Demography, Geopolitics, and the Future of Israel's Capital: Jerusalem's Proposed Master Plan
04/03/2010
Nadav Shragai
|
Jerusalem
The Jewish majority in Jerusalem is declining, meanwhile, according to the proposed plan for the city, there will not be sufficient Jewish housing by 2020 or Arab housing by 2030. The plan also calls for creating urban contiguity between eastern Jerusalem and Palestinian neighborhoods outside the city, reinforcing Palestinian demands to recognize the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem as a single political entity.
http://jcpa.org/text/Jerusalem-Master-Plan.pdf
View Article >>
|
A Moral Evaluation of the Gaza War - Operation Cast Lead
04/02/2010
Asa Kasher
|
Gaza
In Israel, a combatant is a citizen in uniform. His state ought to have a compelling reason for jeopardizing his life. There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the warned neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. Israel should favor the lives of its own soldiers over the lives of the well-warned neighbors of a terrorist when it is operating in a territory that it does not effectively control, because in such territories it does not bear the moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones.
View Article >>
|
Proportionality in Modern Assymetrical Wars
02/02/2010
Amichai Cohen
|
Proportionality
As the uses of force in Somalia, Kosovo, and Iraq show, Western armies are very concerned about protecting the lives of their soldiers, and to that end are willing to risk many civilian lives. They also find acceptable the notion that civilian lives can be forfeited in order to attain important military goals.
Israel's Gaza operation clearly shows that Israeli commanders successfully followed the requirements of the administrative model of the principle of proportionality. The IDF required commanders to take humanitarian law into account in the planning stages of the operation. Legal advisors were involved in the planning of many operations and provided advice regarding specific targets. The right questions were asked, checks were made, and the incidental damage to civilians was on the whole limited.
http://www.jcpa.org/text/proportionality.pdf
View Article >>
|
Israel at 60: Confronting the Rising Challenge to Its Historical and Legal Rights
20/01/2010
Dore Gold
|
Sovereignty
The year 2008 marks sixty years since the establishment of the State of Israel. Yet, today, notwithstanding a 1922 League of Nations Mandate affirming the Jewish people's right to reconstitute itself in its ancient homeland, Israel's fifty-nine year membership in the United Nations and its extraordinary achievements, the very legitimacy of a Jewish state remains an issue of public debate. This publication, based on a conference held on March 26, 2008, engages in a critical examination of the debate on Israel's legitimacy, and the rights of a Jewish nation-state and Jewish self-determination among other nation-states of the world and other nations' claims to self-determination.
View Article >>
|
Curbing the Manipulation of Universal Jurisdiction
20/01/2010
Diane Morrison and Justus Reid Weiner
|
Universal Jurisdiction
The principle of universal jurisdiction has been, and continues to be, an important tool in the legal practitioner's tool box and an essential means for achieving justice for international crimes. Unfortunately, the principle has also become a political device employed for far more cynical means and far less noble purposes. In the early 1960s, Israel was one of the first states to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction in its groundbreaking trial against Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the Holocaust."
http://www.jcpa.org/text/universal-jurisdiction.pdf
View Article >>
|
The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel
13/01/2010
Dan Diker
|
Peace Process
Mahmoud Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.
The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States.
View Article >>
|
Free Lunch for Hamas
01/01/2010
Justus Weiner
|
International Humanitarian Law
As far back as 1996, the NGO Human Rights Watch has been predicting an "imminent humanitarian crisis" in Gaza. Indeed, various NGOs have lodged annual claims that the Jewish state is responsible for the "imminent humanitarian crisis" in the Gaza Strip. Might they have stopped to ask: How has the Gaza Strip been "on the verge" of a humanitarian crisis in excess of 10 years?
View Article >>
|
Children on the Frontlines: Palestinian and Pakistani Child Abuse
01/01/2010
Justus Weiner
|
How Israel Is Guided by International Law
This disturbing practice of deadly child abuse is on the rise in these two Muslim societies. Recent events in both the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent have made the magnitude of the problem that much more acute.
