introduction
in the previous episode We saw how the all-Arab defeat took place. We saw that it left the Palestinian population in Israel without its own state, with about 14,000 dead, and with national humiliation - the "Nakba", which created about 700,000 refugees.
We also touched on the following paradox:
The undisputed Palestinian leader, the "Mufti", Haj Amin Al Husseini, was a particularly toxic personality. His personality and his part in the Nazi machine was so blatant that the Palestinians today almost completely avoid mentioning his name and the central role he played in their history and that of the region. It turns out that even in today's toxic reality, a Nazi personality is still unmarketable. But despite this denial, the Palestinians to this day educate their children precisely about Husseini's toxic legacy.
It seems that the mufti's disappearance from today's Palestinian discourse is indeed mainly a result of his poisonous and unmarketable personality and policies. But in addition, in reality he is a "loser". He did not bring the goods which, in current parlance, "From the River to the Sea".
Are "Palestinians" a people?
In the previous chapters I discussed this question. My conclusion is that the Palestinians are indeed a people, if only for the reason that they feel that way. As the poet Amir Gilboa wrote: "Suddenly a person wakes up in the morning and feels that he is a people." It happened, apparently, one day to the extended family of Abraham our father (or maybe to Jacob's family, or maybe to the slaves in Egypt - depending on where we want to define the circumstances of the birth of the people of Israel). A group of people, due to one or another circumstance, feels a connection that makes them something that is more than individual details. They feel "a people", decide to define themselves as a people, and it's hard to argue with them about that.
According to this definition, the Palestinians are a people. They are a fairly young people, existing, according to what we have seen, for about 100 years. In general, as long as a nation exists over time, it strengthens its definition as a nation. However, the time that passes may weaken this definition, until a situation where the nation dissolves and disappears. This has happened to many nations in history. The durability of a nation rests quite a bit on the foundation that glues its parts together and on its myth as a nation.
The foundation and the myth that build the Palestinian people
The main Palestinian claim:
| The Palestinian people have a natural right to all of the Land of Israel that was taken from it by the Jews |
They strengthen this claim with second-order claims:
- Throughout the past hundreds of years there was a large Arab majority (mainly Muslim) in the country.
- Jews began to arrive in Israel in significant numbers only at the beginning of the 20th century, and the Jewish immigration increased greatly in the XNUMXs, with the encouragement of the British and the West.
- Zionism is a Western colonialist movement
- Zionism usurped land from the "natives"
- During the War of Liberation, approximately 750,000 Arabs were expelled from the territories that fell into the hands of the Jewish state
(We will touch on the nature of these claims in the following chapters)
It follows from the main argument The Palestinian vision:
| * The State of Israel should cease and exist. * The Arab refugees and their descendants, who today number in the millions, will return to their homes and the territories that were taken from them, and establish a state "from the river to the sea". * The Jews may be citizens of such a country, and it is better not to be here at all |
The problem with the Palestinian vision
This vision highlights a major problem in Palestinian nationalism. The basis around which this nationalism was built in the 1920s was the "resistance", based on hatred for the Jews and denying them any right to their own country. The events of those days join a chain of events that continues to this day. They clearly show that the denial of the existence of the Jewish state is in the Palestinian priority order above the establishment of a Palestinian state.
On February 18, 1947, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin gave a speech to the British Parliament. In an attempt to explain why Britain is giving up the mandate on Palestine, he said:
| "His Majesty's Government is faced with an insoluble conflict of principles. For the Jews, the essential principle is the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the essential principle is to oppose to the end the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine." |
Bevin, although he was clearly anti-Zionist, was good at articulating the essence of the conflict even then. The problem is that the Palestinian myth is not constructive. It is essentially based on the negation of the other. Even after the Nakba, Palestinian nationalism continued to adopt a number of clearly unconstructive directions.
1. "Right of return"
The "right of return" is a Palestinian principle according to which the 1948 refugees will be able to return to the places they came from. We are not talking about those refugees who were displaced, of whom perhaps a few tens of thousands of elderly people remain today, but about 5 million of their descendants who are today registered with UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Employment Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) as refugees.
