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The Forum > Article Comments > Palestine - cutting Abbas down to size > Comments

Palestine - cutting Abbas down to size : Comments

By David Singer, published 16/10/2012

Israel comprises only 17% of former Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza 5%, and Jordan makes up the remaining 78%.

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So far as I can make out the British Mandate covered what is now Jordan, as Singer says, but it seems that very quickly it became (such as in atlases printed during that period) Palestine (west of the Jordan river) and Transjordan (to the east).

To come to the point, so what? Singer doesn't even hint at a reason why people whose roots are in Palestine-west-of-the-Jordan should be expected to settle elsewhere. The nearest he comes is to quote an Israeli politician "East of the river Jordan, there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees". But there is room for them in lots of places. So what? They want to go where their ancestors have always lived until they were expelled/excluded in the last 64 years. Why shouldn't they?

Singer's attitude is shown pretty clearly in his acceptance that these people should be sent anywhere that is convenient to Israel.

Singer's willingness to talk nonsense is illustrated in his comments about article 5 of the Mandate. To suggest that this precludes granting independence to part of the territory in question seems ludicrous. In fact the Mandate actually envisaged the creation of a Jewish National Home within the territory. (No-one actually seems to know what this means, though one possibility seems to be an independent state. As a matter of fact the one thing that is clear is that it doesn't mean the state of Israel as it has turned out - it was supposed to protect the "civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion" - Article 2).
Posted by jeremy, Tuesday, 16 October 2012 9:29:07 AM
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The latest Zionist pronouncement via Peter Singer continues to argue the case for racist Israel on the basis of a colonialist mandate from the League of Nations, an organisation full of anti-Semitic governments only too keen to label Jews a “nation” rather than part of their own populations. The Arab people in general and the Palestinians in particular were not represented. Neither the Palestinian people nor anyone else are legally or morally obliged to give the League’s Balfour Declaration the time of day.

The right to Palestinian territory, from the sea to the River Jordan, belongs to the families born there including the five million exiles being kept from their homeland by Zionist guns backed (for now) by officialdom in Europe and America and unfortunately Australia.

Treating people of Jewish descent as constituting a “nation” satisfies underlying anti-Semitism in those who see these people as a “problem” to be “solved” by encouraging them to settle in someone else’s territory. The racist Zionist movement was and is only too happy to cash in on the anti-Semitic notion, reinforced by religion, that Jews are “different” from everyone else. Hence this latest article urging that the Palestinians be dumped in Jordan rather than return to their own homeland.

PS: The invasion of Palestine was not a “War of Independence” waged by the invaders as Mr Singer suggests readers uncritically assume.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Tuesday, 16 October 2012 1:41:56 PM
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Dear Julian,

Just because the truth is inconvenient (abetting antisemitism) doesn't mean that it should be ignored.

Whether you like it or not, Jews are a nation and were never anything else. That you don't like their treatment of Palestinians is a separate matter.

Judaism is one of the first national movements. When nationalism started in the west, they were challenged by Napoleon who asked them: "are you a separate nation?". Obviously they saw the catch and had a hard time with it: if they said the truth they would face persecution and expulsion; if they lied, as they eventually did, claiming that Judaism is just a religion, they were to gain emancipation and civil rights. So they did answer hesitantly and cowardly, "No, we are French". Of course they never meant what they claimed in http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/363_Transp/Sanhedrin.html
Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 16 October 2012 4:29:30 PM
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#To jeremy

In response to your comments:

1. Transjordan remained part of the Mandate from 1920 until 1946.

2. Quoting one sentence out of its context is misleading. What Rabin said was:
"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"

3. Palestine - a sparsely populated and underdeveloped area of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years - was a centre for the migration of vast numbers of Arabs attracted to the economic opportunities available with the migration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine from about 1880. The UN recognized this in 1947 when the Partition Resolution called for the creation of one Jewish State and one Arab - not "Palestinian" - State in the remaining Palestine territory.

4. Pursuing a right of return by Palestinian Arabs or their descendants to what is now Israel - 17% of former Palestine - has been and continues to be one of the major stumbling blocks to resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict.

5. Article 5 of the Mandate is clear and unambiguous - no ceding or leasing of Palestine territory.

Article 27 stipulated:
"The consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of the mandate"

Transjordan's independence was recognized by the League of Nations in dubious circumstances at its last meeting on 18 April 1946 prior to being disbanded on 20 April 1946.

6. The terms of the Mandate did not preclude the creation of a Jewish state according to sworn evidence given to the Peel Commission in 1937.

7. Please particularise the civil and religious rights of any persons living in Israel not being "safeguarded" - the term actually used in Article 2.
Posted by david singer, Wednesday, 17 October 2012 9:02:06 AM
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To Emperor Julian

Another one of your Jew-hating and Jewish State denying posts that can only give encouragement to those who seek to prolong the 130 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs - rather than attempt to resolve it.

Reflect on your views as the deaths, injuries and trauma suffered by both Jews and Arabs continue to escalate and as people all around the world become victims of terrorist actions in support of the "Palestinians" - perpetrated by those holding similar opinions to your own.
Posted by david singer, Wednesday, 17 October 2012 9:22:48 AM
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All we can see in these further Zionist posts are assertions without supporting facts or arguments – including the further assertion that to reject them makes one a “Jew hater” with responsibility for the continuing deaths caused by the Zionist occupation of Palestine. The assertion that people of Jewish descent are “a nation” is embellished by calling this assertion “truth”. It is asserted that Jews loyal to the land of their birth were being “cowardly” by failing to satisfy Zionist ambitions.

The bottom line: Proclaiming the right of a worldwide ethnic group to call itself a “nation”, seize someone else’s land and hold it by violence is a claim that that ethnic group is “special” in a way that no other ethnic group on earth is “special”. The name of this claim is “Zionism”. To anyone who detests racism it is a vile claim.

There are grounds to negotiate a decent solution in Palestine. For example one issue to be confronted is that Palestine is a police state. Virtually nobody in Israel - Jewish or Arab - wants to live under its rule. To qualify for a one state solution Palestine would need to make radical and permanent changes, with democracy and respect for individual human rights nailed home. There are other issues of justice - special status for the world’s ethnic Jews are not among them.

To pull Zionists to reality they might study the work of genuine Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, who was born in Israel and did the bulk of his detailed historical research there. Pappe’s extensively referenced book is “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”. Pappe is a moral and intellectual giant beside whom Zionists are pygmies.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Wednesday, 17 October 2012 5:00:20 PM
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