How war was turned (by Israel) into a brand

Political chaos means Israel is booming like it's 1999 - and the boom is in defence exports field-tested on Palestinians

Naomi Klein
Saturday June 16, 2007
The Guardian

...Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country - US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank, and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2bn in "defence" products to the United States - up dramatically from $270m in 1999. In 2006, Israel exported $3.4bn in defence products - well over a billion more than it received in American military aid. That makes Israel the fourth largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called homeland security sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2bn, an increase of 20%. The key products and services are hi-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems - precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2104411,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=27

This is an analysis I've not seen previously, and I thought it may be of interest to people in this discussion group.

- B

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

And, do you really want to live in a country that exists in a constant state of threat and fear because of its aggressive policies? I personally prefer to not live in a police surveillance state, so none of this stuff DHS imports now from Israel is of any good to me.

Don't tell me we're any safer now than we were under Clinton.

in the sand. You can claim that US and Israeli policy causes some of the terrorism that exists, but it certainly wouldn't occur without the conscious choice of thousands of insane muslim extremists willing to pull off these despicable acts. You either deal with said reality or ignore it your peril. Israelis have chosen to deal with it-and profit from it.

Always the innocent bystander to some folks.

nor the demonic evil the far left tries to portray it as.

should go. Netanyahu is bat shit crazy and him in power opens the door to even worse than is going on now.

What do you think?

Olmert acted stupidly last summer with Lebanon and cost himself credibility. Right now, he's weak, but considering the other players in the region, he still has more power than most. I think he should focus on a dual track of negotiations with Syria on Golan and Abbas on the West Bank. I don't think they should cut off Gaza, but they shouldn't focus on it beyond responding to any cross border attacks on Southern Israel.

That's really all he can do until such time as he's unable to ward off a no confidence vote or the next election cycle comes around.

still going up on Palestinian lands? And how about the water rights? The best land and all the water have been confiscated by Israel. I don't suppose that matters to supporters of Israel, does it? The Palestinians have been stripped of everything all for the benefit of Israel.

For example, you seem to think that the entire west bank belongs to the Palestinians. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't belong to any state right now. It is unclaimed territory. However, there are areas that can be claimed just as rightfully by Israel as by Palestine.

Israel confiscated the best land? OK, like where?
The water thing is just total BS.

Where are you getting this information? I'm guessing websites...

or have you maybe read any books on this conflict. :rofl:

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

This is not in dispute. This is not debatable. This is not even remotely controversial. Even Judge Burgenthal the one dissenting Judge in the International Court of Justice ruling that Declared the Wall in to be illegal; although he did not agree with the 14 other judges regarding the wall, stated in his opinion brief that if the Wall or parts of the Wall is being built to protect the settlements, those parts of the Wall are ipso facto illegal, Because the settlements themselves are illegal. He also stated categorically that all land in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza is Occupied Palestinian Territory. (link: http://www.asil.org/insights/insigh141.htm#_ednref2 ) This is simply not debatable among credible independent legal experts. All international legal bodies agree on the illegality of the settlements and that the entire West Bank is Occupied and have always agreed; without exception. This question is way beyond the pale of rational debate.

The view that the racist-apartheid settlements are legal is argued only by the extremist fringe.

According to B'tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, " the built-up area of the settlements in the West Bank covers 1.7 percent of the West Bank, the settlements control 41.9 percent of the entire West Bank".(1)

Resolution 252 (1968)
Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon.

267 (1969)
Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.

271 (1969)
Reiterates calls to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem and calls on Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers

298 (1971)
Reiterates demand that Israel rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.

446 (1979)
Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers, to rescind previous measures that violate these relevant provisions, and "in particular, not to transport parts of its civilian population into the occupied Arab territories."

452 (1979)
Calls on the government of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction, and planning of settlements in the Arab territories, occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.

465 (1980)
Reiterates previous resolutions on Israel's settlements policy.

484 (1980)
Reiterates request that Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

592 (1986)
Insists Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Conventions in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories.

672 (1990) Israel
Reiterates calls for Israel to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.

673 (1990) Israel
Insists that Israel come into compliance with resolution 672.

