New York Times again states PFP “has a point” on illegality of Israeli settlement activity
02 May 2005
New York Times again states PFP “has a point” on illegality of Israeli settlement activity
Partners for Peace executive director Michael Brown emailed Steven Erlanger, Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, shortly after Mr. Erlanger’s article of April 19, 2005. Mr. Erlanger recently answered our concerns — and those of many others — and asked that we post his response.
—
To: Concerned respondents to my article of April 19
From Steven Erlanger, bureau chief, Jerusalem. The New York Times
First, I want to thank you all for caring enough to write, and I want to apologize for this collective letter, which may not respond to all of your varying points. Many of you wrote individually, but since I also was faced with an organized letter campaign, this seems a reasonable way to try to respond. But in particular I want to thank Kathy Christison, Michael Brown and Jimmy Johnson for their thoughtful responses.
In general, I would urge readers not to confuse analysis with support. My effort is to describe what is happening on the ground and what it means demographically, as well as geographically, for the various populations, and what the impact might be even before final-status talks begin. My effort is to lay out what Israel plans as best as I can divine them, in the context of a news story with a large graphic and limited space.
For many of you, the article should serve as a wake-up call. Don’t confuse the messenger with the message.
Nor should you expect a full history lesson in every article, which has limits on length and is subject to trimming at the last minute.
My data are not a matter for major dispute, and were not taken exclusively by any means from the work of David Makovsky at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I used material from the census bureaus of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, from Peace Now, from Ir Amim, from the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. There is no great disagreement on where the barrier is going or on the numbers of people on either side of it.
I tried to be careful to deal with East Jerusalem separately, given the Israeli annexation, which of course is in dispute. And I made that clear. I then quote the Israeli Ministry of Defense as saying that 85,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem with Israeli identity cards on the Israeli side of the barrier. That is in the story to emphasize it, not to diminish it. But it is not true that all Palestinians living inside what is generally called Jerusalem, never mind the municipal boundaries, will live inside the barrier or wall.
These, for example, are Ministry of Defense figures: Out of the 230,000 Palestinians (Ministry of Interior records) bearing blue I.D, registered as living in Jerusalem, 90,000 live outside the Jerusalem municipality and 55,000 live inside the municipal area but outside the barrier; 85,000 Palestinians with blue ID live in Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the barrier.
And I have written in the past, as others at The Times have done many times, of the disputes over land, seizures of land, uprooting of olive trees, gates across fields, difficulty of travel, multiple checkpoints and so on that are faced by ordinary Palestinians – from Jayyous and Nablus to East Jerusalem and Khan Yunis. These are hardly unknown issues to the readers of my newspaper.
Michael Brown and some others feel I did not fully represent the international view that Israeli settlement building across the green line is illegal, and that I simply said: “Palestinians argue in any case that all Israeli settlements beyond the green line are illegal. They reject the annexation of east Jerusalem and say that even the 8 percent of the West Bank inside the barrier is among the best land for housing and agriculture. Unilateralism, they say, is no substitute for negotiations.” Elsewhere in the piece, I note that the Palestinians regard the Israelis living in East Jerusalem as illegal settlers.
I think Mr. Brown has a point. There are U.N. resolutions calling the Israeli settlements illegal, and many different countries, some of them European, have taken the same view. The United States view has migrated from the Carter days to whatever we can deduce from the ambiguities of the road map, which I also felt I had to take some room to explain.
But most “international law” is ambiguous or advisory, whether we like it or not. The applicability of the 4th Geneva convention, for example, and what
parts of it, are a subject for intense legal debate in Israel and various court rulings, with questions at issue about the sovereignty of Jerusalem and the West Bank before 1967. You may disparage such debates, but they are real. Even the key U.N. resolution about land for peace was negotiated to say that Israel must withdraw “from territories” – not from “all territories.”
I’m not an international lawyer, I’m glad to say, but I should have broadened the point beyond the Palestinian view, to emphasize that this view is widely shared by a number of countries. We have, of course, written that in the past.
Similarly, Mr. Brown and others believe I should have cited the advisory opinion last summer of the International Court of Justice on the route of the barrier, which is, according to the court, illegal wherever it is built over the green line. I also think this is a fair point, and in fact, a reference to that decision was cut. There were other quotes cut that I was sorry to lose, that I felt helped broaden the perspective of the article.
