It is not a secret. It is just something joe sixpack didn’t bother to find out, the MSM didn’t want to report, and politicians - and especially other arab countries - want to ignore.
Anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of the “Palestinian” people has known this for a long time.
A leftist once tried to convince me that Communists don’t really exist because “true communism” has never been tried.
100 million+ dead chasing a pipe dream.
This is all sophistry. In 1948 70% of the population of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, called at the time Palestine, were Arabs. It is now estimated that, even excluding the refugees, they constitute 50% of the population of that area. What they are called is irrelevant, they still have the right to live in the land in which they were born.
Israel has only two just options: either annex all the territories and grant full and equal citizenship to all the inhabitants or divide the land between themselves and the Arabs, which was the rational for the creation of the State of Israel in the first place. I recognize that both options are unpalatable and will not argue which would be better. A third option of expulsion of the Arab population is just not going to happen and would lead to a war in which Israel would be isolated from the whole world, possibly even the U.S.
Suppose an Arab child is born, today, on the West Bank. What is the nationality of that child? Note that I'm asking about the child's nationality, not his ethnic membership. For example, what passport should he eventually hold?
Should he get a Jordanian passport? If so, then you're saying that the West Bank is really, today, Jordanian territory.
But that doesn't make much sense. Should a person born, today, in Boston be automatically eligible for a British passport, just because England once ruled Boston?
So should that Arab child get an Israeli passport? If so, then you're saying that everyone born on the West Bank is an Israeli citizen, with all the voting rights, rights of free movement throughout Israel, etc. as any other Israeli.
Such a situation might well lead to the end of Israel.
In my mind, neither “Jordanian” nor “Israeli” seems to fit that Arab child. So is the child therefore stateless, not eligible for any passport and not eligible to vote in any elections anywhere at any time?
That seems wrong also. IMHO, "Palestinian" is the only option left.
You have been seriously misled.
You might be able to make a case that there is no nation of Palestine. Asserting there are no Palestinians displays the depth of your ignorance and gullibility.
In 1917 the Balfour Declaration stated:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The existing "non-jewish" people are Palestinians.
Call them Palestinians or call them Jordanians or call them something else, there are a couple of million of them and they don’t like Israelies at all. Changing their name won’t make them go away.
Just to be clear, ‘Jordanians’ are also a very modern creation, ruled by the family that were the protectors of Mecca before the Saudis.
This is an intellectual how many angels can dance on a pin arugment. It doesn’t matter what the Arabs living in Palestine were once. They are an insane, dangerous but distinct cultural entity now and the now is what the Israelis have to deal with.
This is an intellectual how many angels can dance on a pin arugment. It doesn’t matter what the Arabs living in Palestine were once. They are an insane, dangerous but distinct cultural entity now and the now is what the Israelis have to deal with.
This is an intellectual how many angels can dance on a pin arugment. It doesn’t matter what the Arabs living in Palestine were once. They are an insane, dangerous but distinct cultural entity now and the now is what the Israelis have to deal with.
In the case of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, they welcomed jews from the 14th century onwards and in the 1700s 60% of the world's jews lived in Poland-Lithuania
There were no state sponsored pogroms
But that didn't help Poland-Lithuania which got ripped into three parts and the largest Jewish areas got incorporated in Russia and faced pogroms and then the Holocaust.
When the Jews were in Poland, it prospered, but that was because Jews were skilled in finance and in technology from Spain and Germany (where they came from) and they helped, along with the Germans, Armenians and others to vitalize the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth economy
BFLR