This right was anchored in UN Resolution 194. In Article 11 of Resolution 194, two alternatives were given for solving the refugee problem:
| ...the refugees who wish to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors will be allowed to do so at the earliest possible time from a practical point of view. For the property of those who prefer not to do so, compensation will be paid according to the principles of international law... The reconciliation committee must assist in their return to their homeland (repatriation), their resettlement, as well as the economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees... |
The interpretation of this section and its implications have been debated between the Arab and Israeli sides ever since. The Arab side's position over the years has been that this UN resolution clearly anchors the Palestinians' claim to the right of return. Israel claimed that the wording of the resolution left the manner of its implementation and the determination of who the refugees are who aspire to "live in peace with their neighbors" in Israel's hands. There is no global precedent. For a similar demand, the meaning of the "right of return" is the elimination of the Jewish state, and the Palestinians know this very well.
The "right of return" is actually another form of the Palestinian vision, according to which the state of Israel should cease and exist.
2. Approaching as a way of life
The Palestinians are eternal refugees who refuse to be rehabilitated. UNRWA, the refugee agency established by the United Nations to solve the refugee problem, has done and is doing everything in its power to perpetuate the problem. Refugees, in a way that has no precedent in the world, have become inherited at UNRWA. The result: today we have over 5 million registered Palestinian refugees.
And what is worst of all - the Palestinians behave as eternal refugees. They convinced themselves of the "right of return". Until they return, they have decided to act as victims that the whole world must come to their aid without being forced to actively promote themselves.
There is no precedent for such behavior. The years after World War II saw tens of millions of refugees in Europe and Asia. The rift was big, but the problems were solved, in many cases with the help of UN refugee organizations, within a few years.
Young Israel, for example, in those years Israel took in 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. It did this without the need for an organization on behalf of the United Nations. Rehabilitating the refugees was not the Palestinian way, and they received reinforcement in this direction from their brothers in the Arab countries, who wanted to preserve the problem at the expense of the refugees. The Palestinians even went further and actually sabotaged projects that tried to improve their situation. Example Characteristic of the Palestinian insistence not to rebuild is the farm of Musa Al-Alami.
The farm of Musa Al-Alami
After the war of liberation, Musa al-Alami, a prominent personality at the top of the Palestinian national movement, established an agricultural farm for Palestinian refugees east of Jericho ("Mashruh Musa al-Alami"). The farm was funded by donations. King Abdullah (the territories of the West Bank were controlled by Jordan after the war of liberation) assigned her 20,000 dunams. Wells were dug on the farm, irrigation canals were built and it produced beautiful agricultural crops.
The farm flourished between 1951 and 1955. Palestinian refugees worked and made a living from it. A swimming pool, a clinic, a school and a boarding school for hundreds of orphans were built next to it. It was a unique attempt to promote from within and turn his back on rapprochement, but he did not succeed. Amin al-Husseini did not like the idea. Any attempt to rehabilitate refugees is seen by him as a betrayal of the idea of the right of return. He did not agree to give up fixing the emissions situation as a tool in the fight against Israel.
Already in 1954, al-Husseini planned to assassinate al-Alami. He couldn't do it, but in December 1955 a rioting Palestinian mob attacked the farm, destroyed, looted and burned it.
3. Choosing terrorism as a recommended and respectable way of life
The Palestinians reinvented terrorism as a method of action that would bring them redemption, and turned it into a way of life. We will not list here all the terrible actions from hijacking planes, murdering athletes, indiscriminate killing of Israelis and Jews. All these actions were and are still supposed to promote the Palestinian vision. They are also a clear example of how unconstructive Palestinian nationalism is. And they have remained consistent in their method to this day.
Nationalism is based on negative elements
Today it is very difficult to identify positive elements in this nationalism.
What country can such a national movement establish?
You don't have to imagine too much. In 2005, the Palestinians accepted Gaza as a sort of pilot for a state. The world hoped to see Gaza become a kind of Singapore, but the Palestinians chose their usual course. The Palestinian national movement had all the conditions to show what it was capable of. Unfortunately, we have seen what it is capable of: poverty, religious extremism, hatred and terrorism. Is it possible to build a long-lasting nation on such a foundation that is built only on the negation of the other? uncertain.
Is it possible to build a country on such a basis? Certainly not. She will be a harm to herself and harm to her neighbors.
I enjoyed what was written. Written clearly and clearly.
