Lawyers Challenge EU and UK over Inaction on Palestine

long live Palestine!

This is good news, hopefully it will have some impact.

Are the Settlement the Major stumbling block to Peace in the Middle East?

We should not make the settlements the problem....
There are 1,200,000 or so Arab settlers living inside Israel Proper....
Do we make them the problem....No....They are Arab settlers who happen to live inside Israel.

If we were to go ahead and make the Viable Palestinian State called for in the Road Map to Peace Now, in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza (only 22% of what is TODAY (forget the past, it is gone, gone, gone) Israel, West Bank and Gaza)....Some of the violence we see might come to an end.

Just like you have Israel with 1,200,000 or so Arab settlers.
You would have Palestine with 400,000 or so Jews.

By making it easy for the Jews to move to Israel proper and for Arab settlers to move to Palestine if they wanted to, perhaps you would not have to force anyone to move.

It might happen naturally, A Jewish family living in the State of Palestine in the West Bank decided they want to move to Israel. They put their house up for sale (just like a person would anywhere in the U.S. if lets say, they wanted to move from Ohio to Texas).....They sell their house...the Israeli Government has set up an agency to help them move to Israel Proper....The same should go for the Arab settlers inside Israel.

No one knows until it is done.......

Peace could be just around the corner......

""IF"" only 200,000 Jews decided to move to Israel.
""IF"" only 500,000 Arab settlers inside Israel decided to move to the new Palestinian State....once it was a Viable State with its own Government free from the Israeli Occupation.
You would end up with Palestine with a Palestinian majority and only 200,000 Jews.
You would end up with Israel with a Jewish majority and only 700,000 Arab settlers...
Of course this is not exact but it is a sample of what could happen.

But if you want any kind of Peace you have to start somewhere......

And there are some things that cannot be disputed.
In 1948 through 1967, the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza did not think of having a state of their own......They were part of Jordan and Egypt.
The Majority of the Palestinian People that lived in the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 were born there and have lived their whole lives In the West Bank and Gaza..

It is true that the Majority of the Jews living inside Israel were born there and have lived their whole lives there but the majority (not all) of their ancestors came from Russia, Germany and other European Nations in the late 1800's and during and after World War II till it became the Nation of Israel in 1948.

The Jews decided to call their State Israel and their People in Israel Israelis.
The Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza should be able to call themselves Palestinians if that is what they want to be called.

To end the resistance to the Occupation…End the Occupation that allows for the resistance…

Who knows, but it's worth a try.

There never was a country called "Palestine" and with whats going on by the Arabs, there never will be. Long live peaceful, civilized societies.

Isn't it true that Palestinians never had either a state, nor any distinct culture or language of their own?

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Posted on AUGUST-2-2001

For the moment, let's assume that the Palestinian people should not have a country of their own because they have never had a state, then why should the peoples of Salvador, Guatemala, Congo, Algeria, ... etc. have the right of self determination?

It should be noted that none of these countries had a state prior to gaining independence, nor a distinct language or culture that set them apart from their neighboring states. In other words, even if it's true that the Palestinian people had neither a state, nor a distinct culture or language:

* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and businesses?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country in which they were born?

According to historical facts, Zionism, as an ideology, evolved in response to the rise of Europe's nationalism and anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, especially in Tsarist Russia (Pale States), France during the Dreyfus affair, and Germany after WW I.

Similarly, Palestinian nationalism evolved in response to the presence of Zionism in Palestine, and most importantly because of the British intention to turn Palestine into a "Jewish National Home," see the Balfour Declaration for further details. These central facts were well articulated by David Ben-Gurion (Israel's 1st Prime Minister) and Moshe Sharett (Israel's 1st Foreign Minister) on many occasions. For example:

* A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in early 1919, Ben-Gurion expressed his opinion of future Jewish and Arab relations:

"Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don't know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours---even if we learn Arabic . . .and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don't see why 'Mustafa' should learn Hebrew. . . . There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs." (One Palestine Complete, p. 116)

*

On May 27, 1931, Ben-Gurion recognized that the "Arab question" is a

"tragic question of fate" that arose only as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a "question of Zionist fulfillment in the light of Arab reality." In other words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill their aspirations in a land already inhabited by a Palestinian Arab majority. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xii, Preface)

*

As the number of Jews in Palestine (Yishuv) doubled between 1931-1935, the Palestinian people became threatened with being dispossessed and for Jews becoming their masters. The Palestinian political movement was becoming more vocal and organized, which surprised Ben-Gurion. In his opinion, the demonstrations represented a "turning point" important enough to warrant Zionist concern. As he told Mapai comrades:

". . . they [referring to Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed . . . this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the [Palestinian] Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke the respect of the world. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126)

*

But Ben-Gurion set limits. The Palestinian people were incapable by themselves of developing Palestine, and they had no right to stand in the way of the Jews. He argued in 1918, that Jews' rights sprang not only from the past, but also from the future. In 1924 he declared:

"We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 38)

In other words, the Palestinian people are entitled to no political rights whatsoever, and if they have any rights to begin with, these rights are confined to their places of residence. Ironically, this statement was written when the Palestinian people constituted 85% of Palestine's population, and owned and operated over 97% of its lands!

*

In February 1937, Ben-Gurion was on the brink of a far reaching conclusion, that the Arabs of Palestine were a separate people, distinct from other Arabs and deserving of self-determination. He stated:

"The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country . . . because they live here, and not because they are Arabs . . . The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 170)

* In 1936 (soon after the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada), Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary:

"The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, [Arabs] see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn't matter whether or not their view is correct.... They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale .... they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. ..... [Arabs are] fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing the land, but of losing homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine ..... By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement." (Righteous Victims, p.136)
* In 1938, Ben-Gurion also stated against the backdrop of the First Palestinian Intifada:

"When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves ---- that is ONLY half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves. . . . But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves." (Righteous Victims, p. 652)
*

In 1936, Moshe Sharett spoke in a similar vein:

"Fear is the main factor in [Palestinian] Arab politics. . . . There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews' entry into Palestine." (Righteous Victims, p.136)

So if the causes of Zionism had not risen, meaning European anti-Semitism, then Palestinian nationalism might not have evolved into what it is today. It's worth noting that the Palestinian people, prior to WW I, always identified themselves as being part of "The Great Syria" (Suriyya al-Kubra), however, that drastically changed when Britain intended to turn Palestine into a "Jewish National Home", see the Balfour Declaration for more details.

This declaration, which was made to the Zionist Movement in 1917, signaled the future dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people because it did not address their political rights. On the other hand, the declaration recognized the political rights of the "Jewish people" around the world, despite the fact that the Jews in Palestine were under 8% of the total population as of 1914 (Righteous Victims, p. 83). In that respect, Lord Balfour, who was the British Foreign Secretary and a self-professed Christian Zionist, stated in 1919:

"Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder importance than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land." (Righteous Victims, p. 75)

In response to this declaration, the Palestinian people started to collectively oppose the British Mandate, Jewish immigration, and land sales to the Zionist movement.

Rather than dealing directly with the issues, sadly many Israelis and Zionists have chosen to ignore the existence of the Palestinians as a people. It should be emphasized that the hawk of all Israeli hawks, Ariel Sharon, has accepted the existence of a Palestinian state, in principle, in a portion of historic Palestine. Whether Israelis and Zionists like it or not, Palestine now exists as a postal code, international calling code, internet domain name, ...etc. in the heart of "Eretz Yisrael". The 8.5 million Palestinians are not going away, and the sooner Israelis and Zionists understand this simple message, the faster they shall start dealing with core issues of the conflict in a pragmatic way.

Finally, applying such logic is very dangerous since it would eliminate half United Nations' members overnight. It is simply not just to suppress the political, economic, and civil rights of the Palestinian people by claiming that they never previously had a state, distinct language, and distinct culture. Ironically, the Zionist movement has been encouraging Jews from all corners of the world to emigrate to "Eretz Yisrael", so that there is no real common denominator between all of these immigrants such as a common language, culture, country of origin, or even a unified interpretation of "who is a Jew".

To say that the Palestinian cannot have a State because they did not have one before, would be the same as saying Israel cannot have a modern day state of Israel because there was no modern day state of Israel before 1948.
And the U.S. cannot have a State because there was no U.S.A. before 1776.
As long as you have a majority of Palestinian People living in the West Bank and Gaza. There is no reason why you cannot have a modern day state of Palestine.

Thats just one of many factors The reason that it comes up with such regularity is as a response to myths widely held by less informed folks. A lot of people labor under the myth that there was once an Arab nation of Palestine that was over thrown by a Jewish invasion in 1947. There are also people also believe that the people called by the modern day politcal name "Palestinians" are the indigenous inhabitants of what is today Israel. Neither of these is true. Its important if one choses to address the problems of today, to really understand the actual history of the region.

Prior to 1967, the Palestinians considered themselves Arabs with in theGreaater ArabNation, within the theory of Pan Arabism. Their “state” was the Greater Arab nation, and their culture and language, Arabic.

Its interesting that you selected the examples of true colonies of the Europeans, Salvador, Guatemala, Congo, Algeria, which in the separate processes of individually de-colonizing themselves, asserted their right of self determination AFTER having expelled, exploited or absorbed the indigenous peoples. It is comparing apples and oranges and even then simplistically.

It is mis-leading to confuse individual property rights with group political rights. Thus while there is no question there are legitimate Arab legal claims for such things as homes, farms, and businesses, that’s a different set of ideas than an independent political right of self determination. There are Arab property claims being addressed through the Israeli court system all of the time. The legal system is the remedy here.

After the Arab people fled modern day Israel at the orders of the Arab High Command, in order to support the invasion of newly independent Israel in1948, they were not permitted to return to their villages because they were allied with and supportive of hostile, alien forces. Similarly, and slightly earlier, the Sudeten Germans were not permitted to return to Czecheslovakia for the same reasons and lost their homes, farms etc. Its not unique or unusual.

As to the question of Arab citizenship, it varies widely. Many Arab residents of the West Bank hold and have always held Jordanian citizenship. For others, accepting any Israeli documentation would have lead to their persecution by the Arab power structure. For those who left in 1948, they had neither Israeli citizenship, and were not permitted citizenship in the Arab countries in which they came to settle. As to their descendants, it is only the Palestinians, unique among the world’s peoples, that assert that their rights as refugees is hereditary. This assertion, that the Palestinians have greater rights than all other peoples is unsupported by international law. Once peaceably re-settled, a person is no longer a refugee and that status does not flow through to their children and grand children

“Zionism” is modern nomenclature for the ancient desire of all of the Jewish people, as expressed in liturgy poetry, song etc, to return to the traditional homeland of the Jewish people. Its not a modern phenomena, its just the modern form of an ancient phenomena. There wa sno equivalent “Palestinian” nationalism at that time, just the beginnings of Pan Arab nationalism in response to centuries of Ottoman domination. Initially there were different Arab responses to the presence of Zionism in Palestine, until the issue was manipulated , for reasons of internal political power struggles by the Grand Mufti Al-Husseini. There came to be competing nationalisms thereafter. Had the Arabs recognized the UN partition plan of ‘47, its far more likely that “Palestine would have been absorbed by its Arab neighbors, that any independence for a Palestinian state.

For the vast majority of Palestinians, once the land owners had sold their land to incoming jews, the Palestinian tenant farmers were landless and displaced. So rather than Jews becoming their masters, it was one master or the other. That was an economic systemic problem.

