Via JPost:

Despite all of the Arab attacks in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936, the British response was to reward Arab aggression against the Jews and impose draconian restrictions on Jewish immigration. The pattern of Arab attacks and rewards would repeat itself time and again. Arab states, terrorist groups and the Palestinian Arabs believed that they could wage “wars of limited liability.” They could unleash attacks with impunity in an attempt to wipe out Israel, convinced that if they were defeated they could return to a status quo ante, or even achieve diplomatically what they couldn’t win on the battlefield. Territories captured by Israel would be returned and not annexed, terrorist leaders would be honored and not condemned, and Jews/Israel would be blamed.

Despite Arab aggression against the Jewish communities in Palestine in 1947 and 1948, Palestinian Arabs still demand today a “right of return” to areas within Israel’s borders since the 1949 Armistice. In 1956, Egyptian-commanded fedayeen terrorist attacks led Israel to join Britain and France in the Sinai campaign against Egypt. Two days into the war, President Dwight Eisenhower called Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. According to a biographer of Jewish leader Max Fisher, Eisenhower admonished Prime Minister Ben-Gurion: “You ought not forget that the strength of Israel and her future are bound up with the United States.” This was followed by specific threats: If Israel did not leave Sinai and Gaza there would be UN condemnation, U.S. aid would be terminated, the tax-status of charitable contributions would be challenged.”

In 1957, the U.S. pressure forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai without securing ironclad guarantees against Egyptian aggression and blockades. In October 1965, Max Fisher visited Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm.

Eisenhower admitted to him: “Looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressed Israel to evacuate the Sinai.”

Critical evidence negating the claim that the Arabs in the Land of Israel had been there “from time immemorial.”  Via IsraelNN.com:

Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas says the Arabs of the Galilee city of Tzfat left in 1948 not because they were driven out, but on their own volition.

Many biographies of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas imply that his family became “refugees” because of the War of Independence in 1948. For instance, a BBC profile on Abbas when he succeeded Yasser Arafat as PLO chairman in 2005 writes, “In the light of his origins in Safed in Galilee – in what is now northern Israel – he is said to hold strong views about the right of return of Palestinian refugees.” Answers.com states, “As a result of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, he became a refugee.” Wikipedia articles on the topic say the same – all giving the impression that the Abbas family was driven out and became homeless.
It is notable that the Abbas family moved back to Damascus, as that is likely the place where it had originated less than 90 years earlier.

However, Abbas himself – co-founder of Fatah with Arafat, and known as Abu Mazen – now tells a different story. Speaking with Al-Palestinia TV on Monday, Abbas admitted that his family was not expelled or driven out, but rather left for fear that the Jews might take revenge for the slaughter of 20 Jews in the city during the Arab pogroms of 19 years earlier.

In the words of Abbas (engineer of the “Black September” terror attack during the Munich Olympics, which killed 11 Israeli athletes and a U.S. citizen on September 4, 1972)

“I am among those who were born in the city of Tzfat (Safed). We were a family of means. I studied in elementary school, and then came the naqba [calamity, namely, the founding of the State of Israel – ed.]. At night, we left by foot from Tzfat, to the Jordan River, where we remained for a month. Then we went to Damascus, and then to our relatives in Jordan, and then we settled in Damascus.

“My father had money, and he spent his money systematically, and after a year, the money ran out and we began to work.

“The people’s basic motives brought them to run away for their lives and with their property. These [motives] were very important, for they feared the violence of the Zionist terrorist organizations – and especially those of us from Tzfat felt that there was an old desire for revenge from the rebellion of 1929, and this was in the memory of our families and parents.”

The “rebellion” Abbas referred to was a series of brutal Arab attacks on Jewish towns in the summer of 1929. Nearly 70 Jews were slaughtered in their homes in Hevron, 20 in Tzfat, 17 in Jerusalem, and others were murdered in Motza, Kfar Uriah and Tel Aviv.

Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, the current Palestinian Authority chairman, was also behind the Maalot High School Massacre in which 26 Israeli school children were killed and 66 were wounded, not including the immoral palestinian Muslim terrorists. This slaughter was planned by Mahmoud Abbas, the current “moderate” head of the PLO.

Here is a PowerPoint Presentation on Mahmood Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, via Israel Behind the News. (You will need to have a PowerPoint Player to view this). The 22 slain youths are referred to as the “22 Flowers”. They are buried together in a special enclave in the Safed Beit Olam.

Via MEMRI:

Sheik Himam Sa’id, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, said on Arabic TV last week:

“People of Hebron – you are now waging a war against the Jews. You are well-versed in this. We saw how, on a day in 1929, you slaughtered the Jews in Hebron. Today, slaughter them on the land of Hebron. Kill them in Palestine. Arise, oh people of Palestine…arise and face the [PA] Preventive Security forces.”

“What will you say to the Jordanian government? Expel the Jewish ambassador from Amman. Amman is pure, and the Jewish ambassador must not defile its soil….Stop normalization with the Jews. Stop all imports and exports with the Jews. Our markets are full of Jewish vegetables and Jewish fruits. Traders who bring these fruits and vegetables are traitors, collaborators.”

I thought that this would be a good time to repeat a previous post of mine about the history of England’s principled role in creating nations, carving up nations and occupying the Middle East:

During WWI, the entire Middle East, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire, was split into two parts. Half was controlled by France (the French Mandate), the other half by England (the British Mandate).

The French Mandate included the northern part of the Ottoman Empire. The British Mandate included the southern and eastern part of the Ottoman Empire.

It is important to keep in mind that the Ottoman Empire controlled the Middle East from the 16th to the 20th century — for some 400 years. During this time, the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. did not exist. The residents in these areas were predominately Arab subjects of the Ottoman Empire, living in loosely organized tribal communities.

The British Mandate included the landmass on the West Bank of the Jordan River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the landmass on the East Bank of the Jordan River, an area known as Trans-Jordan. The British called this whole huge area “Palestine.”

When the British took over the land of Israel, suddenly the dream of a homeland for the Jews became a real possibility.

By this time, there were between 85,000 to 100,000 Jews living in the Land of Israel, of a total population of 600,000. (See “History of the Jews” by Paul Johnson, p. 430.) Most of the Arabs living in the land had migrated there only in the previous thirty years attracted by the jobs created by the Jews who were building and farming. (Note that when Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there.)

A big boost for a Jewish homeland came from Earl Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), then foreign secretary, who in 1917 promised British support for the cause.

Balfour became a friend of the Jewish cause in some measure because of Chaim Weizmann whose invention of artificial acetone, the chief ingredient in gunpowder, enabled the British to mass-produce gunpowder for the war effort. Balfour said that acetone converted him to Zionism.

Balfour’s support for a Jewish homeland became known in history as the Balfour Declaration which was issued in the form a letter to Lord Rothschild on November 2nd, 1917. It stated:

“His Majesty’s government looks with favor upon the establishment in Palestine of a national homeland for the Jewish people.”

But talk is cheap, and when it came to the reality of creating such a state, the British had many other considerations and interests to take into consideration.

Despite the support of certain British political figures, the British Foreign Ministry and others were generally much more pro-Arab, and the British government got busy carving out Arab countries from the lands of the Ottoman Empire.

Through their efforts the country of Iraq was created in 1921. It was a monarchy with Faisal ibn Hussein, the son of Hussein the Sherif of Mecca, as king. Soon thereafter Iraqi oil started to flow to the West.

Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world (after Saudi Arabia) and it is no wonder the British were interested in having a bond with this country as well as other oil-rich Arab states.

Another country created by the British was Jordan. In 1927, the British installed Abdullah ibn Hussein, another son of the Sherif of Mecca, as emir of the new country called Trans-Jordan, later Jordan. Jordan was confined to the East Bank of the River Jordan and did not include any part of the West Bank.

Why were the sons of the Sherif of Mecca made rulers of these countries?

The British wanted alliances with all the Arab kingdoms. They had shored up support for the Ibn Saud of the Arabian Peninsula, who had fought the Turks alongside them. Ibn Saud got Saudi Arabia.

But when that happened, the British had to pay off the Hussein Sherif of Mecca, who was in charge of the Islamic holy sites. (The Hussein family are Hashemites, the tribe of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, and have been traditionally the keepers of the “holy” city of Mecca.)

They had to give him and his children some land, so they gave them Iraq and Trans-Jordan — the land on the East Bank of the River Jordan.

Yet despite all this country-making, and despite the Balfour Declaration, the British could not get around to creating a country called Israel.

Why not?

There was a clear British bias against the Jews as is readily apparent to anyone who has studied the series of White Papers issued by the British government in the 1920s and 1930s.

The reasons for this bias were:

The British had to deal with the issue of an Arab majority living in what was left of Palestine. They came up with all kinds of partition plans all of which were rejected by the Arabs. (Not all Arabs were opposed by-the-way; King Faisal of Iraq signed an agreement with Chaim Weizman calling for peace and cooperation.)

Many members of the British government and military were clearly anti-Semitic and had a romantic/patronizing attitude toward the Arabs.

The Arabs had oil and England needed oil. In the final analysis, the British had to take into consideration what was in their best interest. Looking after their strategic interests and placating tens of millions of Arabs was more important in their eyes than saving a few hundred thousand Jews, even though this went against the conditions of the mandate that they were granted in 1920.

Meanwhile the poor Jews, not knowing that the British were going to back out of their promise, kept migrating to the land.

The third migration or aliyah (between 1919 and 1923) brought 35,000 Jews to the land. The fourth aliyah (between 1924 and 1928) brought 80,000 Jews to the land. The fifth aliyah (between 1929 and 1939 as Hitler rose to power in Germany) brought 250,000 Jews to the land.

The Arabs made it clear that they were not going to sit still for a Jewish state. In August of 1929, due to the instigation of the preachers in the mosques, a series of riots broke out in which many Jews were massacred.

The New York Times in its history of Israel (Israel: from Ancient Times to the Modern Nation, pp. 38-39) writes of this time:

“The riots of August, 1929, were ignited in Jerusalem over a rumor spread by Arab leaders that Jews were going to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third most holy shrine. Fighting soon spread throughout Palestine. The worst massacres were in Hebron, sacred to Jew and Muslim alike, where 67 Orthodox Jews – men, women and children – were slaughtered by Arabs and 50 more wounded. Pierre van Paassen, a reporter, described the horror that he witnessed by lamplight in a Jewish seminary in Hebron: ‘The slain students in the yard, the dead men in the synagogue, slashed throats and mutilated bodies.’ By the time order was restored 133 Jews had been killed, 399 wounded.”

The 1930s saw more rioting and more massacres, especially in Jaffa and again in Hebron. In response, the British convened the Peel Commission which almost totally did away with the Balfour Declaration that had originally promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine on both sides of the River Jordan.

In July of 1937, the Peel Commission issued a report which said that all the Jews should be confined to a tiny state that would include a sliver of land along the Mediterranean coast and a small piece in the north abutting the west side of the Lake Kineret (“Sea of Galilee”).

The Arabs greeted the Peel Commission recommendation with a revolt which lasted until 1939.
The Arab Revolt was led by Haj Amin Husseini, who was originally appointed as the Mufti of Jerusalem by the British. It is interesting to note that in addition to hundreds of Jews who were killed by Arabs, some 3,000 Arabs died in this revolt at the hands of other Arabs and at the hands of the British.

For all the British criticism of Israel today, at that time the British were not shy in their efforts to quell the rioting. They introduced the policy of housing demolition and used artillery to shell rebellious towns.
The revolt was finally crushed and the Mufti fled first to Beirut and later to Europe, where he became an ally of Adolph Hitler, organizing a Bosnian S.S. unit to kill Jews in the Balkans.

After the war he was captured but escaped. He was later involved in fomenting violence, including the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951. He was last heard of living as a guest in Saudi Arabia. (Faisal Husseini, who was the PLO’s representatives in Jerusalem and who recently died of a heart attack was a relative of his.)

The British did not keep the promise contained in the Balfour Declaration and neither did they keep the promise contained in the Peel Commission report.

They did enforce one aspect of the Peel Commission report — that which limited Jewish migration to the land to only 12,000 a year for the next five years (1939-1943). By doing so the British doomed the Jews under the control of Nazis — they would no longer be able to find refuge in their homeland.

They did this, knowing full well what the Germans were doing to the Jews — this was after the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht (see Part 60). And still the British closed an escape route that would have saved millions of Jewish lives.

The Jews were desperate and they tried to come illegally. In response, the British set up a blockade to keep them out.

Many Jews managed to circumvent the blockade and it is estimated that 115,000 Jews got through. But 115,000 is a very small number compared to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust and who could not find refuge in the land of Israel.

The British presently show the same callousness in regard to Jewish men, women and children being murdered today, as they did during the British Mandate.

I gratefully acknowledge Aish for their assistance in providing facts contained in this post. You can read the White Paper of 1922, White Paper of 1939, and the Balfour Declaration, here, here, and here.

There is a profound lack of knowledge of the Jewish Biblical and modern historical connections to Gaza.

Gaza is named in our Torah. Its size, shape, region and identifying markers are precisely mentioned and illustrated. Gaza is but another area of Jewish land that has been stolen from us by Arab Muslim thieves and murderers:

The following Biblical references should help you in talking points on the subject:

Biblically speaking:

1. Genesis 15 – The area in which Gaza is located was included as part of Abraham’s inheritance.

2. Numbers 34:2-6 – The Bible details precisely the northern, southern, eastern and western borders of ancient Israel. Readers should note that in every reference there is a body of water – the Mediterranean Sea, a lake, a river and a wadi (a dry river bed that flows only after an infrequent heavy rain). Bodies of water are permanent markers in most cases. In Numbers 34:5 with reference to the southern border it states: From Azmon the boundary shall turn towards the Wadi of Egypt (near el-Arish) and terminate at the sea (Mediterranean). This would include the entire present-day Gaza Strip and additional land in the Sinai.

3. Joshua 13:2 – The Lord said to Joshua: This is the territory that remains to be conquered: all the districts of the Philistines, those of the Gerurites, from the Shihon, which is close to Egypt, to the territory of Ekron in the north, are accounted. Canaanite, namely those of the five lords of the Philistines – the Gazities (Gaza), the Ashdodites (Ashdod) etc.

4. Joshua 15:47 - Most Biblical commentators hold that the modern day Gaza Strip was within the territory allotted to the tribe of Judah.

5. Consider in Joshua Chapter 15: This was the portion of the tribe of Judea (15:20); Ekron, with its dependencies and villages (15:45); Ekron, westward, all the towns in the vicinity and Ashdod, with their villages (15:46); Ashdod, its dependencies and its villages, Gaza, its dependencies and its villages, all the way to the Wadi of Egypt and the edge of the Mediterranean Sea (15:47).

6. Judges 1:18 - And Israel captured Gaza and its territory, Ashkelon and its territory, and Ekron and its territory.

7. Kings 5:1 – Solomon’s rule extended over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and the boundary of Egypt (Wadi of Egypt or to el-Arish).

8. Ezekiel 47:19-20 – 47:19 The southern limit shall run: A line from Tamar to the waters of Meriboth-kadesh, along the Wadi (of Egypt and ) the Great Sea (Mediterranean). That is the southern limit.

Historically speaking:

* During the 3rd century BCE, Gaza and Akko were the leading centers of trade and industry. Both cities had numerous Jewish residents, including some very wealthy and influential families. [1]

* There were Jewish communities in Gaza during the Hasmonean period (166-63 BCE).

* During ancient times, in the taking of tithes (shmittah), the Gaza area was included in this Jewish religious obligation. Shmittah is observed to this day in Jewish settlemens located in the Gaza Strip as it was deemed part of ancient Eretz Israel.

* During the 4th century CE, Emperor Constantine attempted to build a church in Gaza but the Jewish population located there was opposed to this.
At that time, Gaza was the principal port for trade and commerce for the Jewish population of the Holy Land. A very ancient synagogue was excavated there some time ago. Influential rabbis, Israel Najara, author of the popular prayer and Shabbat song Kah Ribon Olam, and Rabbi Avraham Azoulai, the renowned mekubal, lived in Gaza Jewish communities.

* During the 7th century CE: “When the Arab hosts now began spreading northward, they encountered the first focus of resistance in the city of Gaza, then occupied by a strong Byzantine garrison under the command of the provincial governor, Sergius. At that time Gaza embraced a substantial Jewish settlement, in fact the most important community in Judea. Jews seem to have fought alongside the Byzantines in the ensuing battle, which ended in Sergius’ defeat.” [2]

* Also during this period, “Saccording to the famous grammarian, Jonah ibn Janah, Gaza, too, lost its status as the foremost community in Judea, but it remained a center of learning and well-developed community life.” [3]

* From 1885 to World War I Jews lived in Gaza.

* A renewed Jewish community existed in Gaza until the Muslim pogroms against Jews in 1929. Jews were murdered in many communities throughout Palestine, especially Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed – three Jewish holy cities.

The following is a list of Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip:

Alei Sinai, founded in 1983
Bedolach, founded in 1986
Bnei Atzmon (Atzmona), founded in 1979
Dugit, founded in 1990
Gadid, founded in 1982
Gan-Or, founded in 1983
Ganei Tal, founded in 1979
Katif, founded in 1986
Kerem Atzmona, founded in 2000
Kfar Darom, founded in 1946
Kfar Yam, founded in 1984
Morag, founded in 1984
Netzer Hazani, founded in 1977
Netzarim, founded in 1984
Neve Dekalim, founded in 1983
Nisanit, founded in 1984
Peat – Sadeh, founded in 1989
Rafiah – Yam, founded in 1986
Shirat HaYam, founded in 2000
Tel Katifa, founded in 1992

Notes:
[1] A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Salo Wittmayer Baron,
Vol 1,
page 255, (Original copyright 1937)
[2] Ibid, Vol 3, page 87
[3] Ibid, page 102

References to Jewish Connections to Gaza by Anthony David Marks: Israel Hasbara Committee

A ceremony in memory of the 67 victims of the 1929 Hebron Massacre was held on Tuesday evening in the ancient Jewish cemetery in the city.

What was the 1929 Hebron Massacre?

In 1929, 67 Jews of the ancient holy city of Hebron were brutally murdered by a bloodthirsty Arab mob.

The mob, fueled with anti-Jewish incitement, false reports that the mosque of Omar had been vandalized by “Zionists,” attacked a synagogue and slaughtered all the Jews they found inside. Men, women, and children were massacred – while they were praying. The Arabs then proceeded to the Hebron yeshiva, butchered students, and burned sacred books. The remaining Jews barricaded themselves inside the house of Rabbi Eliezer Dan Slonim.

The lynch mob managed to break into the house, and an orgy of bloodshed ensued.

Pierre Van Paassen, a journalist on the scene, wrote the following description:

What occurred in the upper chambers of Slonim’s house could be seen when we found the twelve-foot-high ceiling splashed with blood. The rooms looked like a slaughterhouse. When I visited the place in the company of Captain Marek Schwartz, a former Austrian artillery officer, Mr. Abraham Goldberg of New York, and Mr. Ernst Davies, correspondent of the old Berliner Tageblatt, the blood stood in a huge pool on the slightly sagging stone floor of the house. Clocks, crockery, tables and windows had been smashed to smithereens. Of the unlooted articles, not a single item had been left intact except a large black-and-white photograph of Dr. Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Around the picture’s frame the murderers had draped the blood-drenched underwear of a woman. We stood silently contemplating the scene of slaughter when the door was flung open by a British solder with fixed bayonet. In strolled Mr. Keith-Roach, governor of the Jaffa district, followed by a colonel of the Green Howards battalion of the King’s African Rifles. They took a hasty glance around that awful room, and Mr. Roach remarked to his companion, “Shall we have lunch now or drive to Jerusalem first?”

In Jerusalem the Government published a refutation of the rumors that the dead Jews of Hebron had been tortured before they had their throats slit. This made me rush back to that city accompanied by two medical men, Dr. Dantziger and Dr. Ticho. I intended to gather up the severed sexual organs and the cut-off women’s breasts we had seen lying scattered over the floor and in the beds. But when we came to Hebron a telephone call from Jerusalem had ordered our access barred to the Slonim house. A heavy guard had been placed before the door. Only then did I recall that I had inadvertently told a fellow newspaperman in Jerusalem about our gruesome discoveries.

What do the news services have to say about the events of 1929? A Reuters article published on MSNBC dismissed it in one sentence:

“On August 23, 1929, during anti-Jewish riots in British Mandate Palestine, 67 Jews were butchered in Hebron and the Jewish community withered and left.”

From reading the rest of the article, one might get the impression that “the settlers” committed the atrocity. After all, Reuters blames Jews for everything else.

For example, a Muslim family complains that “the settlers” are trying to drive them out of the home they have lived in “for centuries” (since 1929), by using the brutal coercion technique of offering them money to live elsewhere.

From reading the news services, it would seem that the Jewish residents of Hebron are responsible for all the violence in the Mideast, the spread of AIDS, the rising unemployment, the hole in the ozone, and the Windows Me operating system.

Click here to read more on the Arab massacre of Jews that occurred 38 years before there ever was an “occupation” in 1967.

What happened in 1967 that caused Israel’s borders to change? Did Israel just decide they wanted more land?

No.  Israel was attacked by warring Arab Muslim nations.

But before we discuss 1967, let’s roll back the clock to the year 1917. 1917 is the year Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration which stated that the British government favored “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. . . .”