View Article >>
|
Europe Seeks to Divide Jerusalem
15/12/2009
Dore Gold
|
Jerusalem
According to the 1993 Oslo Agreements, Jerusalem is one of the issues to be discussed in future permanent status negotiations. The Swedish move to have the European foreign ministers back a declaration recognizing eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state clearly pre-judges the outcome of those talks.
What is needed is an ongoing Israeli diplomatic effort for Jerusalem, underlining Israel's legal rights and its role as the protector of the holy sites.
View Article >>
|
A Paradox of Peacemaking: How Fayyad's Unilateral Statehood Plan Undermines the Legal Foundations of Israeli-Palestinian Diplomacy
24/11/2009
Alan Baker
|
Peace Process
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad published a plan in August 2009 to unilaterally declare statehood after a two-year state-building process. However, any unilateral action that undermines the existing Oslo interim framework could jeopardize the peace process and remove the basis for the existence of the Palestinian Authority. Were the Fayyad plan to be adapted and integrated within a resumed negotiating process, on the basis of the extensive infrastructure that already exists in the Oslo Accords, then this plan could serve as a constructive starting point for any new round of negotiations.
View Article >>
|
The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel with the False Charge of Apartheid
11/11/2009
Robbie Sabel
|
Apartheid
Israel is a multi-racial society, and the Arab minority actively participates in the political process. There are Arab parliamentarians, Arab judges including on the Supreme Court, Arab cabinet ministers, Arab heads of hospital departments, Arab university professors, Arab diplomats in the Foreign Service, and very senior Arab police and army officers. Incitement to racism in Israel is a criminal offence, as is discrimination on the basis of race or religion. The comparison of Israel to South Africa under white supremist rule has been utterly rejected by those with intimate understanding of the old Apartheid system.
http://www.jcpa.org/text/apartheid.pdf
View Article >>
|
Israel's Right to Secure Boundaries: Four Decades Since UN Security Resolution 242
22/10/2009
Amb. Dore Gold, Amb. Meir Rosenne, Prof. Ruth Lapidoth, Amb. Yehuda Blum, Amb. Richard Holbrooke
|
Resolution 242
UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 is the most important UN resolution for peacemaking in the Arab-Israel conflict. The resolution never established the extent of Israel’s required withdrawal from territories captured during the Six-Day War in exchange for peace with its Arab neighbors. The borders of any Israeli withdrawal were meant to reflect its right to live within “secure and recognized” boundaries.
View Article >>
|
Turning a Blind Eye to Hamas War Crimes
11/10/2009
Jonathan Dahoah Halevi
|
Gaza Fact-Finding Mission
Is the silence of the human rights organizations regarding the killing of dozens of Palestinians in a mosque in the Gaza Strip related to the Goldstone Committee?
View Article >>
|
Blocking the Truth of the Gaza War: How the Goldstone Commission Understated the Hamas Threat to Palestinian Civilians
18/09/2009
Jonathan Dahoah Halevi
|
Gaza Fact-Finding Mission
On June 28 and 29, 2009, the Goldstone Commission recorded Palestinian statements at the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City. This study is an analysis of the four main statements, the way the commission interpreted them, and reports from other Palestinian sources which contradict the testimony presented to the commission. Reports issued by the Palestinian terrorist organizations themselves detailed the fighting in a way that often contradicted the Palestinian witnesses. In addition, the witnesses hid vital information from the commission regarding the presence of armed terrorists or exchanges of fire in their vicinity.
View Article >>
|
The U.S.-Israeli Dispute over Building in Jerusalem: The Sheikh Jarrah-Shimon HaTzadik Neighborhood
27/07/2009
Nadav Shragai
|
Jerusalem
The Sheikh Jarrah-Mt. Scopus area - the focus of a dispute between the Obama administration and Israel over building housing units in the Shepherd Hotel compound - has been a mixed Jewish-Arab area for many years. Many observers incorrectly assume that Jerusalem is comprised of two ethnically homogenous halves: Jewish western Jerusalem and Arab eastern Jerusalem. Yet in the eastern part of Jerusalem there are today some 200,000 Jews and 270,000 Arabs living in intertwined neighborhoods.
View Article >>
|
|