Palestine – Time to tell the Truth

Republican front runner for next President of the United States – Newt Gingrich – has done himself and his campaign great credit in branding the Palestinians as an invented nation…writes David Singer.Gingrich stirred up a real hornets’ nest when he said in an interview with the Jewish Television Network:

Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire.

I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic

Gingrich has subsequently refused to back down and has now gone even further in stating:

The fact is, the Palestinian claim to a right of return is based on a historically false story. Somebody oughta have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland, point out the context in which Israel came into existence, and “Palestinian” did not become a common term until after 1977. This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage. And we refuse to tell the truth when the other side lies. And you’re not gonna win the long run if you’re afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth.

This propaganda war has been successfully waged by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)  since its creation by the KGB in 1964.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service in an interview with Front Page Magazine on 1 March 2004 spilt the beans on the PLO and its connection to the Soviet regime when he said:

The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the “Palestinian territories” occupied by Israel, and the “Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia,” created by the KGB in 1975, which organized numerous bombing attacks against US airline offices in Western Europe.

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow.

The language used in the 1964 version of the PLO Charter was slick –  designed to establish that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians”. Who could possibly disagree with that motherhood statement – especially if it was repeated ad nauseum?

The problem was that the Charter’s definition of “Palestinians” included only the Arab residents of former Palestine and a limited number of Jews.

Article 6. The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian parent after this date whether in Palestine or outside is a Palestinian.

Article 7. Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine.

It didn’t take long for this gratuitous acceptance of some Jews to virtually vanish when the 1968 edition of the Charter declared:

The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.

Non-Arab Christians and non-believer residents of former Palestine were totally rejected as being Palestinians. Their descendants as well as the descendants of any of the Jews who had lived in Palestine since the beginning of the Zionist invasion were persona non grata in their homeland of their birth..

If that seems like racism,smells like racism and is still contained in the PLO Charter today – then it is racism.

Article 24 in the 1964 version of the Charter also excluded any claim by the Palestinians to the West Bank and Gaza – and by inference to Jordan – which together had comprised about 80% of former Palestine

This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area.

This article was subsequently deleted from the Charter following Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and Egypt’s loss of Gaza in the Six Day War in 1967.

The significance of that deletion – and indeed the invention of the Palestinians in 1964 – was underscored when the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Zuhair Mohsen told the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.

“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

Total rejection of international law by the Palestinians was also part and parcel of this invented nation – since the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1946 had already recognized the legitimate right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine whilst the United Nations had admitted Israel as a member on 11 May 1949.

Article 17 of the 1964 Charter expressed this view in the following manner:

The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination.

By 1968 Article 17 had been excised and replaced by Article 20 which declared:

The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

Gingrich’s statements are indeed the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The PLO has seen its propaganda campaign succeed to a stage where “Palestine” has been admitted as a member “state” of UNESCO in apparent contravention of the UNESCO Constitution, the Montevideo Convention and customary international law..

The PLO’s stated intention of liberating and replacing both Israel and Jordan in the United Nations as its192nd member still remains unrevoked in the PLO Charter.

Seventeen years of fruitless PLO negotiations with Israel have now been virtually abandoned – with the two-state solution envisaged by the Oslo Accords and advocated by President Bush in his Roadmap now in its death throes.

Gingrich’s message to the PLO is clear – return to the negotiating table and hammer out a deal with Israel or face the consequences if this has not happened and Gingrich becomes America’s next President.

The PLO cannot say it was not warned.

David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network