As you may already know, Palestine was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for 400 years before the British came along in 1917. At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire and other imperial powers agreed to surrender their colonies. In 1919, Emir Faisal, the son of Sherif Hussein who led the Arab revolt against Turkey, signed a declaration in support of the Balfour Declaration, even supporting all necessary measures “…to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”

As a result, Great Britain issued the British White Paper of June 1922, agreeing to give Arabs almost 80% of Palestine, which was severed from the rest of the colony and called Transjordan (later re-named Jordan). All of the land given to Arabs was to the east of the River Jordan. Then came The Palestine Mandate. It is from this time that the Arabs living in this area get the name Palestinians. Of course, at that time the Jews living in the region of the Palestine Mandate were called Palestinians too.

In August of 1929, due to the instigation of Muslim clerics in the mosques, a series of riots broke out in which many Jews were massacred. In the Jewish Holy City of Hebron, 67 innocent men, women and children were slaughtered by Arabs while praying in their synagogue. The 1930s saw more rioting and more massacres, especially in Jaffa and again in Hebron. In response, the British convened the Peel Commission which almost totally did away with the Balfour Declaration that had originally promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine on both sides of the River Jordan.

In July of 1937, the Peel Commission issued a report that gave Jews only a tiny, 1-3 mile strip of land that could not possibly become the Jewish National Home because it was far too small and included only one major city – Haifa, but not Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, etc. It also included a small piece in the north abutting the west side of the Lake Kineret (“Sea of Galilee”). Such actions went totally against Article 5 of the Mandate which explicitly state that the British shall not divide the land.

This was an example of British perfidy at its worst. The Brits betrayed their legal document, their legal contract, with the Palestinian Jews.

The Arabs greeted the Peel Commission recommendation with a revolt which lasted until 1939. In 1939, Britain issued the White Paper of 1939 almost shutting down Jewish immigration, thus violating the League of Nations Mandate which calls on the Brits to promote Jewish immigration. The White Paper of 1939 also stated that Palestine shall not become a Jewish National Home and instead should be converted into an Arab state. From a legal point of view, UN resolutions were not needed to establish a Jewish state in Palestine because such state could be legally based on the League’s Mandate.

And that’s when on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 181 recommending division of the land given to Jews under the Mandate. Great Britain did not support the resolution. From a political and practical point of view, the 1947 U.N. partition plan served as reason for the legal declaration of a Jewish State.

However, the 1967 lines are not a border. After the 1947- 48 war, the Arabs refused to recognize Israel, and insisted the boundaries were only ceasefire lines, and this remained their legal status. The eastern borders of Israel are yet to be decided. Moreover, UN Resolution 242, the foundation stone of Arab-Israeli negotiations, explicitly avoided requiring an Israeli retreat to the 1967 lines, its drafters believing those were indefensible.

Resolution 242 calls for the recognition of Israel’s right to exist, an end to the state of war maintained by the Arab world against Israel and secure and recognized boundaries for Israel. 242 does NOT require Israel to return to the non-secure borders of pre-1967.

What does 242 say?

“Termination of all claims or states of belligerency… ”
“…respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every State in the area… ”
“…[every State's] right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”
“Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories in the recent conflict.”

What does 242 mean?

- The Arab states must end the state of war initiated and maintained by them since 1948.
- The Arab states must recognize Israel’s right to exist.
- Israel is entitled to clearly defensible borders.

This is not a privilege, but rather a right guaranteed by international law.

- Israel should withdraw from some, not all, of the territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
- Israel’s indefensible pre-1967 borders provided no security.
- The Arab states should sit down with Israel, without preconditions, to negotiate peace.

A few days before the UNSC vote on 242, President Johnson summoned UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg and Undersecretary Eugene Rostow to formulate the US position on the issue of ‘secure boundaries’ for Israel. They were presented with the Pentagon Map, which had been prepared by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler. The map displayed the “minimum territory needed by Israel for defensive purposes,” which included the entire Golan Heights and the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria. The participants of the meeting agreed that the Pentagon Map fulfilled the requirements of 242 for ‘secure borders.’ (Prof. Ezra Sohar, A Concubine in the Middle East, Geffen Publishing, p. 39; Makor Rishon weekly, March 10, 2000).

242 does not refer at all the 1949/1967 Lines;
242 mandates negotiation – give and take, rather than give and give;
242 never refers to withdrawal from ALL the territories, which would negate the principle of negotiation;

242 calls for the introduction of a NEW reality of ‘secure and recognized borders’, which indicates that the OLD reality of the 1949/1967 Lines is neither secure nor recognized.

The reality is that if Israel is to protect itself, it must achieve a comprehensive military victory over the Palestinians, so that the latter give up their goal of obliterating it.

Not one of the land suggestions addresses the real problem: the Palestinians’ conviction that, by continuing to hammer away at Israel, they can defeat and destroy it. Every piece of evidence suggests and every opinion poll confirms that the Palestinian assault on Israel is a wildly popular undertaking.

Ending the Palestinian assault will be achieved not through some negotiated breakthrough but by Palestinians (and Arabic-speakers more generally) concluding that their effort to destroy the Jewish state will fail, and so give up this ambition. There is a war under way, but nearly all prefer to ignore this unpleasant reality, preferring instead to suggest meaningless fixes and solutions.

Let’s not leave out the San Remo Resolution. The last legally binding document to be adopted regarding the areas of Israel in question remains the 1920 San Remo resolution, which deeds full sovereignty to the Jewish people. This resolution, consisting of the Balfour Declaration and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, is the basic document upon which the Mandate for Palestine was constructed. The San Remo Resolution concerning Palestine and the Jewish National Home was adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference on April 25, 1920 by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the Prime Ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand) and Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by the Ambassador of Japan (K. Matsui).

The Resolution was a binding agreement between these Powers to reconstitute the ancient Jewish State within its historic borders “from Dan to Beersheba”, an agreement that was incorporated into the Treaty of Sevres and the Mandate for Palestine.

But it really is futile to have a discussion about a “legalized framework” when a “legalized framework” was already in place with document after document after document that I cited above.

The Arabs have deceived the world for decades with their mendacious protests that their land has been “stolen” from them. One might take such proclamations seriously if it came from a pacifist people such as the Tibetans, who had quietly inhabited their land for ages before it was seized by the Communist Chinese in 1950.

The claim is laughable coming from the Arabs, who in the early Middle Ages conquered and reduced to slavery and penury ancient peoples and civilizations stretching from the borders of Persia to the Atlantic; who in 1947 rejected an Arab state in Palestine alongside a Jewish state and sought to obliterate the nascent Jewish state; who never called for a distinct Palestinian Arab state until the creation of the terrorist PLO in 1964—sixteen years after the founding of the state of Israel and three years before the Six Day War in 1967; and who to this moment continue to seek Israel’s destruction, an object that would be enormously advanced by the creation of the manufactured entity of “palestine”, the Arab state they demand.

The only religious argument that makes sense is to point out how so many Jewish holy places exist in Israel. It’s hardly irrational that Jews should want to live near the Wailing Wall or other sites of great importance in Jewish history and Jewish religion, particularly given how poorly Muslims have treated such sites.

The fact is that the West Bank and Gaza were annexed by Jordan and Egypt fifty years ago with no Arab complaints. Israel has absorbed a million Jewish refugees from Arab lands and the Soviet Union with no complaints. The 3.7 million seething refugees who live abject poverty on the West Bank, and who have received more than a billion dollars in aid from Israel and the rest of the world are refugees only because the Arab states themselves have rejected them and kept them in poverty so they can be cannon fodder for the holy war to push the Jews into the sea. The “Palestinian problem,” is entirely a creation of the Arabs themselves, a product of their refusal to live side by side with any infidels they think they can destroy. If they want peace, they can start with rejecting the Hamas Covenant and the Palestinian National Charter, the only document that I know of where a state defines its national vision by calling for the destruction of another state.

I don’t believe in a two-state solution at all, and a one-state solution with the “law of return” will turn the entire nation of Israel into a land where only Arabs may live – with the goal to supplant Israel – not to live side by side with it. Therefore, there is no solution.

HonestReporting’s biography, with links to important sources.

EARLY LIFE

It’s ironic that the man who personified the Palestinian movement was neither born in the region it claims, nor conforms to his own organization’s definition of Palestinian identity. Yassir Arafat, whose real name is Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was born in August 1929 in Cairo, son of an Egyptian textile merchant. He was sent to Jerusalem as a small child after his mother died, then returned to Egypt via Gaza.

Throughout his career, Arafat’s Egyptian background was a political impediment and source of personal embarrassment. One biographer notes that upon first meeting him in 1967, ‘West Bankers did not like his Egyptian accent and ways and found them alien,’ and to the very end Arafat employed an aide to translate his Egyptian dialect into Palestinian Arabic for conversing with his West Bank and Gaza subjects.

As a young man, Arafat took no part in the formative experience of the Palestinian movement ― the 1948 Arab-Israeli war ― but he would nonetheless claim refugee status throughout his life: ‘I am a refugee,’ he cried out in a 1969 interview, ‘Do you know what it means to be a refugee? I am a poor and helpless man. I have nothing, for I was expelled and dispossessed of my homeland.’ (Arafat’s congenital lying would continue for decades.)

FATAH AND THE PLO

In the mid-1950s, Arafat joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, then rose to the head of the Palestine Student Union at the University of Cairo. In the late 1950s Arafat moved to Kuwait,

where he co-founded Fatah (‘Palestine National Liberation Movement’ ― an acronym meaning ‘conquest’), the faction that would later gain control over the entire Palestinian movement. Fatah’s motley ranks of Islamists, communists and pan-Arabists expanded via brute violence. ‘People aren’t attracted to speeches, but rather to bullets,’ Arafat quipped at this stage. (At right: Fatah logo of rifles and grenades over Israel)

Fatah began military-style training in Syria and Algeria in 1964, and the following year tried unsuccessfully to blow up a major Israeli water pump. Fatah’s stated goal was the obliteration of the State of Israel, and well before the 1967 war would supply a pretext, Arafat’s organization repeatedly attacked Israeli buses, homes, villages and rail lines.

This violence against Israeli civilians was a pillar of the Palestinian National Covenant (the foundational charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization – PLO), which states that ‘the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence’ and that ‘armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine and is therefore a strategy and not a tactic.’ (Despite repeated Palestinian commitments in the late 1990s to annul these sections of the covenant, it was never officially changed.)

Arafat’s public profile got a boost in 1968, when the IDF raided a Fatah terrorist stronghold in the Jordanian village of al-Karameh. The uniformed,
keffiyah-clad Arafat took this opportunity to project himself as a fearless Arab leader who, despite the post-Six Day War gloom, dared to confront the Israelis. The image stuck, and Fatah’s numbers swelled with new recruits.

Arafat and Fatah consolidated power through bribery, extortion and murder, and at the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo in February 1969, Arafat was appointed head of the PLO― a position he would never relinquish.

JORDAN, LEBANON AND TUNISIA
By the late 1960s, heavily-armed, Arafat-led Palestinians had formed a terrorist ‘state within a state’ in Jordan, not only attacking Israeli civilian targets, but also seizing control of Jordanian infrastructure.
The tension reached a height during late 1970, when Jordan’s King Hussein cracked down on the Palestinian factions. During this bloody conflict, known as ‘Black” September’, Palestinians hijacked four Western airliners and blew one up on a Cairo runway (pictured at right), to both embarrass the Egyptians and Jordanians and, in their words, ‘teach the Americans a lesson for their long-standing support of Israel.’ With the broad publicity this generated, Arafat had hit the world stage.

When King Hussein drove Arafat’s faction out of his Jordanian kingdom (causing thousands of civilian deaths), they relocated in Lebanon. As in Jordan, Arafat soon triggered a bloody civil war in his previously stable host country. Simultaneously, the PLO launched intermittent attacks on Israeli towns from southern Lebanese positions.

Yassir Arafat then brought the high-profile terrorist act to western soil. In Sept. 1972, Fatah-backed terrorists kidnapped and murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games. And in 1973, Arafat ordered his operatives in the Khartoum, Sudan office of Fatah to abduct and murder US Ambassador Cleo Noel and two other diplomats. (In 2004, the FBI finally opened an official investigation against Arafat for the Khartoum murders.)
The wanton violence fueled Arafat’s political goals, as his presence on the world stage grew: In 1974, he became the first representative of a nongovernmental organization to address a plenary session of the UN General Assembly (pictured at left) In the speech, with a gun holster strapped to his hip, Arafat compared himself to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Arab heads of states declared the PLO the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians, the PLO was granted full membership in the Arab League in 1976, and by 1980 was fully recognized by European nations.

In 1978-82, the IDF invaded Lebanon to root out PLO groups that had continually terrorized the northern Israeli populace. The U.S. brokered a cease-fire deal in which Arafat and the PLO were allowed to leave Lebanon; Arafat and the PLO leadership eventually settled in Tunisia, which remained his center of operations until 1993.
During the 1980s, Arafat received financial assistance from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, which allowed him to rebuild the battered PLO. This was particularly useful during the first Palestinian intifada in 1987 ― Arafat took control of the violence from afar, and it was mainly due to Fatah forces in the West Bank that the anti-Israel terror and civil unrest could be maintained. Arafat would then become nearly the only world leader to support Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War. (Saddam would later repay this loyalty by sending $25,000 checks to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.)

THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

In the early 1990s, the U.S. led Israel and the PLO to negotiations that spawned the 1993 Oslo Accords, an agreement that called for the implementation of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period. The following year Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.

In 1994, Arafat moved his headquarters to the West Bank and Gaza to run the Palestinian Authority, an entity created by the Oslo Accords. Arafat brought with him from Tunisia an aging PLO leadership that would bolster his ongoing monopoly over all Palestinian funds, power and authority. Elections in 1996 extended Arafat’s control over the PA, but under the Oslo agreement, the term of that candidacy ended in 1999. Arafat never allowed new elections to take place.

While Israel went about implementing its side of the Oslo agreements ― removing troops from nearly all Palestinian areas, recognizing the PA, and educating for peace ― the PA utterly failed to live up to its commitment to renounce and uproot anti-Israel terrorism. Instead, unprecedented incitement from Arafat’s official PA media and school textbooks, and active and passive PA support for terrorist groups led to a string of suicide bombings in the mid-1990s that killed scores of Israeli civilians. In October, 1996, at the height of the Oslo years, Arafat cried out to a Bethlehem crowd, ‘We know only one word – jihad! Jihad, jihad, jihad! Whoever does not like it can drink from the Dead Sea or from the Sea of Gaza.’ [For more on the failure of Oslo, see HonestReporting's documentary film,http://www.blogger.com/Camp between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. There, Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in Gaza and 92% of the West Bank, and a capital in East Jerusalem― the most generous offer ever from an Israeli government. Yassir Arafat rejected the offer and ended negotiations without a counteroffer. As American envoyDennis Ross concluded, 'Arafat could not accept Camp David... because when the conflict ends, the cause that defines Arafat also ends.' [See alsothis interview with Ross on Oslo.]
Immediately following this breakdown, the PA media machine under Arafat’s control ramped up the war rhetoric, and preparations were made for riots that were unleashed following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. The Arafat-supported ‘al” Aqsa intifada’ would continue for four years. This unprecedented wave of anti-Israel terrorism, which would result in over 1,000 Israeli deaths, was marked by over 120 Palestinian suicide bombers and the growth of an Islamic martyrdom cult.

This stage of violence revealed that Arafat and the PA had never abandoned their longstanding plans to liquidate the Jewish state. Arafat had told an Arab audience in Stockholm in 1996, ‘We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion… We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.’ Likewise, Arafat explained to a South African crowd in 1994 that the Oslo agreement was merely a tactical ruse in the larger battle to destroy the Jewish state ― a modern version of the Muslim prophet Mohammed’s” trickery against the ancient tribe of Quraysh. Arafat’s colleague Faisal al-Husseini was even more explicit, describing the Oslo process as a ‘Trojan Horse’ designed to promote the strategic goal of ‘Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea’ ― that is, a Palestine in place of Israel.

