and just for fun if egypt opened their border, would you please name one single item that the gazans just have to get from israel that would affect their life style? anything?
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i’ll answer for you: ZERO. There is not a thing israel delivers to gaza that their brothers, the Egyptians cannot deliver or they cannot find an alternative for…and the only thing you have to say about that is that, if egpyt opens their border, israel will go to war with egypt.
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do you really expect me to believe that? or is that because if you admit egypt in fact can totally destroy the “israel blockades gaza” theme, your not left with much to blame israel for, the gazans and their almost daily attacks on israel…and thats a problem.
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part of what you don’t want to do, as well as your friends in gaza’s leadership is ‘grow up.” There are consequences for ones actions and in international politics, self-interest rules. Thats why NATO killed thousands in Libya to protect Europes oil supply and why they don’t touch syria.
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shooting at us from gaza, will only bring bad things to gazans, if you would like a change there, have “your friends” try not shooting and “make nice” with their neighbors. It would be new concept and if it fails they can always go back to trying to kill me.

my impression and you can confirm this, is that your less interested in improving that actually day to day living of the gazans and more concerned with your definition of “justice’ which i’m sure is based firmly in western definitions and not in the local cultural definitions.
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clearly if hamas and egypt make a political deal that opens the 12km border up, the gas they shut off from the sinai can go to gaza, water piped in from El Arish, hospital visits to Cairo as opposed to Tel Aviv.
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gaza like other counties that have no accessible port do survive by making nice with their neighbors, but thats not your primary goal is it? its not the well being of gazans, it first and foremost, making israel ‘pay for its sins” and whether or not the gazans have to continually suffer until that time comes, well thats the price of “justice.”
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Gazans getting a better life, without israel paying for it sins is not “justice” and canon be accepted, from your point of view
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anything wrong with that conclusion?

you earlier claimed and obviously still do that israel has a full blockade of gaza, yet you’ve already admitted that rafah (and its 12 km border ) are in fact not guarded by israel and in fact israel has no control over that border.
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hence using the dictionary definition of what constitutes a blockade of gaza,….israel is not blockading gaza.
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Cleary you don’t like to admit to that, because the implication of that are far reaching not just to the Gazans but to the israelis as well, but that can be discussed once you agree to using the dictionary as the basis for words and what they mean.
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because you use your own definitions of words, you can make up anything you want, describe it anyway you want and claim “its the truth” blame who you prefer to blame and not have to prove anything or even accept a counter argument…..its a good system, especially designed for those who don’t recognize it-but i do.
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get back to me when you agree to use the dictionary as the basis for word definitions

any problem with that logic?
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just answer that…either you wrote sloppily, which happens you prefer to tell a story that is not accurate, or your redefining the capabilities of israel.
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we’re defining your credibility here,

If settlements are ‘legal’, the ground is laid for annexation

Jonathan Cook
Jul 18, 2012

The recently published report by an Israeli judge concluding that Israel is not in fact occupying the Palestinian territories – despite an international consensus to the contrary – has provoked mostly incredulity or mirth in Israel and abroad.

Left-wing websites in Israel used comically captioned photographs to highlight Justice Edmond Levy’s preposterous finding. One shows an Israeli soldier pressing the barrel of a rifle to the forehead of a Palestinian pinned to the ground, saying: “You see – I told you there’s no occupation.”

Even Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, seemed a little discomfited by the coverage last week. He was handed the report more than a fortnight earlier but was apparently reluctant to make it public.

Downplaying the Levy report’s significance may prove unwise, however. If Mr Netanyahu is embarrassed, it is only because of the timing of the report’s publication rather than its substance.

It was, after all, the Israeli prime minister himself who established the committee earlier this year to assess the legality of the Jewish settlers’ “outposts”, ostensibly unauthorised by the government, that have spread across the West Bank.

He hand-picked its three members, all diehard supporters of the settlements, and received the verdict he expected – that the settlements are legal. Certainly, Justice Levy’s opinion should have come as no surprise. In 2005, he was the only Supreme Court judge to oppose the decision to withdraw the settlers from Gaza.

Legal commentators too have been dismissive of the report. They have concentrated more on Justice Levy’s dubious reasoning than on the report’s political significance.

Under international law, Israel’s rule in the West Bank and Gaza is considered “belligerent occupation” and, therefore, its actions must be justified by military necessity only. If there is no occupation, Israel has no military grounds to hold on to the territories. In that case, it must either return the land to the Palestinians, and move out the settlers, or defy international law by annexing the territories, as it did earlier with East Jerusalem, and establish a state of Greater Israel.

Annexation, however, poses its own dangers. Israel must either offer the Palestinians citizenship and wait for a non-Jewish majority to emerge in Greater Israel; or deny them citizenship and face pariah status as an apartheid state.

Just such concerns were raised on Sunday by 40 Jewish leaders in the United States, who called on Mr Netanyahu to reject “legal manoeuvrings” that threatened Israel’s “future as a Jewish and democratic state”. But from Israel’s point of view, there may, in fact, be a way out of this conundrum.

In a 2003 interview, one of the other Levy committee members, Alan Baker, a settler who advised the foreign ministry for many years, explained Israel’s heterodox interpretation of the Oslo Accords, signed a decade earlier.

The agreements were not, as most assumed, the basis for the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, but a route to establish the legitimacy of the settlements. “We are no longer an occupying power, but we are instead present in the territories with their [Palestinians'] consent.”

By this view, Oslo redesignated the 62 per cent of the West Bank assigned to Israel’s control – so-called Area C – from “occupied” to “disputed” territory. That explains why every Israeli administration since the mid-1990s has indulged in an orgy of settlement-building there.

According to Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Levy report is preparing the legal ground for Israel’s annexation of Area C. His disquiet is shared by others.

Recent European Union reports have used unprecedented language to criticise Israel for the “forced transfer” – diplomat-speak for ethnic cleansing – of Palestinians out of Area C into the West Bank’s cities, which fall under Palestinian control.

The EU notes that the numbers of Palestinians in Area C has shrunk dramatically under Israeli rule to fewer than 150,000, or 6 per cent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Settlers now outnumber Palestinians more than two-to-one in Area C.

Israel could annex nearly two-thirds of the West Bank and still safely confer citizenship on Palestinians there. Adding 150,000 to the existing 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a fifth of the population, would not erode the Jewish majority’s dominance.

If Mr Netanyahu is hesitant, it is only because the time is not yet ripe for implementation. But over the weekend, there were indications of Israel’s next moves to strengthen its hold on Area C.

It was reported that Israel’s immigration police had been authorised to expel foreign activists from the West Bank. The new powers were on show the same day as the army arrested foreigners, including a New York Times reporter, at one of the regular Palestinian anti-wall protests in Area C.

And on Sunday, it emerged that Israel had begun a campaign against OCHA, the UN agency that focuses on humanitarian harm to Palestinians in Area C from Israeli military and settlement activity. Israel has demanded details of where OCHA’s staff work and what projects it is planning.

There is a problem, nonetheless. If Israel takes Area C, it needs someone else responsible for the other 38 per cent of the West Bank – little more than 8 per cent of historic Palestine – to “fill the vacuum”, as Israeli commentators phrased it last week.

The obvious candidate is the Palestinian Authority, the Ramallah government-in- waiting. But the PA’s weakness is evident on all fronts: it has lost credibility with ordinary Palestinians, it is impotent in international forums and it is mired in a financial crisis.

If the PA refuses to, or cannot, take on these remaining fragments of the West Bank, Israel may simply opt to turn back the clock and once again cultivate weak and isolated local leaders for each Palestinian city.

The question is whether the international community can first be made to swallow Justice Levy’s absurd conclusion.

your wrote
If Israeli naval ships prevent Gazan fishermen from sailing more than 4 kilometers from shore you have to explain how exactly “the egyptian border and hence can end the blockade in a second”
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it is Israel that maintains a blockade on Gaza
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blockade definition:

The isolation of a nation, area, city, or harbor by hostile ships or forces in order to prevent the entrance and exit of traffic and commerce.
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preventing entry or exit
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israel can have a 1000 ships off the gaza coast, as long as gaza has a border with egypt that israel does not control Israel cannot blockade gaza, nor can it prevent goods from entering.

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that is why we have dictionaries, The definition has nothing to do with politicians or intentions, it relates only to whether gaza is isolated or not, as per your claim that israel has blockade gaza-it can’t since it only controls 3 out of 4 borders.
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perhaps now you can explain how israel can blockade gaza when there is over 12 km of egyptian/gaza border that if and when egypt chooses they can import and export anything they want…just as they are now doing with the tunnels

really? so is a “normal life” living under a secular dictatorship under the PA, with a possible result like we see in syria? or perhaps hamas will redo the gaza thing and your definition of a normal life for the Palestenians is living under hamas, with their own view foreign policy.

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are you going to now tell me that those two possibilities are racist to even consider them?