Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Do the Palestinian Arabs Deserve Their Own State?

The questionnaire below has been floating around cyberspace for years, but it's always worth keeping in view.

It also brings to mind the oft-repeated statement "the Palestinian Arabs deserve a state of their own," which makes one wonder about other national groups which do not have their own independent states.

I looked up the Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations on Wikipedia and found the entry began with the following:
Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups Around the World is a four volume set of books by James Minahan. The 2002 book follows and expands upon his 1996 Nations without States. In the volumes, Minahan chronicles 350 national groups that are not recognized as independent states. He presents a defined criterion for a stateless nation:
  1. Self-identity as a distinctive group,
  2. the display of the outward trappings of national consciousness (particularly the adoption of a flag),
  3. the formation of a specifically nationalist organization or political grouping that reflects its claim to self-determination.


One never hears anyone say any of those other 350 stateless national groups deserves its own state. Perhaps it has something to do with the following four characteristics of the Palestinian Arabs which are not shared by the others:
  1. The Palestinian Arabs have a much shorter history than any of the others, having formed a still tentative national identity only since the Arabs lost the war they forced on Israel in 1967.
  2. None of the other groups forged their identity as an anti-group, as a way of denying the right of another group (in the case of the Palestinian Arabs, the right of the Jews) to its homeland.
  3. None of the other groups has repeatedly spurned opportunities to establish its own sovereign state.
  4. None of the other groups has made terrorism such a core value at the heart of its identity.




An interesting questionnaire for Palestinian Advocates



By Yashiko Sagamori

If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history," I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:


  1. When was it founded and by whom?

  2. What were its borders?

  3. What was its capital?

  4. What were its major cities?

  5. What constituted the basis of its economy?

  6. What was its form of government?

  7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?

  8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?

  9. What was the language of the country of Palestine?

  10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?

  11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell us what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.

  12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?



You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?

And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over — or thrown out of — the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?

I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.

The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel ; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people" and installed it in Gaza , Judea, and Samaria . How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza , respectively?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza , Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called "Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" — or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East . Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?

1 comment:

YJay Draiman said...

NO PALESTINIAN STATE – No land concessions R4.

Imagine that the various people who settled in the United States for the past 300 years decided one day that they one to parcel the United States into an independent State just for them, would the American public go for it. The Answer is absolutely NO.

The situation in Israel today is no different. The Arabs there are not Palestinians, there is no such Arab nation as Palestine or Palestinian people.

Europeans countries today are consisting of numerous people from other countries. Would the Europeans people cede part of their country to set up another State in their midst. The answer is absolutely NO.

All the Arabs in Israel and surrounding areas are from the various Arab nations, such as Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and other Arab nations.

Prominent PLO Arab says there are no 'Palestinians' and no "Palestine"

PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein admitted in a March 31, 1977 interview with a Dutch newspaper Trouw.

"The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism. "

The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people

If the historic documents, comments written by eyewitnesses and declarations by the most authoritative Arab scholars are still not enough, let us quote the most important source for Muslim Arabs:
"And thereafter we [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd'.".
017.104
YUSUFALI: And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, "Dwell securely in the land (of promise)": but when the second of the warnings came to pass, We gathered you together in a mingled crowd.
PICKTHAL: And We said unto the Children of Israel after him: Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh to pass We shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations.
SHAKIR: And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.
- Qur'an 17:104 -
Any sincere Muslim must recognize the Land they call "Palestine" as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by Muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah's ultimate revelation.

Sequence of historical events, agreements and a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel totaling approximately 45,000 square miles, as mandated by the League of Nations in July of 1922. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel. (You might as well break apart Syria which was mandated at the same time).

Jay Draiman.

PS
20 Years of Research Reveals Jerusalem Belongs to Jews


(IsraelNN.com) Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law.".