Arab-Israel Conflict - Forgotten Facts!

[david barrett]

http://www.shamrak.com/sh_edit.....nFacts.htm

The term "Palestinian" is itself a masterful twisting of history. To portray themselves as indigenous, Arab settlers adopted the name of an ancient Mediterranean tribe, the Philistines (“Invaders” in Hebrew), that disappeared out over almost 3000 years ago. The connection between this tribe and modern day Arabs is nil. Romans, in order to conceal their shame and anger with rebellious regions, changed the references to Judea and Samaria by naming them Palestine.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem - Israel became a nation in the 14th century B.C.E. Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Since 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for up to 1,000 years with a continuous Jewish presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

3. The only Arab dominion since the Arab invasion and conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

4. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

5. For over 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray facing Mecca (often with their backs toward Jerusalem).

8. In 1854, according to a report in the New York Tribune, Jews constituted two-thirds of the population of that holy city. (The source: A journalist on assignment in the Middle East that year for the Tribune. His name was Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx.)

9. In 1867, Mark Twain took a tour of Palestine. This is how he described that land: A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human.

10. In 1882, official Ottoman Turk census figures showed that, in the entire Land of Israel, there were only 141 000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab.

11. A travel guide to Palestine and Syria was published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker; The book estimated the total population of Jerusalem at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.

12. As the Jews came and drained the swamps and made the deserts bloom, Arabs followed. They came for jobs, for prosperity, for freedom. And, they came in large numbers.

13. In 1922, with what was widely acknowledged as the illegal separation of Trans-Jordan, the Jews were forbidden to settle on almost 77% of the Palestine, while Arab settlement went unrestricted and encouraged by British mandatory authority.

14. Prior to the Second World War Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine, proposed the idea "that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighboring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine."

15. Did you know that Saudi Arabia was not created until 1913, Lebanon until 1920? Iraq did not exist as a nation until 1932, Syria until 1941; the borders of Jordan were established in 1946 and Kuwait in 1961. Any of these nations that would say Israel is only a recent arrival would have to deny their own rights as recent arrivals as well. They did not exist as countries. They were all under the control of the Turks. Over 80% of the original British Mandate land was given to Arabs without population transfer of Arabs from the land designated for Jews.

16. In 1947, the Jewish state huddled on 18% of the original British Mandate land. The Jews accepted it gratefully. The Arabs rejected it with a vengeance and seven Arab states immediately declared war against Israel.

17. In 1948, the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Most of them left in fear of being killed by their own Arab brothers as traitors.

18. Some 850,000 Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab countries, due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

19. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is claimed to be around 630,000 (where did they get this number?). Based on population census, estimated number of Arabs who left Israel was around 460,000. They were ordered to leave by Arab leaders at the time.

20. From 1948 till 1967 Arabs made no attempt to create a Palestinian state. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated, 58 synagogues in Jerusalem were destroyed and the Jews and Christians were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

21. Arabs began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1964 only, on the initiative of Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat. The idea became popular Arab propaganda tool after Israel re-captured Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the defensive 6-Day War of 1967,

22. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, Arab-Palestinians is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel.

23. Arab refugees INTENTIONALLY were not absorbed or integrated by the rich Arab oil states that control 99.9 percent of the Middle East landmass. They are kept as virtual prisoners by the Arab power brokers with misplaced hatred for Jews and Western democracy.

24. There is only one Jewish state. There are 60 Muslim countries, including 22 Arab nations.

25. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

26. Pan-Arabism or the doctrine of Muslim Caliphate declares that all land that used to belong to Muslims must be returned to them. Thus, Spain, for example, must eventually be re-conquered.

The Palestine Mandate.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar.....ndate.html

In July 1922, the League of Nations entrusted the Great Britain with The Palestine Mandate, recognizing "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine," Great Britain was called upon to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine - Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). Three months later, in order to obtain full control over Suez canal, the Great Britain made a deal with Hashemite Kingdom, Egypt and France. The trans-Jordan (77% of the Mandate) was given to the king's brother in exchange for the Sinai, which was given to Egypt. Golan Heights (5% of the Palestinian Mandate) was ceded to the French controlled Syrian Mandate. This robbery was legalized immediately by, the puppet of the Great Britain and France - the League of Nations!

General Assembly resolution 181, of Nov. 29, 1947: It calls for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem to be controlled by a "special international regime" to protect its holy places. The Zionist movement seeking to establish a Jewish state accepted the partition, the Arabs rejected it.
The resolution was not carried out: After Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, war broke out pitting the embryonic state against surrounding 7 Arab states.
Israel gained more land than it would have had under the partition resolution. Neither Israel nor Jordan, which controlled the divided parts of Jerusalem after the war, accepted control of the holy city by an international body.

Security Council resolution 242, Nov. 22, 1967: It calls for "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied" in the 1967 Six Day War and for "respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
The resolution was not carried out because the Arab side did not recognize Israel, and Israel refused to withdraw.

[david barrett]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S.....2FShowFull

Self-made Nakba
by Barry Rubin

It's become fashionable to match the celebration of Israel's founding (part of the media can't even admit that Israelis are celebrating) with Palestinians' marking of their 1948 "nakba," or catastrophe.

Yet whose fault is it that they didn't use those six decades constructively? And who killed the independent Palestinian state alongside Israel that was part of the partition plan? Answer: The Arab states and Palestinian leadership themselves.

The mourners were the murderers.

You can read details in my book, The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict. A summary: The key point is that in rejecting partition, in demanding everything and starting a war it could not win, the Arab side ensured endless conflict, the Palestinian refugee issue, and no Palestine. It wasn't murder - it was suicide.

Or in the words of General John Glubb, commander of Jordan's army: "The politicians, the demagogues, the press, and the mob were in charge... Warnings went unheeded. Doubters were denounced as traitors."

Briefly, the British tried to help the Arabs win; the Americans to assist them in finding a last-minute way out; and the soon-to-be Israeli Jews were ready to have a Palestinian state alongside Israel if their neighbors had accepted it.

THE BRITISH government provided money and arms to Arab states (for Egypt, 40 warplanes and 300 troop carriers; for Iraq, planes as well as antiaircraft and antitank guns; for Saudi Arabia, a military training mission) while embargoing them to Israel. The British government also tipped off Arabs about the timing of its withdrawals (giving Arabs a head start to seize abandoned installations), subsidized the Arab League, blocked Jewish immigration and let British officers run Jordan's army in the war against Israel.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said later said, "It became clear to us that Britain viewed with favor the Arab aims regarding Palestine."

It's well-known that President Harry Truman supported partition and quickly recognized Israel. But in March 1948 the US government offered the Arab states a serious plan to suspend partition, block a Jewish state, and create a new, long-term trusteeship. They considered but rejected it, even after Washington proposed an international peacekeeping force - including Egyptian troops - to maintain order.

Finally, if the Arab side had accepted partition, the Jewish leadership would have accepted the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Many Jewish leaders were desperate to get a state at all, lacked confidence they would win the war, and knew they could not buck an international consensus.

WHY, THEN, did the Arab side, and especially the Palestinian leadership, reject partition, go to war, and trigger a 60-year-long crisis that was a disaster for their people?

There are four basic reasons:

• Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was a man who thought like Hamas. Fresh from his stay in Berlin, where he cooperated with Adolf Hitler, he hated Jews, wanted to destroy them and could not envision compromise.

• Pressure from radical forces and public opinion made it unthinkable, or suicidal, for Arab regimes not to go along with all-out war even when they feared the worst.

• Arab states competed for influence, seeing the future Palestine either as their satellite or a place where they could seize land for themselves.

• Finally, they thought they would win easily. Even the moderate Jordanian King Abdullah said, "It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into the sea!" Syria's prime minister warned that the Arabs would "teach the treacherous Jews an unforgettable lesson."

The leader of Syria's client guerrilla force, Fawzi al-Kaukji, bragged: "We will murder, wreck and ruin everything standing in our way, be it English, American or Jewish." He explained that the holy war would be won not through weapons but through self-sacrificing Arab fighters.

Sixty years later, radical Arab nationalists and Islamists frequently make the same claim.

True, Arab armies were badly led, badly trained, and uncoordinated. Arab regimes distrusted and disliked the Palestinian leadership and bickered among themselves, striving for individual advantage. This was a pattern often repeated in later years. Abdullah secretly negotiated with the Zionists but they distrusted him, knew he couldn't control the other leaders, and he offered too little.

Still, the consensus was, in the words of a US intelligence report, "The loosely organized, ill-equipped armies of the Arab nations do not have any capabilities against a modern opponent but they do have the strength to overrun Jewish resistance in Palestine...."

IT DIDN'T work out that way. The nascent Israeli forces gained ground against the Husseini and Kaukji forces before the Arab states' invasion, then largely won the ensuing international war.

Neither during the conflict nor after their defeat did the regimes help create an independent Palestinian Arab state. Egypt held the Gaza Strip; Jordan annexed the West Bank.

Their rejection of peace so often thereafter made the conflict last until now. The continuation of these policies today by much of the Palestinian leadership - either explicitly or in practice - could make it last another century.

Yet 60 years later, the Arab side has the hutzpa to complain - and a good part of the Western media echo - that they were Israel's victims in 1948.

Back then, Kaukji explained that once the Arabs started winning, the Western media would proclaim, "The Arab cause is a just one." The Arab side made no secret of the fact that the Jews were the underdog, and everyone knew what happened to underdogs. As Arab League Secretary-General Abd al-Rahman Azzam explained, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre...."

BY THE way, what slogan were Palestinian schoolchildren told to chant at the Nakba Day demonstrations organized by the PA? Why, "Palestine is all ours!" of course, the same slogan as in 1948.

Sad to say, the main complaint of Palestinians today is still not so much that they are Israel's victims, but that, so far, Israel hasn't been theirs, Azzam-style.

What would Kaukji think to learn that, in fact, the Western media would proclaim: "The Arab cause is a just one" only after the Arabs had so thoroughly and repeatedly failed to gain such a bloody total victory, though long before they fully accepted the lessons of that failure?

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center at IDC Herzliya and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal.





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