To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (770 ) 12/1/2001 3:37:18 PM From: Elmer Flugum Respond to "Arafat's refusal at Camp David to recognize a Jewish connection to the Temple Mount - including his preposterous statement to President Clinton that a Jewish temple never stood there must be viewed in this light. "The Palestinian tyrant correctly understood that by accepting such a connection, he would have been implicitly accepting a Jewish claim to the entire Land of Israel. Similarly, Arafat understands that if he denies Jewish claims on the Temple Mount, he effectively denies them everywhere. After all, if the core of Jewish national existence for over 1,000 years and ?"While those who argue that Israel can never be called an occupying power in any part of the Jews' ancestral homeland are implicitly rejecting international law, those who maintain that the Jewish State is occupying Palestinian land are doing precisely the same thing. For according to international law, the "territories" are not now, nor have they ever been, Palestinian land. At the very least, Judea, Samaria and Gaza must be considered disputed territories on which both parties have competing claims. The rights of the Jews to settle throughout the area was recognized under the League of Nations Mandate and the right of the Jewish State to retain "territories" necessary for its security has been recognized by the UN Security Council. " foreign invaders using unproved Bible stories and persecution stories to do so.Those who would reject history, morality and international law and demand that Israel immediately "end the occupation" of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip should note that according to any objective legal criteria, that "occupation" is now more legitimate than ever. "Despite the negative connotation associated with an occupation, it is legitimate for a nation to occupy another when that occupation is an outgrowth of a defensive war, and when it is designed to prevent further aggression by the enemy. Such was the case in the aftermath of World War II, when both Germany and Japan were occupied by foreign powers and when no serious western statesmen would have had the chutzpah to suggest that such an occupation was illegal, much less immoral. "are immoral and illegal.That the Palestinians have made "ending the occupation" their casus belli is only the latest scene in the theater of the absurd starring the Jewish State over the past 50 years. For it is this belli which sparked Israel's so-called occupation, and it is a continuing Palestinian belligerency that now justifies that "occupation" more than ever - that is, if you believe there was "allowed (how big of some), to return to their land. The Palestinian refugees should be given the same rights and the occupied territories returned.
