Posted on 01/18/2002 5:59:49 PM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian
Out of curiosity, what is your criteria for those who do and do not have the right to their own state?
I imagine that when practically every country on earth save one (the USA) has killed your people for sport...
...You're happy to receive even 20% of the independent Land promised you.
More like Balfour wanted British Zionist political support in World War I, and once the war was one, certain unscrupulous Colonial Office types fell back on their time-honored practice of playing the "natives" off against eachother.
Divide and Rule.
Simply as a point of legal rectitude, Arab Palestine -- Jordan -- should grant citizenship to any and all Arab Palestinians for the asking. It's Jordan's 1921 raison d'etre, after all; just isn't kosher to shut the Palestinians out.
Okay, that point made, let's consider the next question... what about the West Bank palestinians who don't want to move to Jordan (assuming Jordan opened the gates to any who did)?
I do not necessarily agree that the Palestinians have a "right" to "their own state", even granting the following:
I don't think that this is entirely fair; we should at least modify our consideration by asking, "How 'brutal' would the Israeli administration be if a large number (majority?) of the Palestinians weren't calling for the liquidation of the Israeli State and Race?" Israeli brutality hasn't happened in a vacuum; if the Palestinians' kindergartens weren't teaching innocent children that Allah lusts for the flesh of Jews medium-rare, and the Israelis were still treating the Palies as they are, that would be truly heinous. As it is, the Palies' bloodlust makes it an ethical mess.
But let's go deeper, and look at your criteria for Statehood:
Not good enough. In fact, not even good enough if the Israeli administration is "brutal".
Oppressive Governance is a necessary pre-condition for a Right of Revolution (i.e., tyrannical governments, not just ones, should be overthrown or seceded from), but it is not a sufficient condition. You must also be offering the people a better alternative. To illustrate my point: the record of History should prefer the Czar to the Communists. The Czar killed his thousands, but the Communists killed their millions. Therefore, the Communists were not in the Right in fomenting Revolution; though the Czar was oppressive, they sought (and did succeed) to bring about something far worse. Unlike the American Revolutionists, who were Freedom Fighters who sought to exchange Monarchy for Republic, the Russian Communist Revolutionists sought to exchange Murder on a comparatively small scale for murder on a grand scale. They were, therefore, not Freedom Fighters, but insurrectionist terrorists (who unfortunately won).
So you must have a proximate cause (oppression)...AND a better alternative...
...For your Right of Revolution to be Just.
The present Palestinian insurrection fails the test (horribly). Even if we grant their proximate cause (which is not entirely fair, we should see how Israel behaves when jewish school-buses aren't getting machine-gunned) of "oppressive Israeli governance", look at the Palestinian Revolutionists:
(All of which doesn't even address the fact that these groups have more or less promised Aggressive War against Israel upon the formation of a sovereign State... not a particularly good sign in itself.)
Now, it would be one thing if the Palestinians had a group of Resistors who were quoting "the Rights of Man" and singing the praises of Constitutional Republicanism while not machine-gunning schoolbuses full of Jewish children. If Palestinian Revolutionists were truly offering their people anything better than the Israeli administration, and the Israelis were still bull-dozing their houses, then you've got both Proximate Cause (oppression) and Righteous Alternative (a better promise) for just revolution.
But that ain't the case at all.
It's one thing to, on general human-rights principles, condemn the oppressions of the Czar in this case (if we want to cast Israel in that role). But to endorse the Palestinian demand for statehood given their current crop of Revolutionists would be tantamount not only to criticizing the Czar, and supporting the Red October Communists against him.
For the Palestinians to have a just Right of Revolution, two things must happen:
Under such conditions, the rule of the "Czar" (Israel) must be preferred to the terrorist insurrection of the "Red October Revolutionists" (Hamas, Jihad, PFLP, and PLO). To the outside observer, It's actually the least overall Rights-oppressive option for the average Palestinian.
And that will remain the case until the Palestinians themselves (it's their responsibility) bring forth Independence Representatives who are not proposing to replace Oppression with Utter Tyranny.
And as long as Palestinian "educational TV" teaches palestinian kiddies that the Jews are a sub-human virus to be exterminated from the earth, I don't see that happening. Ever.
Crappy, but true.
If I gave that impression I apologize. But as far as I can tell the Palestinians are "ruled" for lack of a better word by the Palestinian Authority not Jordan and thus already have their own government if it could be called that.
Who are they going to revolt against?
Presently, they are (at the incitement of their Imams) revolting against continued Israeli administration of the West Bank areas not under the administration of the PLO, at least that's my impression. (Well, many seek the total destruction of Israel, but those are just plain wrong and may be treated however Israel sees fit).
Is this revolt just?
No, I don't believe it is. Since the PLO is not a just Government, Israel has no duty whatsoever to respect the "independence" movement of the Palestinian insurrectionists, any more than the Czar should have respected the insurrection of the Communists. Those who advocate Israeli withdrawal and PLO rule seek to bring their fellow-citizens under a worse tyranny; Israel has no obligation to grant them their aims.
In fact, Israel would be justified in liquidating the PLO administration as a bad experiment that didn't work out, and see if the Palestinians will either come to terms with Israeli administration, or bring forward more worthy independence representatives.
In 1921, they certainly hadn't the power to stop British abrogation of the original Balfour agreements. Fait accompli.
Now that they have an army, I expect they will try to hold on to what they have left.
Mea culpa. (Good grief)
The problem is- sheep and goats are quite damaging to the environment. They graze down plants to the root and will eat almost any vegetation without hesitation. They soon destroy all natural green cover and the soil has a harder time retaining moisture each progressive year. Before long, the land is too dry to support regular agriculture even though the soil is fertile enough and the rainfall should be sufficient. The land erodes, and people find it harder and harder to support themselves because they have turned their own land into desert. That is the story of much of the middle east.
The Israelis- and those others who joined them, made the land bloom again by restoring order. People became secure in the land and didn't need to depend on sheep and goats exclusively. They put forth great effort to restore the cover that had been destoyed by overgrazing. (And it worked.)
There is a huge plot of land in Lybia, I believe, which had been desert as long as anyone could remember, part of that vast and fearsome North African desert. It was BARE, with a bit of scrub and ittle if any grass. About twenty years ago a sheik bought it and fenced it in. He didn't seed it or irrigate it or anything. He just prevented people's wandering herds of goats and sheep from having access. The aerial view of that region is remarkable: it is all still barren desert with a bit if scrub here and there, EXCEPT for this huge hexagonal fenced-off area which is a vibrant green year-round now from all the plants that have grown up. Perhaps if there were a better system of property rights, others could join that sheik and make the whole region green again, as it was long ago.
There is not now and never was an Arab Palestine.
Jewish Palestine
is an oxymoron just like a Christian Jew.
I'm sorry, but this article is fatally flawed though well intended.
BTW, I just wanted to say that I didn't see anything for which you should apologize. Mainly, I was using your post as a segue to some points I wanted to make about the Right of Revolution, and I probably did a poor job of making that transition.
Lemme boil down my long 2 posts into something a little more compact:
1.) A Palestinian Arab State in western Palestine (i.e., Israel) cannot be justified on the basis of Legal National Claim. On the Legal basis of National Claim, Israel has the rightful claim to the West Bank, not Arab Palestine. Arab Palestine has claim to the East Bank (Jordan).
2.) Okay, so if it can't be justified on National Claim, we would have to find justification for it as a fundamental Human Right. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Trouble is, it is only Just to institute Government which is less oppressive than the status quo -- using the standards of the American Declaration of Independence as the guide to determine "better" or "worse", because those standards are just and right. None of the current Palestinian Revolutionary organizations are seeking that goal.
Hence, the Palestinians don't have a National legal-claim to the Land, and their current Revolutionists don't fulfill the universal Human Right criteria of Government, either.
So, under the status quo, they have no right to a Sovereign State on either count (other than Jordan, per National Claim).
That portion of the "Palestine Mandate" reserved to the Arabs. (called "TransJordan)
Jewish Palestine
That portion of the "Palestine Mandate" reserved to fulfillment of the Jewish National Home (called "Israel")
Yasser Arafat has stated that Jordan is Palestine. Other Arab leaders, even King Hussein and Prince Hassan of Jordan, from time to time have affirmed that "Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine." Moreover, in 1970-1971, later called the "Black September" period, when King Hussein waged war against Yasser Arafat's Arab PLO forces, who had been operating freely in Jordan until then, it was considered not an invasion of foreign terrorists but a civil war. It was "a final crackdown" against those of "his people" whom he accused of trying to establish a separate Palestinian state, under Arab Palestinian rule instead of his own, "criminals and conspirators who use the commando movement to disguise their treasonable plots," to "destroy the unity of the Jordanian and Palestinian people." (June 2, 1971: Hussein's orders to Jordanian Premier Wasfi Tel, cited in Hashemite Kingdom, p. 61.) [History of Jordan, Jordan as Palestine -- http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/jordan.html]
Arab Palestine = Jordan.
Seriously, there are some very salient points made by piasa!
Being part American Indian and a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, I can attest that historical America's hands are not clean when it comes to killing "people for sport."
Nor, I'm sure, must I remind you of the on-going holocaust in this country called "choice", which cuts across all racial, cultural, and financial groups, but which - in the end - still kills Americans nonetheless. And, as you know, both "holocausts" in this country were (and are) sanctioned by this government.
None of this is to say that the war of expansion against the Indians in 18th and 19th century America is analogous to Israel's occupation of a land ceded to them both by God and its Arab neighbors. Just wanted to chide you for a rare "sin of omission" on American history. :)
BTW, this is an excellent article, and thank you for posting it.
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