RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

by Michael Lame, posted on April 30, 2010

Let me suggest an outrageous comparison, one between Israeli settlements in the West Bank and illegal immigration in the United States. Though hugely different in many important ways, they are similar in at least three regards:

1) Both are often presented in legal terms – a violation of the law and what to do about it;

2) Both concern the question of whether people are allowed to stay in or are forced to leave their current homes; and

3) Specific terminology is critical to framing the debate on both questions.

The current U.S. government position is that Jewish settlements beyond the green line are at least “illegitimate”, to quote President Obama, if not outright illegal as a violation of international law. Consequently, Israel should cease all further construction in West Bank and east Jerusalem settlements. Moreover, Israel should prepare itself to evacuate tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Israeli citizens from their West Bank homes as part of a peace agreement in order to facilitate the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

On illegal immigration into the United States, the Obama administration calls for creating a “pathway to citizenship” (what I would call “non-amnesty amnesty”) which allows millions of “undocumented workers” and their families (previously known as “illegal aliens”) to remain in the U.S. indefinitely, while tightening up border security and mandating other safeguards to slow down unregulated migration, across the Mexican border in particular. The very idea of mass deportations of the more than ten million persons in the U.S. illegally is dismissed as inhumane, illiberal, and impractical.

How long have these illegal immigrants lived in the United States? Some for only a few months, but for the most part much longer. Given the fact that President Reagan, through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, already extended amnesty to some 2.7 million people who entered the country illegally prior to 1982, those covered by a proposed new Obama amnesty are most likely to have been in the U.S. less than thirty years.

How long have Israeli settlers lived in the West Bank? Some for only a few months, but the vast majority for much longer, the greatest population increase occurring over the last 20 years. The earliest Jewish immigration beyond the green line began within months of the 1967 war and has increased to the point where now approximately 200,000 Jews live in east Jerusalem and 300,000 live in the West Bank.

In both cases the number of people in question, relative to the total population of the country, represents several percent. In both cases many families have lived in their current location for decades. Should they now be uprooted?

At what point does our internal statute of limitations run out? Where do we draw the line – in terms of years or numbers of individuals – on the acceptability of removing people from where they live or, alternatively, resigning ourselves to live with a situation even when we morally oppose it?

Of course the two situations have completely different contexts. Left out of this discussion entirely is the impact of these relative newcomers’ presence on the pre-existing population – Palestinians and Americans. I raise the comparison only as a point of reference for examining how we think about these issues and what our liberal, conservative, or other default positions are – what we dismiss as “out of the question” and what is “so obvious” to us that it requires no examination:

Thousands of Israelis living in illegal settlements? Send them packing!

Millions of illegal immigrants living in cities and towns throughout the U.S.? Let them stay!

International law violated in the West Bank by the establishment of Israeli settlements? Unconscionable!

State and federal laws violated by people surreptitiously crossing the U.S. border? So?… Reform the law and let those here illegally “earn the right” to stay. After all, people come to America for a better life. You can’t blame them for that. (Note: a majority of Jews living in the West Bank have been categorized as “quality-of-life settlers”, seeking a better life than that available to them in crowded, overpriced Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.)

The undisputed fact that millions of people have broken state and federal law by entering and remaining in the U.S., thereby circumventing the immigration vetting process, does not seem to be the determinative factor for immigration reformers and their supporters in deciding whether people now in the country illegally should stay or go.

Neither issue divides people politically along straight liberal-conservative lines. Yet I assert that many of the people who are willing to overlook or forgive illegal immigrants’ transgressions in the United States are the same people who oppose the Israeli settlements’ establishment as a violation of international law (the Hague and Geneva Conventions). For them, the finding of settlement illegality is the end of the matter. International law must be respected; America must insist that Israel comply with global norms. American law can be set aside, but not international law.

Finally, with regards to immigration and to settlements, notice the partisan insistence by both sides in these debates that specific words be used which either stigmatize or normalize the people and practices under discussion. According to the “immigration reform” advocates, one must say “undocumented workers” or “unauthorized population” instead of “illegal aliens”. One should speak of the benefits of “immigration” as much as possible, without distinguishing between the legal and illegal kinds. Those on the other side of the debate are as particular in stressing “illegality” as the operative concept (partly to counter any charges of racism). They claim they are not anti-immigrant but rather anti-illegal-immigrant.