681 (1990) Israel
Reiterates call on Israel to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.

1. (from B'tselem) 152 settlements that have been recognized by the Interior Ministry. In addition, dozens of outposts of varying size have been established. Some of these outposts are settlements for all intents and purposes, but the Interior Ministry has not recognized them as such.
Israel has established in the Occupied Territories a separation cum discrimination regime, in which it maintains two systems of laws, and a person’s rights are based on his or her national origin. This regime is the only of its kind in the world, and brings to mind dark regimes of the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa. "
link: http://www.btselem.org/English/Maps/Index.asp

B'tselem's detailed map of settlements:

http://www.btselem.org/Download/Settlements_Map_Eng.pdf
___________

This report on Water Resources in the West Bank and the Occupied Palestinian Territories by US AID:

http://www.usaid.gov/wbg/program_water.htm




B'tselem's report on Water allocation:

http://www.btselem.org/English/Water/Index.asp
____

b'tselem: LAND GRAB: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank

An excellent and somewhat long and detailed report that explains the mechanism of land confiscation

link to full report: http://www.btselem.org/Download/200205_Land_Grab_Eng.doc

"Introduction

In December 2001, a long article appeared in Ha’aretz under the headline “Five Minutes from Kfar Saba – A Look at the Ari’el Region.” The article reviewed the real estate situation in a number of “communities” adjacent to the Trans-Samaria Highway in the vicinity of Ari’el. The article included the information that most of the land on which these “communities” were established are “state-owned land,” and that “despite the security problems and the depressed state of the real estate market, the situation in these locales is not as bad as might be expected.”

The perspective from which this article was written (the real estate market) and the terminology it employs largely reflect the process of the assimilation of the settlements into the State of Israel. As a result of this process, these settlements have become just another region of the State of Israel, where houses and apartments are constructed and offered to the general public according to free-market principles of supply and demand.

This deliberate and systematic process of assimilation obscures a number of fundamental truths about the settlements: the “communities” mentioned in the article are not part of the State of Israel, but are settlements established in the West Bank − an area that has been occupied territory since 1967. The fundamental truth is that the movement of Israeli citizens to houses and apartments offered by the real estate markets in these “communities” constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The fundamental truth is that the “state-owned” land mentioned in the article was seized from Palestinian residents by illegal and unfair proceedings. The fundamental truth is that the settlements have been a continuing source of violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, among them the right to freedom of movement, property, self-determination, and improvement in their standard of living. The fundamental truth is that the growth of these settlements is fueled not only by neutral forces of supply and demand, but primarily by a sophisticated governmental system designed to encourage Israeli citizens to live in the settlements. In essence, the process of assimilation blurs the fact that the settlement enterprise in the Occupied Territories has created a system of legally sanctioned separation based on discrimination that has, perhaps, no parallel anywhere in the world since the dismantling of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

As part of the mechanism used to obscure these fundamental truths, the State of Israel makes a determined effort to conceal information relating to the settlements. In order to prepare this report, B’Tselem was obliged to engage in a protracted and exhaustive struggle with the Civil Administration to obtain maps marking the municipal boundaries of the settlements. This information, which is readily available in the case of local authorities within Israel, was eventually partially provided almost one year after the initial request, and only after B’Tselem threatened legal action.
The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians did not lead to the evacuation of even one settlement, and the settlements even grew substantially in area and population during this period. While at the end of 1993 (at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Principles) the population of the settlements in the West Bank (including settlements in East Jerusalem) totaled some 247,000, by the end of 2001 this figure had risen to 375,000.

The agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority entailed the transfer of certain powers to the PA; these powers apply in dozens of disconnected enclaves containing the majority of the Palestinian population. Since 2000, these enclaves, referred to as Areas A and B, have accounted for approximately forty percent of the area of the West Bank. Control of the remaining areas, including the roads providing transit between the enclaves, as well as points of departure from the West Bank, remains with Israel.

