(Times of Israel) Dr. Richard L. Cravatts - Professor emeritus Jerold Auerbach of Wellesley College has written that "Israeli settlement throughout the West Bank is explicitly protected by international agreements dating from the World War I era, subsequently reaffirmed after World War II, and never revoked since....The [Mandate for Palestine] recognized 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' and 'the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.'...This was not framed as a gift to the Jewish people; rather, based on recognition of historical rights reaching back into antiquity, it was their entitlement." Legal scholar Eugene V. Rostow, one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 written after the 1967 war to outline peace negotiations, said, "The Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors." Moreover, Rostow contended, "The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there." The settlement debate is part of the decades-old narrative created by the Palestinians and their Western enablers to write a false historical account that legitimizes Palestinian claims while air-brushing away Jewish history. The writer is immediate Past-President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).
2016-12-26 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive