Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace | Page 51

Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace

bound-by-oslo-accord-with-israel
ix

The New York Times’ editorial, “The Fading Two-State Solution,” notes that “Israel is moving quickly to
establish facts on the ground that preclude a Palestinian state,” and quotes a US official: “It is starting to
look like a de facto annexation” (NYT, p. A16, January 23, 2016). Another major voice supportive of
Israel, The New Yorker magazine, has carried a series of pessimistic reports by its editor, David Remnick,
including, “The One-State Reality;” http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/17/one-state-reality .
The study team visited with the mayor of a settlement whose information packet included a nine step plan
for total incorporation of Palestine into Israel; the statement quoted (from a news article) is step five:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/21/settlers-9-step-plan-to-kill-the-two-state-solution.html
x
This frequently quoted aphorism is from the Reinhold Niebuhr, whose political ethics were largely in the
Reformed tradition.
xi
See http://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/belhar.pdf The quote
defining “true reconciliation” comes from the Supporting Letter, para. 3, that goes with the document.
xii

Seidemann, Daniel “The Myth of a United Jerusalem” The Atlantic, Nov. 2011:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/the-myth-of-united-jerusalem/249239/ Seidemann warns:
“Cumulatively, Israeli policies in East Jerusalem today threaten to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a
bitter national conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise, into the potential for a bloody,
unsolvable religious war. This threat derives from Israel's dogged pursuit of the settlers' vision of an exclusionary
Jewish Jerusalem -- displacing Palestinians in targeted areas, politicizing archeology, handing over of the most
sensitive cultural, historical, and religious sites to extreme settler organizations, and promoting a narrative that East
Jerusalem is exclusively or predominantly Jewish, while marginalizing the other national and religious equities in the
city. In the process, Israel is alienating even its staunchest allies and thus undermining its own claims in the city. It is
also putting itself on a collision course with the forces of moderation in the Muslim and Christian worlds, who sense,
with reason, that their equities are being marginalized in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is fast becoming the arena where
religious fundamentalists -- Jewish, Christian, and Muslim; domestic and international -- play out their apocalyptic
fantasies.” The Israeli Committee on Home Demolitions substantiates Seidemann’s reportage with its analyses of
Jerusalem restrictions on family unification, housing permits, etc,, such as a master plan based on the goal of
“preserving a firm Jewish majority in the city”: http://icahd.org/2012/07/24/discrimination-in-the-new-master-plan-ofjerusalem/ Not all of this process of emphasizing Jewish presence over others is in Jerusalem, and nor is it linked to
settlers. The State Department’s annual religious liberty review notes the privileging of Jewish holy sites, for example.
The 2009 Report stated: “At the end of 2008, there were 137 designated holy sites, all of which were Jewish.”
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2009/127349.htm For a report on the re-design in Jerusalem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/world/middleeast/10jerusalem.html?_r=1
xiii
In the West Bank [not East Jerusalem] most Palestinians have PA citizenship, although it does them little
good in the face of Israeli military actions.
xiv

Breaking the Silence is the veterans group that describes the methods of ensuring security for settlements
by disrupting the security of Palestinians: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/world/middleeast/israeliveterans-criticism-of-west-bank-occupation-incites-furor.html “Last year, the group published a report
containing testimonies from more than 60 Israeli officers and soldiers who served during the war in Gaza in
2014. It contended that the guiding military principle was one of “minimum risk to our forces, even at the
cost of harming innocent civilians.” It added that caused “massive and unprecedented harm to the
population and the civilian infrastructure” in Gaza.
xv

For the Rand study, The Costs of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, see:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR740-1.html
xvi
Quoted in a review of Max Blumenthal’s The 51 Day War:
http://americamagazine.org/issue/culture/inevitable-violence
xvii
The Palestinian people have, by weight of customary international law, expressed in many UN
resolu [ۜ