This report, which is the continuation of several reports published by B’Tselem in recent years, examines a number of aspects relating to Israeli policy toward the settlements in the West Bank and to the results of this policy in terms of human rights and international law. The report also relates to settlements in East Jerusalem that Israel established and officially annexed into Israel. Under international law, these areas are occupied territory whose status is the same as the rest of the West Bank.

This report does not relate to the settlements in the Gaza Strip. Though similar in many ways to their counterparts in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip settlements differ in several respects. For example, the legal framework in the Gaza Strip differs from that applying in the West Bank in various fields, including land laws; these differences are due to the different laws that were in effect in these areas prior to 1967.

This report comprises eight chapters.

• Chapter One presents a number of basic concepts on the principal plans implemented by the Israeli governments, the bureaucratic process of establishing new settlements, and the types of settlements.
• Chapter Two examines the status of the settlements and settlers according to international law and briefly surveys the violations of Palestinian human rights resulting from the establishment of the settlements.
• Chapter Three discusses the bureaucratic and legal apparatus used by Israel to seize control of land in the West Bank for the establishment and expansion of settlements. The chief component of this apparatus, and the main focus of the chapter, is the process of declaring and registering land as “state land.”
• Chapter Four reviews the changes in Israeli law that were adopted to annex the settlements into the State of Israel by turning them civilian enclaves within the occupied territory. This chapter also examines the structure of local government in the settlements in the context of municipal boundaries.
• Chapter Five examines the economic incentives Israel provides to settlers and settlements to encourage Israelis to move to the West Bank and to encourage those already living in the region to remain there.
• Chapter Six analyzes the planning mechanism in the West Bank applied by the Civil Administration, which is responsible for issuing building permits both in the settlements and in Palestinian communities. This mechanism plays a decisive role in the establishment and expansion of the settlements, and in limiting the development of Palestinian communities.
• Chapter Seven analyzes the map of the West Bank attached to this report. This analysis examines the layout of the settlements by area, noting some of the negative ramifications the settlements have on the human rights of the Palestinian population.
• Chapter Eight focuses in depth on the Ari’el settlement and the ramifications of its establishment on the adjacent Palestinian communities. This chapter also discusses the expected consequences of Ari’el’s expansion according to the current outline plan.

link to full report:

http://www.btselem.org/Download/200205_Land_Grab_Eng.doc

.

is akin to say Israel has no right to defend itself.

It is not the erection of a security barrier that is a violation, but its erection on ground beyond the boundaries of Israel circa 1967.

it was the structure and concept behind that was declared illegal. This is different from the Israeli Supreme Court case which forced the Israeli government to re-route the fence.

The grounds on which that decision rested related to its interference with the affairs of the people under occupation in occupied territory, which rendered it, in the view of the judges, less than a legitimate exercise of self-defense. This was embroidered with some additional items that strike me as foolish swill, mind. No one has ever ruled, or will ever rule, that a country cannot fortify its border.

was illegal. You can claim otherwise, but I have read the ICJC decision as well as the decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court.

and you'll note there are no claims from those who oppose the wall to re-route it, only to tear it down.

But it cannot be denied it has been effective to virtually ending suicide bombing from the West Bank.

Certainly from the Israeli point of view, it has been a pretty good thing, and overall, anything that reduces the number killed is in my view to the good of everyone involved. You will not find me condemning it, or demanding it be dismantled forthwith.

But there is no question, either, that it represents a de facto annexation of everything lying between it and the Armistice Line. Declarations this is temporary do not move me much; in this conflict the temporary has a way of hardening into permanence down the years. The announcement, when its building was commenced, that the regulations for 'absentee owners' that had been employed shortly after '48 would be applied, hardly was encouraging.

as to its necessity. Look, I empathize with their conditions, but you can't argue that it was a choice of last resort.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the Glory of God."

to the same degree, are they?

Yet life is, as we both know, far from fair....

"There is no instance in history of a state benefiting from prolonged war-fare."

despite it's effect on the Pals.

And from the "progressive" community, you hear an awful lot of defenses of right wing thugs like Hamas. It's only fair that I and others who hold both progressive and pro-Israel views speak up and be heard.

But best to drop the 'Pals' usage, and spell out the whole 'Palestinians': the contraction has derogatory connotation in certain circles, though you may not be aware of it.

