|
I-A The Land of Israel has
been the national home of the Jewish People for three thousand years
ago.
The Jewish People have
legitimate land claims. The Hebrew Bible is the historical record of
the Jewish People from the time of Abraham, some 4,000 years ago. It
narrates in detail how the Jews came to first settle in the Land of
Promise, and narrates their history in the land for a thousand years.
It repeatedly asserts that God himself gave the land to the Jewish
people as their homeland for all eternity. It even presents detailed
descriptions of its borders.
The biblical narrative
describes how the Israelite tribes led by Moses formally became a
Jewish nation at Mount Sinai thirty-three centuries ago, when after
first having escaped from bondage in Egypt, they received the divine
Law of the holy Torah, including the Ten Commandments. The subsequent
conquest and settlement of the land by the Israelite tribes, of whom
the tribe of Judah was one of the largest and most powerful, is also
described in detail in the Bible.
King David established
Jerusalem as the capital of ancient Israel over 3,000 years ago. That
event took place over fifteen hundred years before Mohammed and the
Muslim religion were born, and the subsequent Arab conquest of the
Land of Israel. [link to a map showing Arabia and Jerusalem]
King Solomon, the son of King David, built the First Temple in
Jerusalem in ancient Israel. The Kingdom of Judah that was founded by
David and Solomon existed as a fully sovereign nation for over four
hundred years. Later the Israelites, or Jews as they came to be known,
were attacked, defeated and driven into the Babylonian exile. But
within seventy years they had returned to build their Second Temple
under their leader Zerubbabel. This Temple was later to be rebuilt in
even greater splendor by King Herod.
During the Roman occupation
of the Land of Israel, about two thousand years ago, the Jews revolted
against Roman domination. In the ensuing savage war lasting over three
years the Jews sustained horrific loses, the Holy Temple was destroyed
and Jerusalem was sacked. Most of the survivors were sold into slavery
and ultimately driven into an exile lasting into modern times. A
second Jewish revolt in the second century of the common era, also
brutally repressed by Rome with heavy casualties, continued the
process of dispossession and near genocide against the Jewish people
in their ancient land.
Nevertheless, some Jews
always managed to remain in the Land of Israel throughout the
succeeding nineteen centuries. They survived conquests by multiple
invading armies including those of European Christian Crusaders and
Muslim jihadis. Jews have prayed to return to their Holy
Land, to be reunited as a people there, and to have their
national independence restored, three times a day for two thousand
years
The State of Israel is the
Third Jewish Commonwealth, existing on a small part of the land that
according to the Hebrew Scriptures, God promised to Abraham and his
descendants forever. Israel does not “occupy” one inch of land
that is not steeped in long centuries of Jewish history and residence,
and that is not hallowed by Jews as the sacred soil of their
ancestors. Claims that Israelis are intruders or invaders in the land,
or “nonindigenous inhabitants,” have no basis in law, history or
theology.
During the past millennia
many nations came and went; many boundaries were drawn and redrawn
time and time again. However, the Jewish People remains eternally
connected to that small sliver of land that they have believed for
more than three thousand years has been assigned to them by God
Himself. Acknowledging this reality can go a long way toward
promoting peace and justice to that region. Contesting the right of
the Jewish people to their Holy Land will create endless strife and
suffering to the region and beyond.
Nor are the demands
that Israel withdraw from the “occupied” territories based upon
considerations of equity, because the combined Arab and Muslim nations
occupy more than one thousand times the area controlled by Israel.
They already possess a more than adequate share of land on this
planet.
I-B The Qur’an, the
Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible all confirm Jewish claims to the
Land of Israel.
It is not true, as so many
Arabs and Muslims have been led to believe, that the Qur’an rejects
Jewish claims to the Land of Israel/Palestine. In fact the Qur’an
confirms Jewish claims to the land of Israel. Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi
Palazzi, Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Association, has said
the Jewish right to the Land of Israel is indeed inscribed in the Qur’an.
He also traced how the original message of acceptance became perverted
into one leading to implacable rejection and bloody conflict. The
following verses from the Qur’an are but three examples supporting
the Jewish right to the Land of Israel/Palestine.
“And thereafter We said to
the children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And
when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together
in a mingled crowd.’ “ (Qur’an
17:104, The Night Journey)
“Remember Moses said to his
people: “O my People! call in remembrance the favor of Allah unto
you, when He produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave you
what He had not given to any other among the peoples.” (Qur’an
5:20)
“O my people! enter the
holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you; and turn not back
ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.” (Qur’an
5:21)
I-C
How the Arabs/Muslims
acquired twelve million square miles of territory.
Today’s maps show a vast
Arab/Muslim area encompassing over fifty countries and spanning
multiple continents, a situation which everyone accepts as
unquestionable and legitimate. However, there was a time when Arabs
occupied less than one tenth of their present domain. Mohammed, the
founder of Islam, was born in Arabia some fourteen hundred years ago.
It was only during the century following Mohammed’s teachings that
Arabs embarked on a jihad to spread Islam and conquered vast areas of
the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Europe and parts of Asia. In
Mohammed’s time Arabia comprised less than one million square miles
and contained multiple ethnic groups, including Christians and Jews.
Mohammed’s Islamic conquest virtually eliminated non-Muslims from
Arabia. Today the Islamic conquests extend over some twelve million
square miles. About half of that territory contains twenty-one
official Arab nations, mostly populated by Muslims. The other half
contains dozens of Arab and non-Arab Muslim nations.
The historic land of Israel
[link to a map of the time] was conquered by the Muslims in the year
638, over five and a half centuries after the first Jewish revolt
against Rome was crushed and many Jews were expelled from their
country.
Many Arab/Muslims today
espouse the doctrine that any land conquered by Islam must forever
remain Muslim. There are even some Muslims who argue for a Muslim
re-conquest of Spain which was under Muslim rule centuries ago. Over
ninety percent of present Arab/Muslim lands were acquired by Islamic
conquest.
I-D There never was a
State of Palestine. Until recently, there was no concept of a
Palestinian people.
Before the British founded
their Mandatory regime in “Palestine” in 1920-22, few if any Arab
inhabitants of the area that was designated “Palestine” by the
British colonial authorities and the League of Nations had called
themselves “Palestinians.” The name Palestine originated with the
Romans almost two thousand years ago following their crushing of the
Jewish revolt. It was the Roman authorities’ intention to erase
Jewish history from the Land of Israel. The name Palestine, derived
from the ancient “Philistine” people, who had already disappeared
by Roman times, was intended to replace the name” Judea.” It only
represented a geographical renaming and redistricting but never
introduced a new nation or a new national identity .During the
succeeding two millennia, “Palestine” was a name used, if at all,
almost exclusively by Europeans, principally European Christians, as a
designation of the ancient Israelite-Jewish Land of Israel.
Throughout the thousand or
more years of Muslim rule in Western Asia, “Palestine” was rarely
used even as the name of a geographic area or administrative district,
and never served as the name of an independent state or kingdom. The
Qur’an refers only to “Syria,” including the area called “Palestine”
by the Romans within it. This usage remained constant among Arabs and
other Muslims at least until the British conquest of “Palestine”
in 1918. In Arab usage, the area called “Palestine” by some
Europeans was simply the southern part of a country called “Syria.”
During the four hundred years
of Turkish rule in the region, “Palestine” did not exist as a
geographic entity or administrative unit. The Arabic-speaking
inhabitants of the area viewed themselves as members of a particular
tribe, and inhabitants of a particular village, as subjects of the
Turkish Sultan, and above all as Muslims or Christians, as the case
may be. They had no idea that they were “Palestinians” or even
that such a place as “Palestine” existed.
During the period of British
rule, between 1918 and 1948, Palestinian Arabs began to think of
themselves as Arabs and as part of a larger Arab nation. But even
then, few of the country’s Arab inhabitants called themselves “Palestinians.”
Only after Israel’s
founding in 1948, and the refugee “exodus” from portions of
Palestine that became Israeli territory, did it begin to become the
practice in the Arab world, and among Westerners who supported the
Arabs in their conflict with Israel, to refer to the Arabs with
origins in the Palestine Mandate territory as “Palestinians.” And
it was only after 1948 that Arabs with origins in British Mandatory
Palestine begin frequently to call themselves by this name. They were
encouraged to do this by the Arab League states, who saw the “Palestinian
identity as a way of developing a sense of grievance among the
Palestinians toward Israel, and a way of encouraging them to wage a
war of terrorism against the Jewish people in their old-new homeland,
aimed at achieving an Arab reconquest of what had once been Arab or
Muslim-ruled land. This sense of grievance was cultivated even more by
the Arab regimes and the United Nations through the means of denying
Palestinian-origin Arabs citizenship and other rights in most Arab
states, and by encouraging, and at times compelling, them to live in
segregated “Palestinian refugee” camps. Here the “Palestinians”
were indoctrinated with the idea that it was their sacred duty to
reconquer the land that had supposedly been stolen from them by the
Jews, not only for themselves, but on behalf of the entire Arab and
Muslims worlds.
Arab leaders and
propagandists also saw the “Palestinian” identity as a means of
gaining sympathy for their anti-Israel war in the West. Instead of
presenting the conflict as merely an effort to enable individual Arab
families to return to former homes in what had become Israel, the Arab
politicians and propagandists realized that it would attract more
sympathy for the Arab cause in Europe, the United States and elsewhere
to claim that a “Palestinian” nation had been dispossessed of
their homeland by Israel. Such a propaganda ploy made it possible for
Arab leaders and spokesmen to claim that Israel needed to withdraw
from Judea, Samaria and Gaza in order to make way for an Arab state of
“Palestine,” and that ultimately all of Israel should be “returned”
to its former “Palestinian” Arab residents, now characterized
as the “indigenous” inhabitants and sole rightful owners of the
entire land.
In order to preserve the “Palestinian”
identity, many Arab states refused to allow “Palestinians,”
meaning anyone with ancestry in the former Palestine Mandate
territory, to become citizens of the Arab states in which they
actually lived, and where, in many cases, they were born. In
Lebanon, for example “Palestinians” are prevented by law from
working in 69 different occupations and are forced to live in
exclusively “Palestinian” refugee camps, rather than being allowed
to integrate into the Lebanese population. Of course they are also
denied the right to vote or to exercise any other citizenship rights,
even if they were born in Lebanon and their parents were born there
too, as is frequently the case. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
and numerous other Arab countries also deny the Palestinians
citizenship, even if they were born in these countries.
Many Arab leaders have openly
admitted that their refusal to grant the “Palestinians”
citizenship rights in their actual countries of birth and residence is
intended to keep them focused on their supposed “patriotic” Arab
duty to wage war against Israel, in order to recover their “original”
homes, lost or abandoned by their ancestors during the unsuccessful
Arab assault on Israel in 1948-49. The failure of this aggression, and
the founding of Israel, which occurred at the same time, is frequently
referred to by Arab politicians as the “naqba,” or “disaster”.
Palestinian Arabs are indoctrinated from birth with the idea that it
is their sacred duty to fight for the “liberation” of “Palestine,”
the destruction of Israel (called “the Zionist entity,”) and the
reversal of the so-called “naqba,” which supposedly was a shameful
defeat suffered by their ancestors.
Palestinian Arabs continue to
be ambivalent about how important and primary the “Palestinian”
identity really is to them. The “Constitution” of the Palestinian
terrorist organization Fatah, and the “Covenant” or “Charter”
of its front organization, the PLO, assert that the Palestinian Arabs
are part of a larger “Arab” nation, rather than an entirely
separate nation in their own right. And the “Covenant” or “Charter”
of the even more extreme Palestinian terrorist group Hamas asserts
that Palestinian Arabs are part of a larger Islamic “nation” (ummah),
and not a separate people. “Palestine” is regarded by the Hamas
not as a separate country but as a tract of land owned by all Muslims
as a religious trust (wakf), which the Palestinian Arabs are
responsible for reconquering on behalf of the entire Muslim world. It
is thus not at all clear that most Palestinian Arabs regard themselves
as a separate nation.
Some “Palestinian”
leaders have admitted, in unguarded moments of frankness, that the “Palestinian”
identity is essentially a propaganda ploy, aimed at justifying the
conquest of Israel. These leaders have also predicted that the
Palestinian identity will disappear once the Arabs conquer Israel and
then form a new super-state, uniting the entire Arab and/or Muslim
worlds.
During the period of British
Mandatory rule from 1918 until Israel’s rebirth in 1948 the term “Palestinian”
was used almost exclusively for the Jews who were reclaiming,
resettling and revitalizing their ancient homeland after nearly twenty
centuries of exile. Following the re-birth of Israel, the
Palestinian Jews logically became known as “Israelis.” This
presented an opportunity for hostile Arab leaders to appropriate the
names, “Palestine” and “Palestinian”. They thus created a new
group of people for political reasons. Whether this people actually
constitute, or believe that they constitute, a separate and
distinctive nation, still remains in doubt. Twice, in 1947-48 and
again in 2000, the Palestinian Arabs were offered an independent
state; on both occasions, the Palestinian Arab leaders rejected the
offer, preferring instead to launch a war against Israel.
I-E The peace
that almost happened.
The principal ‘roots’ of
the current Arab-Israeli conflict are neither Arab nor Israeli but
British.
For a brief period following
World War I, it appeared that both Arabs and Jews were poised to
embark on a future of peace and prosperity. In 1919, representatives
of the Arabs and the Jews reached an agreement to embark on a peaceful
and bright future as friends and neighbors in the Middle East.
Had this amicable, far-reaching and far-sighted agreement
between Arabs and Jews was reached over eighty years ago been
faithfully implemented, it would have provided a historic opportunity
to establish an enduring peace, and perhaps would have avoid the
current Arab-Israeli conflict. What went wrong?
At the Paris Peace Conference
of 1919 that was called to conclude World War I, His Royal Highness
Emir Feisal Ibn Hussein, head of the Arab delegation and acting on
behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hejaz and all Arab peoples, signed an
agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing the World Zionist
Organization, that called for Arab recognition of a Jewish National
Home in Palestine and Jewish and international, recognition for an
independent Arab State in the other Arabic-speaking territories of the
former Turkish Empire. The Arab and Jewish delegations to the peace
conferences were both in amicable agreement about the need and right
of the Jews to national homeland in Palestine, and the right of the
Arab people to a sovereign state outside Palestine. Feisal and
Weizmann expressed their anticipation of friendly cooperation in the
future. This agreement formed the starting point for a series of
international national declarations and agreements that promised
national sovereignty to both Arabs and Jews.
After the Paris conference, a
series of follow-up peace conferences were held by the victorious
Allies to draw new boundaries in the vast territory of the defeated
Turkish Ottoman Empire, which had ruled over those lands for four
hundred years. The newly formed League of Nations soon became involved
in these negotiations, and issued “mandates” for future
independent states in the region, to be temporarily governed by
Britain and France as ‘mandatories,” or trustees, for the
soon-to-be-independent new nations.
The Arabs were promised
sovereignty in a number of newly-created “countries” comprising
about two million square miles. The Jews were initially promised by
the Allied powers a national home that was to include what is now
Israel, the “West Bank”, Gaza, part of the Golan Heights, and the
territory of what later became the present Kingdom of Jordan. All of
these territories comprised less than one percent of the area assigned
to the Arabs. The League of Nations soon afterwards issued an
internationally binding agreement to be known as the League of Nations
Mandate for Palestine. Britain was assigned the responsibility for
faithfully implementing that Mandate.
The League of Nations
drew new boundaries for the Middle East for territories covering over
two million square miles. All but 10,000 square miles of these
territories were allocated to the Arabs. Ultimately, Arabs would gain
sovereignty in multiple countries covering five million square
miles. (the countries concerned by the League of Nations were only
those of the Middle East, and not the entire Arab world: they
amount to almost TWO million square miles). Jews would finally have a
homeland in less than one percent of that area. Britain, the
dominant regional power, was assigned, and accepted, a League of
Nations Mandate to facilitate the establishment of the Jewish homeland
in the region called Palestine.
Unfortunately, the British
governments of the day sabotaged their own Mandate, thereby ruining
prospects for peace between Arabs and Jews for several generations. It
was the British government of Palestine that itself reneged on its
commitments to the Jewish people, and in various ways incited the
Arabs to oppose the Jewish presence, leading to anti-Jewish riots and
eventually to all-out war.
Had Britain honored its
original obligations under the Mandate, a Jewish State might have
emerged prior to World War II, and in time to rescue many of those who
ultimately perished in the Holocaust. That would also have produced a
far stronger Israel and a less tempting target to her enemies, thus
increasing the chances for peace.
The errors of a colonial
power in a past era of human history should not continue to be allowed
to poison relations between Muslims, Arab Christians and Israelis.
These errors should be recognized for what they were and “confined
to the dustbin of history,” where they will cease to be an obstacle
to peace.
I-F
Britain betrays its
Mandate
The Arabs received their
promised territories but the Jews did not, because, Britain first
modified the terms of the Palestine Mandate which was assigned to it
and later abandoned and defaulted on these terms altogether. Almost
immediately after Britain began its administration of Palestine, some
British officials, such the territories’ first British
administrator, Ronald Storrs, began to incite Arab leaders to organize
demonstrations and even riots against the Jews. This pattern of
incitement by some British officials in the Palestine administration
continued throughout the thirty years of British rule.
In 1921, the British
Palestine authorities appointed a rabid Jew-hater, Amin al Husseini,
to be Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council of
Palestine, even though his candidacy for Mufti had been rejected by a
vote of his fellow Muslim clergymen. In the same year, Britain
detached three-fourths of the full Palestine Mandate territory from
the Jewish National Home and unilaterally created the Arab emirate of
Transjordan out of it. This area, ruled by a nobleman from
what is now called Saudi Arabia, evolved into the present Kingdom of
Jordan with British sponsorship. Britain also agreed with France
to transfer the Golan Heights to French-controlled Syria. These
massive restrictions on the territory of the Jewish National Home were
accepted only after the fact by the Council of the League of Nations.
Later, in 1939, the British
issued a “White Paper” drastically restricting future Jewish
immigration to Palestine, just when the rise of the Nazi regime and
the beginning of World War II made admission to Palestine an urgent
necessity to save millions of Jewish lives, and promising that the
entire country would become an Arab state within ten years. The League
of Nations Mandates Commission rejected this unilateral British action
as a violation of the terms of the Palestine Mandate.
Arab guerillas or terrorists
under the leadership of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who had been appointed
Mufti of Jerusalem by the British, repeatedly organized riots against
the Jews, in 1920, 1921, and 1929. These culminated in an all-out
campaign of terrorism and guerilla war against the Jews from 1936
until 1939. Hundreds of Jews, nearly all civilians and including many
children, were slaughtered.
I-G Origins of the
Palestinian Arab refugee problem
After World War II, the
United Nations was formed as a successor to the League of Nations. Its
charter guaranteed that the rights of peoples established in the
League of Nations Mandates would remain in effect under the new
international organization. One of these rights was the right of the
Jewish people to a national home of their own in what was then called
Palestine. However, in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly
recommended partitioning the remaining area of the Jewish National
Home (10,000 square miles, or about the size of New Hampshire) into a
Jewish state about the size of Connecticut (5,000 square miles), and a
second Arab state. Despite the whittling down in the proposed area of
the Jewish homeland, the Jews nevertheless accepted this
proposal. The Palestinian Arab leaders and the League of Arab
States not only rejected it, but launched a full-scale military
offensive, carried out by both Palestinian guerillas or terrorists and
armed forces dispatched by six Arab states, against the Jewish
inhabitants of the Palestine Mandate territory.
The British responded to the
United Nations partition proposal by completely abandoning Palestine
and its responsibilities under the Mandate. On the day that the
British completed their withdrawal, the Jews proclaimed their reborn
State of Israel, in accordance with the United Nations General
Assembly resolution. The withdrawing British refused to
recognize the State of Israel, offered the Palestinian Arabs no
assistance or encouragement to form a state, as recommended by the
General Assembly resolution, and left no orderly government behind in
the Arab populated areas of the country. On the other hand, the
British gave military assistance to the Arab states that invaded
Palestine and attacked Israel.
The Jews defended
themselves against overwhelming odds from the Palestinian
guerilla/terrorist forces and the armies of the six invading Arab
states. The proposed second Palestinian State was never formed, not
because of Jewish objections, but because the Palestinian Arab leaders
refused to organize and proclaim such a state. They even refused to
cooperate with the United Nations Commission created to assist them in
forming a Palestinian Arab state.
On instructions from their
leaders, or in imitation to the behavior of the Palestinian Arab
elite, which deserted the country en masse almost as soon as
hostilities commenced, several hundred thousand Palestinian Arab
residents evacuated the areas which were being contested by the
opposing armies. This was the origin of the Palestinian refugee
problem.
I-H The Expulsion of
Jews from Arab Countries
Although Jews
had lived in nearly all of the Arabic-speaking countries for
centuries, in some countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Libya, long
before any Arabs had arrived there, they were nevertheless subjected
to severe discrimination under Muslim rule as dhimmis (second class
residents without full citizenship) under Islamic Shar’ia law)
they were not allowed to testify in a court of law, thus leaving them
defenseless against criminal attack and civil abuse. They were forced
to pay a special “toleration” tax not required of Muslims. And
there were a host of other discriminatory laws and customs causing
them to live in conditions of continuous harassment.
Even before the outbreak of
the first major Arab-Israeli war in 1947 discrimination against Jews
in Arab countries had begun to turn into persecution. Harassment of
the Jewish communities living in Arab countries was organized by
anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic elements within the dominant Muslim
population as a way of retaliating for the Jewish nationalist movement
in Palestine. Considerable sympathy in the Arab world
for the German Nazis during the World War II era also
aggravated conditions for the Jewish minorities within the Arab
countries.
A major pogrom was organized
in Iraq in 1941, causing the deaths of over 130 Jews and the wounding
and raping of thousands. Amin Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who
had found asylum in Iraq after organizing an anti-Jewish terrorist
campaign in Palestine, was primarily responsible for organizing this
pogrom. Hundreds of Jewish businesses were looted. Several days of
anti-Jewish riots in Libya in 1945 resulted in even more Jewish
deaths.
During the 1947-48 war, major
pogroms racked the Jewish communities of Syria and the Aden
protectorate under British rule (now part of Yemen). Terrorist
bombings killed scores in the Jewish communities of Egypt and Iraq.
In the sixty years of Arab
war against Israel since 1948, persecution of Jews has continued.
Executions and imprisonment of Jews on trumped up charges, harassment
by the secret police, riots, looting, bombings, desecration of
synagogues, organized boycotts of Jewish business, firings of Jews
from their jobs, and anti-Semitic campaigns in the press were among
the methods that were used to force Jews to emigrate from the Arab
countries. In some Arab countries, such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the
governments of these nations organized the persecutions. But even in
countries where the governments made some efforts to protect the local
Jewish population, such as Morocco and Tunisia, they were unable to
prevent harassment and intimidation of the Jews by “militant”
Muslim groups.
Nearly all of the former
Jewish residents, estimated to number between 850,000 and 900,000 in
1947, have now fled from the Arab countries. The few that remain are
still subject to persecution and violence. Their numbers exceed the
approximately 700.000 Arabs who left parts of Palestine that became
Israel in 1948. The Jewish refugees were forced to abandon all of
their property, estimated by some sources at to have been worth $100
in all, when they fled. Israel took in the majority of the Jewish
refugees and rehabilitated them, granted them full Israeli citizenship
and fully integrated them into Israel society, at great expense. But
they have received no aid whatsoever from the United Nations or any
international agency, such as has been given to the Palestinian Arab
refugees.
I-I Sixty long years of
unrelenting Arab war against Israel
Even after the war of 1948,
when Palestinian Arab guerillas or terrorists, joined by the armed
forces of seven Arab states, attempted to strangle Israel in its crib,
the entire Arab world has continued to wage war on Israel for sixty
long years. Armistice agreements were signed by Israel and the Arab
states in 1948, but the Arab governments insisted that these were only
temporary military truces, not peace treaties, and that the borders
established by these agreements were only ceasefire lines, not
permanent borders between Israel and its neighbors. They asserted that
a state of war between Israel and the Arab nations continued to exist
despite these temporary ceasefire agreements.
Within less than a year the
signing of the armistice agreements, Palestinian Arab guerillas or
terrorists had begun conducting armed raids into Israel again. They
have been conducting these raids ever since. Over the years, the
Palestinian guerillas or terrorists have killed several thousand
Israeli civilians and wounded or maimed thousands of others.
The Arab states imposed a
strict economic and diplomatic embargo against Israel. The Suez Canal,
and on and off, an international waterway known as the Gulf of Aqaba
or the Gulf of Eilat were closed to Israelis, thus making it nearly
impossible for them to import oil. Even Western companies that did
business with Israelis were boycotted. The Arab states provided
financial aid, military training and propaganda encouragement to the
Palestinian terrorists to conduct their armed incursions into
Israel. Israeli villages near the border with Syria were shelled
almost continuously for years from the Syrian-controlled Golan
Heights. Through all these means, the Arab regimes placed the Jewish
state under siege. This siege has continued to this day.
I-J The Palestinian Arab
terrorist organizations
The armies of the entire Arab
world mobilized against Israel in 1967, and Egypt and Syria launched a
massive surprise attack on Israel with their armies in 1973. For the
most part, however, the Arab world has preferred to wage war against
Israel through Palestinian and other Arab terrorist organizations that
were formed, or at least heavily sponsored and encouraged, by the Arab
States, but for which the Arab regimes refuse to accept full
responsibility. (This is yet one more way in which the “Palestinian”
identity has proven useful to the Arab regimes).
The terrorist organizations
do not wear uniforms or others markings identifying themselves as
soldiers. They operate out of civilian populated areas and
disguise themselves as civilians. They kill Jewish civilians and
soldiers, non-combatants and combatants alike, even including young
children, without making any distinctions whatsoever between them.
These methods are serious war crimes under international law.
I-J.1 Fatah
Prominent among the
Palestinian terrorist organizations has been Fatah, originally
sponsored and financed by Syria. In 1968, Fatah took over another
terrorist organization formed by the League of Arab States
organization in 1964, called the Palestine Liberation Organization (or
PLO). In this way, Fatah obtained funding for their terror operations
from the entire Arab world. It also obtained a huge amount of money
from a tax that the Arab governments enabled it to levy on all
Palestinian Arabs living in the Arab countries. Fatah, through its
diplomatic and financial front of the PLO, also has acquired billions
of dollars from international drug dealing, other smuggling
operations, and extortion rackets. According to some financial
experts, the assets of the PLO total over $50 billion worldwide This
does not even include the vast amounts of money held by other fronts
for Fatah, such as the “Palestinian National Authority” ( or PNA,
established in 1994; see below under “The Oslo Accords” for more
about this terrorist front organization), and the hundreds of millions
squirreled away in the private bank accounts of corrupt Fatah
officials—including the late Yasser Arafat and the surviving members
of his family. In many ways, Fatah and the other Palestinian Arab
terrorist organizations are massive criminal gangs that use terrorism
as a cover for their massive, and extremely profitable, illegal
rackets.
Fatah now also obtains vast
amounts of money, weapons, and military training from Iran, and
through its front organizations the PLO and the PNA, from the European
nations, the United States, and even from Israel as well! These
democratic nations have for some strange reason now recognized Fatah,
through its PLO and PNA fronts, as “the legitimate representative of
the Palestinian people.” Nearly all of the nations of the world,
including the European Community nations and the United States, have
also established diplomatic relations with Fatah through its front
organizations, the PNA and the PLO. Yet its terrorist operations and
objective of destroying Israel remains unaltered.
I-J.2 Hamas
Another, even more extreme
Palestinian Arab terrorist organization is Hamas, which is a branch of
the international Jihadist-Islamist organization the Muslim
Brotherhood. Like other Muslim Brotherhood member organizations, Hamas
aims not only at the conquest of Israel, but of the entire world on
behalf of Islam. Hamas is lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia and Iran,
and maintains its headquarters in Syria. By taking over the PNA
through elections in the Palestinian Arab communities of Judea,
Samaria and Gaza, Hamas gained access to the vast funding
sources and diplomatic ties originally established by Fatah when it
established the PNA “government “ of these communities. It is true
that some (by no means all) European countries, and the United States,
made a pretense of dealing only with Fatah officials of the PNA, and
try to avoid official contact with its Hamas officials. However, this
was a meaningless gesture, since Hamas now largely controlled the PNA
and had access to all of its vast funding sources. In any case,
nearly all of the Arab countries, Iran, Russia, China, South Africa,
Norway, Spain, and most other governments outside Europe dealt with
the Hamas officials of the PNA, and several funneled money to them.
Hamas’ violent takeover of
exclusive control in Gaza in 2007 and its expulsion of Fatah’s
representatives from this territory led to a suspension of most (but
not all) international aid to Hamas, but a vast increase in
international aid, including the lavish supply of armaments, to Fatah.
How long the rather halfhearted European “boycott” of Hamas will
continue, however, is dubious, since several European countries have
resumed quiet contacts with the Hamas rulers of Gaza.
In any case, we should not
forget that Fatah is just as dedicated as Hamas to terrorism and to
the destruction of Israel. This reality renders the attempt by the
democracies, including the United States and Israel, to draw a
distinction between these two organizations pointless, self-deluding
and self-destructive. (see Note in I-J.1)
I-J.3
Other Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations
There are dozens of other
Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Islamic Jihad, the
Popular Resistance Committees, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PDFLP), etc. These organizations frequently work closely
with each other as well as with the dominant Fatah and Hamas
organizations. Such a plethora of terrorist factions helps to diffuse
responsibility for terrorist acts, and to make it difficult for
Israel, other democratic governments and the international press to
determine who is responsible for them. They enable Fatah and Hamas to
deny that they are responsible for terrorist attacks carried out in
defiance of various so-called “cease fires,” by blaming these
attacks on the smaller groups, which are actually fronts or
subcontractors for the “major” terrorist organizations. The war
against Israel is thus conducted through a maze of deceptive front
organizations.
I-J.4
Political and Diplomatic Demands of the Palestinian
Terrorist Organizations
The “Constitution” of
Fatah, broadcast on its official website in English, defines its goal
as “complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist
economic, political, military and cultural existence. . .uprooting the
Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist
state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated” (articles
12 and 19). This amounts not only to the destruction of Israel but
genocide against the Israeli people.
When wearing its “front”
hat as the Palestinian National Authority, Fatah leaders say they will
accept a “compromise” that would a) evict all of the
400,000-500,000 Jewish residents of territories outside the June 4,
2007 ceasefire lines between Israel and the “West Bank” and Gaza,
b) Permit the “return” to Israel of all Palestinian Arabs
descended from those who left areas within Israel’s June 4, 1967
borders earlier, during the 1948 Arab-Israel war. These demands would
force Israel to resettle something like three million people, nearly
all of them bitterly hostile to Israel, within its borders, thus
insuring chaos, fighting between the large numbers of forcibly
resettled Jews and voluntarily resettled Arabs, and the collapse of
Israel.
This demand of the present
Palestinian National Authority is a restatement of the “Plan of
Phases” put forward by the Palestine Liberation Organization front
for Fatah in 1974. That plan called for the PLO to establish an
independent “authority” on any territory that Israel could be
induced to evacuate, while still working for the “liberation” of
all of Palestine from the “Zionist presence.” Since 1993, the
Palestinian organizations have in effect been doing their best to
implement this “Plan of Phases,” having already induced Israel to
allow them to implant the first “phase.”
Even while telling foreign
governments and Israel that they are prepared to accept this “compromise,”
Fatah leaders such as PNA President Mahmoud Abbas have never
renounced the organizations “Constitution,” which calls explicitly
for the destruction of Israel.