The Palatines are not a people. They are descendants of Muslims/Christians who changed their religion and assimilated from other peoples, but they are not themselves.
Do you want to say that a group of people stood up 100 years ago and said they were a people?! We have nothing to do with that.
But then why don't the Jews who returned to their homeland have the same right?!
We too stood up about 100 years ago and said we are a people. old and new.
And I agree with what was said as soon as we are not here what will they do?!
Who will they fight against?!
At that moment the Palestinians are unnecessary.
That's why they cultivate hatred, because it's only because of it that they exist, it's the justification for their existence.
But none of this matters at all.
What matters is that there is no good solution to our situation.
Every solution is a bad solution.
They are here and we are also here and in light of the situation it does not seem that we can live together and therefore one of the nations should cease to exist.
I really hope it's not us.
Let us open up and become smarter and learn to stop feeling bad about ourselves and stop trying to justify our very existence.
We will stop with the "affirmative action" that favors the young Arabs over the young Jews in the universities and we will stop paying the Arabs for their studies instead of paying the soldiers and fighters.
Because in practice this is what we do and no one has the courage to say it.
It is said that in hospitals, for example, there are 20 percent Arabs.
This is a blatant lie. There is at least 50 percent.
why? Check the admission and financing conditions yourself.
Take Meir Hospital for example.
Come to the hospital and see some Jewish and some Arab doctors.
Go down to the parking lot and check who they belong to.
You might learn something. It's not enough to talk, you have to smoke.
Quietly and wisely. Not violently and not with bells and whistles.
By the way, do you know why they fail to establish a state? Not just because they don't want to. But because they are not able to. Because when their common denominator is to wipe out the Jews, then when there are no Jews, there is no nation.
They are not a people for the simple reason that they have nothing in common except language and the desire to eradicate us and our rule in this country. If we're not here, they'll kill each other in the blink of an eye. As they actually do in practice inside the green line.
They are one people like the Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians and Emiratis are one people. Rather, like Eritreans, Sudanese, and other illegal migrant workers/infiltrators are one people.
I certainly agree that some collective can bond together out of a common destiny and a desire for self-determination. and decide that he is with That is his right. but! This fact does not give him any right to make any historical demands and claims far beyond the time when this "nation" came together to be such.
how many times
Yawning is a recommended action to pump oxygen to the brain.
Hope it helped you.
I laughed. twice
A balanced article (in terms of right/left),
And the final conclusion is correct!
There has been a Jewish majority in Jerusalem for over 150 years.
It is good to read that even the leftists among us have sobered up over the many years and sufferings and realized who the vile "people" we are dealing with here in the last century are.
Just to be precise in the terminology: Zionism did not steal territory from the natives, but the Zionists took their land which was rightly given to them since the dawn of history and which was stolen by violence and pogroms in the generations prior to this period from our ancestors.
According to the understanding, the Palestinians in general find in the state of Jordan their small minority in Lebanon and Syria and a larger minority here inside Israel as well and consolidating all of them so to speak as a "people" is the opposition to Zionism and our return to our country.
Let's just hope that the generations that come after us will remember and not forget what the previous generations went through and draw conclusions and know how to deal with that enemy (whose support in the world is getting stronger and also violent, not to mention giving birth in huge numbers) and God forbid they won't go through what the generations before them went through and won't be complacent to make the same mistakes, Give the same gestures and talk with the same naivety about peace agreements, but they will always be focused and aware of how We are preempting a pre-emptive strike against the attack of this enemy, who will probably never leave more than the last centimeter here.
Correction to the beginning of the response: *a vile enemy, not a vile "people".
Fix:
The origin of the Palestinians is not in the "state of Jordan" - this state did not exist at all before 1920.
A (small) part of the Palestinians are probably the descendants of the Muslims who came from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, or the Christian natives (from Byzantium, which preceded the Muslim invasion and Islam in general) or those who converted to Islam over time.
A large part came from Egypt (in 1831 there was a large Egyptian colonialist settlement brought by Ibrahim Pasha).
Some came from Syria. Ezz-edin al-Qassam, for example, was a Syrian who fought for Faisal in "Greater Syria", fled here after Faisal's defeat and became a zealous "Palestinian".
Quite a few came from the surrounding area following the work provided by the British Mandate authorities, and the Jewish agricultural settlements from the 1920s onwards.