Israel Begins Forced Removal of Jewish Settlers From Gaza as Deadline Expires

Because of the past history of desecration of Jewish cemetaries by Arabs (Jordan in Jerusalem 1948), even the graves are being re-located. What can be said about the prospects of peace with people that are so violently prejudicced that even the dead are denied peace?

It takes two to tango.

Didn''t they teach you in kindergarten that two wrongs don't make a right? and isn't the subject graveyards, resting places of the dead, rather than houses of worship. Is your medication kicking in or something? Why does indybay tolerate your constant negativity and attempts to supress others opinions if you disagree ("drive them off the board")? Is free speech only for some? Is indybay only for thsoe with pre-approved points of view? We all know what to call those who don't tolerate others.

Exactly, two wrongs don't make a right!
So instead of always defending israel by pointing to Palestinian violence, maybe you should be willing to look at Israel's terror and atrocities, too.--instaed of always trying to say 'self-defense'....

Nice stuff especially within three years of the Holocaust, its not a "tit for tat" sort of thing. To the Arabs, its a war of pride, honor, conquest and possesion. To the Israelis its a war of survival. Thats why.

# Damascus radio called on all Arabs to "undertake the liberation battle that will tear the hearts from the bodies of the hatefull jews and trample them in the dust" - quoted in TIME, June 2, p. 20

# "the surviving Jews would be helped to return to their native countries, but my estimation is that none will survive"

- Ahmed Shuqeiri (later to be PLO chief) quoted in Churchill and Churchill, p. 52

# "We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought... Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and who is defeated will by nature love the victor".

- Sami al Jundi, leader of Syrian Baath party, "Al Baath" Beirut, 1961. From B. Lewis, "Semites and Anti-Semites" pp.147-148.

# "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacare which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacares and the crusades"

Arab Leugue Secretary General Azam Pasha, May 15, 1948 (quoted in "New Dimensions" Jan. '91).

"On May 28, 1948 the Arab Legion completed the capture of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the site of numerous ancient synagogues and the Western Wall of the Temple, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 AD. These were and remain the holiest sites in the Jewish religion.

After the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem was captured, the destruction, desecration and systematic looting of Jewish sites began and continued. 57 ancient synagogues (the oldest dated to the 13th century), libraries and centers of religious study were ransacked and 12 were totally and deliberately destroyed. Those that remained standing were defaced, used for housing of both people and animals. The city's foremost Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum. Appeals were made to the United Nations and in the international community to declare the Old City to be an 'open city' and stop this destruction, but there was no response. This condition continued until Jordan lost control of Jerusalem in June 1967.

On the Mount of Olives, the Jordanian Arabs removed 38,000 tombstones from the ancient cemetery and used them as paving stones for roads and as construction material in Jordanian Army camps, including use as latrines. When the area was recaptured by Israel in 1967, graves were found open with the bones scattered. Parts of the cemetery were converted into parking lots, a filling station, and an asphalt road was built to cut through it. The Intercontinental Hotel was built at the top of the cemetery. Sadar Khalil, appointed by the Jordanian government as the official caretaker of the cemetery, built his home on the grounds using the stones robbed from graves. In 1967, the press published extensive photos documenting that Jewish gravestones were found in Jordanian Army camps, such as El Azariya, as well as in Palestinian walkways, steps, bathrooms, and pavement.

The Hurva Synagogue, attributed to Rabbi Moses Ben Nahman (Ramban), was the main synagogue in Jerusalem in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (and possibly much earlier), until the Ottomans closed it in 1589 because of Muslim incitement. It was burned by Arabs in 1721 (Hurva = destruction in Hebrew), but again rebuilt by Zionists in the 19th century, becoming the most prominent synagogue on the Jerusalem skyline. For that reason, when it was captured by the Arab Legion during the battle for Old Jerusalem in 1948, they dynamited it to show that they controlled the Jewish Quarter. When the Jews in New Jerusalem saw the Hurva burning, they knew that Jewish life in the Quarter had ended (again).
Access to the Holy Sites

When the 1948 war ended, and negotiations began, the Israeli representatives emphasized regaining access to Jewish Jerusalem. Article VIII of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement, signed on April 3, 1949, called for the establishment of a Special Committee:

* ... composed of two representatives of each Party for the purpose of formulating agreed plans" including "free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

Hopes were high that Jews might visit the Western Wall for Passover 1949, but the Jordanians violated the Armistice Agreement. These clauses were never honored. Promises continued to be made, and Glubb Pasha, the British commander of the Arab Legion, pledged that:

* Jerusalem's Arab and Jewish populations would be two separate cities with free trade and exchange between each other. The Arabs would be perfectly willing to allow the Jews to have access to their shrines, notably the Wailing Wall, now inside the Arab-held Old City.

