Boris Johnson praises
Israel but notes its breach of Balfour Declaration
Newsletter published on 5 November 2017
(1) Boris Johnson
praises Israel but notes its breach of Balfour Declaration
(2) Text of Boris
Johnson's Statement
(3) UN rapporteur
urges sanctions on Israel for driving Palestinians ‘back to the dark
ages’
(1) Boris Johnson
praises Israel but notes its breach of Balfour Declaration
My vision for Middle East peace between Israel and a new
Palestinian state
Boris Johnson 29 OCTOBER 2017 • 10:00PM
On November 2 1917 my predecessor Lord Balfour sat in the
Foreign Secretary’s office, where I am writing now, and composed a letter to
Lord Rothschild. The essence of the Balfour Declaration consists of one sentence
of 67 words; those were the carefully calibrated syllables that laid the
foundations of the State of Israel. Balfour declared that “His Majesty’s
Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home
for the Jewish people”; with the famous and crucial proviso that “nothing shall
be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities”. ...
U.K.'s Boris Johnson Defends Balfour Declaration: 'Proud of
Britain's Part in Creating Israel'
Despite praise for the 'incontestable moral goal' behind the
document that lent British support to the foundation of Israel, he said its
spirit 'has not been fully realized'
Haaretz Oct 30, 2017 12:09 PM
Balfour declaration British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
defended Sunday the Balfour Declaration, writing that he was "proud of Britain's
part in creating Israel" in an opinion
piece published in the Telegraph on Sunday. The 1917 text will mark its
centennial on Thursday. In the deceleration, penned by Britain's then-Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour, the British government said it viewed "with favor the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Johnson praised the document for its "incontestable moral goal: to provide a
persecuted people with a safe and secure homeland," saying it was
"indispensable to the creation of a great nation." Nonetheless, he said that the
document's stipulation that "... nothing shall be done which may prejudice the
civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" had
"has not been fully realized."
...
(2) Text of Boris
Johnson's Statement
My vision for Middle East peace between Israel and a new
Palestinian state: article by Boris Johnson on the Balfour
Declaration
From:Foreign & Commonwealth Office and The Rt Hon Boris
Johnson MP Part of:Peace and stability in the Middle East and North Africa,
Israel, and The Occupied Palestinian Territories
Published:30 October 2017
Written on:30 October 2017
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's article published in
today's Daily Telegraph ahead of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration on 2
November 2017.
{photo} FCO building
{end}
It was here in this room, beneath this same gilded ceiling,
that one chapter of the story began. On 2 November 1917 my predecessor Lord
Balfour sat in the Foreign Secretary’s office, where I am writing now, and
composed a letter to Lord Rothschild.
The essence of the Balfour Declaration consists of one
sentence of 67 words; those were the carefully calibrated syllables that laid
the foundations of the State of Israel.
Balfour declared that “His Majesty’s Government view with
favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”;
with the famous and crucial proviso that “nothing shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities”.
On the Centenary, I will say what I believe: the Balfour
Declaration was indispensable to the
creation of a great nation. In the seven decades since its birth, Israel has prevailed over what has
sometimes been the bitter hostility of
neighbours to become a liberal democracy and a dynamic hi-tech
economy.
In a region where many have endured authoritarianism and
misrule, Israel has always stood out as a free society. Like every country,
Israel has faults and failings. But it strives to live by the values in which I
believe.
I served a stint at a
kibbutz in my youth, and (though I was mainly washing up) I saw enough to
understand the miracle of Israel: the bonds of hard work, self-reliance and an
audacious and relentless energy that hold together a remarkable
country.
Most of all, there is the incontestable moral goal: to
provide a persecuted people with a safe and secure homeland. So I am proud of
Britain’s part in creating Israel and Her Majesty’s Government will mark the
Centenary of the Balfour Declaration on Thursday in that spirit.
I see no contradiction in being a friend of Israel – and a
believer in that country’s destiny – while also being deeply moved by the suffering of
those affected and dislodged by its birth. The vital caveat in the Balfour Declaration –
intended to safeguard other communities
– has not been fully realised.
I have no doubt that the only viable solution to the conflict
resembles the one first set down on paper by another Briton, Lord Peel, in the report of the Royal
Commission on Palestine in 1937, and that is the vision of two states for
two peoples.
For Israel, the birth of a Palestinian state is the only way
to secure its demographic future as a Jewish and democratic nation. For
Palestinians, a state of their own would allow them to realise their aspirations
for self-determination and self-government.
Achieving this goal will require painful compromises from
both sides. In the words of Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist, the tragedy of the
conflict is not that it is a clash between right and wrong, but rather a “clash
between right and right”.
What might the future look like? In private, Israelis and
Palestinians often tell me their visions for peace – and their parameters
frequently have much in common. But they are understandably reluctant to define
them in public. This November also marks the 50th anniversary of another
British-drafted document, United Nations Resolution 242, that enshrined the
principle of land-for-peace as the route to a settlement in the Holy Land. So in
this time of anniversaries – and animated by the spirit of Balfour and Peel and
of another Briton, Lord Caradon, better known as Hugh Foot, who drafted
Resolution 242 – I propose to set out what I suggest is a fair
compromise.
There should be two independent and sovereign states: a
secure Israel, the homeland for the Jewish people, standing alongside a viable
and contiguous Palestinian state, the homeland for the Palestinian people, as
envisaged by UN General Assembly Resolution 181.
The borders should be based on the lines as they stood on
June 4, 1967 – the eve of the Six Day War – with equal land swaps to reflect the
national, security, and religious interests of the Jewish and Palestinian
peoples. There must be security arrangements that, for Israelis, prevent the
resurgence of terrorism and deal effectively with all threats, including new and
significant threats in the region; and, for Palestinians, respect their
sovereignty, ensure freedom of movement, and demonstrate that occupation is
over.
There needs to be a just, fair, agreed and realistic solution
to the Palestinian refugee question, in line with UN Resolution 1515. In
practical terms, this means that any such agreement has to be demographically
compatible with two states for two peoples and a generous package of
international compensation must be made available. The final determination of
Jerusalem should be agreed by the parties, ensuring that the holy city is a
shared capital of Israel and a Palestinian state, granting access and religious
rights for all who hold it dear.
All of the above I set out with due humility, because it is
Israelis and Palestinians – not those of us who live far away – who would bear
the pain of compromise. And I am encouraged by President Trump’s evident
commitment to finding a solution.
Britain and, I am sure, our European friends stand ready to
help implement any agreement, including by supporting its security provisions,
contributing to refugee compensation, and enabling flows of trade and investment
between Europe, Israel, a sovereign Palestinian state, and its Arab neighbours,
which could help transform the region.
I am also heartened that the new generation of Arab leaders
does not see Israel in the same light as their predecessors. I trust that more
will be done against the twin scourges of terrorism and anti-Semitic incitement.
But, in the final analysis, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must negotiate
the detail and write their own chapter in history. A century on, Britain will
give whatever support we can in order to close the ring and complete the
unfinished business of the Balfour Declaration.
Document information
Published:
30 October 2017
From:
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP
Part of:
Peace and stability in the Middle East and North
Africa
Israel
The Occupied Palestinian Territories
(3) UN rapporteur
urges sanctions on Israel for driving Palestinians ‘back to the dark
ages’
Philip Weiss on October 31, 2017
Last week there was a significant development in the
international response to the Israeli occupation when the UN rapporteur for human rights in the
occupied territories came out with a harsh report saying the world was too
passive about the occupation.
The “duration of this occupation is without precedent or
parallel in today’s world,” the report said. Israel has “driven Gaza back to the
dark ages” due to denial of water and electricity and freedom of movement. There
is a “darkening stain” on the world’s legal framework because other countries
have treated the occupation as normal, and done nothing to resist Israel’s
“colonial ambition par excellence,” which includes two sets of laws for Israelis
and Palestinians.
At a press conference about his report, S. Michael Lynk, a
Canadian professor of law and human rights expert, said it is time the
international community reach into its “toolbox” of enforcement mechanisms, so
as to “raise the stakes” against the occupation and change international
“opinion” of Israel. The country had been worried by the Goldstone Report in
2009 and is today worried by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement
(BDS), Lynk said; so if the international community took “unified actions on an
escalating basis” to declare the occupation illegal and demand Israel’s
withdrawal, Israel would respond.
