Middle East crisis -settlements and the so-called occupation

Settlements and the so-called Israeli occupation policy. Is Israel occupying a Palestinian state as has been claimed, or is it a lie?

One of the most difficult and longest crises is the Middle East crisis revolving around Israel. Its neighboring countries, such as Syria and Egypt, have recently had problems with the so-called after the Arab Spring, and up to thousands of people have been killed in Syria, but these are fairly new things compared to the debate around Israel. The Syrian conflict is a matter of a few years, but the Israel issue has lasted for decades. There is no lasting peace and no harmony between people. Moreover, according to the Bible, the dispute over Israel will still lead to great hostilities at the end of the present era. Compared to this, the Syrian crisis may be a minor problem, although it cannot be underestimated. The Finnish Ambassador to Israel, Pekka J. Korvenheimo, commented on the complex situation in the Middle East in an interview of Uusi Suomi (January 17, 1991):

I have here in Israel learned how complicated Israeli-Arab conflict is. The Palestinian question is not as simple as it looks, for example, from the Helsinki horizon.

One new stage is the debate around Israeli settlements. Some countries have begun to boycott Israeli products coming from these areas. They want no one to buy them because they consider settlements to be illegal and occupied areas. They have the perception that these areas belong or should belong to the so-called state of Palestine, which has a long history in the same area. In this regard, however, it is worth taking into account the following points, which are often overlooked in the media. Perhaps they give a new perspective on the subject:

History. When dealing with the question of Israel, one must first understand history, for the roots of the Jews are closely related to the names Israel and Jerusalem. It’s not just a matter of a few decades or one century, but these names were familiar more than 3,000 years ago. The Bible, whose last books were written about 2,000 years ago, repeatedly talks about both places. Jerusalem is mentioned about 1,000 times, and Israel more than 2,000 times, so they were key venues even then. For example, the Qur’an, which Muslims consider their holy book, does not mention Jerusalem at all. The Qur'an also does not mention the name Palestine, nor does the Bible.

    Instead, the Qur’an confirms that the state of Israel belongs to the Jews. During the time of Muhammad, it was understood that they were connected. When Muslims today do not accept these teachings of the Qur’an, they are fighting against their own holy book:

Moses said unto his nation: "My nation, remember the mercy, which God showed you when he set prophets among you, made kings from you and gave for you such, what he has not given to anybody else. My nation, go to the holy land, which God has regulated for you, don't turn away, that you wouldn't be ruined." (5:20,21)

We led the Israelites over the sea, and pharaoh with his troops followed them because of his wickedness and his hostility, until he was engulfed by the waves. Then he said: "I believe that there is no other god other than the one whom the Israelites believe in, and I too submit to him."... We led the Israelites to live in the blessed land and we fed them with all good, but they began arguing when they found out. God will solve their dispute on the day of the resurrection. (10:90 93)

After that, we said to the Israelites: "Settle down to live in this land, and when the last moment comes, we will bring you all together before us." (17:104)

This took place, for we wanted to let the Israelites inherit the land. (26:59)

Israelites, remember my mercy that I showed you, when I chose you from among the nations. (2:47)

We gave the Israelites the Book, wisdom and prophecy, we fed them with all good, we chose them from among all people (45:16)

Palestinians' background. Examining history, therefore, it can be shown that there has been a state in the Middle East called Israel, inhabited by Jews as early as 2000 years ago and before. Jews have solid roots in this area.

    What about modern time? One common claim today is that Jews would have forcibly driven Palestinians out of the country. It has been claimed that they had taken over the ancient homeland of the Palestinians, with Jerusalem as their capital.

    However, this perception has no historical basis. There are no known evidence from the past about the so-called Palestinian people or country that would have had its own rulers, army, money, language, clear recognizable borders and other characteristics suggesting the existence of a nation. These important attributes were missing completely. The name Palestine – Falastin in Arabic – has indeed existed as a name, but it was a name for an area that the Roman caesar Hadrianus gave to the Jewish state in 135 AD. At the same time Jerusalem got a new name, Aelia Capitolina.

Jews and also many others used the name Palestine in the early 1900s. The original name of the current Jerusalme Post magazine used to be The Palestine Post, i.a. Palestine Symphony Orchestra (later called Israeli Filharmonic Orchestra) was responsible for music, and electricity came from Palestine Electric Company. These terms show that it was about the land area and not about a people called Palestinians, which never existed. Arab executive Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi expressed in the raport he gave to the Peel committee in 1937: “Palestine is a term that the Zionists made up. We are Arabs and have belonged to Syria for centuries.”

  Instead, history teaches that present-day Palestinians are Arabs who came from surrounding states. Many are descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham, and most of them moved into the area during the past 150 years.

   These people did not represent one nationality but several: Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Iraqi, etc. They arrived from neighbour Arab states or (before the year 1917) from the former Turkish Ottoman region, which until a hundred years ago still had possession of most of the Arab states. They could not have had any kind of Palestinian identity at that time; neither was there any mention of any Palestinian identity made by neighbour Arab states. These mentions were made a lot later.

  What led people to move from surrounding areas to the present land of Israel was the fact that conditions were much better there. Consequences of the migration of the Jews included an increase in wages and the standard of living, and this tempted them to move away from the surrounding areas. The people mostly migrated to those areas where the standard of living had increased the most. The nearly abandoned area, a distant and desolate place, started to be inhabited again.

When the land started to react to the hard work of the Jews, they became victims of their own success. The Muslims, who for centuries had not cared what happened to the land, heard about the success of the Jews. They started to flow into the land from the neighbouring Muslim states, with the intention of working for the Jews. When they moved back, they did not want to settle down in new areas but to the areas where the Jews were. (1) 

A Palestinian state already exists. A further indication that Palestinian identity is a relatively new thing is the fact that after Jordan occupied the West Bank in 1948 and that area was under Jordanian rule for almost 20 years, the Palestinians never demanded self-government or independence from the Jordanian authorities during that time. That did not happen, even though they made up the majority of the Jordanian population. Instead, they considered themselves Jordanians, sat in the Jordanian parliament, and they never wanted to name East Jerusalem as their capital. The reason for such a procedure is certainly that these Palestinians felt to be same people as the Jordanians; after all, they had kinship with other Jordanians.

   When the Arabs today demand a new Palestinian state and the splitting of present-day Israel, it must therefore be noted that a Palestinian state already exists: it is Jordan. The Jordanians and the Palestinians themselves have acknowledged the connection between each other:

King Hussein of Jordan, in An-Nahar-Al Wal Daul-magazine on December 26, 1981: "Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan."

Anwar Nusseibi, former Jordanian Minister of Defense on October 3, 1970: “Jordanians are also Palestinians. This is one state; these are one people. Its name doesn't matter. Families living in places like Salt, Ibrid and Karak (Jordan) not only have family relationships through marriages with families in Nablus and Hebron but they are one and the same people. ”

Statement by Zuheir Moushin, commander of the PLO armed forces, to a German magazine in Cairo in 1972: The Palestinian people does not exist as such. The creation of a Palestinian state is only one means of our ongoing struggle against the Zionist state for Arab unity. In fact, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. It is only for political and tactical reasons that we speak today of the existence of a Palestinian people, because the national interests of the Arab countries demand that we establish a separate Palestinian people to oppose Zionism. You see, for purely tactical reasons, Jordan, a recognized and sovereign state with its own established borders, cannot thus claim Haifa, Jaffa, Ber-Sheva and Jerusalem, while a Palestinian living inside Israel undoubtedly can. I want to emphasize that the moment we occupy all of Palestine, we will immediately unite Palestine and Jordan. (2)

20TH CENTURY HISTORY. In trying to figure out how the states formed to the present Middle East, we need to go back to the final stages of the First World War and time after that. Then the following things happened that influenced the birth of Israel and other states. If these past stages are not looked at, it will be difficult to understand the current situation in the Middle East.

• The vast Ottoman Empire, led by the Turks, collapsed in early 1918. Its vast territories in the Middle East came under the control of the League of Nations, that is, in practice, under the rule of Britain and France as mandates. The name of the British territory was Palestine, and it covered the whole of present-day Jordan and Israel, including the West Bank, the Golan, Gaza, and Jerusalem. (Today, for tactical reasons, only the territory under Israeli control is called Palestine, but at that time this territory also included Jordan.). Of these British and French mandates, several states later became independent: e.g. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Israel.

• The so-called Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917. It promised that Jews could establish a national home in the British Mandate Territory, which at the time also included what is now Jordan, not just the territory where are the borders of Israel now. Within the Jewish territory, Arabs were promised civil and religious rights, but national sovereignty had to belong to the new Jewish state alone and only.

   The predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, approved the Balfour Declaration and the boundaries of the mandate at the San Remo meeting on 24 April 1920.

