doing the Palestinians a favour by offering to throw the unwanted bits to the PLO.

  2. Denis is right. What will happen is not in our hands, but describing what we want is: What we want is TOTAL withdrawal.

    Israel should retract to the green line, removing all settlers, settlements, wall, the siege of Gaza, the internal checkpoints, and stop stealing water and other materials (and stop dumping toxic and other wastes) — all as preparations for making the “just and lasting peace” imagined so fondly by UNSC 242 (1967).

    Might the USA let/make this happen? Well, the signal of USA turnaround on many questions of diplomacy, war and peace, etc., is the ongoing and smoothly progressing END of the dollar’s preeminence as the currency in which OIL is traded.

    I don’t look forward with unmixed happiness to the demise of the USA as an economic superpower, but I do look forward to an end of its cruel-to-others and wasteful-to-Americans military empire all or chiefly in place as a support for dollar-denomination of the price of oil. And the vast debt acquired largely by a refusal to tax the rich whilst maintaining the vastly expensive military empire will one day fall due, possibly making the USA another Greece or Italy or even Iceland w.r.t. debt repayment.

    At that point — or even well on the way to that point — I think the USA might see its way to making peace rather than war in I/P-land as well as elsewhere. A dream, maybe a nightmare, but a possibility.

  3. Thank you for this statistic. It is a sobering update, and highlights the disconnectedness of both US and Israel policy. Both still “support” a two-state solution which appears to be dead on delivery. Is this a case of advocating something they know can never come to pass? Or can the Palestinians be induced to support an even more bifurcated and non-contiguous entity?

    I do not expect the latter, and therefore agree that Israel’s dogged refusal to accommodate 2 states will lead nowhere other than to demands and legitimate resistance in the name of a single state based on freedom, dignity and equality for all citizens regardless of religion or race.

  4. The problem is that there is no “we” to give Israel a stark choice. The Republicans just want to give Israel even more leeway to do whatever. Obama, apparently annoyed with Netanyahu, seems unwilling to do anything. The Europeans can’t agree on any path. Then it seems that most Palestinians are unwilling to give up the “right of return” which is tantamount to disassembling Israel.

    So, that leaves things up to the force of history and demography. The choice, as Woody Allen put it (paraphrasing) (Israel) faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction.

    I don’t think Israel can pull off withdrawing from the territories. Looks like the future is looking a lot like the Balkans.

  5. Throughout last year, the UN and Peace Now used the statistic of approximately half a million Israelis living in settlements, including in EJ. It’s not credible that there would have been such a dramatic increase in a year; could somebody explain the disparity between the two figures? Maybe the larger one includes outposts (hardly a gigantic number) and IDF bases?

      1. I think the 722,000 figure should be taken with several grains of salt. In 2010 the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics put the settler population in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at 517,774. That doesn’t include about 20,000 in the Golan Heights, but even if you add them in, and figure 5% growth per year in 2010 and 2011, we’re still pretty far from the Israel HaYom figure.

        I don’t read Hebrew, so I don’t know whether Israel HaYom gives any more detail, but a Jan. 15 AFP report does. First of all, it says the numbers come from Yaakov Katz, a Knesset member fro the far-right National Union party, who says he got them from the interior Ministry. For the West Bank settler population, not counting East Jerusalem, he gives a figure of 342,414, which is not out of line with conventional estimates. There are two reasons the total is so much higher than most figures: a) it includes 60,000 Jewish Israelis allegedly studying at institutions in West Bank settlements, and b) it puts the Jewish population of East Jerusalem at 300,000, compared to the usual estimate of 200,000. Even factoring in substantial increasesin the last two years, that’s a huge discrepancy.

        I have no way of evaluating the figure for students, but as to East Jerusalem, I can’t help but suspect that Katz and his sources are inflating the number in order to strengthen their claim to that area.

        1. Ketzeleh isn’t a reliable source. I should’ve noticed that. I’m not sure he even got the figures from the Interior Ministry as he claims. So the numbers could very well be inflated. Which of course continues a pattern of fraud, subterfuge & exaggeration common to the settler enterprise.

          1. I don’t suppose anyone is still following this discussion, but for the record a new report from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics puts the East Jerusalem settler population at 262,000, according to a June 12 report from WAFA, the Palestinian news agency (https://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam ). That compares to the 300,000 figure claimed by MK Yaakov Katz and then published in Israel HaYom.

            My hunch is that the real figure is somewhere in between, but obviously it rises by the week.

  6. How reliable is this source?

    Isn’t it a right-wing propaganda outlet owned by Sheldon Adelson?

    Have they ever been known to bend the truth in the past?

  7. We need a world-wide movement on the scale of the one that helped the South Africans end apartheid.

    At the very least:

    1) end the Israeli Population Register of Nationality and Religion as a step to real equality for all Israelis
    2) End the occupation of Cis-Jordan and the siege of Gaza
    3) Close the Likud page on the Knesset website where the claim is made to all the territory between the river and the sea.

  8. RE: “in 2011, 722,000 Israelis lived beyond the Green Line, including in settlements and East Jerusalem. This was a 5% increase over 2010.” ~ R.S.

    FROM ELLIOTT ABRAMS, 04/08/09:

    (excerpt)…Is current and recent settlement construction creating insurmountable barriers to peace? A simple test shows that it is not. Ten years ago, in the Camp David talks, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat approximately 94 percent of the West Bank, with a land swap to make up half of the 6 percent Israel would keep. According to news reports, just three months ago, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered 93 percent, with a one-to-one land swap. In the end, under the January 2009 offer, Palestinians would have received an area equal to 98 to 98.5 percent of the West Bank (depending on which press report you read), while 10 years ago they were offered 97 percent. Ten years of settlement activity would have resulted in a larger area for the Palestinian state

    SOURCE – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703379.html

    P.S. Ergo, the ‘Abrams Principle’ stands for the proposition that more Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank will ultimately result in a larger area for the Palestinian state. That’s why I say, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” with the settlement actvity; so as to result in the largest Palestinian state possible (from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River)! “Let Right Be Done.”

  9. The kingdom of Jordan was dubbed “Trans-Jordan” by the British when they got the League of Nations Palestine mandate (written by Zionists). According to the Likud platform which you can find on the Knesset website, the only Palestinians that Likud will negotiate with about Palestine is the kingdom.

    So, along with claiming for Israel all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (in the same platform) they reveal that their “face to face negotiation” talk is a sham.

    I agree that all the land from the River to the Sea should be one state, with equal rights for all its inhabitants. And, by analogy to Trans-Jordan I have dubbed it, provisionally, Cis-Jordan, for “this side of the River).

    It took decades of struggle, capped by a relatively short international active condemnations, for apartheid to be abolished in South Africa. Let’s get serious on BDS.

  10. P.S. Just Google “likud platform knesset” to see the actual texts of Likud’s frank and outrageous platform. I verify periodically that they haven’t taken this webpaage down. As of 18/1/2012 at 9:23 AM EST it is still there.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *