Ayelet Shaked: Israel's Minister of Annexation

[Israeli]

By applying Israeli law in the West Bank, the justice minister's proposal is expected to deepen the apartheid in Israel's code of law between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Haaretz Editorial May 02, 2016
 
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s portfolio automatically gives her a seat on the security cabinet. But more important to Shaked than the rule of law she’s responsible for are the settlers who vote for her Habayit Hayehudi party and influence its internal rankings, and who want to legalize the inequality between first-class Israeli citizens and fourth-class Palestinian subjects (in the middle are Israeli Arabs and residents of East Jerusalem who are not citizens).
Shaked announced Monday that she’s working with Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit on a plan to apply Israeli law in the West Bank. She said a committee to be established will examine each law that passes in the Knesset and decide whether it should immediately be applied to the settlements as well by military order.

Shaked’s proposal comes after repeated efforts to legislate bills that smack of annexation. Bills submitted by Orit Strock, Yariv Levin, Zeev Elkin and Shaked herself in the previous government, in an effort to get future laws to apply to in the West Bank, were opposed by then-Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and were ultimately scuttled, although they were approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.

Also in the previous Knesset, Habayit Hayehudi pushed an initiative to apply labor laws in the West Bank to help pregnant women in the settlements. But it backtracked when it became clear that the legislation would improve Palestinian rights and add an economic burden to employers in the settlements.

Israel has not been inadvertently avoiding the process Shaked advocates. To date, Israeli law applies to the settlers on a personal basis under the law that extends emergency regulations, while whatever applies on a regional basis is by order of the regional military commander. There are already Israeli laws “imported” to the territories that favor the settlers, and Shaked’s proposal will make the situation worse because the laws will be applied more systematically.

Continued @: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.717530

[6chars]

1. I'm curious about these labor laws to help pregnant women

[Israeli]

2. Dont you know how to Google ??

I give you this 6chars,.... although I doubt you will get it :

Why I’m Not Orit Strock’s Sister

Far-right Knesset member's battle to extend Israeli labor laws to women in the West Bank may just be one more step on the road to turning the occupation into total, and legitimate, annexation.

Neri Livneh Apr 02, 2013

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/why-i-m-not-orit-strock-s-sister.premium-1.512937

[6chars]

5. still not seeing the connection between pregnant women and labor laws

do they have to take five small quick breaths before pushing or something?

[shira]

3. Hamasbarists bitch, moan & wring hands about apartheid 2 sets of laws....

...and now that 1 set of laws is proposed, they bitch about that too.

Cute.

[azurnoir]

4. ah Shaked wants an official rubber stamp on the current situation in the West Bank

no surprises there

[Israeli]

6. None whatsoever azurnoir.............

The incremental annexation of Palestine

Israel’s justice minister announces a plan to apply Israeli law to parts of the West Bank, or in other words, annexation. By taking an incremental approach, she stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. Success, however, will expose the true nature of Israel’s discriminatory regime.

Source : http://972mag.com/the-incremental-annexation-of-palestine/119042/

[Little Tich]

7. This is the next logical step in creating the Apartheid one-state solution.

It also means that there are no occupied territories, only a lot of people living in Israel without citizenship under Apartheid law. All of Israel will become an Apartheid state.

This is not one of Shaked's better ideas.

[Israeli]

8. Nothing to offer .......

The Justice Minister
Proposes a bill
To annex
The settlements.

So it is no surprise
That Netanyahu
Says "No" to France.

Quite simple, he has
Nothing to offer.

Source : http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad/1462544950/

[Israeli]

9. America Must Tell Israel: Annexing the West Bank Is Our Red Line

Extending civil law to the settlements, as the justice minister is attempting, lays the legal groundwork for Israel to extend its permanent grip over the West Bank. Obama cannot remain silent.

Steven Klein May 08, 2016

Wake up Obama, it’s time for the U.S. to draw a red line.

Israel is in on the verge of sounding the death knell of the two-state solution. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is leading a renewed charge to apply Israeli civil law to the West Bank, a move that would indicate more than just “creeping annexation” but a fatal and irreversible change to the status quo.

Such a move would not constitute de jure annexation but rather de facto annexation. It is a step that the United States must oppose and prevent if it ever hopes to keep alive the prospect of a two-state solution.

Washington is often vulnerable in an election year. The USSR invaded Hungary in October 1956 knowing the Eisenhower administration would be unable to respond a week before Election Day. All the more so, a second-term president in his final year can be a lame duck when it comes to foreign policy. We cannot afford to wait.

Changing the legal status quo in the West Bank bears much graver consequences than when Israel extended civil law over East Jerusalem in 1967 and the Golan Heights in 1981. In fact, it would be reminiscent of the first U.S.-Israeli diplomatic crisis, when Israel changed the legal status quo in the Gaza Strip it occupied after the 1956 Sinai Campaign.

After that war, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion thought, perhaps justifiably, that just as the world had accepted Israel expanding its internationally recognized borders from the 1947 partition lines to the 1949 armistice lines, it could do the same in Gaza. Israel made the Israeli lira the only legal currency in Gaza in December, and Ben-Gurion declared in January 1957 that unlike Sinai, Israel would not be evacuating Gaza.

However, the United States did not accept this position, adhering to the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. Moreover, it considered Israel, along with Britain and France, as the aggressor in the conflict. Israel begged to differ, arguing that Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran constituted a casus belli. Washington continuously pressured Jerusalem, even threatening sanctions, if it would not withdraw.

America won this battle of nerves, and Israel agreed to pull out in March 1957 after a six-month occupation after U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Foreign Minister Golda Meir came to a good faith agreement. According to this understanding, the United States pledged that if Israel would return to the 1949 armistice lines, America would consider any future closure of the Straits as a casus belli.

The United States honored that pledge in 1967. It did not pressure Israel to withdraw immediately after the Six-Day War from the territories it had captured following Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran. But it was clear that Israel was not to annex the territories, which would have returned to situation to the post-1956 crisis, and it did not attempt to change the legal status quo in the West Bank or Gaza.

Since then, however, Israel has pushed back against the spirit of the Dulles-Meir agreement, applying civil law in East Jerusalem and the Golan, and settling hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews in the West Bank. In those cases, Arab residents were offered citizenship or permanent residency. The United States, meanwhile, has sufficed with verbal chidings of Israel, even as the prospects of a two-state solution have dwindled.

Shaked is taking matters in a much more dangerous direction. She wants to apply Israeli law in the settlements to “equalize” conditions for settlers with Israelis inside the pre-1967 lines without extending equal conditions, like labor laws, to Palestinians. Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett can parse words and rightfully claim that there is “a very big difference between annexation and equalizing legislation,” but everyone knows that extending civil law to the settlements lays the legal groundwork for Israel to extend its permanent grip over the West Bank.

President George W. Bush already made one irresponsible deviation from traditional U.S. policy when he legitimized the idea of Israel maintaining parts of the West Bank as part of negotiations. The message of America’s inaction or endorsement of Israeli policies in the West Bank have reinforced and emboldened Israeli leaders to believe that they can take one step after another. Now they believe that they can shift gears from creeping annexation to virtual annexation.

Thus, the Obama administration cannot wait for November. It must publicly draw a red line and remind Israel that changing the legal status quo in the West Bank violates a 60-year understanding that the United States intends Israel to uphold.

If he remains silent and Shaked succeeds in her mission, there won’t be any peace process left to fight for when the next president takes office in January.

Steven Klein is an editor at Haaretz and an adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University's International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation. Follow him on Twitter: @stevekhaaretz

Steven Klein
Haaretz Contributor

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718530