Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Palestinians Have a State

Un vecchio articolo, di rara attualita'
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=16948
The Palestinians Have a State
By: Sidney Zion / JewishPress.com
Monday, August 04, 2003
The Palestinians Have a State
It's called Jordan.
The only thing about the Middle East that goes without argument and
even without saying is that the Palestinian Arabs are a stateless,
homeless people.
You can`t pick a fight on that anywhere in the world, including Tel
Aviv. The fact that four wars have been fought for the ostensible
purpose of resolving the plight of the Palestinians has solidified
this consensus. Everyone believes it.
The Oslo peace process lies in ruin, and the road map plan is off to a
shaky start, due to the inability of the parties involved to agree on
a formulation of principles concerning the right, or lack thereof, of
the Palestinians to determine their own future on the West Bank of the
river Jordan -- the area universally regarded as the historic,
political, geographic, and demographic landmass of Palestine.
But even as the arguments rage over whether or how this should or can
be accomplished - a state, a homeland, an entity? - a lot of well-
intentioned people will tell you that there is not now and never has
been a Palestinian nation.
The problem with this notion is that it is not true. There is and has
been a Palestinian nation since May 14, 1946 - only two years to the
day before there was an Israeli nation.
Originally called the Kingdom of Transjordan, that nation is now the
Kingdom of Jordan. It lives on the East Bank of the Jordan River and
comprises 80 percent of the historic, political, geographic, and
demographic landmass of Palestine. It has a population of three
million people, virtually all of whom were either born there or
arrived there from the other 20 percent of Palestine - Israel plus the
``occupied territories`` known as the ``West Bank.``
Palestine, then, includes both sides of the Jordan River, bounded on
the west by the Mediterranean, on the east by Saudi Arabia and Iraq,
on the south of Egypt, on the north by Syria and Lebanon.
These boundaries were universally acknowledged from the end of World
War I until 1946, when Great Britain created by fiat the independent
Kingdom of Transjordan - thus lopping off four-fifths of Palestine and
handing it to the Arabs, in direct violation of the mandate over the
territory granted to Great Britain by the League of Nations.
In the years since, Jordan has been recognized as a nation separate
and apart from Palestine, its only connection being its role as the
principal ``host country`` for Palestinian refugees displaced by the
creation of Israel.
While Israel won its independence through revolution against the
British colonialists, it is viewed as a creature of the United
Nations, owing its existence to a world guilt-ridden over the
Holocaust.
Since its victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel - it is said -
now controls the whole of Palestine. Its refusal to cede completely
the territory occupied after that war - from East Jerusalem to the
Jordan River, plus the Gaza Strip - is therefore considered the bar to
national rights or ``self-determination`` of the Palestinian Arabs.
So goes the conventional wisdom of much of the world, and, because it
is so widely believed, it is naturally thought to be fair and
objective. No matter that it is based on an incredible distortion of
history, politics, geography, and demography.
Yet, unless this distortion is corrected, there is little hope for
anything close to enduring Middle East peace. A brief look at
relatively recent events puts the problem in perspective.
A Gift For Abdullah
Before World War I, the word ``Palestine`` had no clear-cut
geographical denotation and represented no political identity. In
1920, however, the Allied powers conferred on Great Britain a
``mandate`` over the territory formerly occupied by Turkey. It was
called the Palestine Mandate and included the land on both sides of
the Jordan River.
This mandate was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and
remained unchanged during the League`s lifetime.
The mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration, the famous 1917
proclamation by which Great Britain committed itself to provide a
homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people; it did not provide a
homeland for the Arabs living there, but it did protect their ``civil
and religious,`` although not their political, rights.
However, two months after the League of Nations approved the mandate,
Winston Churchill, then Britain`s colonial secretary, changed the
rules of the game.
``One afternoon in Cairo,`` as Churchill later boasted, he simply took
all the land east of the Jordan River and inserted the Hashemite
Abdullah - the great-grandfather of the present King Abdullah - as its
emir.
But he did not free it from the mandate, and the people living on the
East Bank were in all respects Palestinians. The people living there
traveled under Palestinian passports, as did the Jews and Arabs living
on the West Bank. But the whole country was effectively ruled by
Britain.
Why did Churchill do it? Because Abdullah was bitterly disappointed
that he hadn`t been chosen by the British as king-designate of Iraq -
a post that went to his brother. Churchill wanted to stroke Abdullah`s
ego and at the same time serve the empire.
But, according to Britain`s East Bank representative, Sir Alec
Kirkbride, this land, constituting 80 percent of the mandate, was
``intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement
of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which they
were pledged to support, became an accomplished fact. There was no
intention at that stage of forming the territory east of the river
Jordan into an independent Arab state.``
Indeed, Churchill persuaded the Zionists to go along with the
suspension of Jewish immigration to the East Bank on the grounds that
this would mollify the indigenous Arab population on the West Bank -
then 200,000 strong - and thus make possible a Jewish homeland west of
the Jordan.
Of course, it did no such thing; instead, it whetted Arab appetites
for the whole of Palestine, an objective which was nearly achieved
several time: the Palestinian Arab uprising against the Jews in 1936;
the British White Paper of 1939, which cut off the Jewish immigration
