I probably shouldn’t mention this, for the sake of being called an ‘anti-Semite’, but I can’t help it … most people refuse to accept the very simple fact that Israel, the creation of Zionists and homeland of the Jews, is perhaps the most criminal country on this planet. Why? Because it holds millions of innocent men, women and children in a five-star open-air prisoner of war camp, for the world to see!
Now, Britain relinquished the British Mandate for Palestine in 1947, allowing persecuted Jews of a war-torn Europe to escape their experienced frictions at the hands of their German neighbours. Quite gallant of us really, don’t you think? That display of kindness was a far cry from our historical nature; giving up land for a religious denomination that we had very little to do with, for free. Unfortunately, though, all niceties tend to have a negative impact somewhere down the line: in this case, the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians.
From the moment of displacement onwards, the Palestinian population has found itself fighting tooth and nail to preserve the minimal amount of land that it has, in the West Bank, under the constant strain of Israeli pressure. When I say ‘pressure’, I mean the constant land-grabbing that the Israeli Government seems desperate to conduct. What is the land-grabbing for? Settlements; to accommodate current Israeli citizens and inbound Israeli’s from foreign shores.
Just 48 hours after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the Chairman of Jerusalem city hall’s Planning and Building committee, Meir Turgeman, announced on Israel Radio that permits to continue building settlements had been in progress, but were delayed until Barack Obama was officially out of office — the former president stood against the Israeli regime capturing Palestinian territories. Turgeman stated that he was: ‘told to wait until Trump takes office because he has no problem with building in Jerusalem’.
Now, Britain’s Minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood, of HM’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office has commented on the Jerusalem municipalities approval of plans to build a further 566 new settlement homes in East Jerusalem:
‘It is the long-held view of the British Government that settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory are contrary to international law and an obstacle to a two-state solution, and we condemn them. The UK reiterates its support for a negotiated peace settlement that leads to an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign’.
The international community deems the Israeli settlements as illegal, not because they were established on land belonging to an opposing party (i.e., the Palestinians), but because they are classed as a violation of the Geneva Convention’s prohibition on population transfer. This part of the Geneva Convention prohibits a state from transferring its population into occupied territory. However, there are is still a legal dispute taking place about this particular issue.
Former Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney, Julius Stone, points out:
‘We would have to say that the effect of Article 49(6) is to impose an obligation on the State of Israel to ensure (by force if necessary) that these areas, despite their millennial association with Jewish life, shall be forever judenrein. Irony would thus be pushed to the absurdity of claiming that Article 49(6), designed to prevent repetition of Nazi-type genocidal policies of rendering Nazi metropolitan territories judenrein, has now come to mean that … the West Bank … must be made judenrein’.
The world shouldn’t be too surprised. Israel has been illegally building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the Six Day War of 1967. But the irony is, indeed, pushed to the limit, given that the Israeli people are, for the most part, treating the Palestinians of the West Bank just as badly as they and their predecessors were treated by a Nazi-ruled, war-torn Germany.
DISCLAIMER: The articles on our website are not endorsed by, or the opinions of Shout Out UK (SOUK), but exclusively the views of the author.