The Jordanian "occupation" of the West Bank was very abusive of the rights of Jews and Christians, or any resident of Israel. Jewish and muslim residents of Israel were not permitted to visit their Holy Places in East Jerusalem. Christians, too, were discriminated against. In 1958, Jordanian legislation required all members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre to adopt Jordanian citizenship. In 1965, Christian institutions were forbidden to acquire any land or rights in or near Jerusalem. In 1966, Christian schools were compelled to close on Fridays instead of Sundays, customs privileges of Christian religious institutions were abolished. Jerusalem was bisected by barbed wire, concrete barriers and walls. On a number of occasions Jordanian soldiers opened fire on Jewish Jerusalem. In May 1967, the Temple Mount became a military base for the Jordanian National Guard.

During the Jordanian occupation of Hebron from 1948 to 1967, Jews were not permitted to live in the city, nor -- despite the term of the 1948 Armistice Agreement -- to visit or pray at the Jewish holy sites in the city. Additionally, the Jordanian authorities and local residents undertook a systematic campaign to eliminate any evidence of the Jewish presence in the city. They razed the Jewish Quarter, desecrated the Jewish cemetery and built an animal pen on the ruins of the Avraham Avinu synagogue

Although there were numerous discussions of this issue, and Israeli complaints, the Jordanians refused to honor the agreement, and the UN did not pass any resolutions against this treatment of Jewish religious institutions."

These quotes from zionists-which you identify as--indicate a whole lot more than "survival" as you claim--this is an ideology

Miscellanies Quote From Zionists and non-Zionists


BASED On Declassified Israeli Documents & Personal Diaries
In October 1882, Validimir Dubnow, one of the earliest Zionist pioneers in Palestine, wrote to his brother articulating the ultimate goals of the Zionists movement:

"The ultimate goal . . . is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years. . . . The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)

In October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, few of the earliest Zionist pioneers in Palestine, wrote describing the indigenous Palestinians:

". . . There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become a the strong and papules ones." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)

In 1914 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Israel's second president) advocated the employment of exclusive Jewish Labour in Jewish run business, he wrote:

"It should have been the case that the Jewish bourgeoisie would be chauvinistic and would demand only Jewish labor. We, the socialists, tending toward internationalism, should have demanded that workers be employed without regard to national and religious differences. In reality, we see exactly the opposite." (Righteous Victims, p. 51)

In 1909 Meir Disengoff, who become Tel-Aviv's first mayor, asked:

"How can Jews, who demand emancipation in Russia, rob the rights of, and act selfishly toward, other workers upon coming to Eretz Yisrael." (Righteous Victims, p. 51)

In March 1911, 150 Palestinian notables cabled the Turkish parliament protesting land sales to Zionist Jews. The governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, responded:

"We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups. . . . aiming to take Palestine from us." (Righteous Victims, p. 62)

In 1916 Lord Balfour declared that he is a "Zionists" during a British Cabinet meeting. In an encounter between Weizmann and Balfour:

"[Weizmann] laid out his much repeated argument -- that Zionists and British interests are IDENTICAL. The Zionist movement spoke, Weizmann said, with the vocabulary of modern statesmanship, but was fueled by a deep religious consciousness. Balfour, himself a modern statesman, also CONSIDERED Zionism as an inherent part of his Christian faith. . . . Soon after, Balfour declared in a cabinet meeting, I AM A ZIONIST." (One Palestine Complete, p. 41)

And in the same year, Balfour also state:

"[He and Lloyed George had been influenced] by the desire to give the Jews their rightful place in the world; a great nation without a home is not right." (Righteous Victims, p. 72)

In 1917, the Zionist Organization, which had offices in both the Allied and Central Powers, was neutral, and it was feared that Germany might preempt the Allies with a pro-Zionist declaration of its own. a visit to Paris by the Russian Zionist Nahum Sokolow helped convince French Quai d'Orsay that the time had come for a pro-Zionist statement. In exchange Sokolow agreed to rally Jewish support for continued Russian participation in the war. On June 4, 1917, the director general of the French Foreign Ministry, Jules Cambon, issued the declaration that serve as a precedent and basis for the more significant Balfour Declaration:

"You [Sokolow] . . . consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded . . . . it would be a deed of justice and reparation to assist, the protection of Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that land from which the people of Israel were exiled so man centuries ago.
The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongfully attacked [the Belgians], and which continues to struggle to assure the victory of right over might, cannot but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies." (Righteous Victims, p. 74)

Foremost among Jewish critics to Zionism was Sir Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India and the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet. His dissent from the political nature of Zionist aims stemmed from conviction that Judaism was a universal faith, distinct from nationality, and that in the era of the modern nation-State the Jewish people did not constitute a nation. He questioned the credentials of the Zionist Organization to speak for all Jews. In secret memoranda (later made public) he wrote:

"Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom ... I have always understood that those who indulged in this creed were largely animated by the restrictions upon and refusal of liberty to Jews in Russia. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognized by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the 'national home of the Jewish people'. I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mohammedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews, and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mohammedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine ... When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country ...

"I deny that Palestine is today associated with the Jews or properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mohammedan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history ...

"... When the Jew has a national home, surely it follows that the impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be enormously increased. Palestine will become the world's ghetto. Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? His national home is Palestine". (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section II)

When the question of the British Mandate over Palestine was discussed in British Parliament in the late 1910s, it became clear that opinion in the House of Lords was strongly opposed to the Balfour Declaration, as illustrated by the words of Lord Sydenham in reply to Lord Balfour:

"... the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country - Arab all around in the hinterland - may never be remedied ... what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend." (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section IV)

While the Zionist leadership was discussing the morality of "transferring" the Palestinian people in December 1918, Yitzhak Avigdor Wilkansky, an agronomist and advisor at the Palestine Office in JAFFA, felt that, for practical reasons, it was:

"impossible to evict the fellahin [Palestinian Arab peasants], even if we wanted to. Nevertheless, if it were possible, I would commit an INJUSTICE towards the [Palestinian] Arabs. There are those among us who are opposed to this form the point of view of supreme righteousness and morality. . . .[But] when you enter into the midst of the Arab nation and do not allow it to unit, here too you are taking its life. . . . Why don't our moralists dwell on this point? We must be either complete vegetarians or meat eaters: not one-half, one-third, or one-quarter vegetarian." (Righteous Victims, p. 140-141 & America And The Founding Of Israel, p. 71)

Edward Mandell House, US President Wilson's aid, wrote Lord Balfour predicting the outcome of future implementation of the Balfour Declaration:

"It is all bad and I told Balfour so. They are making [the Middle East] a breeding place for future war." (Righteous Victims, p. 73)

While the peace conference was convening at Versailles in the early 1919, a debate has erupted whether to grant the Mandate over Palestine to the Americans or to the British. Zionists opposed the U.S. control to the country on the grounds that American democracy (where majority rule) ran COUNTER to the plan for "national home" in Palestine. A publication issued by the Zionist Organization in London wrote:

"Democracy in American too commonly means MAJORITY RULE without regard to diversities of types or stages of civilization or differences of quality. Democracy in that sense has been called the melting pot in which that quantitatively lesser is assimilated into quantitatively greater. This doubtless is natural in America, and works on the whole very well. But if American idea were applied as an American administration might apply it to Palestine, what would happen? The numerical majority in Palestine today is [Palestinian] Arab, not Jewish. Qualitatively, it is a simple fact that the Jews are now predominant in Palestine, and given proper conditions they will be predominant quantitatively also in a generation or two. But if the crude arithmetical conception of democracy were to be applied now, or at some early stage in the future to Palestinian conditions, the majority that would rule would be the Arab majority, and the task of establishing and developing a great Jewish Palestine would be infinitely more difficult." The problem at the HEART of the Zionist claim was RARELY ARTICULATED so clearly: the Zionist dream ran COUNTER to the principle of democracy. (One Palestine Complete, p. 119)

In November 2, 1918, Balfour day parade in Jewish Jerusalem, Musa Kathim al-Husseini, Jerusalem's mayor at the time, handed the British governor of Palestine, Storrs, a petition from more than 100 Palestinian notables which stated:

"We have noticed yesterday a large crowed of Jews carrying banners and over-running the streets shouting words which hurt the feeling and wound the soul. They [Zionist Jews] pretend with OPEN VOICE that Palestine, which is the Holy Land of our fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors, which has been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages, who loved it and died in defending it, is NOW a national home for them." (Righteous Victims, p. 90)

In 1919 Lord Balfour, the father of the Bolfour Declaration, justified the usurpation of Palestinians right of self determination as the following:

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

As early as October 25, 1919 Winston Churchill predicted that Zionism implied the clearing of the indigenous population, he wrote:

"there are the Jews, whom we are PLEDGED to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for GRANTED the the local [Palestinian] population will be CLEARED out to suit their convenience." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 15)

In March 1921 Winston Churchill, a life long Zionist, ASSURED Arabs that Jews WOULD NOT dispossess them one day:

"It is manifestly right that the scattered Jews should have a national center and a national home and be reunited and where else but in Palestine with which for 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the British Empire, but also good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine. . . . They shall share in the benefits and progress of Zionism." (Righteous Victims, p. 99)

And also in 1921 Churchill assured the Palestinian delegation headed by Kathim al-Huseini the Palestinian rights will be preserved:

"[The Jews would not] take any man's lands. They CANNOT dispossess any man of his RIGHTS or his PROPERTY. . . . There is room for all." (Righteous Victims, p. 100)

And in October 1941, Churchill wrote in a secret Cabinet minute in support of partition Palestine into two state (in defiance of the 1939 White Paper):

"I may say at once that if Britain and the United States emerged victorious from the war, the creation of a GREAT JEWISH STATE in Palestine inhabited by MILLIONS OF JEWS will be one of the LEADING FEATURES of the peace conference discussions." (Righteous Victims, p. 167-168)

In 1936 the Mapai leader David Hacohen explained how Zionist socialism should be for Jews not Arabs, he said:

"I remember being one of the first of our comrades [of the Ahdut Ha'avodah] to got to London after the first World War. ... There I became a socialist. ... [In Palestine] I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to the housewives that they not buy at [Palestinian] Arab stores, to prevent [Palestinian] Arab workers from getting jobs there. .... To pour kerosene on the [Palestinian] Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had bought; to praise to the skies the Keneen Kayemet [Jewish National Fund] that sent Hankin to Beirut to buy land from absentee effendi [landlords] and to throw the fellahin [peasants] off the land-- to buy dozens of dunums-- from an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbid, one Jewish dunam to an Arab is prohibited." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 25) Such racist sentiment was the norm among the early Zionist leaders, similar statements were also repeated by Ben Gurion and Jabotinsky.

In 1938 Berl Katzneslon, the influential Mapai leader, stated his opinion of the demographic make up of the Jewish states upon the implementation of the partition proposed by the Peel Commission:

"There is the question of how the army, the police, and the civil service will function and how a state can be run if part of its population is disloyal .....[and the Palestinian Arabs will get equal rights as Jews] ... ONLY a small minority of [the Palestinian] Arabs will remain in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 115)

On June 9 1942 Lord Moyne (who was later to be assassinated on November 6th 1944 by the Stern gang in Cairo) told the House of Lords in London:

"[the European Jews were] not only ALIEN in culture but also in blood. Immigration on this scale [3 million dispossessed European Jews] would be DISASTROUS MISTAKE and indeed an impractical dream. The [Palestinian] Arabs who have lived and buried their dead for fifty generations in Palestine, WILL NOT WILLINGLY surrender their land and self-government to the Jews." (Israel: A History, p. 113)

In April 1943 Churchill said in defiance to the British 1939 White Paper:

"I CANNOT agree that the White Paper is the firmly established policy of the present Government. I have always regarded it as a gross breach of faith committed by the Chamberlain Government in respect of obligations to which I personally was a party." (Righteous Victims, p. 166)

On 12 January 1944 Churchill wrote to his senior War Cabinet colleagues in defiance of the British 1939 White Paper:

"Some form of partition is the ONLY solution." and thirteen days later he informed the Chief of Staff Committee: "OBVIOUSLY we shall not proceed with ANY FORM of partition which Jews to do not support." (Israel: A History, p. 116)