TERRORIST TO THE END

The final phase in Arafat’s life-long commitment to organized terror was channeled through the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a Fatah group that was responsible for many of the most deadly attacks against Israeli civilians between 2000-2004. Though many media outlets described a mere ‘loose affiliation’ between Arafat and this terrorist group, the evidence clearly indicated a direct financial and organizational bond between the two:

▪ In November, 2003 aBBC investigation found that up to $50,000 a month was funneled by

An ammunition bill for the terrorist Al Aqsa Brigade, signed by Yassir Arafat – see larger version

Fatah, with Arafat’s approval, directly to the Al Aqsa Brigades, for the purpose of organizing bombings, snipings and ambushes against Israeli civilians.

▪Documents captured by the IDF in 2002 indicated Fatah’s ‘systematic, institutionalized and ongoing financing’ of the Al Aqsa Brigades. (See Arafat’s signature on the weapons budget, and this full report from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)

▪ The leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Tulkarm told USA Today on March 14, 2002: ‘The truth is, we are Fatah, but we didn’t operate under the name of Fatah…We are the armed wing of the organization. We receive our instructions from Fatah. Our commander is Yasser Arafat himself.’
[For more on the Arafat-Al Aqsa connection, click here.]
In addition, Arafat granted free rein to the radical Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad to perpetrate dozens of horrific acts of civilian murder between 2000-2004. [At left: Arafat with Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, 2003]
DELEGITIMIZATION

In January 2002, the Israeli Navy seized a Gaza-bound, PA-owned freighter ― the Karine A― that was loaded with more than fifty tons of Iranian ammunition and weapons, including dozens of surface-to-surface Katyusharockets. (See more on the Karine A.)

In June 2002, upon recognizing Arafat’s ongoing financing and abetting of terrorism, U.S. President Bush called for Arafat’s removal from power. Progress toward peace required, according to Bush, ‘a new and different Palestinian leadership…not compromised by terror.’ Release of a U.S.-backed ‘road” map’ for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was therefore delayed until such a new Palestinian leader emerged. On its part, the Israeli government chose to isolate Arafat in his Ramallah compound, the ‘Muqata’, where he would remain from early 2002 until his final days, and where his burial is expected to occur.

In April 2003, hours after Mahmoud Abbas assumed the role of Palestinian prime minister, the official road map was released and diplomatic progress began. But Arafat consistently undercut the authority of Abbas, leading to Abbas’ resignation and the halting of the road map peace process.

CORRUPTION, AUTOCRACY, JIHAD

Over the course of his ‘revolutionary’ career,Arafat siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid money intended to reach the Palestinian people.

Estimates of the degree of Arafat’s wealth differ, but are all staggering: In 2003, Forbes magazine listed Arafat in its annual list of the wealthiest ‘Kings, Queens and Despots,’ with a fortune of ‘at least $300 million. ‘Israeli and U S officials estimate Arafat’s personal holdings between $1-3 billion.

And while the average Palestinian barely subsisted, Arafat’s wife Suha (at left) in Paris received $100,000 each month from PA sources as reported on CBS’ 60 Minutes. That CBS report also noted that Arafat maintained secret investments in a Ramallah-based Coca Cola plant, a Tunisian cellphone company, and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands.

Arafat also used foreign aid funds to pay off cronies who bolstered his autocracy: An International Monetary Fund report indicated that upwards of 8% ($135 million) of the PA’s annual budget was handed out by Arafat ‘at his sole discretion.’ And Arafat’s select PA policemen, far from keeping the peace, were repeatedly among the suicide bombers and snipers.

Money was just one method of strengthening Arafat’s power apparatus. Critics of his PA government were routinely imprisoned, tortured or beaten. One example: In 1999, Muawiya Al-Masri, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, described Arafat’s corruption to a Jordanian newspaper. For this, he was attacked by a gang of masked men and shot three times. Al-Masri survived the ordeal and described Arafat’s grip on PA power: ‘There is no institutional process. There is only one institution ― the Presidency, which has no law and order and is based on bribing top officials.’
From 2000-2004, Arafat permitted Muslim imams to incite unprecedented anti-Israel and anti-American violence from their mosques and through official PA media. Arafat’s Religious Affairs Ministry employed preachers who regularly called for children to ‘martyr themselves’, and PA television glamorized the act of suicide bombing.

Under Arafat, the Palestinian Authority school textbooks denied Israel’s very existence, and jihad was presented to Palestinian children as an admirable course of action. The Jewish people, meanwhile, was represented to schoolchildren as a tricky, greedy and barbarous nation.

Freedom of the press was virtually non-existent during Arafat’s reign in Gaza, Jericho and Ramallah ― if it didn’t speak favorably of Arafat, it didn’t get printed in the PA-controlled media. Moreover, the PA enacted a systematic policy of intimidation of foreign journalists. One case among many: When an AP cameraman captured footage of Palestinian street celebrations following the 9/11 attacks, he was kidnapped, brought to a PA security office, and Arafat’s cabinet secretary threatened that the PA ‘cannot guarantee [his] life’ if the footage was broadcast.

Yet beyond the terrorism, extortion, embezzlement and intimidation lies Arafat’s most unfortunate ongoing impact: The inculcation of murderous values in an entire generation of Palestinians, who have been educated ― under Arafat’s direction ― to continue the fight of jihad against Israel, rather than compromise to end the decades-long conflict.

How many generations will it take to undo Arafat’s dark legacy?

This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Yassir_Arafat3_1929-2004.asp.

This article was originally published on the early Smooth Stone archives on Blogger on November 11, 2004.