The JPost reports now, that US Ambassador Dan Shapiro has requested of Israel to temporarily freeze settlement construction in order to promote peace talks with the Palestinians. This request has been denied.We should recall that earlier the United States had criticized a Likud-sponsored plan to legalize rogue settlement outposts, saying it does not recognize the "legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity", a semantic term that the Obama-led Administration has consistently hammered away at, while confusing, purposefully I can only presume, the public with a closely related other term as here in a State Department statement: "We oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts, which is unhelpful to our peace efforts and would contradict Israeli commitments and obligations"There is nothing illegal in a Jewish presence in the territory international law recognized as the geographical area that was to become the reconstituted Jewish national home, especially as all decisions and agreements between 1915 and 1924, including the Anglo-American Convention and various US Congressional resolutions and Presidential signatures, never mentioned Arabs in connection with this territory. The term was always "non-Jews".In other words, in addition to the legal opinions of the many, including Rostow, Schwebel, Baum and others such as...Madeline Albright, herself a former US Secretary of State:In an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s The Today Show on October 1, 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright related to building in Yesha and said: “I wasn''t happy…I felt that going forward with those kinds of buildings was not helpful. Mr. Lauer pressed her and stated: “ It''s legal. “, and Albright admitted: “It''s legal.” It is patently clear, and Amb. Shapiro should know this, that it is illegitimate to ban a Jew from building a home in the Land of Israel. Former Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin made that quite clear to former US President Jimmy ("Elder") Carter when he explained to him his viewpoint, using Shiloh and other Biblically-named cities in Israel and the United States as examples. That would be...apartheid. Here''s how Shmuel Katz recalled the confrontation in his The Hollow Peace, when Begin first met Carter, who had expressed "his reservations about the establishment of Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza." Begin replied:
"Mr. President, there are a number of towns whose names derive from the Bible. There are so many places named Hebron and places called Shiloh and other places known as Bethlehem. Would it occur to you to prevent anybody from settling in one of those places? Have you the authority to do so? In the same way the Government of Israel cannot forbid a Jew to settle in the original Hebron or the original Bethlehem."
In fact, if the US favors such a policy of restricted residency which would prohibit population, well, there are many Arabs in Israel who could become the object of a backlash campaign predicated on the logic of Obama, Clinton and Shapiro. They could be told, if it is illegitimate for a Jew to live in Judea and Samaria, should it then not be legitimate for an Arab to live in Israel?I do not support such a campaign but the logic is cogent. Sense is sense, whether we are Jewish, Mulsim or Christian or neither.And the political basis is simple: if the US continues to push in this direction, the reasoning can only be that they think all the country belongs to the Arabs who can never be told they cannot live somewher. But the Jews, ah, that''s another matter. They are, it would devolve from this line of thinking, strangers to this land and they deserve only part of it - and in the other part they cannot reside.Well, Mr. Ambassador, we are revenants, the natural and rightful sovereign national group in this land and we have returned to our ancestral patrimony despite the Ottomans, the Crusaders, the British and other unfriendly and unhelpful countries during the period prior to 1948, including the Holocaust era.Hebron was Jewish-"settled" until Arabs ethnically cleansed the city as they did to Shchem and Gaza and Jenin and later to Gush Etzion, Jerusalem''s Old City and other locations including Neveh Yaakov, Ataror and Bet Ha''aravah.Mr. Ambassador, it is your country''s policy, as expressed currently by this Administration, that is illegitimate.^