In March 1944 the United States president, Franklin D. Roosevelt (who described himself as a Zionist to Josef Stalin in 1945), assured Jews of the FULL American support to establishment of a "Jewish National Home", he said:

"FULL JUSTICE will be done [after the war] to those who seek a JEWISH NATIONAL HOME, for which our Government and the American People have always had the deepest sympathy and today more than ever in view of the tragic plight of hundreds of thousands of homeless Jewish refugees." (Righteous Victims, p. 171)

On 4 November 1944, Churchill told Chaim Weizmann in defiance to the 1939 White Paper:

"[If the Jews could] get the WHOLE of Palestine, it would be a good thing, but if it came to choice between the [1939] White Paper and partition, then they should take partition." Churchill also told Weizmann that "he too was for the inclusion of the Negev" in the future Jewish State. (Israel: A History, p. 118)

On March 22, 1945 the Arab states, soon after a meeting for the Arab League, issued the "Alexandria Protocol" which stated:

"The rights of the Arabs [of Palestine] CANNOT BE TOUCHED with prejudice to peace and stability in the Arab world. . . [The Arab state were] second to none in REGRETTING the woes which have been inflicted on the Jews of Europe. . . . But the Question of these Jews should not be CONFUSED with ZIONISM, for there can be NO GREATER INJUSTICE and AGGRESSION than solving the problem of Europe Jews by . . . inflicting INJUSTICE on the Palestine Arabs." (Righteous Victims, p. 172)

In March 1948 Ezra Danin, a senior member of the Political Department's Arab Division in the Haganah, described the pattern of the Haganah treatment of the Palestinians, he said:

"As a result of several superfluous [Haganah] operations, which mainly hurt 'good' Arabs who were in contact with us .... the [Palestinian Arab] mass exodus from all places were continuing. The Arabs have simply lost their faith [in our goodwill]?" (Benny Morris p. 41)

Ya'acov Shimoni, a senior member of the Political Department's Arab Division in the Haganah, quoted a Haganah commander in March 1948:

"war is war there was no possibility of distinguishing between good or bad Arabs." (Benny Morris, p. 41)

Contrary to the Zionist version of event, H.M. King Abdullah ordered the remaining Palestinians in Haifa to stay put, he stated on May 5, 1948:

"every man of strength and wisdom, every young person of power and faith [from Palestine], who has left the country, let him return to the dear spot. No one should remain outside the country except the rich and the old." The king Abdullah went on to thank: "those of you . . . who have remained where they are in spite of tyranny now prevailing," and went out of his way to cite the Jewish Agency condemnation of the massacre perpetrated at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. (Benny Morris, p. 134)

On May 10, 1948, Aharon Cohen, the director during the war of the Arab Department of the newly formed MAPAM party, wrote in a memorandum to the party's Political Committee:

"There is a reason to believe that what is being done . . . is being done out of certain political objectives and not only out of military necessities, as they claim sometimes. In fact, the TRANSFER of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the boundaries of the Jewish state is being implemented . . . the EVACUATION/CLEARING out of [Palestinian] Arab villages is not always done out of military necessity. The complete destruction of the villages is not always done only because there are no sufficient forces to maintain a garrison." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)

Soon after the occupation of Haifa, most local Jewish civilian leadership (such the mayor Shabtai Levy) had not been averse to an Palestinian return, a major change of thinking had taken place in the course of May 1948. By June 6, 1948 the drift of a meeting in the Haifa town hall was, in the word of one participant:

"There are no sentiment in war . . .Better to cause them injustice than that [we suffer] a disaster . . . We have no interest in their returning." (Benny Morris, p. 134)

The U.N. Mediator Count Bernadotte reported on September 16 1948 (one day before his assassination in Jerusalem by the Stern terror gang which was lead at the time by Israel's future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir) that Palestinians refugees must return to their homes, farms and business:

"at the earliest possible date. [NO] just and complete" settlement was possible, the Mediator wrote, if the right of return was not recognized. "It would be an OFFENCE against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right of return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine and, indeed, at least offer threat of permanent replacement of the [Palestinian] Arab refugees," he wrote. At the same time, however, Bernadotte was fully aware the the radically changed and changing circumstances in Israel (including the immigrant influx) strongly militated against future mass return of refugees. "It must not be supposed," he wrote, "that the establishment of the right of refugees to return . . . provides solution of the problem. The vast majority of the refugees may no long have homes to return to and their re-establishment in the State of Israel presents an economic and social problem of special complexity." (Benny Morris, p. 151)

On July 24 1948 the Mapai Center held a full-scale debate regarding the Palestinian Arab question against the background of the ethnic cleansing of Ramla and Lydda. The majority apparently backed Ben-Gurion's policies of population transfer or ethnic cleansing. Shlomo Lavi, one of the influential leaders of the Mapai party, said that:

"the ... transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs out of the country in my eyes is one of the MOST JUST, MORAL and CORRECT that can be done. I have thought of this for many years." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 192)

This was seconded by Avraham Katznelson, another influential Mapai leader, who also said:

"more moral, from the viewpoint of universal human ethics, than the emptying of the Jewish state of the [Palestinian] Arabs and their transfer elsewhere .... This requires [the use of] force." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 192)

An officer of the police national headquarters, who had visited the villages of Elabun and Mrar (in the Galilee) in November 1948, reported:

"All the inhabitants of Elabun were DEPORTED, except for four villagers who are Greek Orthodox, and a small number of old people and children. The total number of inhabitants left in the village is 52. The priests complained bitterly about the EXPULSION of the villagers and demanded their return. . . . In Mrar, most of the inhabitants remained, except for many of the Muslims." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 28)

The following is a discussion between MAPAI secretariat regarding demographic make up of the "Jewish state" soon after the 1948 war:

Shlomo Levi, MK: " . . . The LARGE NUMBER of [Palestinian] Arabs in the country worries me. The time come when we will be the minority in the State of Israel. There are now 170,000 [Palestinian] Arabs in the country, including 22,000 school-age children. The natural increase among [Palestinians] Arabs is high and keeps growing, especially if we give them all the economic advantages which we are intending to give: health, education and big benefits. There is no such rate of natural increase anywhere in the world, and we have to give careful thought to this imminent danger. Such an increase could match our immigration. . . . We may reach the point when the interests of [Palestinian] Arabs rather than of the Jews will determine the character of the country. . . ."
Eliyahu Camreli, MK: "I'm NOT WILLING to accept a single [Palestinian] Arab, and not only an Arab but any gentile. I want the State of Israel to be ENTIRELY JEWISH, the descendents of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. . . ."
Yehiel Duvdenvany, MK: "If there was any way of solving the problem way of transfer [the Israeli propaganda term for ethnic cleansing] of the remaining 170,000 [Palestinian] Arabs we would do so. . . ."
David Hakohen, MK: "We didn't plan the departure of the [Palestinian] Arabs. It was a miracle. . . ."
Z. Onn: "The landscape is MORE BEAUTIFUL----I enjoy it, especially, when traveling between Haifa and Tel Aviv, and there is not a single [Palestinian] Arab to be seen." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 46-47)



Soon after the 1948 war, the "Jewish state" imposed a martial law against the remaining Palestinian citizens of the state. The political aim of the martial law was summed up in the following TOP SECRET memorandum:

"The government's policy . . . has SOUGHT TO DIVIDE the [Palestinian] Arab population status of the [Palestinian] Arab villages, and competitive spirit of local elections, deepened the divisions inside the villages themselves. The communal policy and the clan divisions in the villages prevented [Palestinian] Arab unity. . . . Martial law has ruled all this time with complete and total authority."" (1949, The First Israelis, p. 65)

In 1949 a cable was sent by the US ambassador in Damascus to Washington about Israel's rejections of the proposal sent by Husni al-Za'im (Syria's president in 1949) to conclude a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel:

"Unless Israel can be BROUGHT to understand that it CANNOT have all of its cake (partition boundaries) and gravy as well (area captured in violation of truce, Jerusalem and resettlement of [Palestinian] Arab refugees elsewhere) it may find that it has WON Pal[stine] war but LOST peace. It should be evident that Israel's continued insistence upon her pound of flesh and more is DRIVING Arab states (and perhaps surely) to gird their lions (politically and economically if not yet militarily) for LONG range struggle." (Righteous Victims, p. 264)

On May 5, 1948 Golda Myrson [later changed to Meir] visited Palestinian Arab Haifa after it was conquered by the Israelis, and on May 6, 1948 she reported to the Jewish Agency Executive:

"It is dreadful thing to see the dead city. I found next to the port [Palestinian Arab] children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where coffee and pitot were left on the table, I COULD NOT AVOID [thinking] that this, INDEED, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e. in Europe, during the World War II].

