Exclusive UCI Interview of Howard Grief in Jerusalem

1. UCI Interview of Howard Grief at Status of Jerusalem Conference, UC4I.org, UCI Staff
2. Washington Backs Islamists as Sinai and Gaza Explode, FrontPage Magazine, P. David Hornik
3. Is the Palestinian Authority Losing Control in the West Bank?, The Jewish Press, Khaled Abu Toameh
4. Fundamentally Freund: Kiss the Green Line goodbye, The Jerusalem Post, Michael Freund
5. Israel, Osiraq, and anticipatory self-defense, The Jerusalem Post, Louis Rene Beres

In mid June of 2012, Israeli representatives of the Unity Coalition for Israel, Chana Gavon and Judith Nusbaum, attended a significant leadership conference entitled The Status of Jerusalem Under International Law. Dr. Jacques Gauthier was a featured speaker at the conference and, just outside, we were privileged to hear from Howard Grief, historian, legal expert and author of the book, The Legal Foundation and Borders Of Israel Under International Law.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that the Obama administration is “deeply concerned” by the Egyptian military regime’s having seized powers so as to prevent a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the country.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said that “We…urge the [military] to relinquish power to civilian-elected authorities….” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that “We are particularly concerned by decisions that appear to prolong the military’s hold on power.”

As the report notes, the military regime’s move is aimed at preventing the Brotherhood’s presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi—if he has indeed been elected—from “declaring war without the agreement of the ruling generals.”...

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In recent weeks, the Palestinian Authority security forces have been launching a massive crackdown on anarchy and lawlessness in various parts of the West Bank.

The crackdown was ordered by Abbas after he discovered what many Palestinians have known for a long time: that his security forces and Fatah loyalists are responsible for the chaos and anarchy.

Palestinians say this is the biggest operation to be carried out by the Western-funded security forces since Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005,

Dozens of Palestinian security officers, some of them holding very high ranks, have thus far been rounded up and transferred to a Palestinian prison in Jericho....

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In 2011, Jewish population of Judea, Samaria grew at pace of 4.3%, which is more than double the national average.

Patrol near Jenin (Photo: REUTERS)

The announcement on Tuesday that a deal had been reached between the government and the residents of Beit El’s Ulpana neighborhood will hopefully bring a peaceful end to an otherwise painful episode.

After months of wrangling, the two sides reached an accommodation that will bring about the relocation of the homes at the heart of the dispute along with additional building in other parts of Beit El.

This entire affair, which threatened to resurrect old wounds in Israeli society, was the opening salvo in a campaign by Israel’s Left to force the government to demolish Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria that it deems to be illegal. In the coming months, similar conflicts are likely to arise over other Jewish outposts such as those at Givat Assaf and Migron, as the Left seeks to turn back the clock and undermine Israel’s presence in the territories....

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(Photo by: Stringer Iran / Reuters)

Israel now faces the unprecedented prospect of a nuclear Iran.  However, in January 2003, the “Project Daniel” group had already reminded then-prime minister Ariel Sharon that a first-use of force against an openly genocidal enemy state can be permissible. After all, international law is never a suicide pact.
 
No state need ever agree to suffer existential harms before acting in self-defense. There are, in fact, several identifiable circumstances in which a targeted-state may correctly invoke the longstanding legal principle of anticipatory self-defense. Operationally, such an action could also be called preemption, but this readily recognizable designation has more to do with military tactics, than with jurisprudence.

It was on June 7, 1981, that Israel chose to undertake a unilateral defensive first-strike against Iraq’s nuclear infrastructures. Today, Iranian nuclearization has come much farther along than Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor. It follows that, unlike Operation Opera, which was former prime minister Menachem Begin’s code name for the destruction of Osiraq, a preemptive Israeli strike against Iranian hard targets would almost certainly fail.

Yes, of course, the Iranian enrichment facilities could be set back for several months or even years, but the costs, both fiscal and human, would likely be staggering. Moreover, an Israeli “preemption” could still take a number of very different forms, including far-reaching expressions of both targeted killings and cyber-war.

On June 7, 1981, Israeli fighter-bombers destroyed the Osiraq nuclear reactor shortly before it was ready to go "on line."   At the time, the general reaction of the global community was hostile.  Even the UN Security Council, in Resolution 487 of June 19, 1981, indicated that it "strongly condemns" the attack and that "Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered."
 
But Israel's unilaterally defensive action of June 7, 1981 now looks very different. We know now that Saddam Hussein's plans to build a French-supplied reactor at his nuclear research center at Tuwaitha were designed to produce militarily usable plutonium....

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