With regards to the West Bank, one side insists that we should regularly preface the term “settlement” with “illegal” or follow it with the more explanatory term, “established in clear violation of international law”. “Colony” is also acceptable, but “neighborhood”, “community”, “town”, and “city” are not. The opponents of this view reject the use of pejorative terms to describe where Jews live on the other side of the green line.

These differences in vocabulary may seem small, but they are important in shaping our thinking about the issues. Particular words, even the order in which they are used, have an emotional resonance among readers and listeners. Imagine the firestorm of criticism that would engulf any speaker standing before an ethnically-mixed American audience who began a speech by welcoming the “colored people” in the group instead of the “people of color”!

U.S. immigration and Israeli settlements, issues half a world apart from each other, provide an opportunity for us to examine how we choose sides and how we select the language we employ to express our views.

by Michael Lame, posted April 5, 2010

Before addressing once more the larger topic of international law and Palestinian-Israeli conflict, allow me to refute a few specific, egregious claims made by Michael Thomas in his first two blog posts.

1) Michael Thomas states that the young state of Israel “adopted its own war crimes statute (with the unseemly addition of an offense of crimes against Jews only).” Here are some relevant facts:

On March 29, 1950, the Knesset passed the Crime of Genocide (prevention and punishment) Law, which defines genocide as the commission of various acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious…group”.

On August 1, 1950, the Knesset passed the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, which defined “a crime against the Jewish people” as the commission of various acts “with intent to destroy the Jewish people in whole or in part”. This law applied only to acts committed “during the period of the Nazi regime” or “during the period of the Second World War”. The State of Israel later employed this law in the prosecution of Adolph Eichmann.

One third of the world’s Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The state of Israel was created, in part, to safeguard the Jewish people (and not just the Jews of Israel) from the possibility of a future holocaust. Given the history of the Jews and the purpose of the Jewish state, I see nothing in the least bit “unseemly” in the passage of an Israeli law to bring Nazis and Nazi collaborators to justice for their crimes against the Jews.

2) Michael Thomas claims that a legal opinion presented in a letter written by a State Department attorney in 1978 claiming that the Israeli settlements beyond the green line violate the Fourth Geneva Convention “has never been withdrawn or overturned”.  Wrong.

The positions of a US administration on international matters are those positions taken by the President. Herbert Halsell, the lawyer in question, may have represented his Foggy Bottom and White House bosses, Cyrus Vance and Jimmy Carter, but he certainly didn’t represent subsequent administrations, nor are they bound by his legal reasoning. Just two weeks after taking the oath of office, on February 3, 1981, President Reagan specifically repudiated the earlier finding as he declared, “I disagreed when the previous administration referred to them [settlements] as illegal. They’re not illegal.”

Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Schultz, told Congress on September 9, 1982 that “the status of Israeli settlements must be determined in the course of the final status negotiations.” Presidents from Reagan on have claimed that the West Bank settlements are “unhelpful” or “an obstacle to peace” but not one, not even Obama, has claimed that they are illegal.

3) Michael Thomas writes that “Nearly everyone, including some hard-line Zionists, understands that the settlers’ project has nearly fulfilled its potential for killing the idea of a Palestinian state, and that without such a state there is no credible alternative future for Israel that is safe and stable.” In that one sentence, two debatable interpretations masquerade as facts. “Nearly everyone…understands” is a sleight-of-hand way to pretend that a seriously controversial matter has already been settled in favor of the author’s point of view.

Commonplace as a trope in Middle East debates is the refrain that “the window of opportunity for a two-state solution is closing”. Meron Benvenisti claims that it closed twenty years ago. Others say it’s about to close. A poll conducted only last month showed that 71% of Israelis and 57% of Palestinians support a two-state solution. Obviously someone forgot to tell the majority of Israelis and Palestinians that the idea of a Palestinian state has already been killed off. Or perhaps the West Bank settlement project which today seems irreversible can indeed be slowed, stopped, channeled, or even reversed.