But I take responsibility for the piece. And I would ask you to read it with these notes in mind.
Others said I should have emphasized how much of the rest of the West Bank is desert, or concentrated on the Jordan Valley, or a number of other matters.
And some wrote to me insisting that I never noted certain facts, which in fact I did note in the piece. Someone said I wrote that Israel is only building on 8 percent of the West Bank, which I did not write – in fact I described how West Bank settlement is continuing beyond the route of the barrier in contravention of Israeli promises. Some said I never noted that the 8 percent includes much of the best agricultural land or various other comments that indicated less than attentive reading.
Others urged me to talk to various sources, including some, like Jeff Halper, for example, whom I know and have spent time with, including a tour of Maale Adumim and the barrier. But I welcome all such suggestions.
And I also got this response, among a small group of similar expressions: “Congratulations, your Mideast coverage is so biased and anti-Israel that Palestinian publications now use it verbatim. For example today, The Palestinian Media Center used your front page story from today about the fence and other issues to keep its propaganda machine going. Whatever journalistic integrity the Times had, has long disappeared. The story of course had to be put on the front page since there was no other newsworthy story going on and the slant had to promote terrorism and free movement for known murderers. Great job,
Times.”
Yours sincerely,
Steven Erlanger
—
Partners for Peace is troubled that broadening quotes were cut from Steven Erlanger’s article. The loss of a broader perspective diminishes the article. Editors should take care in future not to excise quotes that provide a fuller and fairer appraisal of the situation on the ground.
As for international law, Partners for Peace directs interested readers and The New York Times to UN Security Council resolution 465 which is quite clear on the matter of the illegality of settlement activity. As with deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner’s letter of last week, however, we are encouraged by the fact that The Times agrees we have a point in regard to the illegality of Israeli settlement activity being more than simply a Palestinian claim.
UN Security Council resolution 465 is provided in full below:
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/5aa254a1c8f8b1cb852560e50075d7d5?OpenDocument
Security Council
S/RES/465 (1980)
1 March 1980
——————————————————————————–
Resolution 465 (1980)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 2203rd meeting
on 1 March 1980
The Security Council,
Taking note of the reports of the Commission of the Security Council established under resolution 446 (1979) to examine the situation relating to settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, contained in documents S/13450 and Corr. 1 and S/13679,
Taking note also of letters from the Permanent Representative of Jordan (S/13801) and the Permanent Representative of Morocco, Chairman of the Islamic Group (S/13802),
Strongly deploring the refusal by Israel to co-operate with the Commission and regretting its formal rejection of resolutions 446 (1979) and 452 (1979),
Affirming once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,
Deploring the decision of the Government of Israel to officially support Israeli settlement in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since
1967,
Deeply concerned over the practices of the Israeli authorities in implementing that settlement policy in the occupied Arab territories, including Jerusalem, and its consequences for the local Arab and Palestinian population,
Taking into account the need to consider measures for the impartial protection of private and public land and property, and water resources,
Bearing in mind the specific status of Jerusalem and, in particular, the need for protection and preservation of the unique spiritual and religious dimension of the Holy Places in the city,
Drawing attention to the grave consequences which the settlement policy is bound to have on any attempt to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East,
Recalling pertinent Security Council resolutions, specifically resolutions 237 (1967) of 14 June 1967, 252 (1968) of 21 May 1968, 267 (1969) of 3 July 1969, 271 (1969) of 15 September 1969 and 298 (1971) of 25 September 1971, as well as the consensus statement made by the President of the Security Council on 11 November 1976,
Having invited Mr. Fahd Qawasmeh, Mayor of Al-Khalil (Hebron), in the occupied territory, to supply it with information pursuant to rule 39 of the provisional rules of procedure,
1. Commends the work done by the Commission in preparing the report contained in document S/13679;
2. Accepts the conclusions and recommendations contained in the above-mentioned report of the Commission;
3. Calls upon all parties, particularly the Government of Israel, to co-operate with the Commission;
4. Strongly deplores the decision of Israel to prohibit the free travel of Mayor Fahd Qawasmeh in order to appear before the Security Council, and requests Israel to permit his free travel to the United Nations headquarters for that purpose;
5. Determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;
6. Strongly deplores the continuation and persistence of Israel in pursuing those policies and practices and calls upon the Government and people of Israel to
rescind those measures, to dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem;
7. Calls upon all States not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connexion with settlements in the occupied territories;
8. Requests the Commission to continue to examine the situation relating to settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, to investigate the reported serious depletion of natural resources, particularly the water resources, with a view to ensuring the protection of those important natural resources of the territories under occupation, and to keep under close scrutiny the implementation of the present resolution;
9. Requests the Commission to report to the Security Council before 1 September 1980, and decides to convene at the earliest possible date thereafter in order to consider the report and the full implementation of the present resolution.