That means sanctions.
Israel is very dependent upon trade with the outside world,
it’s very dependent upon its market with the United States, it’s very dependent
upon its market with Europe. If there was an understanding that all of a sudden
Israelis wanting to travel abroad needed to have visas, if all of a sudden
Israel wasn’t going to get preferential trading agreements with the EU. If all
of a sudden, the many and multitude of forms of military or economic cooperation
or academic cooperation with Israel were now going to come to an end as long as
Israel continued that, I think you’d
begin to see a sea-change in the attitude of ordinary Israelis and in the
attitude of the Israeli government…. Every journey of 1000 miles begins with a
single step.
“I didn’t use the word boycott,” Lynk said in the press
conference, though he called for a refusal to purchase settlement
goods.
He got an immediate reaction. US ambassador to the U.N. Nikki
Haley on Friday said that the U.S. was “deeply disturbed” by Lynk’s report and
by his support for “economic and academic boycott” of Israel. The Jerusalem Post
turned on Lynk for seeking to turn Israel into a “pariah state” (don’t worry,
it’s happening on its own).
Lynk’s report is the big news here. Its characterization of
Israeli actions in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza as flagrant violations
of international law that are causing huge suffering that the world ignores,
along with its implicit endorsement of BDS, are as important an intervention as
earlier efforts by Richard Goldstone and Jimmy Carter.
As Peter Belmont wrote on his blog, Lynk is seeking to revive
the dead letter of the two-state solution:
Prof. Lynk may have come up with a powerful reason for the
nations to act together with a program of minimal steps which they might take
while getting up the nerve and determination to take really effective
steps—sanctions against Israel to compel Israel to comply with [international
law]. Such sanctions, one supposes, could result in bringing the occupation to
an end…. Voilà! A two-state solution!
Israel refused Lynk access to the occupied territories. Here
are excerpts from the report that convey its emphatic character.
The occupation affects all of Palestinian
life:
The human rights and humanitarian law violations associated
with the occupation impact every aspect of life for Palestinians living in the
West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza
Gaza is in misery:
In addition, water supplies are at risk, with most homes receiving water through the
piped network for only a few hours every 3-5 days, while the desalination
plants are functioning at only 15 per cent of their capacity. More than 108
million litres of untreated sewage were reportedly being discharged into the
Mediterranean every day…
In August of 2017, five cancer patients died while awaiting
permits to travel for needed care
The settlements have choked the two state solution and
threatened human rights.
[T]he two state solution [is] on life support, with a fading
pulse…
The world just treats Israel as the lawful occupant of the
West Bank and East Jerusalem. This
represents an “abject failure” of international law and “a darkening
stain.”
This is the longest-running military occupation in the modern
world. Notwithstanding insistent calls by the international community, most
recently in 2016, that the Israeli occupation must come to a complete end, that
many of its features are in profound breach of international law, and that its
perpetuation both violates the fundamental right of the Palestinian people to
self-determination and undermines the possibility of a two-state solution, it
has become more entrenched and harsher than ever. Indeed, the Israeli occupation
has become a legal and humanitarian oxymoron: an occupation without
end.
Thirty-seven years ago, in June 1980, the Security Council –
sufficiently alarmed by the duration and severity of the occupation and Israel’s
defiance of prior resolutions – adopted Resolution 476. At the time, the Israeli
occupation was already thirteen years old. In its 1980 resolution, the Security
Council reaffirmed “…the overwhelming necessity to end the prolonged occupation
of Arab territories…by Israel” and “strongly deplore the continuing refusal of
Israel to comply with the relevant resolutions of the Security Council and the
General Assembly.”
The inability to end the Israeli occupation has been an
abject failure of international diplomacy, a darkening stain on the efficacy of
international law and the source of multiple broken promises to the Palestinian
people. Nor does the prolongation of this occupation serve the people of Israel,
for it corrodes their society and their public institutions by entangling them
in their government’s drive to foreclose a viable and just solution to the
half-century of occupation and the century-long conflict, and makes them the
beneficiaries – unwittingly or not – of a profoundly unequal and unjust
relationship.
The prevailing approach of the international community has
been to treat Israel as the lawful occupant of the Palestinian territory, albeit
an occupant that has committed a number of grave breaches of international law
in its conduct of the occupation, including the settlement enterprise, the
construction of the Wall, the annexation of East Jerusalem and the systemic
violations of Palestinian human rights. In the view of the Special Rapporteur,
while the lawful occupant approach may have been the appropriate diplomatic and
legal portrayal of the occupation in its early years, it has since become wholly
inadequate both as an accurate legal characterization of what the occupation has
become and as a viable political, diplomatic and legal catalyst
It’s a colonial project, par excellence:
The duration of this occupation is without precedent or
parallel in today’s world.
The only credible explanation for Israel’s continuation of
the occupation and its thickening of the settlement regime is to enshrine its
sovereign claim over part or all of the Palestinian territory, a colonial
ambition par excellence. Every Israeli government since 1967 has pursued the
continuous growth of the settlements, and the significant financial, military
and political resources committed to the enterprise belies any intention on its
part to make the occupation temporary…
It’s apartheid, though Lynk doesn’t use that
word.
According to recent reports by the World Bank and the United
Nations, the expanding Israeli settlement enterprise and the supporting
apparatus of occupation has deepened the already separate and distinctly
inferior civil and economic conditions imposed upon Palestinians in the West
Bank. There, the Palestinians are subject to a harsh and arbitrary legal system
quite unequal to that enjoyed by the Israeli settlers.
And ethnic cleansing, though he doesn’t use that word
either:
Israel employs practices that in some cases may amount to the
forcible transfer of Palestinians, primarily those living in rural areas, as a
means of confiscating land for settlements…
As for East Jerusalem, the occupation has increasingly
detached it from its traditional national, economic, cultural and family
connections with the West Bank because of the Wall, the growing ring of
settlements and related checkpoints, and the discriminatory permit
regime…
The dark ages line. Gaza is unique in the world for suffering
a decline in GDP in the last 11 years:
Israel has maintained a suffocating economic and travel
blockade that has driven Gaza back to the dark ages. More than 60 per cent of
the population of Gaza is reliant upon humanitarian aid, it is unable to secure
more than one-third of the electrical power that it requires, it will soon
exhaust its sources of safe drinking water, and, virtually unique in the world,
its gross domestic product is actually lower than it was in 2006…
The international community refused to impose the “robust
tools” of law to counter these human rights abuses:
the international community recoiled from answering Israel’s
splintering of the Palestinian territory and disfiguring of the laws of
occupation with the robust tools that international law and diplomacy provide.
International law, along with the peoples of Palestine and Israel, have all
suffered in the process.
We need international pressure:
[The world must] devise and employ the appropriate diplomatic
and legal steps that, measure by measure, would completely and finally end the
occupation. As Amos Schocken, the publisher of Ha’aretz, has written about his
own country’s leadership: “…international pressure is precisely the force that
will drive them to do the right thing.”
Lynk likens the occupation to the South African occupation of
Namibia, which was ruled illegal, and calls for an International Court of
Justice opinion stating that every bit of the occupation, not just the
settlements, is illegal. That would lead to a wideranging program of
sanctions:
A determination that Israel’s role as occupant is now illegal
would serve several significant purposes. First, it would encourage member
states to take all reasonable steps to prevent or discourage national
institutions, organizations and corporations within their jurisdiction from
engaging in activities that would invest in, or sustain, the occupation. Second,
it would encourage national and international courts to apply the appropriate
laws within their jurisdiction that would prevent or discourage cooperation with
entities that invest in, or sustain, the occupation. Third, it would invite the
international community to review its various forms of cooperation with the
occupying power as long as it continues to administer the occupation unlawfully.
Fourth, it would provide a solid precedent for the international community when
judging other occupations of long duration. Most of all, such a determination
would confirm the moral importance of upholding the international rule of law
when aiding the besieged and the vulnerable.
Lynk is essentially endorsing BDS. The story has not been
covered in the New York Times or other leading U.S. papers, yet.
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