If Israelis and Palestinians make a deal resulting in the establishment of a Palestinian state, some but not all of the West Bank settlements will likely be included in newly-drawn boundaries for the state of Israel (probably in exchange for land inside the green line). Those settlements not included will be abandoned, forcibly evacuated, or remain as part of the new state of Palestine. A million Arabs are citizens of Israel. Why shouldn’t a couple hundred thousand Jews be citizens of Palestine?

Without a Palestinian state, Michael Thomas claims, “there is no credible alternative future for Israel that is safe and stable.” One way people try to shape a debate is by insisting that THERE IS ONLY ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM, whatever the problem, and the sole solution is, oddly enough, the one they propose! But in complex human affairs, there is usually more than one way to solve a problem, and typically even the best solution to a long-standing conflict will create a new set of problems.

The same poll that showed majority support for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, also showed that 24% of Israelis and 29% of Palestinians support a single binational state, while 30% of Israelis and 26% of Palestinians support a confederation between Israel and Palestine. One could add to this list of possibilities variations on a “Jordanian option” of the West Bank reuniting with Jordan, either as one state or in a confederation. Separate futures for Gaza and the West Bank should also be considered, as well as the possibility of a long-term autonomy or UN trusteeship for the West Bank and Gaza. Strong arguments can be made against each of the above possible options, including the two-state solution.

The currently preferred option among Israelis and Palestinians is indeed the two-state solution. It was not always thus and at some point a different proposal might capture the imagination of one or both peoples. Just because an idea is popular doesn’t mean it is viable.

No one knows if any proposed solution to this conflict will work. No one knows for sure if there will ever be a Palestinian state. And since we can’t know the future, we can only make an educated guess as to whether the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel will result, as Michael Thomas asserts, in a “future for Israel that is safe and stable.” In large part that will depend on the orientation of a future Palestinian state, its leadership, and its relationship to Israel.

Remember that the wording of the polling questions and the specificity of the proposals presented can significantly alter the outcome. If you ask Israelis do they support a two-state solution with a Palestinian state run by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, there will likely be a positive response. If you ask the same Israelis do they support a two-state solution with a Palestinian state run by Hamas leaders Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh, I strongly suspect there will be an overwhelmingly negative response.

While the Obama administration has succeed in focusing attention on the Israeli government’s building plans beyond the green line, another major stumbling block to successful negotiations looms on the Palestinian side. Until it becomes clear who will likely lead a future Palestinian state – those who accept Israel or those who reject it – the Israeli government will see fit to negotiate based on a worst-case scenario, i.e., an eventual Hamas-led Palestinian government. That scenario will result in a much tougher Israeli negotiating stance than if the prospective neighbor is the less militant, more secular, moderate, and business-oriented Fatah.

All these matters are inherently complex. Simplification has its appeal, but people who are serious about resolving the very tough problems facing Palestinians and Israelis should resist the temptation to present the uncertain as certain, the disputed as settled, and the future as an extrapolation from the present.

by Michael Lame, posted March 25, 2010

Throughout history, legality and morality have often been at odds. Actions can be legal and immoral. Actions can be moral and illegal. In the United States we have a long and venerated tradition of breaking laws which we consider to be wrong or simply wrong-headed. Whether the issue has been taxation, slavery, unions, alcohol, drugs, civil rights, abortion, immigration, or the speed limit, millions of Americans have disagreed with the law, protested it, disobeyed it, or simply ignored it.

Reverence for the law is not a requirement for being a good American. Just last month the President of the United States publically took the Supreme Court to task for what he considered to be a misguided ruling on the constitutionality of certain election laws. Laws can be wrong; courts can be wrong.

Following the law – local, state, federal, or international – is not always the right thing to do. And if Americans have been ambivalent about adhering to domestic law, we have been far more skeptical about the wisdom and practicality of international agreements.

Although President Woodrow Wilson enthusiastically supported the creation of the League of Nations at the close of World War I, he could not persuade the US senate to ratify the treaty. The US never joined the League. The Convention against Genocide, completed in 1948, was not ratified by the US until forty years later, under President Reagan. With the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement among newly-independent third world countries during the Cold War, anti-Americanism increased across the globe, and with it, America’s reluctance to participate in global legal structures that might adversely affect the nation and its citizens.

