Sticking
to your guns, literally, pays off.
Original
Thinking by Barry Shaw.
Just look at Iran as one example. Despite six United Nations
Security Council resolutions to the contrary, Iran stubbornly stuck to the
mantra that they have rights to enrich uranium and, ignoring all the fears that
this is the road to a nuclear weapon, it eventually paid off with the new deal
it struck with the appeasing Europeans, America, and a smiling Russia.
The lesson to be learned from this is it is possible to
overturn international law if you are the forceful partner and loudly repeat
your case.
Look at another example. International law professor, Eugene
Kantorovich, has written that the European Union is in default of its own
ruling on occupation by fostering and funding the Moroccan occupation of
Western Sahara. He reminds us that the EU provisionally approved a fisheries
agreement in November that extends into territory that Morocco is occupying in
breach of international law. Furthermore, Kantorovich has exposed the glaring
fact that the EU is actually paying Morocco for access to resources in the
Western Sahara.
That’s pretty amazing stuff when compared to the European
punishing stance over Israel’s building, and offering employment to Arab and
Jew in Judea and Samaria. Unless the EU retracts its resolutions, Israel is due
to be clobbered with European sanctions come January 1st 2014.
How is it possible to come to terms with this level of
hypocrisy and double standards? Perhaps Israel should adopt the stance of the
Iranians and Moroccans? Both
aggressively pursued their “rights” even when they had none under
international law, and the international community folded.
Compared with them, Israel’s rights are considerably more
legitimate in international law, no matter how much President Obama, John
Kerry, and the European Union wiggle.
Israel has far more legitimacy to the “disputed”
territories of Judea and Samaria. Instead of capitulating weakly to the false
charges of “occupied Palestinian land” it should boldly, affirmatively,
and repeatedly declare that Israel has full legitimate rights to the territories
written large in international law.
If Israeli politicians are weak on the justice of our cause,
they should allow international law experts, such as Professor Eugene
Kantorovich, champion the case.
As he said at a lecture, which is freely available online,
it doesn’t matter in international law if you are pro or anti Israel or the
Palestinians. It matters what has been approved and sanctioned in
internationally binding treaties. On this score, Israel can firmly claim
legitimacy over the territories dating back to the League of Nations Mandate of
1922 that was further enshrined in Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, as
well as other rulings. These still stand today.
This need not cancel out the necessity of solving the
problem of Palestinian Arabs, but it does prove title, the absence of which
leaves a cloud of uncertainty over the issue of whose land it is.
Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’
www.israelnarrative.com
He is also the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues
to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.
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