Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 in U.S.
What was the “Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995″?
The United States law called the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995, which passed both houses of Congress by lopsided majorities [Senate by a vote of 93 to 5, House of Representatives by a vote of 347 to 37], calls on the US to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize the latter as the Israeli capital.
determined that the United States' official policy towards Jerusalem was that:
- Israel has the right to determine its own capital
- The US should recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital
- Jerusalem should remain undivided
- The rights of every ethnic and religious group must be protected in Jerusalem
- The US Embassy should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999, the expected date of the completion of the Oslo peace process.
The Clinton administration refused to move the Embassy citing harm America's national security, believing that it would interfere with peace process negotiations. In fact, the Act gave the US President a "waiver authority" under which he could:
- ... suspend the [implementation] for a period of six months if he determines and reports to Congress in advance that such suspension is necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States.
Both Presidents Clinton and Bush used this waiver to postpone any change, fearful of the reaction of Palestinian Arabs, even though Bush promised to move the embassy if elected in 2000. The US refusal to act on the embassy move, leaving Israel as the only country in the world where the US embassy is not in the designated capital city, has encouraged Palestinian Arabs to believe they may eventually succeed in driving Israel out of Jerusalem.
The Sinai Campaign (Operation Kadesh - 1956)
ReplyDeleteThe Sinai Campaign was fought to put an end to to the terrorist incursions into Israel and to remove the Egyptian blockade of Eilat.
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Israeli tanks moving across the Sinai peninsula
The Sinai Campaign, fought to put an end to terrorist incursions into Israel and to remove the Egyptian blockade of Eilat, marked the final transformation of the IDF into a professional army capable of large-scale operations. A battle plan for the operation was adopted in early October 1956, but was revised following Israel's secret agreement with Britain and France. Under this agreement, Israel would transfer the focus of action as close to the Suez Canal as possible.
On its own account, the Israeli government also drew up a course of action allowing it to convert the operation into a brief raid, should the British and French, contrary to the secret agreement, not intervene. In a new plan, adopted on October 25, it was decided to launch the operation with a paratroop landing, and to hold the Armored Corps back until October 31.
At 17:00 on October 29, Israeli units parachuted into the eastern approaches of the Mitla Pass near the Canal - a political rather than tactical or strategic objective. The action provided the pretext for a French and British ultimatum to Israel and Egypt, calling on both sides to cease hostilities and withdraw from the Canal area. For diversionary reasons, Israeli forces also advanced on southern and central axes.
The following day, October 30, Britain and France issued the planned ultimatum, but to no effect, as heavy fighting between Egyptian and Israeli units persisted. In a swift, sweeping operation of 100 hours, under the leadership of then Chief of the General Staff, Moshe Dayan, the entire Sinai peninsula fell into Israeli hands, at a cost of 231 soldiers killed. Reserve units, about which many misgivings had been uttered before the war, conducted themselves honorably. A reserve brigade, equipped with requisitioned civilian buses, negotiated the difficult desert track and captured Sharm e-Sheikh at the southernmost tip of the Sinai peninsula.
The Sinai Campaign did not so much introduce new principles and policies as reaffirm the direction the IDF had already taken. Above all, the doctrine that the determining factors in Israel's mode of warfare would be the Armored Corps and the Air Force was confirmed. The Air Force was still deficient; its development was one of the lessons learned from that war; armor had proven its ability and was there to stay. If 1948 was undoubtedly the War of the Infantry, the uncontested queen of the battlefield in the war of 1956 was Armor.
Once more Israel gained a breathing space of about ten years. Attention now turned to the north, where the Syrians - since 1953 - had been attempting to thwart Israel's National Water Project. Having failed, they undertook to divert the headwaters of the Jordan (originating in Syria), by a manouever designed to leave Israel high and dry. Water is a classical reason for war in the Middle East; but a brief, resolute employment of artillery and tanks prevailed on the Syrians to refrain from their spiteful exercise.
Although Israel had been compelled to withdraw from Sinai without any security guarantee, UNEF - the United Nations Emergency Force, was established to guard against a recurrence of past events. As a result, the fedayun ceased to exist. On the other hand, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was reorganized and its principal military arm, the Fatah - one of a confusing array of para-military and terrorist organizations - began operations on 1 January 1965, at first from across the Lebanese border. Never an existential threat to Israel, it was a constant nuisance from there on and a temptation to divert attention and energy from the main task, preparations for yet another round.
Legal and Historical Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel
ReplyDeleteBefore examining the all-important international legal decisions by the Supreme Allied Powers, made at San Remo in 1920, and confirmed by the Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne which incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration, including the Faisal Weizmann Agreement, it is useful to trace back a few years to get a sense of the legal and political environment that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, leading up to these significant legal and diplomatic events that both emerged from historical roots and went on to shape Jewish contemporary history.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration
The history of the international legal turning point for the Jewish people begins in 1917. World War I was exposing a growing need of Jews dispersed all over the world to have a "national home". Thus, in 1917 Prime Minister David Lloyd George expressed to the British War Cabinet that he "was convinced that a Jewish National Home was an historic necessity and that every opportunity should be granted to reconstitute the Jewish State". This ultimately led to Great Britain issuing, on 2 November 1917, a political declaration known as the "Balfour Declaration". This Declaration stated that: