- Good point. Another few points. The settlers did not own their homes, they leased them from the government of Israel. As a condition of their lease, they had to sign a document that they were living their on the sufferance of the government of Israel, and would leave if the government demanded. Some have applied to become PA citizens, even at the cost of relinquishing their Israeli citizenship - don't know what happened to these guys recently. So this appears to be nothing but a mass eviction of people by their landlord, who may not have legitimate title to the land, and whose original actions placing them there is generally considered illegal. It would be remarkable to include this as an instance of ethnic cleansing and not the people who were displaced when the settlements were built, who are generally considered to have had better title to the land.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/16/AR2005061601379.html
Before I forget, there was a then pretty surprising Ha'aretz article a month or so ago about a Shin Bet study, sadly, accurately enough, predicting a "third wave of Jewish terrorism" (Shin Bet's phrase) Would be useful as a good encyclopedic historical reference, too, though I doubt the Shin Bet original is public. Would have added, but the Ha'aretz article was vandalized when I looked at it again - not just a Wikipedia problem Anybody else see it?, I'll try to dig it up again if I can.John Z 02:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
From Bush, Mideast Words to Act On
By Zbigniew Brzezinski and William B. Quandt
Friday, June 17, 2005; Page A31
The statement President Bush delivered at the conclusion of his recent meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deserves serious attention. It has been much discussed by the Israeli press but drew scant commentary in the U.S. media. The president, in his formal presentation, declared that any final- status agreement between Palestinians and Israelis "must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 armistice lines must be mutually agreed to."
Lest there be any misunderstanding, the president said that "Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudices final- status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. . . . A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank. And a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza. This is the position of the United States today. It will be the position of the United States at the time of final- status negotiations."
Bush's declaration was a significant and helpful restatement of some long-held American positions. If these principles are actively embedded in Washington's policies over the months ahead, they could help further the president's stated goals of resolving the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, promoting democracy in the Middle East and undercutting support for Islamist terrorism.
Thirty-eight years ago this month, Israeli forces occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights. At the time, and without much discussion, President Lyndon B. Johnson made the decision that Israel should be allowed to hold on to the captured Arab territories until the Arabs were ready to make peace with Israel and offer recognition and security. This "land for peace" principle was later embodied in U.N. Resolution 242 and ever since has formed the touchstone for all considerations of Arab-Israeli peace.
Johnson, while very supportive of Israel, went on record as saying that the future borders of Israel "should not reflect the weight of conquest" and that any adjustments to the borders that prevailed before the June 1967 war should be small and mutually agreed to. Since those foundational statements on the territorial aspect of a peace settlement, U.S. policy under successive presidents did not change in any significant way until last year.
Then, in a letter to Ariel Sharon in April 2004, Bush seemed to accept the Sharon government's position that new "facts on the ground" -- namely Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- made it unrealistic to think that Israel should ever withdraw to the old armistice lines of 1949. He said then that "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." (Bush also stated that Palestinian refugees should not expect to return to Israel proper as part of any peace settlement.) The Bush letter was widely seen as a triumph for Sharon. For the first time, an American president had openly sided with the current Israeli view that the passage of time and new realities obviated Israel's obligation to withdraw more or less to the 1967 lines (essentially the same as the 1949 armistice lines) in return for peace, recognition and security.
The president's recent elaboration of U.S. policy is essentially a reaffirmation of the traditional American view that the 1949 armistice lines should be the starting point for any discussion of border changes and that changes in them cannot be one-sided. Much like his predecessors, the president also said last month that "Israel must continue to take steps toward a peaceful future and work with the Palestinian leadership to improve the daily lives of Palestinians, especially their humanitarian situation."
The question inevitably arises of whether the president meant what he said and how in practice he can reconcile his commitment to Sharon with the May 26 statement. We will have an early clue when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits the area next week. Will she reaffirm what the president said about the 1949 lines (including Jerusalem) and the need for mutual agreement for any changes in them? So far we have few indications that the Bush administration has decided to make the kind of commitment that would be needed.
Yet the president has a clear incentive to make that effort, and were he to do so he could count on broad bipartisan support from the American public. All of his ambitious and valuable goals in the Middle East would be helped immeasurably by a successful conclusion of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
For the next few months the Israeli- Palestinian agenda is likely to be dominated by the impending Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and by Palestinian elections. But before year- end the moment of truth for the Bush administration will arrive, and the president will have to decide whether to live up to the words he spoke last month by injecting a sense of urgency into the search for a final-status Israeli- Palestinian peace, or whether to settle for another interim agreement, as preferred by Sharon.
