Hey there Jerry.
You're welcome.
So, is it fair to say that the people that are now called "Palestinians" are recent arrivals to the West Bank and Gaza?
Yes indeedy.
Or were they living there in an Arabic society before Israel annexed those territories (or before Israel's charter was granted)?
There was living there an Arab society before Israel's charter was granted, but those people were not "Palestinians." They were various Arab immigrants from various Arab nations. That's why the UN saw no reason to deny Israel's claim to the land.
Are you saying that their ancestors did not live in that area, too?
That's what I'm saying.
quote:
No, I would have said that they were trying to get their ancestral and historical homeland back - through methods that were not always morally justifiable.
At the end of the day, however, the UN vote vindicated the Jews' claim to their original homeland.
So you are saying they were not trying to steal the lands of another country. And you say the Palestinians are.
That's what I'm saying.
How do the two cases differ, precisely?
One group has a legitimate, historical link to the land. The other clearly does not.
The Jews had ancestors who inhabited the area that was granted to them in Israel's charter, but the Palestinians do not have ancestors who inhabited the area that is in contention now?
That's the essential part of it. Not the full story, but certainly the essential part.
If the UN voted to create a Palestinian state that includes part of what is now Israel, or under occupation from Israel, would the Palestinians current efforts retroactively change status from attempting to steal to something more benign?
Perhaps in the minds of some people. But not in my mind, that is for sure!
I am really interested in hearing all opinions about this (and with due skepticism, since the issue seems so highly polarized)..
That's cool. I appreciate your skepticism. It's perfectly justified.
And I'm not kidding that I don't have enough real information to go on. I don't know the whole history of the Palestinian or the Zionist movements. And I find the situation very puzzling. It must be that someone is right and someone is wrong, but I have a heck of a time figuring out which is who on what points.
Well, that is what I am hoping to help out with right here.
It is a common misconception that the name "Palestinian" refers to a distinct culture, a distinct language, and a distinct nation of people. But none of this is actually true.
The name "Palestinian" is a
geographical reference, not a cultural, linguistic or national one. There is no distinct "Palestinian culture." There is no such language as "Palestinian." There is no nation by the name of "Palestine." The Arab group currently lobbying for the ownership of Israel has no right to that land whatsoever.
It is true that when the Israelites invaded Canaan (as it was known in those days) the land was not a nation, and it was not held by any single ethnic group. Canaan was inhabited by a large number of warring tribes who fought viciously amongst themselves.
These were the Hittites, Girga****es, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. None of these tribes even exist anymore. But the Jews do, and they are the ones who continue to live in a land which they conquered more than 3,000 years ago.
The Jewish people have demonstrated an unbroken connection with Israel for almost 3,700 years. There's hardly a government in the world which would deny that this constitutes a legitimate claim to ownership. Just ask the
Saami people of Sweden. Their claim to
Sapmi is based on the same criteria which the Jews now use to prove their ownership claims.
Let's cast our minds back to the day which followed the declaration of the re-created Israel...
In 1948, seven Arab armieswar on thestate of Israel. Most of the Arabs living within the boundaries of the Jewish state were encouraged (by the invading Arab armies) to leave, so as not to be caught up in the wholesale slaughter of the Jews. They were also promised all Jewish property after the Arab armies won the war.
Nineteen months later, the war had ended. Against all the odds Israel had been victorious. Those Arabs who did not flee immediately became today's Israeli Arab citizens. Those who fled became the seeds of the first wave of "Palestinian Arab refugees."
The result of this war was the creation of a Jewish State slightly larger than that which had been proposed by the United Nations two years before. What remained was taken by Egypt (occupying the Gaza Strip) and Trans-Jordan (occupying Judea-Samaria (the "West Bank" of the Jordan River) and Jerusalem. In the next year Trans-Jordan formally absorbed this territory into itself and granted Jordanian citizenship to all of the Arabs living there. Since Trans-Jordan was no longer confined to one side of the Jordan River, it renamed itself "Jordan." So in the final analysis, the Arabs of Palestine ended up with nearly 85% of the original territory of Palestine. But astonishingly, they wanted even more...!
From 1948-67, when all of Judea-Samaria (the West Bank, including Jerusalem!) ended up under Arab (Jordanian) control, no effort was
evermade to create a second Palestinian State for the Arabs living there. Yes, that's right - the idea to create a Palestinian state was first proposed
after this land had already
left Arab hands!
The Jordanians certainly had no intention of creating an Arab Palestinian state. Now if I was a Palestinian, I'd be somewhat peeved at the fact that my Arab brethren possessed the most disputed sections of Israeli territory for
nineteen years, and didn't do anything with it! If the Palestinians
really belonged there, why didn't they create their own state while they had the chance? Why didn't they do what the Jews had done?
Finally some information from the library of the American-Israeli Co-operative Enterprise - a non-partisan, non-profit organisation based in the United States of America...
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in Palestine continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
Many Jews were massacred by the Crusaders during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century-years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement-more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.
When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine.
When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said:
There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not.
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine:
There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said:
Palestine was part of the Province of Syria
and that,
politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.
A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri (later the chairman of the PLO) told the Security Council:
It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
I hope this helps to set the record straight.
