[dennisw]

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If you want on or off me Israel/MidEast/Islamic Jihad/ ping list please let me know.  Via Freepmail is best way.............

[LadyAustin]

Someone should tell this guy that the West Bank Arabs =are= Jordanian citizens. They carry Jordanian passports.

[Lazamataz]

Good article.

[DittoJed2]

Palestine was the name given to the region by the Romans. God gave the name Israel to Jacob, and the land to Israel. I believe God trumps Rome.

[ppaul]

Arab rulers view any "peace" treaty with Israel as simply a temporary way station on the road to eventual conquest.

Doe you suppose GWB has figured this out yet?

[smith288]

When ever I think of Israel and the troubles they are having both internally in their country and outside with the EU and UN I relate it directly with my particular faith. The resolution to me is nothing mankind can accomplish. When peace reigns over the land, it is done by the hand of God. Granted to a man who is evil and will claim his accomplisment was because he himself is God.

But I guess I could just be some religious fanatic. I wonder how many "fanatics" out there knew Israel would once again be granted their homeland before 1948?? Looky what God did....

[RightWhale]

the very heart of the "Ummah" or the Islamic motherland

That was a long time ago. Damascus is no longer the capitol of the Islamic State.

[Tom Jefferson]

While I don't think this will happen in the near future, I do believe that Israel will eventually have no choice but to annex the West Bank and Gaza. If and when this happens, it would be appropriate for the Palestinian Arab residents to be given the option of becoming Israeli, Jordanian, or Palestinian citizens. The Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza should, at that time, be granted as much autonomy as possible with Israel maintaining overall control.

While it sounds good, the above is unrealistic and impractical. If Israel were to annex the West Bank and Gaza and make them part of Israel, the Muslims would outnumber the Jews. They would then vote in a Muslim government and that would be the end of the Jewish state. It will never happen. Israel does not want to annex the West Bank and Gaza. They just want the Palestinian Arabs to stop killing Jews and let everyone live in peace each with their own state. That will never happen either because the Arabs won't let Israel live in peace, so there will be war between the two peoples for a long time.

[DonQ]

Well, actually it's Jordan that's really most of Palestine. When the League of Nations handed over to Britain in 1920 the Mandate for Palestine, the entire area known as Palestine consisted of what is now: the Kingdom of Jordan, Israel including the "occupied territories" and the Palestinian Authoriy, and the Golan Heights. Britain got the Mandate because it had actually promised to set up a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine.

Within a year, Britain split off the area east of the Jordan River, calling it Transjordan (and the part west of the Jordan River - now mostly Israel - was then called Cisjordan) and later setting up a Saudi family to rule it as the Kingdom of Jordan; Transjordan amounted to approx 78% of the area of the original Palestine Mandate. A year after that, Britain handed the Golan Heights over to the French Mandate for Syria.

So Jordan is most of what was Palestine, and apart from its "royal family" (made royal only by British political appointment), its population is ethnically indistinguishable from the Arabs west of the Jordan ... a fact that the Jordanian govt emphasized repeatedly over the years.

Of course, if you're old enough to remember the Middle East before 1967, you remember that, before Israel won the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, nobody ever mentioned a "Palestinian" people. For the 19 years that Jordan held the West Bank and Egypt held the Gaza Strip, there was no mention of another Arab nationality with any entitlement to an inch of that land; Jordan claimed the West Bank for itself, imposed its own laws and taxes and troops on the Arabs there, and Egypt did much the same on the Gaza, and the UN (and the White House and the rest of the world) did not talk about "Jordanian-occupied West Bank" or anything like that, nor did it breathe a word suggesting that the Jordanians were squatting where another Arab nation had a right to be. Only after the Jordanians and Egyptians were ousted did this mythical "Palestinian nation" get mentioned ... as an excuse to pry the land away from Jews. Even then, the crucial Arabs were sluggish about it; Jordan persisted in claiming the West Bank for itself until about 1988.

[Woodkirk]

Good Article. The problem with any Palestinian state is that it will be run by the Palestinian outlaws who terrorize not only Israel but its own people. Annexation by Israel is the only way for there to be peace in the West Bank and Gaza, and then the land may begin to prosper.

[theoutsideman]

This guy is a patsy. He was duped. What an idiot!

[Rule of Law]

Bump

[ThreeOfSeven]

Eventually, Palestinian resistance may shake off Israel's ugly reign of terror in the West Bank and Gaza. Until then Palestinian (and Israeli) victims will continue to accumulate.