We both worked with a president -- Jimmy Carter -- who decided to go all out to achieve Israeli-Egyptian peace. We also know that any major American peace initiative in the Middle East can be politically costly and immensely time- consuming. Yet without a truly serious U.S. initiative, the parties will never reach a fair and lasting peace. In terms of the American national interest, exercising presidential leadership was the right thing to do in 1978-79, and it is the right thing to do in 2005.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and William B. Quandt was a senior member of his staff with responsibility for the Middle East.
http://incontext.blogmosis.com/archives/028534.html
http://www.zoa.org/pressrel2005/20050527a.htm
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050526.html
The first refers to the June 19, 1967 11-10 cabinet decision to return the Sinai and Golan to Egypt and Syria. However, this decision was quite secret at the time, and the consensus is now that an offer was never in fact made. No Egyptians or Syrians ever heard of the offer at the time and their archives have been searched for it without finding anything. The US was to be the intermediary, and the US was told of the plan by Israel, but not that it was to send it on to the Arabs. It is a real historical tragedy - as far as I can tell, the person most to blame for the intentional not-telling was Abba Eban. The various concessions were minor after the war - in comparison to territorial loss, but major points before it, like freedom of navigation through Suez and Tiran, etc. "relatively minor" might be the best wording in this general article to save space. "Israel maintains" is wrong. Some Israelis who are unreliable sources) is b
The second refers to Sadat's February 1971 response to the Jarring initiative, something important enough that I am slowly writing an article around it. The "unreasonable part" is not good here, as when one describes diplomatic offers one should keep as close to the actual text of the formal response as possible - governments weigh each word and comma very carefully, and we should respect that. The reason for the rejection was simply that it asked for complete withdrawal to the old international border.John Z 20:14, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Using Herzog's account of the June 19th cabinet decision is problematic. First, that it was in response to a famous speech by Ben-Gurion suggesting (near) complete withdrawal should be mentioned. Second, it has become clear that the offer was not actually transmitted to the Arab governments. The US was informed of the offer, but was not informed that Israel wanted them to transmit the offer. IMHO this is one of the real tragedies of the conflict; it did not have to happen as it did, and if it hadn't, history would have been different and probably less bloody. Arab archives have been searched without finding any offer, no one remembers such an offer, no documents have surfaced on the Israeli side either - e.g. no rejection letters. Shlaim's Iron Wall has an account of this, or note this review by him " In fact, no offer was ever made . . " [1] There was a very recent book published in Israel that covers the matter and gives even more evidence, but I can't remember the name or the reference I saw it in right now. John Z 06:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
- Aiden, I am very glad to see this, but I think you still may not entirely understand Wikipedia's policy of neutrality. Of course we strive to present neutrally worded cited information that every editor can agree on, but sometimes this is not possible because there is a genuine scholarly debate about a matter. We then try to present both sides as fairly as we can, not decide which is right. In this case, the only choice is to get your own "bogus, one-sided, bigot sources and add them to the article." In my opinion, most of the things you have a problem with however don't need this kind of treatment, but should at most be reworded, modified or replaced by something presenting a scholarly consensus view. One of the good things about the conflict is that the scholarly narratives of each side are slowly but surely converging, once they completely talked past each other. Take a look at 9.7 Lack of neutrality as an excuse to delete on WP:NPOV - if you think these sections need improvement try to follow that.
See also Wikipedia:Guidelines_for_controversial_articles, Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial In general I think it is a good idea to go into much detail about the background to the war - everyone agrees that it is very complicated, and some things are still debated. The war started because both sides had to be Mr. Tough Guy, but neither side really wanted war - at least I would say that is the most popular scholarly view - and this naturally made for a complex runup to war, for which there should be more not less. Getting down to particulars, I disagree about Finkelstein. Many other sources could be used for this, but something is better than nothing here. It is an accepted fact that the Syrian border troubles were a major cause of the war. Describing how they happened is relevant. About the Egyptian FM, there are two issues. First the actual writing - I think we should trust that the reader understands that he will present the Egyptian POV - so "punitive" is neutral here, while "retaliatory" is not. Wikipedia does not present "NPOV sources" - just accurately attributed respectable ones - in a political matter, one can hardly avoid using biased politicians. The second is the presence of this