• Although the entire British Mandate was originally promised to the Jews, the British separated from this territory ¾ to the Arabs in 1922, that is, the entire area east of the Jordan River. It formed a state called Transjordania (later Jordan) and so the area promised to the Jews was reduced to ¼ of the original. This decision was contrary to the decisions adopted by the League of Nations and to an earlier decision by the British Government of Lloyd George.

• One significant milestone in the birth of the state of Israel was the year 1947. World War II had ended and it was being considered what could be done for the benefit of the Jews who had suffered so much. In the summer of 1947, Andrei Gromyko, the then UN envoy of the Soviet Union and later a long-serving foreign minister, made a speech in the UN General Assembly in defense of the establishment of the State of Israel:

The Soviet Union will approve the establishment of the State of Israel. With 6,000,000 Jews murdered and only 1,500,000 survived in Eastern Europe, the UN could not remain indifferent to the fate of the survivors in light of the human rights principles of the organization’s charter. - The future of a significant part of the Jewish people is linked to the future of Palestine. - The Jewish people suffered indescribably in the war and no European country was able to safeguard and defend the fundamental rights of the Jews or protect them from the violence of the fascist beliefs. This is a painful fact, but it must be able to be acknowledged. On the other hand, the fact that no Western country has been able to help Jews in the past explains the Jews ’aspirations for their own state. - We cannot deny the right of Jews to their own home.

The matter progressed further at the UN meeting on November 29, 1947. At that time, a new division proposal was made again to divide the remaining mandate area into two independent states (the first division had taken place in 1922, when Transjordan was born in the area east of the Jordan River). It was proposed that the Arabs should be given areas such as the present-day West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Jews the rest of the territory. The consequence was that the Jews seized the opportunity to declare themselves an independent state of Israel, but the so-called The Palestinian Arabs, along with the rest of the Arab world, vehemently opposed the division proposal. If the proposal had been approved by them, the so-called Palestinian Arabs had their own state for about 70 years, and there would have been no wars and no refugee problem. However, when the allocation plan was rejected, these far-reaching problems arose. The two-state model was already available then, but Arabs rejected it because they wanted everything for themselves.

• The next step was the declaration of Israel as a state on May 15, 1948. The Jews accepted the UN recommendations on the division of land and seized the opportunity to gain independence. However, the Surrounding Arab states and the so-called Palestinian Arabs did not accept it and immediately started a war against the new state. They attacked a legally established state with the aim of destroying it and dividing the countries among themselves. The Palestinian state and its establishment were not talked about by the Arabs at that time, but were intended to destroy the new state. However, the Arabs did not succeed in their attack, and Israel retained its independence. With the help of the UN, a ceasefire was obtained in 1949.

• When the Arabs did not approve the partition plan and began preparations for the attack, a wave of Palestinian refugees began. They fled before the war (actually from the British Mandate area) and after the war began. In total, there have been an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 refugees. Yet about 150,000 Arabs remained in the newly formed state of Israel.

   The main reason for the refugee problem was the Arabs ’own propaganda. They urged their Arab brothers to get out of the way of war, because then there would be an unhindered opportunity to conquer the country and because in the midst of complete destruction, it would be difficult to know who is Jewish and who is Arab. Most Arabs obeyed the call, but about 150,000 remained.

   When the war began after Israel becoming independence, there were also plenty of journalists in the country. They had come to witness a massacre in which the Arab countries would destroy the newly established Jewish state. They did not mention any refugee problem and how the Jews would have driven them into exile. Nor was it mentioned by Arab leaders in international fora, although at that time they most emigrated - not even Jamal Hussein, uncle of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Arab spokesman, who spoke at the UN before Israel’s declaration of independence, mentioned anything about refugees. Instead, it was considered certain that the new state would be destroyed within a few weeks, and that the refugees could then return. Israel's official policy was to urge Arabs to stay in the country:

We the refugees (…) left our homeland because we trusted in the crooked leaders of the Arab states and their deceitful promises. They promised us that our absence would take no longer than two weeks; it would be like a trip, after which we would return. (Jordanian newspaper Falastin, 30 May 1955)

Those Arab states that advised Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily at the time of the attack and occupation have broken their promise to help these refugees. (Jordanian newspaper Falastin 19 February 1949)

Who brought the Palestinian refugees to Lebanon, where they now have to suffer the negative attitudes of the press and Arab leaders? These newspapers and leaders have no conscience or honor. Who was to blame for the fact that they were brought out of their country under terrible adversity, having lost their money and honor? The Arab states, Lebanon among them, are guilty. (Magazine Kul-Shay, Beirut 19 August 1951).