I trust you on that and will try to refrain from doing so.

Mostly for pointing out the betselem site.

lise

the green line automatically belongs to Palestine is hardly an extremist fringe. The West Bank is de facto unclaimed territory. And at no point did any authority decree that all of east Jerusalem belongs to Palestine.

An advisory opinion from the UN court doesn't qualify as irrefutable proof. Especially considering the UN's history of bias against Israel.

There are plenty of equally valid opinions that do not support your assertion.

That the original Partition calved out all of Jerusalem as an International enclave. But to rest much of a case on this is hazardous for someone advocating for Israel: the argument that East Jerusalem is not "Palestinian" turns very easily to buttress assertion the rest of Jerusalem is not "Israeli", since its basis is really that neither side has claim to the city under the nearest thing to authoritative direction in the question. Better, overall, to accept the Armistice Line as definitive, with everything to its west Israeli, and everything to its east the remnant of the Arab Zone....

That was never enacted anyway.

Israel is a recognized nation. No one can argue against their jurisdiction over west Jerusalem at this point.

The idea that the western wall (for example) automatically belongs to a state that does not exist and can hold no legal claim to it, is absurd. If anything it is disputed territory. (As the treaties signed by the PA and Israel contend.) What legal reason exists to support their claim?

Is the '47 Partition. Everything else is just gun law. Gun law is sound enough, and often determinative in this world, as a practical matter, but it conveys no right the gun in another hand cannot set aside if successful in its wielding of the gun.

since the 47 partition was never accepted.

A line decided by where the fighting front ran once all parties agreed to stop shooting for a while. It was sanctioned by the United Nations, and has hardened by custom into something widely accepted, certainly, but its true basis is the gun.

The Partition of '47 remains the decree of the United Nations for the disposition of its territory, the Palestine Mandate inherited from the League of Nations, which had delegated administrative rights over it to England in its first flower after World War One. Whether it was accepted or not is immaterial; it was and remains the only legal guide, the only item of letter law, as opposed to gun law.

aka, not at all. Besides, it was only a general assembly resolution, thus non-binding. It was a suggestion, and as it was rejected by some of the parties, never was enacted. The only validity that could be derived from it would have been if everyone had agreed to it. But they didn't.

To my knowledge, the British never invoked their Mandate powers to officially back the UN Partition Plan. Without that, the resolution was just an offer, free to be rejected.

There's the British Mandate, for starters. Then there's the Balfour Declaration, Churchill White Paper and especially the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. These are probably the most directly relevant documents.

After Israel's establishment there's the armistice agreements with all of the neighboring Arab states saying the green line is not to be considered a valid border or used as a baseline for related future negotiations.

And there's the Oslo accords, in which the Palestinians agreed that the issue of settlements in the territories shall fall under the jurisdiction of final status negotiations. So, for the time being at least, the settlements existence has been consented to by the PA, as per Oslo.

All were subsumed in the United Nations directed Partition of '47. The Balfour declaration was nothing but a war-time promise of an English government. It gained force of law only when incorporated in the League of Nations Mandate. England had no authority over Palestine at all once that was in place except what was delegated to it by the League. England over the course of the twenties and thirties violated the terms of that grant in so many ways and in so many directions that its continuation constitutes a splendid joke from bygone eras. The Feisal-Weizmann agreement is utterly meaningless: it cannot even be regarded as binding on the present government of Syria, which is in no way a successor of Feisal's ephemeral Damascene Kingdom. Weizmann had no real authority at all.

There is certainly paper stating that the Green Lines of '49 were temporary and not final borders, but they are pointless against the acceptance of Israel into the United Nations with those lines standing as the extent of its actual exercise of sovereignty, and the decades of de facto deliniation they have represented. At the time, no one imagined there would be any major alterations emerging from the various M.A.C. negotions; adjustement on only a very small scale was all that was anticipated.

The recognition under Oslo that the settlements exist, and that their ultimate disposition is punted to some further negotiation, does not really constitute consent, but only confession of impotence, and does not in the slightest affect the international law on the question, which is quite clear on the matters of an occupying power settling its citizens on occupied territory, and the inadmissiblity of annexation by force.