—
The April 19 article by Steven Erlanger can be read below, albeit without the newspaper graphic article that accompanied it.
The New York Times
April 19, 2005
Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank
By STEVEN ERLANGER
MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank, April 16 – They’re building away here in Israel’s largest settlement, with Palestinian workers laboring on new apartment houses overlooking the red-brown hills of the West Bank.
Israel’s intentions to keep building next to this suburb about three miles from Jerusalem have set off a small furor with the Bush administration, which is putting pressure on Israel to keep a commitment to freeze settlement growth.
But the construction and planning at Maale Adumim and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull 9,000 Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip this summer are only parts of a far larger and more complex transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian landscape, and of Mr. Sharon’s policies themselves.
In effect, Israel under Mr. Sharon is unilaterally moving to define its future borders with a Palestinian state – with the scheduled withdrawal from Gaza and from four small settlements in the northern West Bank, with the “thickening” of settlements near Jerusalem and the Israeli border, and with a new route for the Israeli separation barrier approved by the cabinet on Feb. 20.
Palestinians are furious that Israel is moving without waiting for negotiations. But the likely impact of the provisional new border on Palestinian life is, perhaps surprisingly, smaller than generally assumed, and it would leave about a quarter of Israeli settlers on the Palestinian side.
Pressed by the Israeli Supreme Court and the United States, Mr. Sharon has pulled the separation barrier much closer than it had been to Israel’s 1967 boundaries, which were the armistice lines of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war and became known as the green line.
Even including the three major Israeli settlement blocs of Maale Adumim, Ariel further north and Gush Etzion in the south, the land between the green line and the barrier is 8 percent of the West Bank – close to the 5 percent in the proposal that President Clinton was putting forward in 2000, at the end of his negotiations with the Palestinians and the Israelis.
And even that provisional, unilateral 8 percent, before final-status negotiations begin, means that 99.5 percent of Palestinians would live outside the barrier, in 92 percent of the West Bank, with 74 percent of Israeli settlers inside it.
“The real point is being lost in the spat over Maale Adumim,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The contours of the debate over the West Bank have shifted under our eyes.
“People associate Sharon with being Mr. Settlement and react with a certain churlishness, saying he’s trying to trade Gaza for the West Bank. But the real story is how Mr. Settlement, who wanted to build on 100 percent of the West Bank, is down to 8 percent. If we’re talking about Maale Adumim, it means that Sharon sees this as the main battleground, not Elon Moreh or the Jordan Valley.”
Palestinians do not see that as a victory. They argue that all Israeli settlements beyond the green line are illegal. They reject the annexation of East Jerusalem
in 1967 and say that the 8 percent of the West Bank inside the barrier is among the best land for housing and agriculture. Unilateralism, they say, is no substitute for negotiations.
Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian negotiator, said, “If this project is carried out, it will mean shutting the door for negotiations and peace and putting more Palestinians effectively into prison.”
Eight percent is half of what the figure was last summer, before the Israeli Supreme Court told the government to move the barrier closer to the green line. The new route has sharply reduced the number of Palestinians caught inside the barrier: fewer than 10,000 of the two million Palestinians in the West Bank.
Those figures do not include East Jerusalem, which contains about 175,000 Israelis and about 195,000 Palestinians.
About 85,000 Palestinians, the Defense Ministry says, live with Israeli identity cards on the Israeli side of the barrier. The Palestinian population is growing by about 3.3 percent annually, and the Israeli population by less than 1 percent.
Thousands more Palestinians live in areas like Qalqilya, which are no longer formally behind the barrier, but where they must cross through gates that can be sealed quickly.
Still, Israelis argue, the hardships of the barrier are now less severe and affect fewer Palestinians than before. Israeli officials point out that even the final proposal being considered at the end of Mr. Clinton’s negotiations awarded some West Bank land to Israel, with land transfers to the Palestinians to make up the difference. And the Palestinians, in every negotiation so far, have seemed ready to cede Maale Adumim to the Israelis for other land.
Ariel may be a different matter, given how far it sticks out into the West Bank. But even with Ariel, the Israeli government has agreed with Washington not to fully enclose the area, which would trap thousands of Palestinians in enclaves. Instead it uses local fences around settlements and increased army patrols.
Within the new route of the barrier but outside the green line are some 177,000 Israelis living mostly in these large settlement blocs – about 74 percent of Israeli settlers. The other 26 percent, about 63,000, live in the West Bank beyond the barrier.
That 26 percent, some in isolated, heavily guarded settlements or in small outposts, are likely to find themselves stranded in an independent Palestine or
having to move, for it is highly unlikely that in any negotiation this notional Israeli border, along the barrier’s route, will move farther into the West Bank.
Mr. Sharon’s barrier has spelled out the future for those settlers, but removing them could make the coming Gaza evacuation seem like a walk in the park,
especially when talking about fiercely ideological settlements like Ofra and Beit El.
Israel argues that the barrier is not a border but merely a temporary security measure that can be moved or removed in accordance with negotiations. But Israel
is building inside the new route – at Maale Adumim, for example – as if it will be a border, or close to one.
Mr. Makovsky has analyzed the changing route of the barrier and done population estimates, village by village, with census figures and a C.I.A. projection of annual population growth rates. “Clinton was down to 5 percent of the West Bank, and here you are down to 8 percent before final-status negotiations,” Mr.
Makovsky said. “It has to be modified and agreed upon by the parties, but before our eyes we see the rough shape of a two-state solution.”
While the politicians argue, nothing stops.
Settlement construction is continuing on the West Bank, though more slowly than was the case two years ago, in apparent violation of Mr. Sharon’s commitment in the first stage of the road map to freeze settlement growth.
Mr. Sharon says the road map is not yet in force because the Palestinians have not met their own first-stage obligation to dismantle terrorist organizations. The
population of West Bank settlements is increasing by about 5.6 percent a year.
Nor has Mr. Sharon yet kept his promise to Mr. Bush to dismantle illegal settlement outposts built after March 2001 – at least 24 of the 105 illegal outposts disclosed in an Israeli study.
In the meantime, Mr. Sharon and Washington continue negotiating what a freeze means, with Israel being pushed to define where existing construction stops within large settlement areas like Maale Adumim, which was established in 1975. Israeli officials say Washington will allow construction within existing built-up areas but not outside them.
Even that position, which American officials will not publicly confirm, seem to violate Israel’s promises under the road map to freeze settlement growth after March 2001, including natural growth.
That is why Mr. Bush was so upset, and publicly so, about the announcement that Israel was planning 3,500 new units in a 4.6-square-mile area known as E1, adjacent to Maale Adumim, enough to house 14,000 new settlers.
The mayor of Maale Adumim, Benny Kashriel, says the community of 32,000, with its flowerbeds and shopping mall, is widely accepted as part of Israel and will stay that way, so that new construction is necessary to survive.
“We’re building in Maale Adumim territory,” he said.”We’re not expanding at all.”
Large municipal boundaries around smaller communities are a standard Israeli device, critics say, to make it seem that new settlement construction is merely ”thickening” existing settlements. The official municipal boundaries of Maale Adumim are huge, larger than Tel Aviv’s, and stretch nearly to Jericho. The settlement is built up on only about 15 percent of its official area.
Given the proximity to Jerusalem, the passions on both sides are intense. Israelis want E1 to provide contiguity of Jewish settlement around Jerusalem, while Palestinians want it to ensure contiguity of Palestinian settlement between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Mr. Sharon says the plan will go ahead, even if not immediately. “It is the Israeli position,” he said, standing next to Mr. Bush last week, “that the major Israeli population centers will remain in Israel’s hands under any future final-status agreement, with all related consequences.”
For Dror Etkes of Peace Now, there is no quick or painless solution. “Israeli society is going through a very hard period and has to learn to redefine itself
after 40 years as a non-occupying country,” he said. “This is not going to end easily.”
