Re: Rights of ISRAEL AND PALESTINIANS
By Letters To The Editor Tom Carew (01/25/08)
Many Arabs and their allies continue to attack the right of Israel to construct a state (or anything else) on what they term Arab land. The verifiable historical record is as follows.
1. Re the owners, the 10,427 sq miles in question were under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire until 1917 when it was taken by an Arab-Allied coalition in WW I, with Faysal'a **Arab Revolt** forces, advised by Galwayman Col Pierce Joyce, the Jewish Legion led by Irish Col John Henry Pattterson, and the 10th Irish Division, fighting alongside Australian, New Zealand and GB troops.
2. The 3 separate Ottoman districts within Palestine, which had never been united except as the historical Jewish homeland, were then united and temporarily run by the British **Occupied Enemy Territory Administraion** until the 3rd military Chief Administrator, Lt-Gen Louis Bols, handed over to the civilian High Commissioner, Liberal ex-MP Herbert Samuel, on June 20, 1920.
3. This was under the international Mandate, from [a] the April 25, 1920 San Remo Conference, [b] the Treaty of Sevres of Aug 10, 1929, and [c] confirmed by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, and Palestine accordingly became international property being prepared for independence by the UK as Trustee, on behalf of the League.
4. That international mandate obliged UK to facilitate **re-constituting the Jewish national home** in the one place on earth with that enduring historical connection, Palestine.
5. That re-constitution was already well established under Ottoman Sunni Muslim rule, with the new Jewish city of Tel Aviv being built from 1909, on sand-dunes north of Jaffa, freely purchased [not stolen]. The creation of new rural settlements was started in 1878 by Jews from the ancient communities in Safed and Jerusalem, and the Kibbutz movement also from 1909.
6. The UK TUC-Labour Party Aug 1917 Joint War Aims Memorandum included restoring the Jewish national homeland, and that became UK policy on Nov 2, 1917 [Balfour Declaration]. The dynamic of Jewish regeneration was strongly co-operative, not primarily military or political, with the agricultural Kibbutz, and the Histadrut trade union confederation, which organises both Arab and Jewish workers.
7. There was no parallel Arab movement for any Palestinian homeland because they saw themselves as simply part of Greater/Southern Syria.
8. The UN 1947 Committee recommended 7-3, with the Australian Chair not voting, that Palestine be shared by both an Arab as well as by a Jewish state, and the General Assembly accepted that, by 33-11, on Nov 29, 1947.
9. The British withdrew in May, 1948, under their 11th High Commissioner, Rathmines-born Gen Alan Gordon Cunningham, but the Arabs rejected the existence of ANY Jewish state, however tiny, and launched a war of extermination on the new UN-mandated State of Israel. They lost, ending with even less land than the UN had proposed, but only Pres Sadat in Egypt and King Hussein in Jordan abandoned the failed Arab war-strategy. Hamas has its triple-aim of [a] an Islamic Republic, [b] from the River Jordan to the Med Sea, and [c] achieved by violence.
10. Due to that Arab-initiated war, 711,000 Arabs [UN estimate] fled, but as many Jewish refugees [from the Arab world and Iran] were absorbed by the new Israel. Exactly what had happened in 1947 when 7.5m Muslims from India were absorbed by Pakistan, and 7.5m Hindus, Christians and Sikhs were absorbed by India. No **right of return** there, and Pres Musharraf himself is Delhi-born.
11. Israel integrated all her 800,000 refugees, but the oil-rich Arab despots have cynically and cruelly left their refugees in camps, as useful human propaganda fodder.
12. Israel alone contains more Arabs, 1.4m, all full citizens, in her liberal democracy, than the whole of Palestine had in 1947. And the central obstacle to regional peace and collaboration is, as since 1947, the enduring Arab refusal to accept their neighbour - Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2002 but Hezb-Allah still attack across the undisputed international frontier, and rockets rain from Hamas-run Gaza on Israeli civilians, in spite of the complete Israeli withdrawl in Aug, 2005.
Yours, etc,
Tom Carew,
Ranelagh,
Dublin, 6,
Ireland.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Letters To The Editor
