re: "The Poor Palestinians"

Ted Belman at American Thinker ("a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans") considers the plight of the Palestinians without irony or insult.

Money quote(s):

""Palestinian" is a name given to Arabs after the '67 War, who lived or did live in the area known as Palestine during the Palestine Mandate and afterwards right up to the present, and includes their descendants, even if such descendants never set foot in the area known as Palestine."

Oddly, the name "Palestinian" as used after the '67 War, excludes all non-Arab inhabitants of the same geographic area, most notably (but not solely) the Israelis to whom it previously had applied to exclusively.

"United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a relief and human development agency, providing education, health care, social services and emergency aid to 5 million Palestine refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. UNRWA was specifically created to maintain the refugee status, not to end it." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

"The Arab League has instructed its members to deny citizenship to Palestinian Arab refugees (or their descendants) "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland." "

Fortunately, implementation of this instruction has not been universal.

"In Jordan, less than 20% of the refugees live in camps. This is because when Jordan purported to annex the West Bank after the '48 War, it granted all the Palestinians living there and in Jordan proper, citizenship. After the '67 War in which Israel regained Judea and Samaria, many more Palestinians fled to Jordan and over the years since, many Palestinians from the West Bank emigrated there. It is estimated today that the number of Palestinians in Jordan total in excess of 5,000,000 of which only about 2 million are registered refugees. They constitute about ¾ of the total population of Jordan. Given this fact and the fact that the West Bank has approximately 1.5 million Palestinians, one might rightfully argue that Jordan is the Palestinian homeland." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Perhaps the Hashemite dynasty might ought consider re-branding itself as protectors of the Palestinian people.

(Or not.)

"The Arab Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have the right to form a government and govern themselves within the confines of the Oslo Accords. Their government known as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has full autonomy in all matters save for a limitation on matters of security affecting Israel. How they govern themselves is up to them. In effect the Palestinians elect Palestinians to govern them. Whereas in Jordan, the Palestinians are severely underrepresented in the Chamber of Deputies where the minority Bedouin hold sway. If that weren't bad enough, all executive power is vested in the King.

It can safely be said that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are the authors of their own misfortune. In their past elections, they choose parties, whether Fatah or Hamas, that are wedded to the "resistance" which is a euphemism for terrorism. The result of this "resistance," whether in the form of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into civilian areas in Israel or the deployment of suicide bombers by Fatah in Jerusalem and Israel generally, Israel has placed restrictions on them such as a legal blockade of Gaza and travel restrictions in the West Bank. These restrictions are for security purposes only and not intended as punishment. Nevertheless, in the last three years, Israel has been easing these restrictions, and as a result, the Palestinian economy in the West Bank is experiencing an astounding 7% growth rate."

"(T)he Palestinians living in Jordan who have citizenship have no say in their present condition or in their destiny. Their fate is dependent on what the PA chooses to do yet they have no vote in PA elections. Nor do they have a say equivalent to their numbers in Jordan due to the gerrymandering above noted."

2/12

re: "Palestine, Back to the Future"

Ted Belman at American Thinker ("a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans") sidestepped the issue of mythological nationhood and lunges for a solution.

Money quote(s):

"There was a time when the lands now known as Israel (including Judea and Samaria and Gaza) and Jordan were called "Palestine." In fact, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 declared that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

There followed considerable cooperation between the Jews, represented by Chaim Weizmann, and the Arabs living in Mespotamia, now Iraq and Jordan, represented by Emir Feisal. As a result, the Feisal-Weizman Agreement was signed in January 1919, in which it was agreed that the Jews would get the lands lying west of the Jordan River watershed to the Mediterranean."

Fast forward to the end of World War I and Allied disposition of the Ottoman Empire's non-Turkish possessions.

"What remained was for the League of Nations to draw up the Palestine Mandate. Originally, the boundaries of Palestine included what is now Jordan, but a few months prior to the Palestine Mandate being passed by the League of Nations in September 1922, the Jews were told that they must consent to the removal of Jordan from the Jewish homeland if they wished the Mandate to be passed. And so they did, under duress."

Consider this slice one of a salami-slice strategy.

"Britain severed all lands lying east of the Jordan River from the Palestine Mandate and gave the lands to the Hashemites. It was first renamed Transjordan and then just Jordan."

So an Arab homeland was salami-sliced off of overall-Palestine, leaving a Jewish homeland.

(From which additional future Arab homelands may be sliced.)

"There followed many resolutions, wars, and peace processes, all designed to erode Jewish rights to the land described in the Palestine Mandate, and all to no avail. For all intents and purposes, the peace process is dead, and Abu Mazen, otherwise known as Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PA, has refused to negotiate for the last three years.

This futile effort has resulted in a search for alternate solutions. Newt Gingrich went public with his newsworthy statement that "[w]e've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community." Gov Romney did him one better and said, "It's the Palestinians who don't want a two-state solution; they want to eliminate the State of Israel." Didn't they know that in our PC world, one is not supposed to declare that the emperor has no clothes? The fiction underlying the failed peace process is more important than the truth."

It's truly remarkable to see such prominent politicians depart from the popular narrative in this manner.

"The "Jordan is Palestine" solution has been mooted for decades. It is now gaining traction due in part to the Arab Spring, which began a year ago. Jordan now is feeling the tremors. The majority of Palestinian leaders in Jordan favor Jordan becoming a democratic/secular state. They have watched in dismay as similar forces in Egypt were overwhelmed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists. They are determined not to share Egypt's fate. They are led by Mudar Zahran, the author of "Jordan's King and the Muslim Brotherhood: An Unholy Marriage." "

Consider that the majority of people in Jordan are indistinguishable from "Palestinian" Arabs in any appreciable fashion. And that's not counting the ones who are descended from those who left the Jewish homeland or the "Occupied Territories" of the West Bank and Gaza.

"The rationality and achievability of this solution need no elucidation. The solution itself needs only for the U.S. to get behind it. While such an initiative by the U.S. would be a departure from the position it has held since the founding of the State of Israel, it would not be a departure from her original position."

1/29

re: "Newt Challenges the Myth of Palestinian Nationalism"

Bruce Thornton at Private Papers doesn't buy the prevailing myth of Palestinian nationhood.

Money quote(s):

"Newt Gingrich touched off a mini-firestorm when he told a Jewish television channel that the Palestinians are an “invented” people “who are in fact Arabs,” and “who were historically part of the Arab community.” This simple statement of historical fact was of course met with the usual bluster from the Palestinians, who called the statements “ignorant,” “despicable,” and of course “racist,” a meaningless charge. And what response from the Palestinians would be complete without the usual threat that the statement they don’t like will “increase the cycle of violence,” as Palestinian lead negotiator Saeb Erekat put it?

The truly “ignorant,” however, are those who have bought the “Palestinian homeland” propaganda. Where was all this talk about a homeland for the Palestinians in 1948, when the Arab armies invaded Israel? Their aim was not to create a Palestinian state, but rather to carve up the rest of British Mandatory Palestine, as the secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam, confessed at the time: “Abdullah [ruler of Transjordan] was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine . . . The Egyptians would get the Negev. The Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon.” Until 1967, the so-called “West Bank” was part of Jordan, but none of the Arab nations agitated for the creation of a Palestinian state. The “Palestinian homeland” became a tactical weapon after violence failed to achieve the real aim, the destruction of Israel."

This abortive land grab cannot fail to remind this historically-minded reader of Stalin's deal to split Poland with Hitler.

"Our failures in dealing with a dysfunctional Middle East in part result from a failure of imagination, our unwillingness to think beyond our own ideals and see beyond the duplicitous pretexts of our adversaries. The tactic of a “Palestinian homeland,” for example, exploits the Western ideal of the nation-state as forming the fundamental structure of a people and their collective identity. But nationalism is not an organic part of Islam, which recognizes no separation of church and state. A people are created by their adherence to Islam, by being members of the global umma or Muslim community. The PLO Charter makes this clear in Article 15: “The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine. Absolute responsibility for this falls upon the Arab nation — peoples and governments — with the Arab people of Palestine in the vanguard.” Palestinian nationalism is an expression of Arab nationalism, in a way unimaginable for any Western country, for the simple reason that Arab nationalism is in fact another expression of universal Muslim identity."

Yes, but.

Much of "universal Muslim identity" is more accurately described as arabian cultural imperialism. Much of the reason the umma is not, in fact, universal is due to some parts of the Muslim military (and cultural) conquests being less digestible and dissolvable than others, notably Persia and the Berbers.

"National identity, then, means something very different to most Muslims from what it means to us. For most Muslims in the Middle East, being Muslim takes precedence over being an Egyptian, a Libyan, or a Palestinian."

Much of the Middle East, like much of the world outside of Western Europe (and the Anglosphere) is centuries behind us in the formation of a national consciousness. This is in part because they started the process of becoming nation-states later, but also because the forces driving that process are both weaker and opposed by countering forces (such as the umma).

12/15

re: "Palestinians are an Invented People"

Michael Curtis* at American Thinker ("a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans") applies an historian's skills to the Palestinian question.

Money quote(s):

"(W)hatever one's views of the sagacity or judgment of Mr. Gingrich on other issues, or one's opinions on the more general issue of the desirability and character of a Palestinian state existing alongside the state of Israel, the accuracy of his statement cannot be denied.

The conclusion stems from two factors. One is that Arabs living in the area now known as Palestine were regarded, both historically and in contemporary times, not as a separate entity but as part of the general Arab people. This has been recognized by Arab spokesmen, by scholars, and by objective international official reports. The second is that no independent Palestinian state has ever existed, let alone one that manifested a "Palestinian identity." " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Until now, that is; the PA: for values of "independent" and "state."

"That "Arab nation" never included a state known as "Palestine." Indeed, the inhabitants of the general Palestinian area were subjects, not of an Arab nation, but of the Ottoman Empire which ruled the area and lasted from 1516 until the end of World War 1. This was the last generally recognized sovereign power in the area. The area of Palestine was a district of the Empire, officially a vilayet (province), not a political entity. No independent Palestinian state has ever been established, nor was there a single administrative or cultural unit of Palestinians. Arabs in the area were not different in any way from other Arabs in the Middle East area. . Nor was Israel established on the ashes of any state other than that of the Ottoman Empire.

The first official naming of "Palestine" as a distinct, defined territorial area came with the decision of the League of Nations , dealing with areas of the former Ottoman Empire, to create a Mandate for Palestine. This was accorded to Great Britain which ruled the area, from the Mediterranean Sea to west of the Jordan River, from 1922 until May 1948.

All people living in that area were regarded as "Palestinians" without any ethnic connotations. Ironically, the name was used not by Arabs but only by Jews in the area, as in The Palestinian (now the Jerusalem) Post, and the Palestine Symphony (now Israel Philharmonic) Orchestra. Only after the state of Israel was established in May 1948 did the term "Palestinian" become exclusively used in referring to Arabs in the area.

It is now clear that a concept of Palestinian identity and nationalism has emerged and become a political factor."

It's curious how the very word Palestine (and Palestinian) itself was co-opted from the Israelis as soon as they had finished with it.

"The essential problem is not simply a terminological one, a refusal to acknowledge that the category of Palestinian identity is a recent invention. Rather, the insistence on a presumed time honored right of a Palestinian people to the disputed land is being used as a weapon against the right of Israel to exist. Such an insistence is a handicap to a peaceful negotiated agreement between Palestinians and Israel."

12/13

* Michael Curtis is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Rutgers University

re: "Nuke the News: Unpopular in the Arab World"

As always, Frank J. at IMAO ("Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated.") summarized the news like no one else can.

Money quote(s):

"Maybe if our credit gets low enough, no one will lend us money anymore. Then we’ll finally have to buckle down balance our budget. Though, more likely, we’ll just declare bankruptcy. Oh, selling off our assets is going to be painful; I always liked Hawaii." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"(H)ard to get worried over us being unpopular in the Arab world. It’s if we’re suddenly really popular there, then we should get worried. “Hmm… we have 90% popularity in the Arab world… OH NO! DID WE ACCIDENTALLY DO A HOLOCAUST?!!!” "

Impossible to argue with iron-clad logic like that, so why try?

re: "Hussein strikes out"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") rakes Pres. Obama over the coals.