The “Charter” of the even
more extreme terrorist group Hamas, which now rules supreme in Gaza,
asserts that “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam
eliminates it as it has eliminated its predecessors” (from the
preface). It also asserts that “Muslims will fight the Jews (and
kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will
cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!”
Hamas has openly and explicitly rejected the Oslo Accords,
the Roadmap, and all the other agreements and promises to recognize
Israel made by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestine
National Authority,(made, as we have seen, in bad faith by Fatah’s
fronts), and has vowed to fight on until Israel’s final destruction.
The other Palestinian Arab
terrorist organizations all have foundation documents or charters with
similar “commitments” to the destruction of Israel and to “resistance”
(meaning terrorism).
I-K Origins of the Israeli
“occupation” of the “West Bank” and Gaza
In May and early June of
1967, the Arab states mobilized again for all-out war against
Israel. Egypt, Syria and Jordan placed their armed forces under
a joint Egyptian military command and moved large forces towards the
Israeli frontier. President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt ordered a
United Nations peacekeeping force, which had been stationed along the
Egyptian-Israeli border, to evacuate. He once again imposed a blockade
on Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba. And he openly declared war
on Israel.
Throughout the Arab world,
other countries from Morocco to Iraq also declared war on Israel. They
moved armed forces towards Israel’s borders.
After weeks of attempting to
resolve the conflict by diplomatic means, Israel was finally compelled
to launch a preemptive strike in order to push the assembling Arab
armies back from its frontiers and avoid being conquered by the Arab
regimes, who openly proclaimed the complete annihilation of Israel as
their goal. In order to prevent this massive attack, Israel was
obliged to occupy Judea and Samaria (“The West Bank”), which had
been illegally occupied by Jordan in 1948, the Gaza area, which had
been illegally occupied by Egypt in 1948, the Sinai desert of Egypt,
and the Golan Heights, which had been assigned to Syria by Britain and
France in 1922. Israel was thus forced into an “occupation” that
it never sought or desired. And in any case, the areas of Judea,
Samaria and Gaza occupied during this war were in fact part of the
area originally designated for development of the Jewish National Home
by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
I-L
Israel has
withdrawn from over 90% of the territory it occupied in 1967.
In 1979-81, Israel withdrew
from the entire Sinai Peninsula, which formed over 90% of the total
territory it occupied during the 1967 war, in return for a peace
treaty with Egypt.
Israel has repeatedly offered
to return the Golan Heights to Syria, in return for a peace treaty and
an end to Syrian support for the Palestinian Arab terrorist
organizations. Syria has refused all of these offers.
In 1995 the Israelis withdrew
completely from the major Palestinian Arab population centers in
population centers in Judea and Samaria (“The West Bank”). In
1994, Israel withdrew from most of the Gaza area, and in 2005, Israel
withdrew completely and unconditionally from all of Gaza. In 2000 and
early 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from
95% or more from the total area of Judea , Samaria and Gaza, including
parts of Jerusalem, in return for a peace treaty with the Palestinian
National Authority and its leader, Yasser Arafat. Arafat not only
refused the offer, but immediately launched a major terrorist
offensive, the so-called “Al-Aksa Intifada,” which has killed
nearly one thousand Israelis, most of them civilians.
None of these territorial
withdrawals and proposed territorial withdrawals by Israel has brought
Israelis peace
I-M The Oslo accords
In 1993, Israel most unwisely
signed an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
a front for the terrorist organization Fatah, permitting the PLO-Fatah
to take over the civil administration of the Palestinian Arab
communities of Judea, Samaria (together called “The West Bank” by
the former Jordanian occupiers) and Gaza. This agreement has
become known as the “Oslo Accords,” from the Norwegian city where
it was first negotiated. The newly established Fatah-PLO front
established to govern these communities was named the Palestinian
National Authority (PNA). The agreement also allowed Fatah to create
what was called a “strong police force,” and to introduce into the
area more than 7,000 soldiers of what is called the Palestine
Liberation Army (PLA), yet another Fatah front. The PLA soldiers were
trained by, and stationed in, Iraq and the Sudan, two Arab states
deeply involved in international terrorism, and also extremely
despotic regimes involved in genocide against much of their own
population.
Pursuant subsequent
agreements with the PNA, Israel has withdrawn completely from the
largest Palestinian Arab population centers, leaving them under the
exclusive control of the PNA. This has meant in practice that these
communities are governed, if one can call it government, by the
numerous terrorist organizations that the PNA has allowed to establish
themselves in these communities. It has conceded full civil government
to the PNA over large areas of Judea and Samaria containing the
smaller Palestinian Arab communities, while retaining a token military
presence in these areas, concerned exclusively with preventing the
movement of terrorists from these areas into Israel itself.
In 2005 Israel withdrew
completely from the Gaza area, unilaterally and without making any
requests of the Palestinians at all for this withdrawal. Israel even
forced 9,000 Jewish residents of the area from their homes and
destroyed the twenty villages they had established, as an additional
goodwill gesture toward the Palestinians.
