The New York Times had an odd correction today (4/16/10):
A picture caption on Thursday with the continuation of a news analysis article about a shift in the Obama administratio’s Middle East policy referred incorrectly to Ramat Shlomo, the name of a Jewish housing development that Israel says it is expanding despite objections by the United States and the Palestinian Authority. It is a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, not a settlement in the West Bank.
Ramat Shlomo is, in fact, in the West Bank, defined as that part of the Palestine Mandate that was controlled by Jordan from 1948-1967 and occupied by Israel since the ’67 war. East Jerusalem is that part of the West Bank that Israel claims sovereignty over–a claim that is not recognized by the rest of the world, except, apparently, the New York Times.
The word “neighborhood” is a euphemism promoted by the Israeli government to foster the impression that it is normal and proper for a country to move its citizens onto territory captured in war. In fact, this is contrary to international law. The regular term for these illegal communities is “colonies”; in the Occupied Territories, they are usually referred to as “settlements,” which was originally a euphemism but no longer functions as such because it has become too associated with the ugly reality.
So to say that Ramat Shlomo is a West Bank settlement is perfectly correct. It is, however, politically incorrect to say so at the New York Times.
Isn’t it a fulltime job to deconstruct the propaganda issued by the NYT? FAIR would have an easier job reporting what the NYT does NOT lie about.
All the misinformation fit to print …
It’s just an angry squabble between neighbors. Sleep through it and it will be all over, one way or another, by the morning. Sort of like how we became the neighbors of the Indians.
This is not correct. East Jerusalem was not part of the West Bank when it was conquered by Jordan in 1948, the UN resolution on Partition called for an International Jerusalem along with a Palestinian West Bank and Israel. Israel took over West Jerusalem and Jordan took East Jerusalem during the 1948 war, but that didn’t make East Jerusalem part of the West Bank under any version of International Law.
There was no “West Bank” before the 1948 war–the portion of the mandate that was to be given to the Palestinians was a much larger area, including land both east and west of Jerusalem; what’s now called the West Bank was created by the armistice line between Israel and Jordan. While the U.N. plan did envision an internationalized Jerusalem, that municipality was an entirely different (and much smaller) entity than the Jerusalem declared by Israel in 1967; it’s the latter and not the former that’s the basis for what’s now called “East Jerusalem.” If by East Jerusalem you mean the area of the U.N.’s Jerusalem that was captured by Jordan in 1948, then Ramat Shlomo is not in East Jerusalem at all.