Money quote(s) of a non-ad hominem nature:

"just how much clout the NY Times and MSNBC have in the Arab world"

Just about none. Don't believe me? Check overall literacy rates in the Arab world (litaracy in any languages, even their own), look into how often (for instance) Al Jazeera cites MSNBC, and do the math.

"because the vast majority of the Muslims.... live in tribal and honor cultures and they only respect the strong horse"

Nice placement of a UBL "strong horse" reference there.

"the hated cowboy W because say what you want about him, he would kick your ass if you crossed him"

I believe it was the Kennedy administration which followed the adage "Don't get mad, get even." Words to govern by.

re: "White House: Jewish “refugees” right of return should be “on the table” "

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") noted the raising of a non-issue.

Money quote(s):

"The right of Jews to return to the Arab and predominantly Muslim countries they fled from or were kicked out of over several decades could be "on the table" as part of the Middle East peace negotiations, according to a senior White House official."

This could, theoretically, be useful in terms of neutralizing the demand for a right-of-return for Palestinian Arabs.

"In response to a question asking why there is a great deal of focus on the Palestinian refugee issue but almost no focus on the Jews who departed Arab lands, Rhodes declared that the Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate on the Jewish right of return to Arab and Muslim countries and that the United States could play in role in mediating that issue."

Unlike the Arabs who, after being variously expelled or fleeing what is now the state of Israel, became refugees in various neighboring countries, Jews who were forced to leave majority Muslim countries were accepted and integrated in their countries of refuge (primarily Israel). The hows and whys of that fill volumes.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the argument that Palestinian refugees have the right of return to Israel in his Tuesday speech before a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

"[T]he Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel," he said. "You know, everybody knows this. It's time to say it. It's important."

But neither Obama nor Netanyahu mentioned the Jewish right of return in any of their speeches or remarks over the past few days.

Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, said that the Jewish right of return is actually not an issue that's part of the peace negotiations, largely due to the fact that a) there are no Jewish refugees, and b) they don't have any desire to claim lands in Arab states.

"I would like to congratulate the administration for even-handedness, but in fact there are no Jewish refugees today. That's because the Jews who were expelled from Arab countries have been citizens of Israel for decades, where they live in freedom and prosperity," he said."

re: "Obama Condemns Violence in Libya; Somehow Manages to Not Mention Moamar Qadhafi"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ has some observations.

Money quote(s):

"Although I should be fair: I don't think I want tangible American action here. Arabs have enormous chips on their shoulders about the West and like slightly-demented loser little brothers they sort of need to make their own way, even it it's a bit pathetic. American involvement gives them what they most need -- a scapegoat, someone to blame their failures on."

Passing over how generally bad an idea it is to make sweeping generalizations about entire regions, cultures, or ethnicities; I think he's got a point.

"On CNN... A guy is saying that Libya, the state, may not survive Qadhafi's ouster; the state may split into tribe-controlled regions.

Does anyone care about this? Is there a single good reason to champion these arbitrary lines and larger-than-needed-or-wanted states which unite tribes that don't want to be under a single authority?

Do we have some sentimentalism about our old maps? Do we fear having to draw new ones?
This expert wasn't necessarily against Libya splitting into smaller states, but his general tone was one of alarm.

I don't get that. Why do we care if Libya splits into seven more homogeneous tribal regions?"

You'd think it'd be no skin off the United States' nose, but consider the following.

Making a single heterogeneous Third World state into seven homogeneous Third World states means that a single pool of resources (human, mineral, &tc.) able to support a nation state become divided, unevenly (because that's how God distributed them), between seven smaller Third World states. All of them aren't going to get the petroleum reserves.

Another thought; seven smaller tribal states mean seven new states liable to fall prey to any number of the ills small tribal states are liable. Islamicism (which would certainly capture at least one) would be bad enough; Al-Qaeda is worse and becomes an immediate problem for the West.

Lastly, what about Libya's stocks of non-nuclear WMD, chemical munitions, and not-yet-weaponized uranium?

re: "Arab Uprisings: The Limits of Diplomacy"

Charles Crawford explains about non-MTS ("Muddle Through Somehow") events.

Money quote(s):

"For far too long we all have got used to dealing with a sizeable group of miserable dictatorships and autocracies, some relatively benign and/or rich, others not. Even when truly appalling things happened, we looked away."

"Part of it goes right back to the depths of the Cold War and European decolonisation in Africa. Some sort of psychological/political reaction against European rule was more or less expected if not inevitable (and for Cold War leftists, highly desirable). The Soviet Union piled in, offering these newly liberated territories an ideological 'anti-imperialist' approach to the 'West' plus arms sales and the control-freak blandishments of central planning.

And it worked. Western/European liberal ideas which had quite respectable roots across North Africa were more or less wiped out in favour of a motley mish-mash of repressive national socialism and pan-Arab 'nationalism'."

This was a much wider phenomenon not limited to North Africa or the Near East, but extending to the whole of the "Non-Aligned Movement."

"(D)uring the Cold War we got used to making the best of dictatorships in all sorts of places. Unfortunately, when the Cold War ended we quailed at the thought of bringing the Arabs to have a hard look at themselves. We came up with no idea of a reforming partnership with the Arab world's misgovernments."

By then, things like OPEC and Arab terrorism had come into their own and many governments rightly feared rocking those boats.

"(T)he costs and benefits of policies compound up over time. Compounding stupidity dragging on for decades produces fearsome negativities, not least the public debt crisis threatening the credibility of the EU and USA alike.

The Middle East's compounding stupidities have led to a momumentally wretched outcome now."

And we ain't seen nothin' yet.

"It surely is better to do more or less honest business deals with dictatorships, as the very act of engaging with the professional western world gradually (OK, very gradually and perhaps at the risk of helping these villains stay in power) creates a new requirement rippling out into the local system for better training, accountability, due process, and so on. Constructive engagement and all that.

Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the sheer longevity of these decadent Arab regimes is that it reinforced a quasi-colonialist quasi-racist idea that 'Arabs can't do democracy'.

In my 27 years in the FCO I don't recall hearing a single expert on the Middle East talking about how the region might become substantively more democratic. Planning papers on the issue were inconceivable and unwritten."

Constructive engagement is a seductive idea. We do it with un-free societies the world over, from China throughout the whole of the developing world. It might even work, perhaps, in the long run, if nothing else interrupts it.

(But something almost always happens to interrupt it.)

"Not only did Western governments suck up to 'Arab' dictatorships for far too long. Everyone did - Right, Left and Centre!

Above all, so did their own people. For the best part of fifty years tens of millions of Arabs have passively accepted brutal, unaccountable regimes, sub-optimal living standards, a desert of intellectual poverty, reduced choice and freedom. That's not our fault. It's theirs."

&

"It looks as if the Arabs are finally waking up - and realising in a rage what has been done to them by their own fatalism"

re: "Fitzgerald: What happens when the news reports are so obviously biased"

Hugh at Dhimmi Watch ("Dhimmi Watch seeks to bring public attention to the plight of the dhimmis, and by doing so, to bring them justice.") reviews the lessons to be learned.

Money quote(s):

"There are lessons that news reporters should have learned. They have not been learned. Here is what the last 40 years should have taught them, and us:

1) The Arabs consistently lie."

"2) They lie specifically about what they do -- and what they do is too gruesome to discuss -- to captured Israeli soldiers and airmen."

"What would Javier Solano, or Kofi Annan, or his successor Ban-Ki Moon, or Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, or any of the same United Nations or European Union galere, prefer to be? Would they choose to be an Arab soldier who was captured by Israel, or would they choose to be an Israeli soldier who was captured by any Arab group you care to name?"

"The unbelievable moral idiocy, and the misstatements that rise to the level of lying, that vraious reporters and news commentators realize they can get away with, and the similar nonsense and lies that continues, and is tolerated by never being unchallenged, in the accounts offered by Arab spokesmen, is astonishing in its scope. CNN and other newsgroups are lying, in fact, whenever they pretend that the Arabs do not have a long history of flat-out lying, and of re-cycling corpses (including the corpses of all those who die natural deaths during any campaign, which deaths are then attributed to the monstrously cruel Israelis), and of course also of settling scores."

&

"What happens when the news reports are so obviously biased is that they create in their most intelligent and well-informed viewers a deep skepticism. By now that skepticism has become a deep mistrust."