Palestine – The Abhorrent Arab Aberration…writes David Singer
Continuing international demands for an Israeli withdrawal from every square metre of the territory occupied by Israel in the Six Day War – now misleadingly termed ” The occupied Palestinian Territories ” (OPT) in countless UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions – acquires particular resonance on the 46th anniversary of the outbreak of that War on 5 June.
This territory – in which 500,000 Jews now live – had not one Jew or Jewish settlement located within it between 1948 – 1967.
Transjordan had occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem whilst Egypt had occupied Gaza after their invasion of Palestine along with five other Arab armies in May 1948.
Jews then living there had been driven out whilst Jews generally were denied their legal entitlement to “close settlement” on that land including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes – as prescribed by article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter.
Nineteen years was surely long enough for a Palestinian Arab state to have been created in this Jew-free territory- the identical area of land that PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab League now consider to again be made Jew free to end the Arab-Jewish conflict.
After all – with all the Jews gone and their legal right to live there eliminated by the power of the gun – it would have been very easy to declare a Palestinian Arab State there – seek membership in the UN and its agencies – and live happily ever after in peace with the Jewish state.
Yet it didn’t happen.
Instead the Arab residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem voluntarily chose to unify these territories in 1950 with Transjordan to form a new territorial entity renamed Jordan.
In 1964 demands by the Palestinian Arabs to rid former Palestine of any Jewish presence became entrenched in the Charter of the PLO.
Article 24 of the Charter clarified that the unification of the West Bank with Transjordan was nevertheless to remain unchanged:
” This Organization ( PLO) does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area.”
What is now deemed so essential for peace in 2013 – the so called “two-state solution” was never even contemplated in 1964 – when it could have been created with the stroke of an Arab League pen within the next three years.
Instead the Arab states placed their support behind the newly constituted PLO and its proclaimed aim to wipe Israel off the map.
Promises of yet another 1948 style Arab invasion to wipe out the Jewish State were threatened – at a time when Jews and Jewish settlement in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were not an “obstacle to peace” – since no Jews lived there.
Cairo Radio’s Voice of the Arabs proclaimed on 18 May 1967:
“The Zionist barrack in Palestine is about to collapse and be destroyed. Every one of the hundred million Arabs has been living for the past nineteen years on one hope – to live to see the day Israel is liquidated…There is no life, no peace nor hope for the gangs of Zionism to remain in the occupied land ….The sole method we shall apply against Israel is a total war which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.”
On 20 May 1967 Syrian Defence Minister (later President) Hafez Assad stated:
“Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse any aggression, but to initiate the act ourselves, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland of Palestine. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. I believe that the time has come to begin a battle of annihilation.”
Assad was backed up by Syrian President Dr Nureddin al- Attasi on 22 May 1967 – when he told his assembled troops:
“We want a full scale, popular war of liberation… to destroy the Zionist enemy”
Not to be outdone – Egypt’s President Nasser told the General Council of the Confederation of Arab Trade Unions on 26 May 1967:
“Taking over Sharm el Sheikh meant confrontation with Israel (and) also meant that we were ready to enter a general war with Israel. The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel”
On 30 May 1967 Nasser declared:
“The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel … to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not of more declarations.”
Nasser’s bellicosity was matched by Iraqi President Aref on 31 May 1948:
“The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map”
PLO head – Ahmed Shukairy confidently predicted the fate awaiting Jews on 1 June 1967:
“Those who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.”
The rest is history – yet the world currently suffers from memory deficit in failing to understand that what was possible between 1948-1967 cannot be achieved in 2013.
Lest we forget…
David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network
ben David and Ann have a lot of time, vacuous areas where information and logic is required, but, heaps of hutzpah !
David Singer has replied generously and rationally to Ann’s incredible display of lack of knowledge in the subject she seems so anxious to opt for a public expression of her opinions.
The palstinian camp has been busy inventing all kinds of catchy ( they reckon ) termonologies in oredr to …force Israel to succumb to their fallacies.
The so called Palestinian identity, yet another farcical term mostlikely to succeed, however, has been present among us ever since the first suicide bomb was detonated in the midlle of Jeish Jerusalim and, indeed, Tel Aviv. Ever since then NOTHING has really changed. Well, Ann, ben David and the rest of the shlemils among and not so among us, these seemingly innocent rethorical assaults on the Jewish State are deemed to fail simply because the momentum for a dedicated international support for a lost cause is being slowly and surely lost. International political circumstance and the increased awarness of an aggressive anti Western jihadist culture cum reality awakening, the farcical casese made by the parasites leading the palestininas, the overt support palestinians are receiving from proscribed regimes and NGO and a lot more, shall see that at least Area C shall never be abandoned by the wonderful Zionist State of mine, Israel. As about settlements outside the Area C, sorry to inform yourse , but we only alowed one and once an Arriel Sharon catastrophic moment. Maybe when the poor bugger shall wake up and lead Israel again you may have your chances. Otherwise: FORGET IT !!!
OK David, so what do you want? Are you saying that Israel has every right to annex the OPT? Israel has annexed the territory East Jerusalem but not assigned it’s inhabitants automatic Israeli citizenship. They must apply and this is not often granted. Do you suggest annexing the OPT?
Do you suggest that 1.5 million Palestinians to remain stateless forever and subject to military occupation? An occupation which costs Israel hugely not only financially but also it’s moral reputation in the rest of the world. Armies of occupation are never welcome anywhere.
If the Palestinians and Arabs are as nefarious as you suggest, what do YOU propose as a solution to the present situation or do you really believe that the status quo is preferable?
The Palestinians had their chance for peace. They started with the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority who have funded numerous suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and are led by a Holocaust denier. The they elected a virulently anti-Semitic group who believe that it is their religious duty to murder every Jew in the world.