Three weeks before H.M. King Abdullah was killed in 1951, the H.M. said:

"I could justify a peace by pointing to concessions made by the Jews. But without any concessions from them, I am a DEFEATED before I even start." (Righteous Victims, p. 263)

Pinhas Lavon boasted in front of the General Staff that no fewer than forty small military operation had been initiated since he became Minister of Defense in the early 1950s, he said:

"acts of robbery, laying mines, destroying houses, firing on vehicles, etc. . . . During these years MORE WAS DONE in the military share than in all the years of the struggle." (Iron Wall, p. 108) The use of terror and other forms of collective punishments against civilian population was normal in the Israeli Army, Moshe Dayan made similar confessions, click here for details.

In an interview with the the Sunday Times Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister between 1969-1974, stated in June 1969:

"It is not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them, they DID NOT EXIST." (Iron Wall, p. 311)

Israel's leaders drew the wrong lessons from the War of Attrition with Egypt in 1969. They continued to cling to the defensive military doctrine and its corollary, a static defense system, even though the war had shown it to be costly and ineffective. In the that regards, Mordachai Gur, who became chief of staff in 1974, wrote in the IDF monthly (July-1987 edition):

"There is not doubt that our victory in the War of Attrition was very important, but did only one conclusion follow from it---to sit and do nothing? That we are strong and if the Arabs want peace, they have to come to us on their knees and accept out terms? . . . This was the great political and strategic mistake--- the reliance on force as the almost exclusive factor in the formulation of policy." (Iron Wall, p. 297) It is often argued in Israel that Arabs listens ONLY to the language of force, click here to read our response.

Similarly, Abba Eban, a veteran Israeli Foreign Ministry official, PREDICTED that Arabs will resort to force in response to Israel's intransigence on the political path between 1971-1973. He also predicted that Arabs will go to WAR even if they KNEW they might LOOSE, he wrote:

"All the time, the Israeli defense strategy was frankly attritional. The logic was that if the Arabs were unable to get their territories back by war or by Great Power pressure, they would have to seek negotiations and to satisfy some of Israel's security interest. This view made no provision for the third Arab option---neither docility nor negotiation, but a desperate recourse to war in the hope that even an unsuccessful attack would be more rewarding than passive acceptance of the cease fire lines." (Iron Wall, p. 309)

The following conversation occurred between Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein over the years between 1976-1995:

Rabin: "You are very stubborn."
King Hussein: "Yes, I was because I could not give an inch of Palestinian territory or an iota of Palestinian rights."
Rabin: "Well, there is nothing that can be done. Wait for ten years; maybe things will change on the ground."
King Hussein: "Well, too bad." (Iron Wall, p. 334)

When it was time for Palestinians to leave the besieged Beirut in August 1982, and they had no where to go, Ariel Sharon asked an Egyptian intermediary to persuade Arafat to lead the PLO back to Jordan and said if Arafat accepted, Israel would force King Hussein to make way for the organization, Sharon boasted said:

"One speech by me will make King Hussein realize that the time has come to pack his bags."

Arafat immediately replied:

"1-Jordan is not the home of the Palestinians 2-You are trying to exploit the agony of the Palestinian people by turning a Palestinian-Lebanese dispute into a Palestinian-Jordanian contradiction." When Sharon heard Arafat's reply, he responded with an obscene curse in Arabic. (Iron Wall, p. 412)

Out of Gaza - and into Jerusalem
Lindsey Hilsum
Monday 15th August 2005
Ariel Sharon is a master of manoeuvres, writes Lindsey Hilsum. While the world watches the withdrawal from Gaza, he is creating and expanding settlements in more strategic areas

The feint is an old military trick - the general sends a section of his forces to distract the enemy, so the battalions heading for the real target meet little resistance. Watch out for the feint in the Middle East in the coming week. Television news all over the world will show dramatic scenes of Israeli settlers in orange T-shirts being forced to leave the Gaza Strip, in what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls a "painful sacrifice" for peace. Thirty-two thousand soldiers and police are being sent to remove 8,200 settlers, by force if necessary. Viewers will see Jewish settler women dragged kicking and screaming from land Israel has occupied since 1967.

