The UN Settlements Resolution Runs Contrary to Longstanding U.S. Policy and to International Law

Jan. 10 2017

Ambassador Samantha Power, defending the U.S. decision not to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, stated that the vote was “fully in line with the bipartisan history of how American presidents have approached the issue,” citing alleged precedent from previous administrations. However, writes Peter Berkowitz, both her claim and similar statements issued by the presidential foreign-policy guru Ben Rhodes are demonstrably false; he outlines how the incoming president can undo the damage:

While previous administrations have criticized settlements as bad policy, it is the Obama administration that deviates from longstanding American practice by maintaining that every last inch of the West Bank—the territory beyond the Green Line held by Jordan on the eve of the June 1967 Six-Day War—is lawfully Palestinian land. In the very 1982 address on the Middle East that Power cites in defense of Resolution 2334, President Reagan declared, “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.” . . .

Power is wrong on legal grounds as well as on security and historical ones. The Green Line is the 1949 armistice line to which Israel and Jordan agreed to end the war begun by five Arab armies invading Israel after it declared independence on the expiration of the British Mandate in May 1948. The armistice lines have no inherent legal significance. . . .

[S]hortly after he takes the oath of office, Donald Trump should invoke Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 of the United States Constitution, which gives Congress power to “define . . . offenses against the law of nations.” President Trump should ask Congress to pass a law stating that the UN resolution is such an offense and shall not be recognized by any U.S. entity as authoritative. The law should impose sanctions against any U.S. person or entity that cooperates in the enforcement of the resolution. . . .

[T]he Obama administration’s efforts to use international law to criminalize the Netanyahu government’s disagreement with it over how Israel might best achieve security and peace should be forcefully repudiated, certainly by those who believe that international law should not be degraded into a nasty brew of moral posturing, political maneuvering, and personal payback.

Read more at RealClearPolitics

More about: Donald Trump, International Law, Israel & Zionism, Samantha Power, Settlements, United Nations, US-Israel relations

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians