How Strong Is the Arab Claim to Palestine?-Exactly who has the right to claim "I had it first?"

FrontpageMagazine ^ | 8-30-04 | Lawrence Auster

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[SirLurkedalot]

Last sentence summed it all up pretty well for me. But then again I'm a gentile neocon, so go figure.

[escapefromboston]

ill have to read this later

[Diogenesis]

The above matters not. The Palestinian murderers gave $$$$ to the DNC.

[SirLurkedalot]

Already here but thanks for the ping regardless.

[NYC GOP Chick]

Excellent find! Thanks, S!

[newheart]

Add to all this that much of the 'Palestinian' lands were acquired by a rather conventional means. The Jews bought it. And they bought it often from absentee-landlords who were, mostly, Arabs. Then when the 'Palestinians' were displaced they tride to move to the nations of their 'brother' Arabs. Innstead of being welcomed as part of the family, they were treated as second class citizens, or worse--they were often not allowed to work, not allowed to own property and often, not allowed to stay. So they migrated back to Palestine. The Arab world doesn't give a damn about the Palestinian's real plight. They just want Israel to disappear.

[Slings and Arrows]

Bookmarked - thanks!

[Paul_B]

Excellent review and analysis.

[razoroccam]

The article does not go into the origins of Palestinians. Aren't they the descendants of the Philistines, the seafaring warring people who helped destroy the Egyptian empire (I forget if it was the middle kingdom or not).

The article does raise a very important issue. At what point of history do we go to to assert "squatter" rights? Specially since we really don't know how human migration took place over the centuries. If evolution is true, then we all should move to Africa. And if the Bible is true, then we all should move to Iraq.

Impractical, and therefore we have to deal with reality as of today.

[quadrant]

A few indisputable facts:
1)During World War I the British were at war with the Ottoman Empire.
Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire.
2)When Britain defeated the Ottoman Empire, the British had the legal and historic right to carve up the Empire in any manner they pleased.
Such is and always has been the right of the conqueror.
3)The British, rightly or wrongly, promised the Jews a home in Palestine; this promise was embodied in the Balfour Declaration. This was a promise they had a right to fulfill after they took control of Palestine. 4)The British promised Emir of Mecca that he would receive Aleppo, Homs, Homa, and Damascus if he assisted the British with the war against the Ottoman Empire.
As anyone knows who looks at a map, these are four cities in Syria.
The British were deliberately vague as to whether the promise entailed control of the cities alone, the cities and their environs, or the provinces of which the cities were the capitals.
The implication the Arabs chose to make of this pledge is meaningless, since they were not the "promising" party, nor did they have the power to compel the British to interpret the promise in a manner favorable to Arab desires.
In any event, this was a personal promise made to the Emir and not to the "Arabs," who did not exist as any sort of clearly defined ethnic group since society in the Middle East was tribal and not national.
5) It is true that Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speaks of the "self-determination" of peoples, but this document did not bind the British,nor did they recognize it.
In any event the United States was never at war with the Ottoman Empire, so any pronouncement made by Wilson bound the United States and not those countries at war with the Ottoman Empire.

The Arabs feel they have a right to "Palestine",but this right rests on nothing more than the Arab conquest of the area from the Byzantine Empire.
As is known by any student of history, a territory that you conquer is yours as long as you have the force to keep others out.

[Just mythoughts]

History is what it is.

The history of those who over the past centuries who sought to take the claim of that piece of real estate is never ending.

There is always differing arguments as to who "legally" holds the claim, yet few actually have taken the time to lay out what was written would be. Some use the "Bible" to stake a claim, others uses their own "good" books. Interesting little thing about all these happenings, they have happened just the way it was written all those centuries ago.

Some might have the burning desire to find out "WHAT" is next!

[montag813]

anyone have that map of Israel in the Arab world? always very instructive when discussing how Jews are "occupying" Arab land.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Bump for later.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

As is known by any student of history, a territory that you conquer is yours as long as you have the force to keep others out.

So you don't believe in property rights? Why are you on FreeRepublic?

Either the pre 1948 inhabitants of Palestine had property rights to the land they inhabited regardless of the outcome of any war (you are familiar with the Geneva Convetion, aren't you?), or no one has such rights, and the right to property exists only at the sufference of the State (sounds pretty communistic to me, but then we are discussing the defense of an obviously communistic state in Israel, where the government "owns" 95%+ of the land).

This is fundementally what the argument is about, even more than over sovereignty - the dispossesion by force of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from their houses and land in 1948 and since 1967, and their reoccupation by Israelis under the color of law.

If you don't believe me, ask any Palestinian whose family lost their property whether or not they would like it back, or have preferred to have kept it, and whether that is their primary beef. It would be mine too if someone stole my home, and all I was left with was the clothes on my back.

[Khurkris]

This is kind of long...but I guess I've been saving it for something like your question.

THE MOSLEM CLAIM TO JERUSALEM IS FALSE
by Dr. Manfred R. Lehmann
The Moslem "claim" to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the "Furthest Mosque": "Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque."
But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this "Furthest Mosque" (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.
In the days of Mohammed, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by Khalif Omar only in 638, six years after Mohammed's death.
Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style. The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name "Omar Mosque" is therefore false.
In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik's son, Abd El-Wahd - who ruled from 705-715 - reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.
Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the "Sacred Mosque," and the mosque in Medina as the "Furthest Mosque." So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque.
With this understood, it is no wonder that Mohammed issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer, a practice that had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Mohammed put an abrupt stop to it on February 12, 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Moslems themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain. [DR. MANFRED R. LEHMANN is a writer for the Algemeiner Journal. Originally published in the Algemeiner Journal, August 19, 1994.]

[Alouette]

[BenLurkin]

God gave this land to his chosen people.

It doesn't matter who "was there first".

[quadrant]

Of course, I believe in property rights, but the Arabs were enemy combatants; that is, thousands served in the Ottoman armies. Thus, the British were free to dispose of Arab properly in any manner they pleased.
Just as Southerners discovered after the Civil War, the victorious power has the right to dispose of your property in any way he deems fit.
France discovered learned this after the Franco-Prussian War when Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine.
Germany learned the same lesson after WWII, when it was forced to cede East Prussia to Poland.
In any event, the Arabs living on the land were for most part tenant farmers without any ownership rights.
Almost of the land in "Palestine" was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Damascus, who were only too willing to sell the land to the Jews. In fact, so willing were these landlords to sell, that the Zionist organizations lacked the funds to purchase all that came on the market.

The state must guarantee property rights, but for rights to have meaning there must be a guarantor. As the world exists now, the guarantor is the state. If the state no longer exists nor has no power to protect its citizens, then rights become a tenuous matter.
If you doubt this, visit Aztlan.net. You'll see maps depicting how the Western part of the United States is to be carved up into a new state called Aztlan.
Believe me, should the United States lose a major war and be occupied by a hostile power, the demands to create this new state will be made and made vociferously.
If Aztlan is ever created, you can be certain its rulers will not look kindly on the property rights of non-Hispanics.

The Geneva Convention is just that, a convention among states. There was (and is) no state called Arabia. As I said, the British promise was given to the Emir of Mecca alone and not to the Arabs.

I agree that the dispossession of Arab property by the Israelis is regrettable, but this unfortunate situation could have been avoided, if the Arabs had been willing to allow the Jews to settle in Palestine.
In fact, Arab hostility to Jewish settlement is the one constant fact in the history of the area.
Of course, Arabs want their property back, but they abandoned it in the first place or they sided with the invading Arab armies.
Might does not make right, but it makes fact. Facts may be unfortunate, but they are real.