Posted on 01/18/2002 5:59:49 PM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian
Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement.... There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its 'right to exist' a favor, or a negotiable concession. -- Abba Eban, former Foreign Minister of Israel
BACKGROUND
For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. "The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years," he said.
The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:
Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote of Palestine:
Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as: “...[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse.... A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.... We never saw a human being on the whole route.... There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
In the late 19th century, the rise of religious and racist anti-Semitism led to a resurgence of pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, shattering promises of equality and tolerance. This stimulated Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe.
Simultaneously, a wave of Jews immigrated to Palestine from Yemen, Morocco, Iraq and Turkey. These Jews were unaware of Theodor Herzl's political Zionism or of European pogroms. They were motivated by the centuries-old dream of the “Return to Zion” and a fear of intolerance. Upon hearing that the gates of Palestine were open, they braved the hardships of travel and went to the “Land of Israel.”
The Zionist ideal of a return to Israel has profound religious roots. Many Jewish prayers speak of Jerusalem, Zion and the Land of Israel. The injunction not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, is a major tenet of Judaism. The Hebrew language, the Torah, laws in the Talmud the Jewish calendar and Jewish holidays and festivals such as Shavuot all originated in Israel and revolve around its seasons and conditions. Jews pray toward Jerusalem and recite the words “next year in Jerusalem” every Passover. Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that the Jewish commonwealth can be built.
In 1897, Jewish leaders formally organized the Zionist movement, calling for the restoration of the Jewish national home in Palestine, where Jews could find sanctuary and self-determination, and work for the renaissance of their civilization and culture.
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration:
According to the Peel Commission, appointed by the British Government to investigate the cause of the 1936 Arab riots, "the field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, including Transjordan."
The Mandate for Palestine's purpose was to put into effect the Balfour Declaration. It specifically referred to "the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine" and to the moral validity of "reconstituting their National Home in that country." The term "reconstituting" shows recognition of the fact that Palestine had been the Jews' home. Furthermore, the British were instructed to "use their best endeavors to facilitate" Jewish immigration, to encourage settlement on the land and to "secure" the Jewish National Home. The word "Arab" does not appear in the Mandatory award.
The Mandate was formalized by the 52 governments at the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.
It is a little-known fact that many Arab leaders welcomed the idea that a free Israel would boost the common lot of everyone in the surrounding territories. For example, Emir Faisal, King of Syria, welcomed Dr. Chaim Weizmann’s efforts to establish an Israel with Jerusalem as its national capital.
Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. It acknowledged the "racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people" and concluded that "the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine." Furthermore, the agreement looked to the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and called for all necessary measures "...to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil."
Emir Faisal also saw the Zionist movement as a companion to the Arab nationalist movement, fighting against imperialism, as he explained in a letter to Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919, one day after Chaim Weizmann presented the Zionist case to the Paris conference. Faisal wrote:
THE FIRST BETRAYAL
Brown -- Golan Heights; ceded to French Syrian Arab Mandate, 1923
Tan -- Arab Palestine, separated and closed to Jewish settlement
Yellow -- Jewish Palestine, remaining area of Jewish National Homeland
As British historian Paul Johnson noted, Zionists were hardly tools of imperialists given the powers’ general opposition to their cause. “Everywhere in the West, the foreign offices, defense ministries and big business were against the Zionists.”
THE SECOND BETRAYAL
In 1921, Haj Amin el-Husseini first began to organize small groups of suicide squads — fedayeen — to terrorize Jews. Haj Amin hoped to duplicate the success of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey by driving the Jews out of Palestine just as Kemal had driven the invading Greeks from his country. Arab radicals were able to gain influence because the British Administration was unwilling to take effective action against them until they finally revolted against British rule.
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.”
The British encouraged the Palestinians to attack the Jews. According to Meinertzhagen, Col. Waters Taylor (financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine 1919-23) met with Haj Amin a few days before Easter, in 1920, and told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world...that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”
Haj Amin took the Colonel’s advice and instigated a riot. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, allowing the Arab mob to attack Jews and loot their shops.
Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. His power was so absolute “no Muslim in Palestine could be born or die without being beholden to Haj Amin.” The Mufti’s henchmen also insured he would have no opposition by systematically killing Palestinians from rival clans who were discussing cooperation with the Jews.
The Arabs found rioting to be an effective political tool because of the lax British attitude and response toward violence against Jews.
THE THIRD BETRAYAL
The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”
In November 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti's requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches....The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely....the Jews....” Hitler replied:
The Husseini family continued to play a role in Palestinian affairs, with Faisal Husseini, whose father was the Mufti's nephew, regarded as one of their leading spokesmen in the territories until his death in May 2001.
THE FOURTH BETRAYAL
As World War II ended, the magnitude of the Holocaust became known. This accelerated demands for a resolution to the question of Palestine so the survivors of Hitler's "Final Solution" might find sanctuary in a homeland of their own.
The British tried to work out an agreement acceptable to both Arabs and Jews, but their insistence on the former's approval guaranteed failure because the Arabs would not make any concessions. They subsequently turned the issue over to the UN in February 1947.
The UN established a Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) to devise a solution. Delegates from 11 nations went to the area and found what had long been apparent: The conflicting national aspirations of Jews and Arabs could not be reconciled.
The contrasting attitudes of the two groups "could not fail to give the impression that the Jews were imbued with the sense of right and were prepared to plead their case before any unbiased tribunal, while the Arabs felt unsure of the justice of their cause, or were afraid to bow to the judgment of the nations.”
Although most of the Commission's members acknowledged the need to find a compromise solution, it was difficult for them to envision one given the parties' intractability. At a meeting with a group of Arabs in Beirut, the Czechoslovakian member of the Commission told his audience: "I have listened to your demands and it seems to me that in your view the compromise is: We want our demands met completely, the rest can be divided among those left.”
When they returned, the delegates of seven nations — Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, The Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay — recommended the establishment of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, to be joined by economic union, with Jerusalem an internationalized enclave. Three nations — India, Iran and Yugoslavia — recommended a unitary state with Arab and Jewish provinces. Australia abstained.
The Jews of Palestine were not satisfied with the small territory allotted to them by the Commission, nor were they happy that Jerusalem was severed from the Jewish State; nevertheless, they welcomed the compromise. The Arabs rejected the UNSCOP's recommendations.
The ad hoc committee of the UN General Assembly rejected the Arab demand for a unitary Arab state. The majority recommendation for partition was subsequently adopted 33-13 with 10 abstentions on November 29, 1947.
Violence in the Holy Land broke out almost immediately after the UN announced partition on November 29, 1947. Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee's spokesman, had told the UN prior to the partition vote the Arabs would drench "the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood . . . ."
On May 4, 1948, the Arab Legion attacked Kfar Etzion. The defenders drove them back, but the Legion returned a week later. After two days, the ill-equipped and outnumbered settlers were overwhelmed. Many defenders were massacred after they had surrendered. This was prior to the invasion by the regular Arab armies that followed Israel's declaration of independence.
The UN blamed the Arabs for the violence. The UN Palestine Commission was never permitted by the Arabs or British to go to Palestine to implement the resolution. On February 16, 1948, the Commission reported to the Security Council:
The partition resolution was never suspended or rescinded. Thus, Israel, the Jewish State in Palestine, was born on May 14, as the British finally left the country. Five Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq) immediately invaded Israel. Their intentions were declared by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
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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