"Take Time to Explain" Settlements

"Israeli Advocacy Group Begins Campaign to Help Palestinians Sue Over Settlements"
A10, Saturday 1/31/09
By Isabel Kershner

The tired and unexplored "much of the world views" line about the supposed illegality of Israeli settlements is offered. Kershner, though, breaks with media tradition by offering an Israeli counterpoint:

“Israel argues that the settlement enterprise does not violate the law against transferring populations into occupied territories, but that it represents a voluntary return of individuals to places where they or their ancestors used to live.”

Kershner makes several key points here, but doesn’t go far enough. The Fourth Geneva Convention is what Kershner obliquely refers to when she writes of “the law against transferring populations”. Why not give readers the opportunity to look it up themselves?

She equivocates in not stating the law’s intent, which was to protect local populations from a forcible transfer into our out of the occupied territory. She could’ve cited “various international jurists” who have been less ambiguous on the reading of this law and the legality of Israeli settlements.

Kershner correctly states that “it represents a voluntary return of individuals to places where they or their ancestors used to live.” Most people understand the “ancestors” part, but it’s too bad Kershner didn’t feel the need to add that the Jews wanted to return due to their explusion by Arab forces.

Finally, the parsing over “transfer” is a mere defense against settlement critics. The Mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations, which provided for the establishment of a Jewish state, specifically encouraged “close settlement by Jews on the land” from the river to the sea. Article 80 of the U.N. Charter preserved this right to settlement, affirming that “nothing in the [UN] Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or peoples or the terms of existing international instruments.”

Kershner could’ve capsulized these points in a sentence or two, perhaps in the same way she capsulized the very loaded “much of the world”. Thorough examination of settlement legality may be construed as legitimizing them, so the Times takes a pass.

Kershner also makes no distinction among the "285,000 [West Bank] Israelis". Helpful would’ve been another sentence stating that “a vast majority of which are on lands likely to be annexed to Israel as part a final peace accord.” Again, the legitimacy of 200,000+ settler presence hinges on her doing so.

“Some of the data has been obtained by non-governmental groups and has already been published, including in The New York Times in 2006." As the media watchdog CAMERA has reported, there were major flaws with that published data.

On the reliability of the “private land” claims, Kershner does a fair job citing “an Israeli defense official,” who “noted that, in total, the settlements are built on 6 percent of the West Bank” and that private land is a "complicated" issue, “given the different administrations going back to the Ottoman Empire”. Also, Kershner airs the claims that some Palestinians sold their land to Jews, but are now silent, fearful they’ll be labeled “collaborators,” and that “others have no papers to prove ownership”.

Palestinians coming forward apparently “is a sensitive issue,” according to Dror Etkes of Yesh Din. This seems to be a more sensitive issue to Etkes than say, how the Holocaust is treated by Israelis. He wrote in Haaretz that Israel “uses the Holocaust as an alibi” to “preserve the occupation project” showed a lack of sensitivity, and intelligence.

Kershner's article ends with Etkes contending that this sensitive issue “takes time to explain.” The legality of settlements; why “much of the world” considers them all illegal; why many Israelis don’t see them as an obstacle to peace; and the problem of forcibly evicting tens of thousands of settlers. What about these issues surrounding settlements? Shouldn’t they take time to explain?