The statement that the Palestinian people owned 97% of its lands creates a misleading inference of individual ownership. Actually, the vast majority of the land was Government property and other wise un-owned. However, the governments lands (and deserts) are typically lumped together with Arab owned land in order to create a larger number.

The 1936 Arab riots and massacres were prompted by the Grand Mufti in an effort to consolidate his power. Their fear was that the jews would treat them as they intended to treat the Jews if the Arabs were to win.

I very much disagree with your final assertion that Jews have,” no real common denominator between all of these immigrants such as a common language, culture, country of origin, or even a unified interpretation of "who is a Jew". It’s a pleasure to go into any Synagogue in the world and converse and pray in Hebrew, within our acknowledged common culture.

Is the lack of any response whatsoever a general concession that the initial poster was simply wrong?

And while we're at it, let's not forget that your would-be guide to history is nessie, an "anti-racist" who is completely convinced that it's _your_ civil duty to hate 99.5% of American Jews.

Doubt it? Just ask him.

Trust him? He really, really wants you to.

@%<

More Americans need to know the truth instead of the pro-israel propaganda-mainstream media side.

It seems like it needs to be pointed out daily on this board that criticism of israeli policies doesn't equal antisemitism.

I'd like to examine to statements made by this author, many of which are incorrect, and offer the following:

1. "If we make the 'viable' Palestinian State"... Some of the violence might come to an end."

Response: When, in the annals of history, has there ever been an Arab state that has not engaged in violence, if not with its Arab neighbors, then with other so called "infidels"? Let's face it, people who strap bombs to their bodies, and murder innocents indiscriminately and then are applauded by other members of their faith, are not exactly paragons of the anti-violence movement. Furthermore, with the exception of a brief period under the 16th century Sultan Suleiman, Jews have never enjoyed freedom from persecution when living in Moslem countries and even then they were considered second-class citizens. Jews do not persecute Moslems in Israel or elsewhere and any actions that have been taken against Arabs have been to protect the State of Israel and defend its citizens against attack. Unfortunately innocent people have been killed at times, but the attacks have always been provoked by Arabs, who most ultimately answer for the deaths of their own people as well as the innocent Jews they have murdered.

2. What is a "viable arab state?" Name one that has contributed anything to its citizens. Is there one democracy? Is there one that promotes peace? Why is there no mention in the literature of a place called "Palestine" prior to the British mandate, and why was there never any mention of it by any Arab prior to 1967? Because it never existed!

Israel has made repeated offers to the so called "Palestinian people", who are in reality arabs who happened to live on land that is now within the State of Israel, for perhaps a few hundred years. Jews have had a continuous presence in this land for over 3000 years - even during the expulsion of all Jews by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the year 137, when Jerusalem was conquered by him and renamed Aelia Capitolina. Under threat of death, a number of Jews still remained in the land. And so the land passed back and forth from pagan control to Christian control to Moslem control to Christian ..... and eventually the land was restored to its historic and rightful owners - the Jews.

Now if you argue that what was historically yours doesn't necessarily belong to you (and one can certainly make such an argument), Israel was returned to the Jews by the people who administered the land - the British- who were the same people who created the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. So if Israel is illegitimate by that standard, my Islamic friends, you certainly must also want to destroy Jordan ( and I'm sure that their are some of you out there who probably want to do just that). Now I'm sure that there are many people that will say "The world was just felling sorry for the Jews because of what happened to them during the Nazi occupation of Europe." Yes, that's true, and Israel might not have been established when it was, if the murder of six million Jews had not occurred, but it did occur and Israel is a fact, so get over it. Outnumbered enormously by hostile neighbors bent on its destruction, Israel has prevailed in 1948, 1967, 1973 and will continue to prevail each and every time it is attacked.

What other argument can be made for possession of the land?
Well I just made it. If I take your land in a war, whether the war was started by me or not, guess what? It's my land. Israel never started any of these wars, but defended its territory every time.

