Trump won’t swallow Erekat’s PLO-Palestine poison pill
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Secretary-General Saeb Erekat has managed to grab international headlines to promote yet another PLO canard regarding the 100-years-old Jewish-Arab conflict…writes David Singer.
Unabashedly and unashamedly Erekat has declared:
“Israel is internationally recognised as the occupying power over 100 percent of Palestine, including in and around occupied East Jerusalem”
Yet according to Article 2 of the PLO Charter – Jordan is the occupying power over 78% of Palestine.
“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”
The British Mandate for Palestine between 1920 and 1946 encompassed what is today called:
- Israel (17%),
- Jordan (78%),
- Judea and Samaria (West Bank) (4%) and
- Gaza (1%).
The Hashemite dynasty has been the occupying power in Jordan since 25 May 1946 (having rebuffed the PLO’s attempt to overthrow it in 1970).
Hamas has occupied Gaza since 2007.
40% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) was occupied by the Palestinian Authority between 1993 and 2013 until the Palestinian Authority was disbanded on 3 January 2013 by decree of Mahmoud Abbas – the PLO assuming occupation thereafter.
Erekat’s claim that Israel occupies 100% of Palestine is therefore utter rubbish.
Erekat has revived one of the greatest travesties perpetrated by the United Nations on the Jewish-Arab conflict in its publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestinian problem” (“publication”) – omitting any map of the British Mandate for Palestine.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations – Yehuda Blum – told the UN General Assembly on 30 November 1978:
“At the end of the first part of the publication, ostensibly dealing with the period of the Palestine Mandate, there appear a number of maps. The one map that is conspicuously absent is the official map of the Palestine Mandate which, until 1946, included Transjordan on the east bank of the Jordan River. This map was omitted because it does not fit into the PLO’s own scheme, as it would show too clearly that a Palestinian Arab state has already been in existence for 32 years on more than three-quarters of the territory of mandated Palestine – that is, the state now called Jordan. That embarrassment is eliminated in this purportedly scholarly and impartial publication by the simple expedient of eliminating the map.”
Why then has Erekat chosen to follow the UN and delete Jordan from the map of former Palestine?
It has everything to do with the negotiations between Israel and the PLO – conducted with little success since 1993 and having been stalled since April 2014 – and the current concerted effort by President Trump to resolve this long-running conflict that has defied so many other American Presidents.
Jordan can help resolve that conflict – precisely because Jordan is historically, geographically and demographically 78% of Palestine.
Jordan remains the key to Trump ending the conflict between Jews and Arabs in former “Palestine”.
Whilst Jordan was part of the Mandate for Palestine between 1922 and 1946 – the League of Nations had under article 25 restricted the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home within just 22% of Palestine located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Following Jordan’s independence in the remaining 78% of Palestine in 1946 – Jordan rejected international overtures under the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1982 Reagan Plan to enter into negotiations with Israel.
Erekat’s outburst signals concerns within the PLO that Trump may be looking to bring Jordan into negotiations with Israel to resolve competing Jewish and Arab claims in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) – whose last internationally recognised occupying power was Great Britain in 1948.
Trump won’t be swallowing Erekat’s poison pill.
David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network
According to ABC Radio News the Palestine’s PA held a cabinet meeting in Gaza yesterday.
Adrian
Just what one would expect from the $1 billion publicly funded ABC.
The PA ceased to exist on 3 January 2013.
Are you too apparently unaware of what Mahmoud Abbas decreed?
David
I refer you to the following for comment:
HUSSEIN SURRENDERS CLAIMS ON WEST BANK TO THE P.L.O.; U.S. PEACE PLAN IN JEOPARDY; Internal Tensions
By JOHN KIFNER, Special to the New York Times
Published: August 1, 1988
•
AMMAN, Jordan, July 31— King Hussein of Jordan tonight abandoned to the Palestine Liberation Organization any claim to the Israeli-occupied West Bank his Hashemite family ruled between 1948 and 1967.
”We respect the wish of the P.L.O., the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, to secede from us in an independent Palestinian state,” the King said in a dramatic television address after several moves to distance himself from the West Bank. ”We say this in all understanding.”
Martyn – Not sure why you posted Kifner’s comment a second time – but my response is the same:
King Hussein had no claim on the West Bank to abandon to the PLO in 1988 since Jordan had illegally occupied the West Bank between 1948 to 1967.
“Nemo dat quod non habet” – you cannot give to someone something you don’t have.
Its a well established legal principle.
This is just part of the false Arab narrative which you (and the New York Times) seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.
David,
given what you say are the facts, will you be writing to the new York Times to correct the following:
HUSSEIN SURRENDERS CLAIMS ON WEST BANK TO THE P.L.O.; U.S. PEACE PLAN IN JEOPARDY; Internal Tensions
By JOHN KIFNER, Special to the New York Times
Published: August 1, 1988
•
AMMAN, Jordan, July 31— King Hussein of Jordan tonight abandoned to the Palestine Liberation Organization any claim to the Israeli-occupied West Bank his Hashemite family ruled between 1948 and 1967.
”We respect the wish of the P.L.O., the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, to secede from us in an independent Palestinian state,” the King said in a dramatic television address after several moves to distance himself from the West Bank. ”We say this in all understanding.”
Martyn
King Hussein had no claim on the West Bank to abandon to the PLO in 1988 since Jordan had illegally occupied the West Bank between 1948 to 1967.
“Nemo dat quod non habet” – you cannot give to someone something you don’t have.
Its a well established legal principle.
This is just part of the false Arab narrative which you (and the New York Times) seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.
David is in parallel universe if he expects the most ignorant president in American history to solve anything
Maurice
If you are right – Trump cannot do any worse than those highly intelligent Presidents who preceded him and failed to end the 100 years old Jewish- Arab conflict – Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush Snr, Clinton, Bush Jnr, and Obama.
I suggest you just cool it and see what Trump can achieve. Hopefully he has learnt from their mistakes.
Everyone loses David is spot on. Standing ovation for David PLEASE