The Volokh Conspiracy

The credibility of NGOs like Human Rights Watch depends on their being above and apart from the conflicts they monitor – to not take sides. Human Rights Watch has been criticized by many, including its founder, for giving up all objectivity an adopting an anti-Israel campaign.

Their grudge against Israel has been clear for a while, and David Bernstein has written about it frequently here.

Now, we find evidence of direct personal animus. A news story reveals a private Facebook group whose members include a medley European journalists, NGO officials, and far-left activists. Recently the group turned to discussing an Israeli government report that the famous killing of a Palestinian boy at the start of the Second Intifida was in fact staged. Not only was he not shot by Israel, as much prior evidence suggested, he appears not to have been killed at all. (It would not be the last time Palestinians elaborately staged deaths for PR purposes.)

The issue is not the IDF report, but the comments made about it by Peter Bouckaert, HRW’s Emergencies Director (responsible for civilians in wartime, according to his twitter page). He wrote: “Typical IDF lies. As usual, it takes them a long time to really build up the falsehood.”

He goes on the complain that the New York Times coverage of the Israeli report will be used by supporters of Israel.

I previously criticized HRW for releasing reports on alleged Israeli crimes without waiting for the IDF’s comments - now we know: why wait for a “typical lies” that just build up the more time they get? Seriously, HRW should reveal what reports the “emergencies director” was involved in writing.

Academic writing on human rights and international law often treats groups like HRW as custodians of the truth, and accepts their claims without much further scrutiny. That practice is methodologically unsound.

UPDATE: Buockaert is apparently responsible for the HRW report on the 2nd Lebanon War, entitled “Why the Died,” which accuses Israel of war crimes largely based on relies on (favorable) credibility judgements regarding Lebanese testimony about whether certain targets were Hezbollah sites. The report also admits significant errors in earlier report (that doesn’t make them lies!).

Congress’s inquiry into IRS abuses has now expanded beyond the hounding of domestic-policy conservative groups to Israel related ones. In a letter today the Chairman and minority leader of the Ways and Means Committee demand information on whether the agency “undertook special reviews of organizations whose missions involve Israel” and whose activities “contradict or are inconsistent with the Administration’s policies.” Will this be within the scope of the Justice Department investigation?

Again, if the IRS did so, it was only doing what the New York Times (and Peace Now and J Street) told it to.

The Acting Commissioner appears for a hearing on Friday (after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot).

In addition to the IRS’s particular interest in right-wing groups focussed on domestic policy, it has taken an unusual interest in right-wing pro-Israel groups. (I am friends with the leader of the group written about in the link.)

One major question raised by the IRS scandal is where these ideas came from. At least as far as Jewish groups go, the IRS scrutiny is not a fluke. That is not to suggest it was ordered by the White House – that is highly unlikely. At the same time, it certainly does not come out of the blue. The past several years have seen a concerted campaign in the mainstream liberal press to bring the IRS down upon certain pro-Israel groups, particularly those that support activities in the West Bank (or the Territories Formerly Occupied By Jordan).

For example, in 2009 David Ignatius had a story in the Washington Post, A Tax Break Fuels Middle East Friction. “Critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns,” he wrote. The Guardian in 2009 also had a piece calling for IRS action.

In 2010, the New York Times continued the theme with a massive, expose-style front page story, which concluded that while such tax breaks do not seem to be exactly illegal, it creates :a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.” The article then tried to raise questions about whether such groups really satisfied U.S. tax-deductible requirements, suggesting the IRS should look into them. The activities the supported, the Times article suggests, were illegal and extremist.

Picking up the gauntlet, J Street called on the IRS to “probe” groups that support settlements, despite there being no apparent violation of tax laws involved.

And last year, an op-ed in the Times by Peter Beinart argued that “we should push to end Internal Revenue Service policies that allow Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to settler charities.”

This is just a sampling: the notion that right wing Jewish groups should be “probed” by the IRS because they do not line up with President Obama’s (former?) absolutist anti-settlement policy is not a new one. All the organs of intelligent opinion agreed that some generally right wing Jewish groups need to be dealt with by the IRS because they contradict government policy, not because of any evidence of tax fraud. And surely IRS bosses read the Post and the Times; it may even be their “absolute truth” as Times editor Jill Abramson memorably put it.

It would be interesting to find out whether the particular groups mentioned in these articles received any unusual requests from the IRS: I’d love to know either way.

Of course, there may be no direct connection between the campaign for such audits, and the action the IRS in fact took. But nor can one say the IRS action came out of nowhere, was some random frolic and detour.

Similarly, the action against Tea Party groups is not surprising. If one reads that they are racist, dangerous groups, then one might think their tax status is worth looking into.

Summarized in two headlines:

Today: Chomsky helped lobby Hawking to boycott Israel event

Last October: Islamic University of Gaza awards honorary doctorate to Chomsky

You might assume that Chomsky at least avoided meeting with officials of the repressive, theocratic, dictatorial, anti-Semitic, government of Gaza, which, at the very time of Chomsky’s visit was lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians (92 attacks in October, involving 171 rockets and mortars) in violation of the most basic international human rights norms. You’d be wrong: “Prof Chomsky also met with a number of civil society leaders and government officials, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who thanked him for his outstanding support.”

UPDATE: It’s also worth noting that Islamic University, founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and closely associated with Hamas, is itself hardly a bastion of liberalism.

FURTHER UPDATE: Also note that as a proponent of a two-state solution, as opposed to eliminating Israel, Chomsky is on the “right” of the BDS movement. [And as a commenter points out, Chomsky has previously supported only |boycott and divestment of firms that are carrying out operations in the occupied territories" and was a vocal opponent of BDS more generally.]

Via NY Times “The Lede” Blog: In November 2012, Amnesty International tweeted, “Feel enraged by the violence in #Gaza & #Israel? Demand that @netanyahu & @AlqassamBrigade stop attacks on civilians.”

Egyptian activist Mona Seif responded in a tweet, “@amnesty you don’t ask an occupied nation to stop their ‘Resistance’ to end violence!!! SHAME ON YOU!”

Human Rights Director Kenneth Roth, responding to a controversy over the fact that Seif is a finalist for a human rights award for which he is one of the judges, told the N.Y. Times’s “The Lede” blog that “I haven’t seen anything indicating that by ‘resistance’ Mona means attacking civilians.”

Sigh. Now, Seif claims, rather implausibly, that her tweet apparently referring to attacks on Israeli civilians as “Resistance,” coupled with her longstanding public support for Palestinian resistance, did not actually reflect support for attacks on Israeli civilians. But even if you are credulous enough to believe her, you would still have to admit that the tweet itself is “something” that “indicates” “that by resistances Mona means attacking civilians,” and can’t simply be ignored as if the charge against Seif is a figment of the Zionist imagination. If Roth had said, “Mona used intemperate language, but she has now made it clear that she opposes attacks on civilians [she hasn't; instead, in a very lawyerly statement, she said that "I have never called for nor celebrated attacks on civilians," which is hardly the same as opposing such attacks] then I wouldn’t give Roth a hard time. Of if Roth had acknowledged that Seif supports attacks on Israeli civilians, but claimed that her true importance is her work on human rights in Egypt, then at least we’d have an honest, debatable position. Instead, we have Roth’s unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious, which is unfortunately of a piece with his and his organization’s general hostile approach to Israel.

In fact, I doubt that Roth actually fails to comprehend that purported human rights hero Seif has supported attacks on Israeli civilians. It’s just that he doesn’t care. [UPDATE: Perhaps I should clarify that I am not drawing an inference that Roth doesn't care from this particular statement. Rather, I'm drawing it from both a long history of his own often egregiously dishonest statements about Israel and Judaism, and from his stewardship of Human Rights Watch, whose Mideast division is run, with Roth's enthusiastic consent, by individuals who had a known record of hostility to and activism against Israel before they were hired, and have acted in accordance with that record at HRW. Roth has even, in a weak moment, acknowledged that HRW focused its resources disproportionately on Israel, something HRW spokesmen usually deny. I've documented this and more in detail on this blog, and if you're interested you can google bernstein volokh and "human rights watch." But in short, while it's usually wise to give people the benefit of the doubt, Roth has long since forfeited any presumption in his favor; quite the reverse.]

I wrote yesterday about the French Court of Appeals decision holding that French train companies did not violate international law (and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention) by building a light rail system in Jerusalem, including areas occupied by Jordan before 1967.

The case, PLO v. Alstom, is a perfect foreign coda to the Supreme Court’s decision in Kiobel, as it also deals with suits for extraterritorial conduct of multinational corporations (though without the universal jurisdiction twist of Kiobel). It illustrates how the efforts of some American courts to implement international law norms through civil damages remedies is in fact a rather parochial exercise detached from international practice.

1) Most significantly, the Court found that international law does not create liability for corporations. This accords with the view of the Second Circuit in Kiobel – corporate liability was the issue on which cert in Kiobel had been granted, though the case was ultimately decided on extraterritorially grounds. Many who favored corporate liability argued that on this issue, courts should apply not international law, but rather federal common law. In future ATS litigation against companies with some U.S. nexus, the PLO v. Alstom decision will not make plaintiffs’ work easier.

2) The Versailles court also seemed to take a narrow view of aiding-and-abetting liability. The issue is hard to separate from the corporate liability issue, but the Court basically found that even if Israel’s conduct violated international law, the corporation does not incur liability for its involvement.

3) Ironically, the best examples of corporate liability under international law came from ATS cases (where courts had upheld such liability after having been assured of its existence outside ATS cases). Yet the French court brushed off precedents under the ATS by noting that they were merely applications of a “domestic statute” and thus not really international law. There goes global judicial dialogue – or perhaps they heard that the ATS was just federal common law!

4) The Court was pretty dismissive of “soft law” – international guidelines, best practices statements, and so forth, in creating or defining customary norms.

5) I argued recently that the U.S. is particularly attractive to human rights plaintiffs for the same reasons it is attractive to all other plaintiffs, and this cases illustrates this well. Because Alstom was the prevailing party, the Court required Palestinian plaintiffs to cover 60,000 Euros of the defendants’ costs. You don’t get that in a dismissed ATS case.

In an important but largely ignored case, a French Court of Appeals in Versailles ruled last week that construction of a light rail system in the Israeli-controlled West Bank by a French company does not violate international law. In doing so, the court sided with many of the arguments long made against the blanket application of the relevant provisions of the Geneva Conventions to Israeli settlements. National courts rarely if ever address such issues, and thus the decision is important both for its rarity and for what it says.

In this post, I’ll address issues relevant to the substance – Israel’s presence in the West Bank. In the next post I’ll deal with the “Kiobel” issues raised by the case – corporate liability, the value of American ATS cases, and so forth. I should note at the outset that what follows is based on a rough translation of the opinion and my vague French; I would be grateful for corrections on matters of language that I have misapprehended. I venture forward because it is an important decision that deserves attention, yet has been met by complete silence by international legal scholars.

The Jerusalem Light Rail, which began running last year after a long period of construction, links the Western part of the city with the parts occupied by Jordan prior to and annexed by Israel after the 1967 War. The project was widely criticized by pro-Palestinian groups, as was the participation of French rail companies in the project. Along with a variety of political pressure and boycott activities, a Palestinian group sued the French-based multinational conglomerate Alstom Transport for its role in in the project. The case was dismissed below in 2011, and the Court of Appeals upheld the decision last week.

Crucially, the Court held that only the Government of Israel, and not private parties, can violate the relevant provisions of the Geneva Conventions. The arguments that Israeli communities in the West Bank violate international law start with Art. 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer its civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The provision was also relied on heavily in the lawsuit. The Court ruled that 49(6) only speaks to and applies to action by the Israeli government (“the Occupying power”), and does not regulate Alton’s activities in the occupied territory.

This is an extraordinarily important holding in light of the decades old-debate about the meaning of 49(6) in the context of Israeli civilian migration into the West Bank. It is in direct opposition to the political and international law position on settlements. In the standard narrative, any migration of Israeli Jews past the Green Line, or the expansion of their residences and communities once there, is a war crime. Thus when private citizens decides to buy or build a house across the Green Line, or even expand an existing one, it is a war crime.

Moreover, Israeli citizens who migrate to the West Bank are often said to be guilty of war crimes themselves as aiders-and-abettors. The Versailles decision would seem to reject such a position.

This conventional reading of 49(6) as generally banning Jewish settlements is disconnected from the text, which only speaks of “transfers” carried out by the Government. Some scholars, including myself, have long maintained that private movement of persons is in no way covered by 49(6), and the Court apparently adopts this position (though I am unclear how much of a role domestic legal principles played). Now one might say the government is always “involved” – roads, security, zoning, etc., but ubiquitous “background” roles do not trigger the state action doctrine in U.S. constitutional law, and it is not clear why they would under international law. (On the other hand, if one gets a package bus/light rail ticket, it would be an unusual literal case of “transfer” into occupied territory.)

Indeed, the French case would be a strong one for inferring governmental role, since the defendant worked under contract with Israeli governmental entities. My understanding of the Court’s opinion is a little fuzzy here, but it seems they say contractual privity is not enough to trigger 49(6) either. This would certainly make it inapplicable to the vast majority of Israeli settlers (not all, necessarily, since 49(6) is ultimately a case-by-by-case factual question.

The Court goes on the reject the notion that the relevant norms have become customary or jus cogens and apply without the particular textual restrictions of 49(6).

Israel’s critics have long claimed that “everyone agrees” that all “settlements” (a term referring to all Israeli activity in the West Bank, at least that benefits Jews) clearly violates international law, and that only Israeli apologists could believe the arguments to the contrary. I assume the Versailles Court of Appeals won’t be accused of being unduly sympathetic to the Jewish State.

Indeed, many might share my surprise on such a decision coming from a European court, especially given the supposed uniformity of views on the underlying legal issues. Perhaps two factors may explain the surprising decision: this is not an international court, but an ordinary municipal one, and it was an important French industrial concern, rather than Israel, in the dock. International lawyers may what could positively be described as professional or scientific knowledge of the matter, or more cynically as guild orthodoxy. Judges unversed in these verities might see things differently. And of course, here international law is being used against important and powerful domestic interests.

The plaintiffs could still appeal to the Cour de Casssation, which however is not obligated to hear the appeal.

[Cross-posted on OpinioJuris.]

His speech today in Israel was fantastic. Discuss in the comments.

when he says, “Like many liberal American Jews, when he looks at Netanyahu he sees a conservative Republican and he fails to understand how a Jew can be a conservative Republican. I think he looks at Netanyahu in much the same way he contemplates Eric Cantor, the Republican ‏(and Jewish‏) house majority leader. Like many liberal-leaning Jews, he might simply not understand how a Jew could be a Republican.”

But if Obama truly understands so little about Israel that he reduces things to “Netanyahu = conservative Republican” (something the Washington Post actually did quote an administration official as saying), as if Israeli politics somehow map on to an incredibly different American political scene, and truly has been so cloistered on the left that the idea of a Jewish Republican is somewhere between anathema and beyond his comprehension, Goldberg is not doing Obama any favors in pointing these things out. I actually doubt that Obama actually thinks these things, but I don’t doubt that a significant number of “liberal American Jews,” some of whom are or have been Obama advisors, do, and that there views filter down to journalists like Goldberg as Obama’s.

UPDATE: Put another way, there are some liberal Jews who are strong partisan Democrats who are both appalled by the notion of conservative Republican Jews and extremely resentful that (a) an influential group like AIPAC maintains strict partisan neutrality, which has the effect, given the baseline, of pushing the Jewish community and its donors effectively to the right; (b) there is a group of wealthy Republican Jews, exemplified by Sheldon Adelson, working for “the other side.”

There is little that can be done about “a” (JStreet is the attempt to do so) and nothing that can be done about “b” (though liberal Jewish groups did launch an abortive attack on Adelson last Summer). But given that Netanyahu has American friends and supporters from groups (a) and (b), one can take out one’s resentments on Netanyahu, entirely aside from one’s views on whatever policies he’s pursuing. We saw a fine example of this last Summer, when some were accusing Netanyahu of openly siding with Romney, and, when challenged to produce any evidence that this was true and failing to do so, kept insisting it was true nevertheless. (It was especially amusing to hear that Netanyahu was openly siding with Romney because they met when Romney came to Israel, when it turns out that Netanyahu met with Obama when he came to Israel in 2008, and lavished fulsome praise on him. Does that mean that Netanyahu even more openly sided with Obama in 2008?) So Netanyahu becomes a stand-in for all one’s Jewish or pro-Israel bogeymen, which, in my opinion, has not well served the Obama administration.

Times of Israel:

Americans’ sympathy for Israel is at a 22-year high, according to Gallup figures released on Friday, just five days ahead of Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel as president. In figures gleaned from the polling organization’s early February World Affairs poll, 64 percent of Americans say their sympathies “in the Middle East situation” – Gallup’s term for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace talks – lie more with the Israelis than with the Palestinians. Just 12% favor the Palestinians.

People unfriendly to Israel used to say that Israel was only popular in the U.S. because pro-Israel forces had managed to stifle debate by preventing mainstream sources from publishing critical articles. That turns out not to be true now, if it ever was. From the New York Times op-ed page to a best-seller by Walt and Mearsheimer to Joe Klein’s columns to campus “Israel Apartheid Weeks” to dozens and dozens of blogs, it’s actually pretty hard for anyone at all interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict to avoid reading strong criticism of Israel, even if they tried. One would certainly be hard-pressed to argue that debate is being meaningfully “stifled.”

One thing that puzzles me is that if you read just about any online piece about Israel, whether from a mainstream newspaper or a blog, the comments sections are filled with anti-Israel invective. Even many pro-Israel blogs attract many anti-Israel commenters (see, e.g., this blog), and liberal pro-Israel blogs are in fact dominated by them. Given the statistics recounted above, I find this an odd situation. Is there any other issue where public opinion leans so far to one side, but on-line comments slant so heavily the other way? Are there really that many people who feel so strongly about the other side (and not any other burning issues in their world) that they devote a fair amount of their time to mostly-unread blog comments? Or is it a small group that basically scours the internet for Israel-related material, and spend basically all their waking hours writing anti-Israel invective?

I earlier noted the White House’s description of the Dead Sea Scrolls as coming from “Israel.” It turns out that this contradicts the official Palestinian position, which is that the Scrolls are looted Palestinian artifacts. The PA made a kerfuffle when the scrolls were exhibited at a Canadian museum a few years ago:

The P.A. and Muslim activists claimed that the scrolls were “stolen” from Palestinian territory and illegally obtained when Israel annexed East Jerusalem — where the scrolls were stored — in 1967. “The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories” by Israel, wrote Hamdan Taha, head of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities, in a widely publicized letter, calling the show a violation of international law.
Echoing those sentiments on the day of the press preview, Canadian Arab Federation executive director Mohamed Boudjenane called the scrolls “stolen property… seized from an occupied territory,” and repeated the call to close the show on a national newscast.

The BDS forces proposed a boycott and picket of the museum. For them, the Dead Sea Scrolls are Elgin Marbles.

I am sure the Administration did not intend to walk into a fight over the scrolls, but I’m wondering what they would now say to the PA’s claim that they were taken from occupied territory. I look forward to the visit on Thursday, and wonder whether the President will get any flak from the Palestinians/BDS contingent on the issue.

In describing President Obama’s itinerary during his trip to Israel and Jordan next week, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes conceded that the Jewish connection to the West Bank is as strong as it is to Israel, and indeed, spoke of the two interchangeably:

Thursday, the President will begin by going to the Israel Museum. At the Israel Museum, he will view the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a testament, of course, to the ancient Jewish connection to Israel and, frankly, a marvel that the Israelis have restored within the Israel Museum in a very substantial, impressive way. So the President very much looks forward to the opportunity to see the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in the Qumran caves in 1947, when it was part of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Thus the White House seems to recognize that Israel’s history and borders are rooted in the Mandate – what happened in the “West Bank” in 1947 is somehow “connected” to Israel.

Moreover, most the the scrolls were recovered in the the 1950s, after this portion of the Mandate was illegally invaded and occupied by the Jordan. To put it simply, the Dead Sea Scrolls are from the West Bank, otherwise known as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The Dead Sea Scrolls, one might say, are written by settlers.

And if it were not for Israel’s victory in 1967, the Dead Sea Scrolls would not be in the Israel Museum.

By describing the Dead Sea Scrolls as evidence of the ancient Jewish connection with “Israel” (and by accepting the validity of their placement in the Israel Museum), the Administration implicitly acknowledges the arbitrariness of distinguishing between Israel’s presence at the Dead Sea and in Tel Aviv.

No doubt this was an accidental slip of the tongue. But such slips are inevitable because the artificial division of Mandatory Palestine along the 1949 Armistice Line does not accord with any previous historical, demographic, administrative, or geographic realities.

In April, I will be speaking at several New York City law schools on “Israel’s Borders in International Law,” courtesy of the Federalist Society.
April 23: New York Law School (noon); Hofstra (6pm); April 24th: Touro (noon). Conspiracy readers are encouraged to introduce themselves.

I have put up a new working paper on SSRN, entitled Jurisdiction Over Israeli Settlement Activity in the International Criminal Court. It is not about the legality of settlements. Rather, it is about whether repeated and growing threats by Palestine and its supporters to make an international case out of it are consistent with the admissibility requirements of the ICC. I welcome substantive comments (as well as inquiries from law review editors).

Here is the abstract:

In the wake of the U.N. General Assembly’s recent recognition of Palestinian statehood, the Palestinian government has made clear its intention to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), where it could challenge the legality of Israeli settlements. This Article explores the previously unexamined jurisdictional hurdles for such a case. (To focus on the jurisdictional issues, the Article assumes for the sake of argument the validity on the merits of the legal claims against the settlements.)

First, the ICC can only consider situations “on the territory” of Palestine. Yet the scope of that territory is undefined. An “occupation” can arise even in an area that is not the territory of any state – but ICC jurisdiction does not extend there. Thus even if Israel is an occupying power throughout the West Bank for the purposes of substantive humanitarian law, this does not establish that settlement activity occurs “on the territory” of Palestine. Moreover, the ICC lacks the power to determine the boundaries of states, and certainly of non-member states. Moreover, the Oslo Accords give Israel exclusive criminal jurisdiction over Israelis in the West Bank. Palestine cannot delegate to the ICC territorial jurisdiction that it does not possess.

Second, the ICC only takes situations of particular “gravity.” Yet settlements are not a “grave breach” of the Geneva Conventions. No international criminal tribunal has ever prosecuted non-grave breaches. The ICC’s gravity measure involves the number of people killed; for settlements it would be zero. Indeed, the ICC prosecutor triages situations by the numbers of victims; settlements do not appear to have direct individual victims. Finally, the ICC would at most only have jurisdiction over settlement activity from the date of Palestine’s acceptance of jurisdiction. Settlement activity in this time frame would not immediately cross the Court’s gravity threshold.

The impact of these issues goes beyond a possible settlements case. The controversy over a referral of Israel, a non-member state, raises important questions about the meaning of the ICC Statute. These have great importance for other non-member states, such as the United States. They also demonstrate the extent to which major aspects of the ICC Statute remain vague and undefined.

I often see lines like this in articles about Israel, this one from the AP: “... with Arabs living under Israeli control expected to outnumber Jews in the coming years.”

Let’s do the numbers.  There are approximately 6.4 million Jews (including “Jews” who are not recognized by the Israeli Interior ministry as such because they are not Jewish under Jewish law).  There are also approximately 1.6 million Arabs living in Israel, and 2.5 million (though this is debated) in the West Bank.  Of the latter, an estimated 2.3 million live in areas under Palestinian civil control, and joint Israeli-Palestinian military control.  Even giving a liberal construction to “living under Israeli control”, that makes roughly 6.4 million against 4.1 million.  Given a Jewish birth rate of 2.9 per family, plus net Jewish immigration to Israel, there is not likely to be a majority of Arabs in the territory under Israeli control any time soon.

Now, if you add in the population of Gaza, things start to get closer.  But even the most liberal definition of “living under Israeli control” can’t possibly include Gaza, where there is not a single Israeli civilian or soldier living, except perhaps for a handful of Shin Bet undercover agents.   Yes, Israel maintains a partial blockade on Gaza, but day to day life in Gaza is anything but under Israeli control, especially in the context of an article, like the AP’s article, talking about how the tensions that arise when the Israeli and Palestinians population mix, which simply doesn’t and can’t happen in Gaza.

This is apropos of nothing in particular, but it irks me that  journalists reporting Israel and the Palestinians seem to parrot things they pick up from various activist groups, without bothering to check easily discoverable facts.

UPDATE: By the way, if you ever want to find out whether someone is a sincere advocate of a “one-state solution,” a democratic state where both Jews and Arabs have equal rights, or simply wants an Arab takeover, after which most of the Jews will undoubtedly leave or be driven out, ask them this: Let’s say Hamas continues to control Gaza, and refuses to participate in peace negotiations with Israel.  And let’s say further that Israel decides to annex the West Bank, gives the Arabs there equal rights, and writes a new Constitution abolishing any distinctions between the rights and responsibilities of Arabs and Jews in domestic law (and they mean it).  Still in favor of one-state solution, even though it will have an indefinite Jewish majority?  My guess is that most advocates of a one-state solution will find various rationales or excuses why a one-state solution without the looming possibility of an Arab majority is not to their liking.