King Hussein, 17 January 1970: "The Arab leaders have used the nation of Palestine for their selfish political purposes. It is ridiculous, and I would even go so far as to say that it is criminal."

When the Palestinian refugee problem has been in the headlines, it is just one of the waves of refugees that arose between the world wars and after World War II. Other refugee problems involved around 50 million people and have all been resolved. Only the Palestinians are talked about today.

    It is less frequently reported in the media that Jews were also forced to flee or were deported from the Arab world after the declaration of independence. Their number is at least equal to that of Palestinian refugees. On May 15, 1975, the Beirut newspaper Al-Nahar published an article by Sabri Jiryis, a well-known Palestinian Arab scholar, dealing with the problem of Jewish refugees:

It is not true that other states, such as tsarist Russia, Nazi Germany, England, and the United States, were the only influential forces in the events that led to the formation of the state of Israel. The Arabs were also involved in this process. Yes, as sad as it may be, the Arabs were actively involved in this… In this context, it may not be appropriate to describe the ways in which the Jews of the Arab countries were deported from their homelands, the Arab countries, in which they had lived for centuries; nor how shamefully they were forcibly deported to Israel after their property was confiscated or purchased from them at ridiculous prices.

   … It goes without saying that Israel will bring these facts to light if and when one day there will be really serious negotiations on Palestinian rights.

   … Israel concludes as follows: It may be considered possible that we Israelis were the cause of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians driven from their homes during the 1948 war and after that their property was looted. In return, however, you Arabs have caused an equal number of Jews to be deported from the Arab world. Most of these came to Israel after their property had been taken from them in one way or another. Therefore, all of this took place in fact only in a 'population and property exchange', of which each party will draw their own conclusions. Israel placed the Jews of the Arab world to Israel; the Arab states, for their part, must place the Palestinians in their lands and solve their problems.

   There is no doubt that Israel will raise these arguments in the first serious discussions on the Palestinian refugee problem in an international forum." (3)

WHO IS THE OCCUPIER? Occupation is an issue that is often raised in Israeli-Palestinian relations. However, this issue needs to be approached in the light of history and the agreements reached in the last century. Must take into account e.g. the following things:

• The areas now considered occupied, namely the West Bank and Gaza, were, according to the Balfour Declaration (1917), areas where Jews were allowed to settle. This permit also included Jordan at the time, so the area originally promised to the Jews was quite large. The UN predecessor, the League of Nations, approved the Balfour Declaration and the boundaries of the mandate at the San Remo meeting on April 24, 1920.

• As stated, the UN division plan in 1947 was that both Jews and the so-called Palestinian Arabs would get their own state. The Jews accepted the idea of ​​their own state and declared independence in May 1948, but Palestinian Arabs and other Arabs opposed the proposal. They wanted everything for themselves, including the area promised to the Jews.

   The situation led to the surrounding Arab states (Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen) attacking the newborn state with the aim of sharing it with each other. They did not succeed in their intentions. However, Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt Gaza and Syria the Golan Heights. These territories were in their possession illegally and contrary to a UN decision for almost 20 years, until 1967.

   So when it comes to occupation, it must be borne in mind that Egypt illegally occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Why is this not mentioned when talking about occupation? Why did the Palestinians not demand their own state, of which capital is East Jerusalem, when these countries were under Arab rule? Certainly it was because a Palestinian identity did not yet exist at that time, but they felt they were the same people as the inhabitants of the surrounding Arab states. Palestinian identity did not take on a new form until 1967, after the Six-Day War, when the same territories came under Israeli rule.

• As is known, in 1967 there was a Six Day War, started by the Arab states. Their purpose was not to establish a Palestinian state, but to remove the Jewish state from the Middle East on religious grounds, that is, on Islamic grounds. As a result of the war, however, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights came under Israeli rule. These disputed territories were therefore not conquered from the PLO and the Palestinians, but from external states: Jordan, Egypt and Syria. They had started a war, but were forced to give up territories they had held illegally for nearly 20 years.

• As comes to the position of the Palestinians in the midst of the Jewish state, it is true that it is not perfect. Jews are suspicious towards them, and many bystanders suffer. However, the Palestinians themselves are the cause of their suffering. They do not suffer so much because of their Palestinianism, but because Israel defends itself against their violence. To that end, a security fence has also been built, not to the detriment of the Palestinians, but because Israel is defending its civilian population, to which it should be entitled.

   Nonetheless, Palestinian Arabs have received significant improvements in their territories. One of them is running water for West Bank residents. Whereas in 1967 only 10% of the West Bank residents received daily running tap water, the number is now 96%. Their situation is much better than in the surrounding Arab countries.

   Healthcare is a similar thing. Under Israel, the health conditions of Arabs in the West Bank have improved considerably, as have other conditions. They are also better than in many Arab countries:

It is no secret that, although the Arabs in the West Bank do not politically accept Israel on their territory, they have acknowledged that the Jews have raised the health conditions in their area. They noted that king Hussein promised – in paper – clinics, hospitals and schools for the area, but never went through with his promises during the 19 years that the area was under his rule. Indeed, the Arabs have said that Israel and the Jews promised nothing, but they did what Hussein was just talking about, even on a larger scale than they had expected. (4)

• One misconception is that all Palestinians are willing to pursue their own state. Here, however, they are divided. Some of them may want it and do not accept the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East at all - mainly because of and adherence to the teachings of Islam - but quite a few hope that the current situation will continue. They think their position will remain better within the borders of the state of Israel. The following article highlights the perspective of such people:

Mudar Zahran is 39 years old and proud of his Palestinian identity. His parents fled East Jerusalem in 1967 because Egyptian radio said Jews were planning to assassinate all Arabs. He is saddened by the suffering of the Palestinian people but still believes that only in the Israeli regime can they succeed. Mudar Zahran lives in England, where he works as a lecturer and web writer. He attended the international seminar “New Media and General Diplomacy” at Ariel University in Samaria.

   “Most Palestinians are angry with their Arab brothers more than they hate Jews,” Zahra told Israel’s Hebrew daily Israel Hayom. I have never heard, for example, of a Palestinian woman with cancer who was helped by someone of the surrounding Arab country, such as Lebanon. But I have heard of several cases where Israeli hospitals have offered to help."

   Zahran is part of an international group of web writers who want to convey the truth about the Middle East conflict. The group includes Jewish, Muslim and Christian writers. His family moved to England from Jordan, which they did not feel as their home. “We suffered there contempt of our Arab brothers but at the same time we were dependent on them. It's a crazy situation, because really the Arab countries don't care what happens to the Palestinians."

   He is no exception in his thinking. “Most Palestinians think like me. However, I have the privilege to say it out loud, because I am now a British citizen. Most of my people agree, but do not dare to express it.” Zahran and other authors oppose international efforts to create a Palestinian state. “The Jewish state is legal. The two-state model is already dead at birth. There is no room for Palestinian Authority in the Judean and Samaria regions. Any attempt in that direction will weaken the conditions of the Palestinians. As I said, most of them don’t want it ”… (5)

SETTLEMENTS are an issue that has only come to the fore in recent years. They were not much talked about before and were not seen as an obstacle to peace. Now, however, they have been brought out; it has been even called for a boycott of Israeli products produced in these areas. (There was a similar activity during the Nazis in the 1930s, when people were forbidden to buy from Jewish shops. History repeats itself). It has been suggested that products should be labeled so that people know not to buy them.

    However, this issue must once again be approached in the light of history and the agreements reached. Among other things, you should consider the following:

• There was no Palestinian state. As stated, there has never been a Palestinian state in the Middle East that had its own borders. It is therefore wrong to talk about construction on Palestinian land, because there has never been such a state with precise borders. The Palestinians in the West Bank are the same people as the inhabitants of Jordan and the surrounding Arab states.

   It is also important to note that before 1967, the so-called Palestinians were ordinary citizens of Jordan and Egypt. The territories they inhabited were part of Jordan and Egypt because those states had illegally occupied those territories. Thus, the so-called Palestinians were ordinary citizens who did not own the whole land but at most the plots where their dwellings were. Other areas were in the possession of the Egyptian or Jordanian state, which also carried out construction activities as all states do.

   What does this mean? Today, many attack the construction work carried out by Israel, but no one did the same before 1967, when the same areas were ruled by Egypt and Jordan. Isn't there an obvious contradiction here? Egypt and Jordan were illegal occupiers after all, but Israel cannot be considered as such, because the West Bank and Gaza were, according to the Balfour Declaration (1917), areas where Jews were allowed to settle. In modern times, this is forgotten, such as also how the Jews have a historical connection to these areas. It is much deeper than the Arab bond in the same areas. There have also been Jews all the time in the country, although most of them had to leave after years 70 and 135. In Jerusalem, they were the majority as early as the 19th century.

