Monthly Archives: June 2017
Let the Kurds Have Their Way
The Kurds have been friends of United States and are deserving of our help to develop their own sovereign nation. The Kurds are spread out over Turkey, Iran, and Iraq and since World War I have been deprived of their own territorial boundaries. They have been a force multiplier in the fight against ISIS and quite helpful to the United States over the years. The Kurds are fully deserving and justifiably waiting for help from the United States.
In September the Kurds are scheduled to hold a referendum on independence. They are receiving pressure from Iraq and Turkey not to hold such a referendum. Kurdish moves toward independence have generally met with resistance especially from Turkey. This makes for a complex political situation because the United States has its own considerations with respect to Turkey.
The Kurds for decades have been fighting for rights and recognition even though they are the indigenous people of the area. After World War I when the Ottomans were defeated there were plans to establish a Kurdish state. But these plans were dashed when treaties ignored the Kurds, and they consequently settled in areas as minorities and were never organized into a political unit but still maintained their cultural particularity.
There is serious hostility between the Turks the Kurds. The Kurds have been persecuted by the Turks for years. In response to pressures for independence, many Kurds were resettled, Kurdish names were changed, and cultural particularities were banned. The use of the Kurdish language was restricted and even the existence of a Kurdish ethnic identity was denied, with people designated as “Mountain Turks.”
In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan established the PKK, which called for an independent state within Turkey. Six years later, the group began an armed struggle. Since then, more than 40,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. Look here for a statement about the current political situation. In particular, this statement explains the betrayal of the Kurds.
The US no-fly zone established in 1991 has allowed the Kurds to govern themselves in northern Iraq. They have their own parliament, currency, and postage stamps. The Kurdish Federal region was established after the US eliminated Saddam Hussein.
The Kurds are a vital cultural force who are proud, dignified, and democratically inclined. They were forgotten and ignored after World War I. For the longest time the US opposed an independent Kurdistan. That’s before the Kurds have become a friend to United States and so central to the fight against the Islamic state. Turkey has always wanted to assimilate the Kurds and deny their history and culture. They long feared that any gains by the Kurds will be a loss for Turkey.
Turkey’s fears are now moot, because the Kurds of Turkey have no need for external encouragement. It is time for the international community to catch up with the Kurds and work with them to establish their own political institutions.
The Legal Status of the West Bank
Sign posts are seen in front of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim near Jerusalem November 13, 2013. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday his peace negotiators had resigned over the lack of progress in U.S.-brokered statehood talks clouded by Israeli settlement building. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK – Tags: POLITICS) – RTX15BNL
The legal status of the West Bank has been a thorny issue wrapped in confusion, historical change, as well as ideological motivations at the expense of legal clarity. Below is a brief treatment of the issues pertaining to the legal status of the West Bank and it is designed to be an introductory overview. I would direct the reader who seeks additional information to another brief synopsis published recently in the Jerusalem Post Magazine titled: “50 Years of Law Versus Reality” (www.jpost.com May 26, 2017). Also listen to and read the work of Eugene Kontorovich at: http://insct.syr.edu/legal-case-israels-settlements/ a legal expert who devotes scholarly attention to the issue. Below is my own distillation of the issues, based on the above sources, designed to establish some foundation for discussion.
Israel never imagined there would be 400,000 Jews living in the West Bank in a complex and politically charged project called the “settlements.” The land mass that includes the West Bank has been of questionable and debatable legal status for the last 50 years for sure but even before that. What is currently referred to as the West Bank was the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire who were defeated in World War I. The land became part of the British mandate and slipped into additional confusion about who had legal rights. When Israel took control of the land after Israel was attacked in 1967 (the Six-Day War) it fell into the category of “belligerent occupation.” This is a category of international law that requires the conquering force to adhere to a few rules of occupation. Under belligerent occupation the occupying force maintains the rights of the local people, agrees not to change the face of the land, and means that it cannot annex the land but is holding it temporarily. When land is acquired through force or war belligerent occupation is a mechanism for maintaining citizen rights and allowing political decisions to develop.
One of the controversies and difficulties about the legal status of the West Bank is whether or not to apply the principles of The Hague Regulations or the Geneva Convention. Belligerent occupation is a principal from The Hague regulations. The Geneva Convention requires more humanitarian rule even including returning conquered land. But the Israelis argued that Jordan was not a legitimate owner because they had only recently annexed the West Bank in the 1948 war. So Israel argued that it took disputed land from a wartime situation and did not conquer it from a sovereign nation, that is, they did not conquer the land from a legitimate state namely Jordan.
This is a key legal issue: did Israel acquire the West Bank from a legitimately recognized state that had sovereign power, which means according to the Geneva Accords Israel has obligations for peace negotiations, or was the West Bank genuinely disputed property.
The argument by Israel that all of the West Bank was negotiable provided justification for the ballooning settlements. As the settlements have developed, historical and legal arguments about the rights of the Jewish people – supported by a variety of historical documents ranging from the Bible to the Balfour declaration – have become more pronounced. The preponderance of evidence supports the notion that acquiring land by building settlements is illegal. But, on the other hand, Israel argues that it is still engaged in belligerent occupation and protecting the rights of the local inhabitants, that is, the Palestinians.
The legal status of the land acquired in 1967 is clearly debatable such that there are legal principles under which Israel is culpable according to international law, or principles that support Israel’s presence. In either case, the current situation is not sustainable.
Peace and Conflict Politics 