to the Holy Land, locking European Jews in with Hitler; and the united
Arab war against the newly proclaimed State of Israel in 1948.
Reversing Balfour
Until 1946, however, Transjordan remained under the British Palestine
Mandate. The English declared Transjordan an independent entity
without a soupçon of international authority.
As a result, what began in 1920 as a mandate to turn Palestine into a
Jewish homeland turned into a reverse Balfour Declaration, creating an
Arab nation in four-fifths of Palestine and leaving the Jews to fight
for statehood against the Arabs on the West Bank.
The upshot: Jordan is now considered an immutable entity, as distinct
from Palestine as are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
But a country whose population is virtually all Palestinian can hardly
be considered as something less than a Palestinian nation.
Still, the notion that Jordan has nothing to do with Palestine is so
deeply embedded that it comes as no real surprise that The New York
Times and the rest of the media elite treat it as a world apart.
This is hardly something new, of course; readers of a certain age and
long memory may recall that the Times took this approach as least as
far back as the mid-1970`s when, in a three- part series on the
Palestinians, the paper drew historical maps cutting Transjordan out
of the British mandate -- and repeated the fiction that Israel
occupied the whole of Palestine.
Ironically, while the Times was breast-beating over the "stateless"
Palestinians, the late left-wing journalist I.F. Stone was complaining
in the New York Review of Books that Jewish dissidents, like himself,
could not get a word in edgewise in behalf of Palestinian nationhood.
Stone knew all about the two banks of the Jordan, as his piece
indicated. It seems, however, that it didn`t register with him; he
suggested neither that the Palestinians already have a state nor that
the one thing the American press never reports is the fact that Jordan
is Palestine.
On the other hand, the Israeli government doesn`t say it either, and a
story goes with that fact.
Jordan vs. Palestine
When the Zionists agreed in 1922 to suspend immigration to the East
Bank, in accordance with Churchill`s request, Vladimir Jabotinsky
signed on.
But Jabotinsky -- the elegant, fiery Zionist leader who later became
the father of the underground Irgun Zvai Leumi and the ``eagle`` of
its commander, Menachem Begin -- changed his mind about the deal a
year later after it became clear that the Jews had traded away most of
the mandate for nothing.
The Establishment Zionists, however, stuck with the British ever
after.
``There are no Palestinians, there are only Jordanians,`` said Golda
Meir again and again.
Of course, she was wrong. In fact, there are no Jordanians, only
Palestinians. One reason why Golda insisted on the opposite - as
everyone with a passing knowledge of Zionist politics understands -
was that her political enemy Jabotinsky was on the other side.
Meir and her Mapai party, which ruled Israel from the pre-state days
until Begin was elected prime minister in 1977, hated Jabotinsky and
his followers, considering them all ``fascists.``
The Jabotinsky vision held that both sides of the Jordan belonged to
Israel; he wrote a song about it: ``The West Bank is ours, and the
East Bank is ours.``
Menachem Begin marched to this tune most of his life. For domestic
political reasons he dropped it in his later years, but it was
surprising, to say the least, that he did not even allude to it after
he became prime minister.
Had he insisted on educating the world about the true history of
Palestine, Begin could have cleared up the confusion and made a
contribution toward peace.
Thus, if the world were to understand that Israel occupies only 20
percent of Palestine rather than 100 percent, would it not make a
difference?
If it became clear that the Arab refugees and their children who
crossed over to Jordan in 1948 did not enter a ``host country`` but
rather the Arab part of their own country, would it not make a
difference?
Of course it would make a difference.
Israel is being robbed of its political, historic, and geographic
legitimacy while seeming to rob the Palestinians of a nation it
already has.
``If there is a Palestine, there can also be an Israel,`` said the
late Peter Bergson, who led the Hebrew Liberation Movement in the
1940`s.
``But if we paint Jordan as if it`s just another Arab nation, as if
it`s Saudi Arabia, then the fight is on for the extinction of Israel
in stages.
``Because,`` Bergson added, ``if we insist that the whole of Palestine
is the West Bank, anything we return is simply the fruit of a crime.
But if we tell the truth, if we point out that 80 percent of the land
is already in the hands of the Palestinian Arabs, everyone - here and
around the world - will see this dispute for what it is.
``And what is it but an argument over boundaries?....Every boundary
disagreement in history has been settled by drawing new lines. But you
can`t settle it if someone thinks his nationhood has been ripped
off.``
If all this sounds theoretical, impractical, unpragmatic, it`s the
opposite.
A Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is not economically
viable without at least a condominium arrangement with Jordan. This
even in the unlikely event that Israel retreats to its pre-Six Day War
borders.
If left amputated from their true homeland, Jordan, the Palestinians
will seek lebensraum, either toward the Mediterranean or across the
Jordan River. Obviously, they would be no match for Israel, but the
king of Jordan will look like a fine target to a bankrupted
Palestinian regime.
Which is exactly why Abdullah, like his late father before him, fears
a Palestinian state, no matter what he says publicly.
Indeed, no neighboring Arab nation really wants a separate state on
the West Bank - not Egypt, not Saudi Arabia, not Syria, not Lebanon.
Some of them say they want it, but whosoever accepts rhetoric in the
Middle East belongs in the U.S. State Department.
Hat tip to 
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/

homeless people.
Tutti gli stati arabi della regione campano su questa disastrosa
condizione dei palestinesi. Del resto loro ne hanno fatte tante che
nessuno li vuole.

 It's called Jordan.
un vecchio articolo antisemita, di rara attualità.
"gli ebrei hanno già uno stato, gli USA"
qualsiasi pubblicazione di destra di prima che Fini si mettesse la
kippah