• Both Jews and Arabs have moved to this region of the Middle East for the most part only in the last 150 years. Before that, the area was very sparsely populated, ruined and the chances of living were poor.

   Moreover, when the migration took place, both Arabs and Jews lived close to each other. Jews lived in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza, and other areas that now have an Arab majority. Similarly, Arabs have lived among Jews and where there has been a Jewish majority. Now that Jews are being required to leave the area of ​​the West Bank where they have been inhabited, isn’t that going wrong? Isn't that racism? The same is not required of Arabs living among Jews. There should be room for minorities among both. Julius Stone, one of the leading experts in international law in the 20th century, has outlined the situation in which settlements are alleged to be illegal under Article 49 of the Geneva Convention:

We should note that the effect of Article 49 (6) would be to compel the State of Israel to ensure (if necessary by force) that these territories, despite their millennial connection to Jewish life, should forever be judenrein [pure of Jews]. We would drift to an ironically absurd situation if we argue that Article 49 (6), which was intended to prevent a recurrence of Nazi-style genocide by clearing Nazi metropolises from Jews, has now come to mean that… the West Bank must be made judenrein and must be considered as such by the state of Israel by using force against its own inhabitants. Common sense and the appropriate historical and functional context preclude such a tyrannical interpretation of Article 49 (6).

• With regard to settlements as an obstacle to peace, it is important to note that they make up only a couple of percent of the West Bank's land area. And when there has been growth in the settlements, it has happened within them, not outward. It cannot be an obstacle to Palestinian self-government.

    It should also be noted that the greatest advances in the peace process have taken place at a time when construction activity in the settlements has remained brisk. It shows that the settlement issue is not an obstacle to peace:

The Madrid Agreement, Oslo I and Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, the Camp David and Taba negotiations, the Annapolis Conference and the Road Map have come about without settlements being an obstacle. From November 2007 to the end of 2008, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas negotiated 288 times, while new housing was actively being built in East Jerusalem, the Jewish neighborhood and West Bank settlements. In all these years, the settlement issue did not 'nullify' peace efforts, which, on the contrary, took great steps forward for the Palestinians and Israel, and the Palestinian Authority did not withdraw from the peace talks. (7)

• On the West Bank, where Jewish settlements are located, there are areas that fall into three categories. These areas were jointly defined by Palestinians and Jews in the 1995 Oslo Accords, which were signed by both. These areas are:

• 'A' areas with complete Palestinian civil and security administration

• 'B' areas with Palestinian civil administration and Israeli security administration

• 'C' areas under Israeli administration and for which Israel is responsible for town planning. Jewish settlements are located in these areas.

As for the final fate of the settlements, it should be resolved only between the so-called Palestinians and Jews and mutually agreed. At present, they cannot be illegal because they are located in Area C under the Oslo Accords, which is part of the Israeli administrative district and has been approved by the Palestinian leaders themselves. The Palestinian leaders pledged not to try to change the status of Area C, including the settlements, until they were jointly resolved at the negotiating table. Negotiations are not in sight at the moment because they have been refused by Palestinian leaders. Former Israeli Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker has written:

[In Oslo Treaty], which refers to the rights and obligations of each party its jurisdiction until a permanent status of the negotiations is reached, there is no provisions to both parties that limit either planning, city planning or construction operation in cities, settlements and villages, or require stopping such construction. Article 27 of Annex III (Civil Affairs Annex), in the 1995 Agreement, sets out jointly agreed terms for planning and zoning and building rights in the areas, without imposing any restrictions on either party to build in the area of ​​its jurisdiction.

   The agreement brought about a major legal and political change in that the parties jointly agreed to divide the West Bank's areas of competence into areas A, B (Palestinian competence) and C (Israeli competence) pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations. " (Baker: Israel’s Right Regarding Territories and the Settlements in the Eyes of the International Community; in Israel’s Rights as a Nation-State In International Diplomacy, JCPA, 2011) (8)

References:

1. Hal Lindsey: 1948 Vuosi, jolloin loppu alkoi, p. 87

2. Citation from "Totuutena valhe", Pekka Sartola, p. 278

3. Citation from "Israel polttopisteessä", Jukka Riippa

4. Jukka Riippa: "Israel polttopisteessä", p. 179

5. Israel Today, suomenkielinen teksti: Shalom 10 / 2012 p. 30

6. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-illegal-settlements-myth/

7. Pasi Turunen: Kielletyt hedelmät, p. 20

8. http://jcpa.org/book/israels-rights/

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