The West Bank - Jewish, Arab or Divided?
President Bush left the Oval Office no doubt disillusioned as to why his “two state solution” - the creation of a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan - failed to get to first base after six years of fruitless negotiations.
President Obama is finding the going equally as difficult as he takes up from where President Bush left off. He is probably now beginning to understand even at this early stage of his Presidency why another two of his predecessors - Presidents Carter and Clinton - also fell in a heap after believing they had the prestige and influence to bring about a resolution to the 130 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs regarding their respective claims to “Palestine”
Why Presidents Carter,Clinton and Bush failed to bring peace to Jews and Arabs
Their failure can best be explained by the following statement made by Palestinian Authority President - Mahmoud Abbas - appearing in the Wall Street Journal on 19 September 2008:
“What is often overlooked is the enormous historic compromise we already made in accepting the two-state solution and the creation of our state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on only 22% of our historic homeland.”
President Abbas’ claim that the West Bank and Gaza comprise 22% - instead of 5% - of the historic homeland of the Palestinian Arabs continues to materially derail efforts to resolve the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza - the only area of former Palestine where sovereignty remains unallocated between Israel and Jordan.
President Abbas was parroting similar claims made on hundreds of Arab oriented web sites asserting that the Jews established the State of Israel on 78% of the historic homeland of the Palestinian Arabs in the War of Independence in 1948 and subsequently conquered the remaining 22% - the West Bank and Gaza - in the Six Day War of 1967.
This has created the perception that Israel currently occupies 100% of “the historic homeland“ depriving the Palestinian Arabs of a State of their own within that territory - and that the only just solution to resolve their grievances is the creation of such a state in the 22% captured by Israel in 1967.
This propaganda has been given credence by such diverse and influential opinion makers as :
(i) Editor at large of the Washington Times and United Press International Arnaud de Borchgrave
(ii) Professor of Politics at San Francisco University Stephen Zunes,
(iii) South Africa's former minister for Intelligence Services Ronnie Kasrils,
(iv) Journalist and filmmaker John Pilger,
(v) The BBC News Service ,
(vi) French intellectual and journalist Professsor Jules Regis Debray and
(vii) trenchant anti- Zionist critics Assistant Professor Norman Finkelstein, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and Jeff Halper.
De Borchgrave Kasrils Finklestein Pilger
All believe that the West Bank and Gaza comprise 22% - not 5 % - of former Palestine
John Pilger - recently announced as the winner of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize - shows how his thinking has actually been influenced by such propaganda when he wrote in 2002:
"Shortly after it was founded in 1948, Israel controlled, mostly as a result of a United Nations partition and partly by force, a total of 78 per cent of historic Palestine…During the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israelis occupied the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine. Today, the Palestinians, seeking to form their own independent state, want only that 22 per cent back."
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3499.htm
These are false and deceptive statements based on an incorrect understanding of the size of Palestine and the boundaries that defined Palestine in international law.
The reality is that Israel was founded on 17% of historic Palestine in 1948 - not 78% , and captured 5% of historic Palestine in 1967 - not 22%.
The Committee for Accurate Reporting of the Middle East in America (CAMERA) succinctly summarises this reality as follows:
"In fact, the original land of Palestine, as determined by the League of Nations, included what is now Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and the entire state of Jordan. The British transferred nearly 78% of historic Palestine to the Arabs to create a new entity called the Emirate of Transjordan. Jews were forbidden to live, buy land or become citizens there. The UN partition plan proposed a division of the remaining 22% of the land between Jews and Arabs, and the armistice lines (1949-1967) left Israel with approximately 16.5% of the original Mandate area.”
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=46&x_review=5
The Emirate remained part of Palestine until 1946 when it was granted independence by Great Britain and it was renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan,
That decision in 1946 irrevocably created an exclusively Arabs only independent state in 78% of historic Palestine - truncating Palestine to just 22% of the size within which the Jewish people had initially been given the legal right in 1922 to reconstitute the Jewish National Home.
1948 Palestine therefore was only 22% of its size in 1946.
78% of Palestine - today called Jordan - together with its Palestinian Arab inhabitants had thus achieved statehood in 1946 without a single shot being fired. The Jews had to wait another two years to achieve sovereignty in 17% of Palestine - having had to fight and defeat six invading Arab armies from surrounding Arab states to achieve Jewish independence and self determination.
Arab propagandists deliberately ignore the events of 1922 and 1946 to justify their claim that Israel now occupies 100% of Palestine. They are only telling 22% of the story - classic misinformation at its Goebbels' best.
Mahmoud Abbas says one thing as head of the Palestinian Authority
but another as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization
That Mahmoud Abbas can apparently repeat this fiction unchallenged is even more striking when one considers he is also the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) whose Charter claims that Jordan remains an inseparable part of Palestine notwithstanding the actions of Great Britain and the League of Nations in 1922 and 1946.
Indeed the PLO's stated position was reinforced at the 8th Palestinian National Council meeting in February-March 1971 which declared:
" Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from the earliest times. The creation of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity. .. In raising the slogan of the liberation of Palestine and presenting the problem of the Palestine revolution, it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the River from the West, nor did it believe the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separated from the struggle of the masses in Jordan…"
Despite these clear and unrevoked declarations by the PLO, the Quartet - Russia , America, the European Union and the United Nations - still remain foolishly fixated on creating an independent Arab State between Israel and Jordan on 5% of historic Palestine - thus separating the East Bank of the Jordan River from the West Bank and dividing the Arabs who live on each side of the Jordan River from one another.
As Israel's then Defence Minister Yitzchak Rabin declared on 27 May 1985 in The Australian newspaper:
"The Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the river Jordan, there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees. One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb"
Rabin Obama
Knew his history Still learning
How right Mr Rabin was and how wrong President Obama is in pursuing an outcome based on propaganda and misinformation - not reality. These historical truths cannot be ignored.
Size really does matter when it comes to the area of former Palestine and the options available to resolve the dispute between Arabs and Jews in relation to claims for sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.
President Obama needs to understand and face up to this reality if he wants to have any possible chance of succeeding where his predecessors so ignominiously failed..
