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Migron Settler Outpost
The UN Human Rights Council last Thursday decided by 36 to one, and 10 abstentions, to send an international mission to look into the implications of the settlements on the civil, political, social and cultural rights of the Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem.
The council demanded Israel to co-operate with the mission and not obstruct it in any way. Last week the Israeli officials called the establishing of the probe “surrealistic,” and on Monday senior Israeli officials announced they ordered the envoy to Geneva to immediately cut off the ties with the UNHRC and not co-operate with it in any way.
Members of the UNHRC will not be allowed to come to Israel. An official told Haaretz that Navy Pillar and the secretariat of UNHRC sparked this process by establishing a mission to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Last week, Israeli foreign ministry launched an attack on UNHRC, saying that while the human rights were being violated all over the Middle East at an unprecedented scale, UNHRC “ridicules itself” dedicating its resources to establishing “a superfluous and extravagant body.”
The ministry added that the sole purpose of the inquiry was to satisfy the “Palestinians’ whims,” and to harm future attempts at a peace agreement. The United States also said that the investigation of the UNHRC does nothing to promote a just and lasting peace, but only pushes parties away.
It is not the first time Israel refuses to co-operate with the UNHRC; in 2009 it refused any co-operation with the fact-finding mission established after the Gazan conflict.
500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, when Israel occupied these territory. The United Nations has considered the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal.
The decision occurs at a time when the High Court of Israel ordered the closure and the demolition of a largest illegal settler outpost in the West Bank, rejecting a deal brokered by the Israeli government to delay the eviction of the Migron outpost until November 2015.
The decision is expected to have implications on other outpost, which are considered illegal under the international law. The judges argued that the initial order to dismantle the outpost, issued in August, was not negotiable, being an obligation, not an option.
The court also criticized the deal the Israeli government was trying to broker for Migron, because the government has only consulted with the representatives of the 50 families, excluding the Palestinian land owners from the negotiations.
Migron was established in 2001, being built on private Palestinian land belonging to the residents of two Palestinian villages, and became one of the greatest illegal outposts in the West Bank.
The settlement was supported by the local council and the government, and was connected to the power grid and was defended by an Israeli defense force detail. The settlement is located deep down in the West Bank territory, near the city of Ramallah, and is not going to fall under Israeli sovereignty in any possible agreement with the Palestinians.
The ruling is seen as a stop sign to the settlers in the West Bank that they cannot build on private Palestinian land. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised that the settlement would be dismantled in 2003, and in 2006 Palestinian landowners and the group Peace Now petitioned the High Court, causing the state to admit that the settlement was illegal.
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said that his cabinet would respect the decision of the Israeli law, and would act in accordance to the law of Israel. A spokesman for his office said that the government brokered a deal with the Migron hoping that the settlers would leave it voluntarily, thus avoiding violence.
A spokesman for the Palestinian government expressed doubt that the Israeli government would actually respect the ruling of the court. He said that there was a difference between what the Israelis say and what they do.
The question of settlements is the one that has determined the stalling of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The negotiations were blocked in September 2010, when the settlement freeze installed 10 months ago came to an end.
The president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas warned that no negotiations would be resumed until the Israeli government stops the settlement building. Abbas explained that the policy of settlement building was fragmenting the territory of the West Bank to such an extent that the future Palestinian state would not have a territory anymore.
Israel on the other hand explained that it would maintain a military presence on West Bank as the NATO troops are being maintained on the territory of the member states. Israel explains the presence of the settlements as a necessity for the survival of their state, given the width of their national territory.
The dispute over the colonies in the West Bank compelled the Palestinian Authority to seek recognition of its statehood by the international community, at the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The bid was unsuccessful because Palestinian authorities were not able to convince the UN Security Council members to vote for them. Even if they had done that, the United States would have used its veto to oppose the recognition by the UNSC of Palestine as the 194th state of the world.
A third front on which the Palestinians are working in order to have their state recognized is the cooperation with Hamas. For the first time in many years Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement to participate in elections on common lists.
Israel deemed the resumption of ties with Hamas as a victory of terrorism, since Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the Israelis and the United States.
Israel insisted that any possible solution for the Palestinian problem must be agreed upon at the end of negotiation with it. Israel insists upon the recognition of its right to exist and on guarantees of security, while the Palestinians insist upon having their land non-fragmented in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and on a state that would be within the borders it had before the conflict in 1967.
The Palestinians in Gaza refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist, while the Palestinian Authority has already done that in several occasion. A formal recognition of Israel as the state of the Jews is considered dangerous, because it would leave the problem of the refugees unsolved, and with no chance to return to their territory.
The agreed solution for the Palestinian situation is the two-state solution, which means the establishing of two states, one for the Jews and another for the Palestinians. The solution has been on the table for a long time, and is considered the most desirable.
However, a three-state solution exists, and is said to gain momentum if the negotiations are being procrastinated and the settlements continue. The three-state solution refers to including the West Bank into the state of Jordan, thus turning Jordan into a Palestinian state, and Gaza into Egypt, in other words a return to the situation before the Israeli-Arab war in 1967, when the two territories were separated from the respective countries.
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