Gaza Notes

David Bedein reveals some interesting and probably lesser known tidbits about Ariel Sharon's proposed pullout of Gaza.

The popular media will undoubtedly report that Sharon's settlement abandonment policy will sit well with both the PLO and the U.S.

Most reporters have not noticed the map of "illegal settlements" published by the Palestinian National Authority, indicates that all of the settlements that Israel established after the 1948 war, especially in the Negev region of southern Israel, would be considered to be "illegal."

For that reason, Arabs in Gaza have a legal problem with Israeli Jewish settlements that were established after the 1948 war, not with the Israeli settlements that were established after the 1967 war.

Menachem Begin, who advocated Israeli settlement activity in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan, made a cardinal rule when he became Israeli Prime Minister in 1977, which was that no Israeli community in the Golan, Judea, Samaria or Katif would cause Arab villages to be uprooted.

Begin reversed the post-1948 policy allowing Israeli Jews to claim abandoned Arab properties and entire Arab villages for settlement purposes.

What has been forgotten is that the U.S. never recognized Israel's acquisitions of land in the 1948 war. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles made that point when he visited Israel in 1953, and placed the U.S. on the record as opposing Israeli settlement in the "conquered" Negev and the Galilee regions.

For that reason, the U.S. never recognized the 1949 or 1967 cease-fire lines as the borders of Israel. Those cease-fire lines are mistakenly believed by many to be fixed borders.

What the popular media will probably also miss is that the agricultural produce of the 17 farming communities in Katif successfully competes with the agricultural produce of the hundreds of Israel's collective farms -- a factor that has figured into the Israel Labor Party's enthusiastic support for the eradication of their agricultural competitors.