Why should we be any less skeptical of the process and outcome of international legal rulings than we are of state and federal laws? Why this new reverence for international law? Is it deserved?

Many hard-working, lofty-principled men and women from around the world have met in conferences over the last hundred years to hammer out the Hague Conventions, the League of Nations Covenant, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Genocide, and several other global agreements aimed at decreasing man’s inhumanity to man.

But good intentions don’t necessarily make for good law. And there are fundamental differences between international and national law. Obtaining agreements among nations is terribly difficult. We saw that just recently in Copenhagen. The formulation of international agreements is so problematic that the documents are often drafted in language which is intentionally loose and generalized, leaving room for different interpretations on fundamental matters, with conspicuous silences on those important issues where accord is not possible.

Once an international agreement is reached and ratified, it becomes exceedingly hard to revisit and revise it. Reaching global consensus for changing international covenants and treaties is far more complex than having the House and Senate reach agreement on health care reforms. Witness the stalled Doha Round of WTO talks.

Enforcement of International Law

Another way in which international law differs from the law of sovereign states is in its enforcement, which is uneven, often ineffectual, and frequently impossible.

Decisions reached by the General Assembly do not have the force of law, including the 1947 partition plan itself. The International Court of Justice, a UN-affiliated body, issued a 2004 ruling against Israel’s building of the barrier/fence/wall, but that was a non-binding advisory opinion, without teeth. International sanctions have rarely proved effective. South Africa was an exception. Iran is not.

Since the five permanent members of the Security Council can exercise an overrideable veto, the SC will never take action against China’s oppressive activities in Tibet or Russia’s in Chechnya. And, yes, as long as the US is willing to veto anti-Israel SC resolutions, Israel will remain immune to punishment by that body.

The League of Nations fell apart largely because of its inability to deal with fascist aggression in Europe and Africa. Its successor organization, the United Nations, in its very first attempt at nation-creating botched the job so badly regarding Palestine that the world is still dealing with the aftermath of the UN partition plan of 1947, sixty-some years later.

The Hague Conventions of 1907 failed to prevent the atrocities of World Wars I and II. The 1949 Geneva Conventions were designed to strengthen and broaden those earlier efforts to make the world safer from state-sponsored barbarism, with mixed results to-date.

In fact, we have no world government capable of enforcing international decisions. Some are pleased with that situation; others lament it.

But law is only one tool for tackling conflict between people. Arbitration, mediation, and other forms of dispute resolution are commonplace today. In the international arena, war, diplomacy, and negotiations between parties in dispute have much longer lineages than do legal systems in establishing or restoring peace. War is not obsolete. Diplomacy still works. And negotiation between parties, regardless of legal rulings by international courts or councils, is still the best way for Israel to settle differences with her Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese neighbors.

The solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if it is ever found, will not come through the courts or references to legal precedents. The designation of suicide-bombing as a violation of human rights changes nothing. Prefacing the term “settlement” with the modifier “illegal” does not move the two parties closer to resolving their differences. (Nor is such a legal finding required for America to lean on Israel regarding the settlements, if it so chooses.)

Settlements and the Law

Some have argued that Israel has not violated international law in the construction of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. (See, for example, Nicholas Rostow’s recent analysis at http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=782.)

But even if there was no wholesale illegal activity by the Israeli government, there has certainly been massive government collusion in employing a variety of techniques resulting in the alienation of hundreds of thousands of acres from Palestinian villagers. Somehow this land has found its way into the possession of Israeli settlers.

These are tougher issues than many people would like to acknowledge, morally and practically as well as legally. Not all settlements are created equal. To consider any Jewish habitations beyond the green line to be illegitimate requires a willful blindness to the history of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City or the Gush Etzion pre-1948 kibbutzim.

Even when an activity is legal and legitimate, it might not be wise. Exclusively legal concepts do not take into account the neighborliness factor. A few hundred Jews now live in the center of Hebron, an ancient center of Jewish life which is today a city of more than 100,000 Arabs. Neither side wants the other there. Both sides have employed lethal violence. Without a modicum of good will and common sense, no legal determination of pre-1929 home ownership can solve the problem.

Consider this: What if everyone were to agree that the existence of settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank violates international law? What then? Must we accept such a determination as a basis for action? Or is it possible that the law in this case is wrong?

The argument for the illegality of settlements relies primarily on Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The debate continues as to the intention of the writers of this sentence. Was it designed to protect occupied civilian populations from any changes to the land under occupation except those required by military necessity or was it meant to prevent the occupying power from forcibly shifting populations around – moving the occupied out and/or moving their own people in? Does Israeli government support for settlement activity constitute “transfer” of its civilian population rather than simply aid to voluntary decision-making by the settlers themselves? Is this a distinction without a difference?

Even if we accept that any movement of settlers beyond the green line violates this Geneva Convention provision, does the provision itself make sense? Time does not stand still. An occupation of four months is fundamentally different than an occupation of forty years. Things are guaranteed to change during that length of time. And in this case, where the 1949 armistice lines were never legally recognized as borders, Israel was far from a disinterested occupier.

Look at Jerusalem. The future of that city is shaped by every baby born there – to Muslims or Christians, to religious or secular Jews – and by every business started or expanded there and by every building constructed or remodeled there. These are all “facts on the ground.” The idea is ludicrous that either the Israelis or the Palestinians – even if they wanted to, which they don’t – could refrain, for decades, from taking actions that might prejudice the final status negotiations over Jerusalem.

You may not want one side to take particular actions. Many people around the world believe that dividing Jerusalem and designating east Jerusalem (Al Quds) as the capital of a Palestinian state and west Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) as the capital of the Jewish state, is the best, the just, the right, and the only possible thing to do.

Whose Land is it?

Whose land is it anyway? Ask the land. It won’t answer. Ask a geologist, geographer, or historian and you will not receive a single definitive response. Land ownership is a cultural and legal construct. Ownership is not inherent in the land. There is no such thing as Israeli soil or Palestinian land or Arab earth, no Jewish birthright or Muslim patrimony.

To the extent that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a real estate dispute – and I believe it to be much more than that – we need to find a context within which to address the land ownership issue for all of Israel/Palestine, for Gaza and the West Bank, for east and west Jerusalem. It is not simply an issue of legal title to a parcel of land held by an individual or a family. Nor can this complex matter be resolved by reference to who lived where at a particular point in history – in the days of Abraham/Ibrahim, the First Temple period, Roman times, 1600 years of Muslim rule, 1947 or ’67.

What is to be done? What can bring about, if not closure, then at least a modus vivendi that both sides will find tolerable? The answer to this question is not a legal one.

by Michael Thomas, posted March 18, 2010

Israelis and Palestinians and their partisans engage in many ways.  Some of the most important battles are fought over the conceptual frameworks within which the issues are analyzed.  Such frameworks define the interests at stake, and determine what evidence is sought or recognized, what presumptions are indulged, and what solutions are considered.  Strangely for a country that prides itself on its respect for, and advocacy of, the rule of law, one conceptual framework the United States has increasingly abandoned is international law.  That is a costly mistake.

Other frameworks have been preeminent:  the religious/historical/national myth; the ethical/moral; and the political/strategic.  For Americans, the predominant framework began with our founders’ concept of America as the New Zion, and their commitment to restoring the old Zion, Israel.  This “restorationist” sentiment is deep, and has been reinforced by Holocaust guilt; by the portrayal of Israel as stout ally against the Soviets and terrorism; and by effective political action by Jewish and dispensationalist Christian groups to reward loyalty and punish deviance.  As a result, “support of Israel” has become the default political choice, often blocking discussion of other ways of seeing these issues.

Earlier, Americans had seen commitment to the rule of law as both a fundamental value and a practical advantage.  After World War II, the United States engaged in a sustained effort to reach binding agreements, and to establish international institutions, that would set standards by which the world would conduct its affairs.  Led by the U.S. and its wartime allies, the international community established the United Nations, added the Geneva Conventions to earlier efforts to control the means and effects of war, and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention against Genocide and other international agreements as universal standards.  Together with the Bretton Woods organizations, these efforts demonstrated America’s “soft power,” the ability to shape the international environment in ways that evidenced American idealism and promised justice, and at the same time empowered America to protect and advance its own interests.