What do YOU suggest? Withdrawing from the territories and giving more and more land for terrorists to attack Israel from, and bringing rockets and mortars — which will NEVER stop until Israel is destroyed — closer to major Israeli cities?
Ann
I have personally been advocating a division of the West Bank between Jordan and Israel since 1979.when I started the “Jordan is Palestine” Committee.
Sovereignty in the West Bank has been non-existent since Britain withdrew as Mandatory in 1948 and handed back the problem to the UN.
Allocating sovereignty in the West Bank between Jordan (the last Arab occupier) and Israel (the current occupier) seems to me the most logical and sensible thing to do.
Certainly this could have occurred until 1988 – when Jordan relinquished any claim to the West Bank.
With the advent of Oslo in 1993 and the Bush Roadmap in 2003 -a negotiating process was set up that was supposed to ultimately lead to the division of the West Bank between Israel and the PLO.
That has not happened and in my humble opinion is unlikely to happen after 20 years of failed negotiations for the reasons clearly stated in my last article in J Wire – “Palestine – pouring money into a bottomless pit”. Please read it and feel free to comment.
95% of the I.5 million Arabs living in the OPT live in Areas A and B where the PLO has sole administrative control. The PLO has already repudiated OSLO and the Bush Road Map by taking unilateral action outside those agreements.
As a result – “Palestine” is already a member state of UNESCO, has been granted non- member state observer status at the UN., has been declared a country by its President Mahmoud Abbas and has been recognized as a State by some 130 UN member states.
The PLO could declare a state in Areas A and B today in continued defiance of Oslo and the Roadmap and start to issue passports and so end the claimed statelessness of those people overnight. They were after all Jordanian citizens until 1988. The PLO chooses not to go down this route. That is their prerogative. But don’t try to make out the claim of statelessness when it could be theirs tomorrow.
Has Israel got the right to annex the OPT? In my opinion it is entitled to maintain that claim since it falls within the area that was to be the site for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home under the Mandate for Palestine – which right is preserved until today under article 80 of the UN Charter. Such right was to be without prejudice to the civil and religious rights (no mention of “political”) of the “non-Jewish communities”. Again I suggest you acquaint yourself with the Mandate document.
You should also be aware that the PLO have considered the 1922 Mandate and everything that followed to be illegal and void. Again that is their prerogative and they have had to live with the consequences of their decisions since – including their failure to accept the 1937 Peel Report, 1947 UN Partition Plan and doing nothing to create the Palestinian state in the OPT – in the entire area they now claim – between 1948-1967 when not one Jew lived there.
You appear to be totally unaware of the history, geography and demography of former Palestine
Of course you are entitled to whatever view you choose to take – whether it is based on fact or fiction..
I prefer to base my opinion and my articles on established facts and law.
The only realistic two-state solution in Palestine in my opinion involves redrawing the current border between Jordan and Israel in direct negotiations to create the Jewish State of Israel in about 20% of former Palestine and the Arab state of Jordan in the remaining 80% of former Palestine. No one – Arab or Jew – would have to leave their current homes.
Ann
Ann
Have you gone missing in action? Can I take your failure to respond to mean you agree with my comments.?
If so – our exchange would have been meaningful.
J Wire Editor – Just in case Ann is unaware of my response – could you please send her a copy to make sure she has read it.
Maybe she is still in a state of shock that you honestly believe that the Palestinians, having lost most of their land, will accept the loss of their national identity as well ?
Ben David
The Palestinians have put their national identity at risk each time they rejected offers to resolve the conflict in 1922,1937,1947, between 1948-1967, 1993, 2000/1, 2003 and 2008. How many more opportunities are to be afforded them before everyone says – “enough is enough”?
Why should Ann Fink be in a state of shock because I believe enough is enough and that negotiations should be commenced between Israel and Jordan – the last Arab occupier of the West Bank between 1948-1967 – to restore as far as is now possible – given the changed circumstances on the ground – the status quo that existed at the outbreak of the Six Day War?
What do you believe should now happen? More of the same that has gone on for the last 46 years?
Your first sentence reveals your skewed perspective. Judea and Samaria are not the territories of some malicously concocted people who style themselves as “Palestinian”. There is no occupation; Jews came into possession of lands taken from them first by illegal acts and then by acts of aggression. That there are people there who are not Jews and whom Israel does not want as citizens is a side issue. They can have self-government or they can emigrate; Jews have no more oblgations toward those Arabs than did Kuwait which expelled them after they sided with the invading Iraqis and that expulsion was justified by the Saudis. Other groups had to leave areas due to changed politics, not least Jews from Arab lands, but Greeks from Norther Cyprus or Germans from the former Czechoslovakia come to mind; why the special status for “Palestinians” who have repeatedly rejected statehood if that entailed Jewish self-determination. And by-the-bye it is accepted that an aggresssor nation which loses a war is started loses territory, pays compensation and submits to the demands of the successful defender, the exception being that if the defender is Jewish then the Jews have to sue for peace. That exception is unjust and antisemitic.
Excellent article David.
The Arab leaders could not say it more clearly and repeatedly that Israel should be annihilated.
Send this article to John Kerry.
He doesn’t seem to get it.
Ironically the Arabds don’t have to annihilate Israel. Israel is doing it on its own by expanding settlements. Soon the Palestinian population will euqal and outnumber the Jewish population, Israel will have to displace them into Jordan or face the issues of equal rights and while its chief financier, military supplier and diplomatic blocker is sinking deeper into debt, unwinnable war and the prospect of a confronting a new rival to power in the pacific.
Minus US money, weapons and vetos, isarel will have to fund its huge military and occupation forces on it own.