So let's sum it up. Jews were there first, so the land belongs to them. The British returned the land to them, so the land belongs to them. They defended the land militarily and even captured new land (which by right also belonged to them). But remember how quickly Israel was willing to exchange the Sinai for peace with Egypt? It's because the Jews never felt they had a claim on Sinai - it was never part of the ancient land of Israel. I am hard pressed to think of other victors in a war who were expected to return land to the loser. Is the state of Texas now part of Mexico?

3. Regarding the assertion that the majority of Jews in Israel came from other parts of Europe - what possible bearing does that have on this argument? The whole of human history is filled with one people moving in and taking over the land of another. I don't see a big movement in the US to return the land to the native tribes because the majority of us came from somewhere else. As a fifth generation American, I can't even find a native american who claims title to the land I own. In any event, I live by the laws of my country and they say it is my land. The problem with so called "Palestinian" arabs that inhabit Israel, is that they refuse to abide by the law of the land.

So today we have several thousand Jewish settlers being forceable removed from their homes in Gaza and the West bank and Arabs jumping up and down and claiming this is a great victory for them. Why must Arabs always see things in terms of their "victories" and their enemies defeat. They have not and never will defeat Israel and if they had gratiously thanked the State of Israel for giving them this land, instead of saying "Now onto Jerusalem", maybe a real peace might have been possible.

4. The author of the article says that the majority of the "Palestinian people" that lived in the West Bank and Gaza prior to '67 were born there and lived there their whole lives." I can't comment on the veracity of this statement - it may well be true. But few, if any, of these people can make an ancestral claim for the property they live on. The greatest "Palestinian" of them all, Arafat, was born in Egypt and most Egyptians don't include that as part of "Palestine".

By the way, their already is a "Palestinian" State. It's called Jordan and lies just east of Israel. I visited it a few years ago and it's a pretty nice place to live.There is easily enough territory among the many arab countries to accomodate the 1.2 MM people of whom the author of the previous entry refers. If the arabs wanted real peace they could have accomplished it 56 years ago. Forrming a new "Palestinian State" accomplishes nothing and is merely a code word for the destruction of Israel and any hope for a democratic country in the Middle East.

>>>3. Regarding the assertion that the majority of Jews in Israel came from other parts of Europe - what possible bearing does that have on this argument? The whole of human history is filled with one people moving in and taking over the land of another. I don't see a big movement in the US to return the land to the native tribes because the majority of us came from somewhere else. As a fifth generation American, I can't even find a native american who claims title to the land I own. In any event, I live by the laws of my country and they say it is my land. The problem with so called "Palestinian" arabs that inhabit Israel, is that they refuse to abide by the law of the land.<<<

I agree people have moved all over the earth.

Israel proper is a majority of Jews. (about 5,000,000 and 1,200,000) and it should exist.

as you said people moving

The West Bank and Gaza is a majority Palestinian (about 4,000,000 and only about 400,000 Jews.

So Israel won a war.

The U.S. won the war with Japan.
Today there is a Japan, Japan is not part of the U.S.

The U.S. and Russia won a the war with Germany, Today there is a Germany, Germany is not part of the U.S. or Russia.

Japan wants its own country.
Germany wants its own country.
The Palestinians (the majority in the West Bank and Gaza) do not want to be under Occupation and Oppression. They want their own country.

To end the resistance to the Occupation…End the Occupation that allows for the resistance…

Just like it would be hard for the Jews inside Israel to be at Peace if they were under Occupation and being Oppressed.
It is hard for the Palestinians inside the West Bank and Gaza to be at Peace if they are under Occupation and being Oppressed.

I have always said Israel should be recognized inside its pre 1967 borders.
This border is the same if not larger than the legal 1948 border.

AQctually, only abouthalf of the Jews in Israel came from Europe, rather than,"majority of Jews in Israel came from other parts of Europe.About half were Jewish refugees, ehnically cleansed from Arablands and North Africa after Isreal declared independence. Take a look at the JIMENA website (Jews indigenous totheiddle East and North Africa)