And we find this topic ignored by many of our pro-israeli members who believe that everything Israel is doing is within the law. Sad.
It is also against international law to shoot a kassam rocket, and hit an old lady watering her plants in Israeli territory which is Pre-1948. Of course, I find no condemnations of the murderous Palestinian militants who commited such a crime. So I guess the
ignoring of topics is not just a trait of our pro-israeli members. The entire anti-israeli part of the forum shows little concern about an old lady watering her plants killed by Palestinians because they chose to put nails in there bombs.
The settlements are not "illegal" as sometimes charged. The Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to settlements even though you will often hear the claim that it does. Israel took over the land in a defensive war in 1967 from rulers (Jordan, Egypt) who themselves had recently acquired control of the land by aggressive war. The only internationally recognized agreements are those of the Oslo process which do not in any sentence prohibit settlements. At some points in time Israel has voluntarily agreed to a temporary halt to new settlements in anticipation of negotiating breakthroughs. But the repeated reversion to terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs has ended such restraint. The endlessly repeated refrain about "occupied territories" is propaganda, since a) the territories never belonged to Palestinian Arabs, b) the Palestinian Authority was given control of the areas, and c) the only reason Israel continues to exert control is in reaction to Palestinian Arab violence.
The United Nations has frequently addressed the question of Israel's policies and activity of Israelis in the territories, starting with Resolution 242, passed right after the 1967 war. That Resolution seeks a just resolution of the conflict and calls for withdrawal and mutual recognition, but it says nothing about legality. Resolution 338, passed after the 1973 Yom Kippur war, requires Israel and the Arabs to negotiate peace. By insisting that the Palestinians negotiate with Isreal, the Security Council Resolution implicitly agrees that the occupation itself does not violate international law. Later Security Council resolutions - numbered 446, 452 and 465 - do indeed condemn Israel's policy of building settlements in the occupied territories and declare that these settlements have "no legal validity." However, these are political statements reflecting the balance of power in the UN and not a reasoned legal analysis. The Resolutions are not binding on Israel and do not of themselves create illegality.
In Hebron, the Jewish community existed throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule, until the
massacre during the Arab rioting of 1929.
From 1922 through 1928 the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was relatively peaceful. However, in late 1928 a new phase of violence began with minor disputes between Jews and Arabs about the right of Jews to pray at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem. These arguments led to an outbreak of Arab violence in August 1929 when Haj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, fomented Arab hatred by accusing the Jews of endangering the mosques and other sites holy to Islam. Observers heard Husseini issue the call: Itback al-Yahud "Slaughter the Jews!"
On August 22, 1929 the leaders of the Yishuv met with the British Deputy High Commissioner to alert him of their fears of a large Arab riot. The British officials assured them that the government was in control of the situation. The following day the Riots of 1929 erupted throughout the Palestine Mandate, lasting for seven days.
On Friday, August 23, Arab mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and other parts of the country. The Old City of Jerusalem was hit particularly hard. By the next day, the Haganah was able to mount a defense and further attacks in Jerusalem were repulsed. But, the violence in Jerusalem generated rumors throughout the country, many carrying fabricated accounts of Jewish attempts to defile Muslim holy places, all to inflame the Arab residents. Villages were plundered and destroyed by Arab mobs. While attacks on Jews in Tel Aviv and Haifa were thwarted by Jewish defenses, there were Jewish deaths in Hebron, where 67 Jewish men and women were slaughtered and Safed, where 18 Jews were killed, as well as scattered other losses totaling 133 Jewish deaths, with more than 300 wounded.
The Arab violence in Hebron was one of the worst atrocities in the modern history of Israel. On the afternoon of Friday, August 23, 1929 Jerusalem Arabs came to Hebron with false reports of Jews murdering Arabs during the rioting there, even saying thousands of Arabs had been killed. Despite the fact that Jews and Arabs in Hebron had been on good terms, a mass of frenzied Arab rioters formed and proceeded to the Hebron Yeshiva where a lone student was murdered. The next day, the Jewish Sabbath, the killing continued as an Arab mob of hundreds surrounded homes where Jews sought refuge, broke in and murdered scores of Jews in a bloody rampage.
The dead Jews that day included Eliezer Dan Slonim, a man highly esteemed by the Arabs. He was the director of the local English-Palestine bank whose many clients were Arabs, and was the sole Jewish member of the Hebron Municipal Council. He had many friends among the Arab elders, who had promised to protect him. Twenty-two people died in Slonim's house that day including his wife and two young children.
By the end of the riot, during which the British police did nothing to protect the Jews or stop the violence, sixty-seven Jews were dead and hundreds wounded. The survivors were isolated in a police station for three days while the Arabs rampaged through their houses, stealing and destroying Jewish property, unmolested by the British authorities. At the end of the three days the Jews were sent to Jerusalem, exiled from their homes for the crime of being a victim of the Arab riot. Hebron's ancient Jewish quarter was empty and destroyed.
Such settlements as Neve Ya'acov and the Gush Etsion block were established under the British Mandatory Administration, which allowed Jewish settlement in these areas. Even though British Mandate Authorities, particularly in the latter period of the Mandate, were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause, they nevertheless permitted the establishment of Jewish settlements in all areas west of the Jordan River, implementing the League of Nations Mandate. In fact,the Mandate called for Jewish settlement in all of the areas under British control including the almost 80% of the Mandate land that the British gave to create Trans-Jordan and prohibited Jewish settlement there.