The thing that mystifies me, in the pressing of the position you are setting out here, is what purpose lies behind the exercise. These arguments, regardless of whether they are refuted or accepted, can be nothing but an under-girding for a policy of expansionism on the part of Israel. What respectable motivation there might be for a policy of expansionism on the part of Israel quite escapes me. Nor, whatever motive may lie behind it, can a policy of expansionism be carried out by Israel without extreme disadvantage to a number of people who Israel has absolutely no intention of making citizens of Israel, and who must be either displaced physically or consigned to a sort of resident alien status without political or civil rights in the place where they dwell.

overruled the British Mandate? That's not the case at all. The UN Plan was voted for on Nov. 29th, 1947. The British refused to implement the plan, calling it unacceptable to both sides and refused to share the administration of Palestine with the UN Palestine Commission. The Brits didn't end the Mandate over Palestine until May 15, 1948.

And in case there's any doubt... resolution 181 was NON-BINDING! Non-binding resolutions do not generally overrule accepted and implemented international agreements. The British Mandate is over, true, but in the absence of any following law or agreement that designates the legality of immigration, occupation or ownership, the Mandate's specifications remain the sole, legally valid, binding, internationally recognized document on the subject.

Oslo not only recognizes that the settlements exist but also allows for their limited expansion. To be clear, the Palestinians agreed to the settlement's existence and gradual expansion until such time as they could be negotiated.

International law on occupying powers settling its citizens... etc. was not intended to encompass land that had been previously settled by that same people, was it? What you are saying is that despite there having been a Jewish presence in Hebron for 3000 years, since the Jewish inhabitants were evicted for a few decades, they lost any claim they may have had to the land. By this same token, were the Palestinians to win a war against Israel (I know, I know) they would be in violation of the same laws should they attempt to "settle" any of the land currently being used by the settlements. It's absurd. Your argument means that families returning to their homes in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, which they were previously evicted from by the invading Jordanian army, are in fact illegal settlers who are in violation of the Geneva Conventions. I don't think so.

Besides, Geneva explicitly states that nothing written therein can overrule previously held agreements that are held to be binding. Such as... the British Mandate's rules governing settlement of Palestine.

My point in making this argument is not because I support settlements. It is merely because people discussing this conflict are often very casual in asserting rights and laws that do not exist or are incorrect. We can argue about what SHOULD be done to help the peace process or what land people ethically deserve, and so on... but the fact of the matter is that the entire west bank, and certainly east jerusalem, does not automatically belong to anyone. The western wall is not Palestine's to negotiate away or decide to keep. Regardless of the political implications of this reality, I think that the truth merits itself. I won't pretend that the PA is the de facto legal owner of all of Hebron just because I hate the Hebron settlers. Why would you?

The Partition did not direct an end to the Mandate; it was the policy set for the Mandatory Territory when England relenquished the Mandate, whcih had annoumced its intention to do earlier. The Partition was the means the United Nations decided on to carry out the directives of the Mandate, to establish in the Mandatory Territory a 'Jewish national home' while respecting the rights and desires of the other inhabitants of the place, once the power administering the Mandate ceased to do so.

The question of 'binding" you attempt to raise does not apply, because the Partition does not direct any state to anything; it is the direction of the United Nations for a territory that was its property, in essence. Sovereignty in the Mandatory Territories inhered to the League of Nations, not to the powers that received grants of authority to administer them from the League, and that soverign interest was transfered to the United Nations when it was erected on the collapsed remnants of the old League. Once the Palestine Mandate was relenquished by England, it ceased to exist in any form but the United Nations direction to Partition.

The 'intent' of the Geneva restrictions on an occupying power settling its citizens on territory it occupies is immaterial; the letter is clear enough, and would operate against all the items you cite, hypothetical or otherwise. From certain angles it may seem absurd, from others most unfair, but the application of law often is. The fact remains that the settlement program is illegal under international law, and is exactly the sort of thing the original enactment was aimed against, namely the colonization and annexation of occupied territory.

Or do the Rales get one too?