The PLO and the PNA promised,
in return for being permitted to establish their government, to
prohibit and suppress all terrorist attacks on Israelis, and to
prevent the establishment of any armed organizations other than the
Palestinian police. But they have systematically violated and ignored
these and numerous other solemnly made undertakings to Israel that
they signed.. Instead, Fatah and other terrorist organizations, such
as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, that the PNA welcomed into its areas of
control, greatly expanded their membership, arms and training, and
have launched massive terrorist campaigns against the people of
Israel, including the “suicide bombings directed against civilian
bus passengers, restaurants, discothčques where teenagers gather,
etc. Over a thousand Israelis have been murdered by terrorists
operating from their sanctuaries in the PNA-governed areas since 1993;
this is more than the Israelis murdered by terrorists between 1949,
when the first Arab-Israeli war ended, and the signing of the Oslo
Accords in 1993. Many thousands of others have been injured, often
maimed for life. Far from bringing peace, then, the Oslo “peace
accords” have brought Israel endless war, aggression, and loss of
life.
In 2006, the aggression
against Israel deepened when the Palestinian electorate chose Hamas,
which has an even more extreme and overtly ant-Jewish program than
Fatah, to govern them and take over the PNA. The new Hamas
administration has openly repudiated the Oslo accords with Israel
signed by the preceding Fatah administration, and has openly conducted
a war of terror against Israel, including continuous rocketing of
Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza border. However, it is
important to realize that Fatah is also a terrorist organization
dedicated to the destruction Israel, and is only slightly less shrill
in its anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric. It is not, as many
American, European and even Israeli political leaders seem to believe,
a viable “peace partner” for Israel. While it has not been
as open in repudiating the Oslo accords as Hamas, it has
systematically violated them in exactly the same way. Fatah’s “military”
arm, the Al-Aksa Martyr’s Brigades, has carried out numerous “suicide”(
really homicide) bombings and slaughtered hundreds of Israelis.
I-N The Roadmap
The Roadmap is a proposal put
forward in 2003 by the so-called “Quartet” of great powers – the
United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations –
as a means of resolving the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinian Arabs. It calls for the partition of Mandatory Palestine
between an Israel that has withdrawn more or less to its temporary
frontiers as they were before the 1967 war and a Palestinian state for
the territories of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank”) and Gaza.
While in principle calling
for an end to terrorist activity and the disarming of terrorist
organizations, it places the authority for doing this entirely in the
hands of the Palestinian National Authority—which is dominated
by terrorist organizations. Terrorists are thus asked in effect to
disarm themselves. Since the independent Palestinian National
Authority would “transition” directly into the independent
Palestinian state, terrorist groups would in practice be given all the
powers of an independent state, including the right to maintain
unlimited armed forces.
The Roadmap requires Israel
to end all new construction and housing for Israelis living outside
the June 4, 1967 ceasefire lines, “including natural growth.”
(meaning housing to accommodate growing families in these
areas). And it requires the “dismantling” of some or all of the
Israeli communities (referred to as “settlements” and “colonies”)
outside the June 4, 1967 lines. These towns, villages, urban and
suburban neighborhoods are home to 400,000-500,000 people. How or
where homes would be found for these expelled Jewish inhabitants of
Judea and Samaria, or who would pay for their resettlement, is not
addressed by the plan
The Roadmap demands that
Israel withdraw from most or all of the “Palestinian” areas that
it occupied in 1967, without negotiating any final borders with the
Palestinian National Authority, and to allow the Palestinian Arab
leadership to establish an independent state without agreeing to
permanent borders between the Palestinian Arab state and Israel.
The Roadmap praises a
peace plan put forward by Saudi Arabia and declares it to be one of
the bases for a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinian
Arabs. This Saudi plan requires Israel to withdraw to its the June 4,
1967 frontiers, and then to readmit all Palestinian Arabs who claim
descent from people who left areas within these frontiers in 1948. It
is identical to the demands made by the Palestinian National
Authority, and to the “Plan of Phases” promulgated by the
PLO in 1974.
Israel has not only accepted
the Roadmap in principle, but has already unilaterally implemented
many of its provisions, including a complete withdrawal from Gaza, the
dismantling of more than twenty Jewish communities in Gaza and
Samaria, an almost complete prohibition of “natural growth”
in the Israeli towns and villages of Judea and Samaria (at most a few
hundred new housing units have been permitted for a population in the
hundreds of thousands, growing rapidly by natural increase), and
the dismantling of many military checkpoints in Judea and Samaria,
even though they are essential for the protection of Israel’s people
from terrorist attacks.
President Mahmoud Abbas, the
Fatah-affiliated President of the Palestinian National Authority, has
stated his acceptance of the Roadmap, but has done absolutely nothing
to implement the “responsibilities” specified by it for the
Palestinian Arab side, which call for dismantling the terrorist
infrastructure and ending terrorist activity. In fact, the Al-Aksa
Martyr’s Brigade, the “military” wing of Abbas’ Fatah
organization, has continued its unrelenting attacks on Israel’s
civilian population, as have Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular
Resistance Committees, and other Palestinian terrorist organizations.
In early 2007, Abbas called publicly for continued “resistance” to
the Israeli "occupation"—a euphemism for terrorist attacks
on Israel.
The new Hamas-dominated
government of the PNA elected in 2006 has for its part openly
repudiated the Roadmap and all other agreements or proposed agreements
that recognize Israel as a legitimate “entity,” and which
call for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
Israel remains under intense
pressure from the “Quartet” to implement unilaterally and
unconditionally its “responsibilities” under Roadmap, in spite of
the PNA’s utter refusal to halt or even call for a halt in
terrorism. Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah continue to receive strong support,
both financial and military, from the “Quartet” of powers, and
even Israel, despite their utter refusal to implement their
commitments under the Roadmap
The Appendixes to Part I, A
through O, provide extensive documentation for this historical survey,
including original source documents and links to original source
material.
|