Law should be an important part of the policy framework for the U.S., because it incorporates lessons learned from history, moral standards with which America identifies itself, and strategic advantages derived from America’s role in defining the standards.  But the advantages dissipate if fidelity to law is seen to be ephemeral or opportunistic.

By the 1970s, the United States began to act as if it were either above the law or afraid of it.  Even after negotiating detailed protections against threats to its own freedom of action, the U.S. refused to join several treaties, including the 1977 Geneva Protocols and the Treaty of Rome establishing the International Criminal Court.  In the first decade of this century, the United States became increasingly unilateralist and willing to ignore or abandon the standards and institutions for which it had earlier fought.

With respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, American officials, including the current administration, have been unwilling to apply in a straightforward way the principles of international law, or even of bilateral agreements, at least when to do so would require criticism of Israel.  That visible trend has cost America dearly in credibility and has eroded our ability to insist on the standards of international agreements when dealing with other states.  It has also not accomplished what “pro-Israeli” loyalists seek, the security of Israel.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank provide the best-known (but not the only) example.  The law is clear: Under 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, state-facilitated settlements for the exclusive habitation of Jewish citizens of Israel in occupied territory are illegal.  That was the finding of Herbert Halsell, Legal Counsel to the State Department, in a 1978 written opinion that has never been withdrawn or overturned, and it was the conclusion of the ICJ in the Wall case.  [Editor's correction: Herbert Hansell] The Israeli Supreme Court accepts that conclusion as a basis for its decisions on settlements.

Ronald Reagan said at a press conference in 1981 that he thought settlements were an impediment to peace but not illegal.  Since then, the United States has been the only major power that talks about Israeli settlements as though they were just inconvenient, rather than major violations of the rights of occupied populations.

President Obama, who taught law, knows better.  In his Cairo speech last June, he said that the U.S. “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”  What does that mean?  Something is “legitimate,” say the dictionaries, if it is authorized, sanctioned by, or in accordance with law; but an alternative definition is “in accordance with reason or logic.”  Close, Mr. President, but you still seem afraid to call a spade a spade.  (The recent “condemnation” of Israel’s announcement of more settler housing in Jerusalem, by Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton and the Quartet, show growing impatience but still shy away from the legal standard.)

Why does it matter?  As is often the case, the legal standard is also the standard of “reason or logic.”  Nearly everyone, including some hard-line Zionists, understands that the settlers’ project has nearly fulfilled its potential for killing the idea of a Palestinian state, and that without such a state there is no credible alternative future for Israel that is safe and stable.  The settlements are “legitimate” only within a very specific ideological framework, in which God gave Samaria and Judea to Jews, and Palestinians are impediments to the fulfillment of Zionism, not occupied populations with rights under international law.  That mindset promises lasting conflict.  If, however, the settlements are again recognized by the United States as illegal, that would call for principled steps to stop American dollars from enabling them: Offset settlement expenditures against American aid; bar the deductibility of contributions to settler organizations under U.S. law; exclude settler products from the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Act and require labeling to identify them if they are imported anyway.  These measures would be the natural consequences of recognizing illegality when we see it.  They are also measures which would encourage Israelis, a majority of whom say they favor a two-state solution, to get out of their “comfort zone” and confront the settlers.

The United States should consistently maintain positions that respect customary international law, and refuse to acquiesce in or enable actions that are neither consistent with those principles nor agreed to by the parties.  The parties should be applauded when they do likewise, and called out when they do not.  The parties can take divergent positions on how legal rights and obligations should be interpreted or enforced, but they should be challenged when they ignore core standards or insist on their own made-up facts.  These principles apply to issues as varied as the rights of refugees and the rights of civilians in combat.

Israel constantly argues that international law and institutions are biased against them.  In fact, all Palestinians have paid dearly for terrorism perpetrated by some among them, while Israel has operated with relative impunity.  Given the huge disparity in power, this failure to insist on basic legal standards makes negotiation of permanent arrangements – already difficult when the parties are military occupier and the occupied population – very dubious indeed.

A final status agreement will be a legal document, one which will require an American imprimatur.  We cannot attain such an agreement, or expect one to stand the test of time, if it is not just and seen to be just.  International law cannot draft a final status agreement, but it does provide many of the standards which the parties must take into account in reaching compromises that will be honored.