But Sharon is an old general, a master of manoeuvres. While we are reporting the demise of the Gaza settlements, he is presiding over the creation and expansion of settlements in more strategically important areas, where few are watching. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, 3,981 new "housing units" are under construction in the occupied West Bank. At the same time, the Israeli government is building apartments and infrastructure on the outskirts of Jerusalem, to consolidate its hold over the city both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital.

The maps with this article tell the story. They show how a wall being built around a hugely expanded Jerusalem will thrust into the West Bank, almost dividing in two the main territory of any future Palestinian state. Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jerusalem are being surrounded by Jewish settlements, cutting them off from the West Bank and making it impossible for East Jerusalem to become a Palestinian capital. And while new Jewish settlements are under construction, some Palestinian houses in the heart of historic Arab East Jerusalem are threatened with demolition.

Prime Minister Sharon made a neat bargain with President George W Bush: Israel would withdraw from Gaza and, in return, the United States would formally accept that parts of the occupied West Bank which had been settled by Jews would eventually become part of Israel, should a Palestinian state ever come into being. A few "outposts" in the West Bank will be removed at the same time as Gaza, and others will eventually be dismantled, but the plan is to keep major population centres. Bush has said that expanding settlements in the Jerusalem area is not part of the deal, but the Israeli government is going ahead anyway, confident that in the end it will have its way.

After Israel was created in 1948, an armistice line, known as the Green Line, divided Israeli West Jerusalem from Arab East Jerusalem. In the 1967 war, Israel seized East Jerusalem and the adjacent West Bank from Jordan, which had previously had jurisdiction. While Israel occupied the West Bank, recognising that one day it might have to return the territory to the Arabs, it annexed East Jerusalem, arguing that not only had it won the city in battle, but also God had named Jerusalem as the sole and indivisible capital of the Jewish state.

A new report, The Jerusalem Powder Keg, by an independent think-tank on conflict, the International Crisis Group ( www. crisisgroup.org), charts how the Israeli government has gradually expanded the area defined as "Jerusalem". Now that the world is concentrating on events in Gaza, the city limits are being pushed back even further. The map on the following page shows how municipal boundaries drawn in 1993 encompassed newly built Jewish settlements, which many Israelis regard not as encroachments on occupied land, but as mere neighbourhoods in their capital, Jerusalem. The Israeli government is now going a step further, creating a "Jerusalem envelope", which will requisition another 60 square kilometres of the West Bank. This will include the rapidly expanding settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, and - it hopes - the corridor to the north-west known as E1, which links Ma'ale Adumim to the city centre.

Palestinian East Jerusalem is being surrounded by Jewish neighbourhoods. A contour map would show that most of them are on hilltops, looking down on the Arab areas below. The settlements cut off Arab East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Most significantly, the red line on the map represents a wall, the physical barrier of concrete blast blocks and razor wire that Israel is building to separate itself from the West Bank. Ostensibly, it is to stop terror attacks, but it will also create what the Israelis call "facts on the ground", a de facto new municipal boundary extending 45 kilometres into the West Bank.



According to Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group, "Current activity around Jerusalem to link up Jewish West Bank settlements to East Jerusalem will not only undermine chances for a viable two-state solution, but create an explosive mix that will imperil the very security Israel says it is trying to guarantee."

Roughly 200,000 Palestinians will remain within the Jerusalem boundary. A further 55,000 will be excluded. There are already stories of families that find they live on one side of the wall, while their place of work or children's school is on the other. Whereas driving between the West Bank town of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, to the south, would take 20 minutes if you could go through Jerusalem, it will take at least an hour and a half on roads beyond the new wall. (That's not including the time spent at Israeli military checkpoints.)

The Israeli government says it wants to support the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whom it regards as more "moderate" than Yasser Arafat. However, Jerusalem is central for the Palestinians, too, and Abbas is looking increasingly weak in Palestinian eyes as the Israelis consolidate their hold over the city. The alternative leadership is the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

None of this is accidental. By unilaterally surrendering Gaza, Israel has seized the initiative, and bought itself international goodwill and time.

"We were stuck, so we decided to change the strategic equation," explained an Israeli general. Whatever the talk about the "road map to peace", after withdrawing from Gaza, there will be little pressure on Israel to negotiate on Jerusalem or anything else. The onus will be on the Palestinians to prove to the world that they can run Gaza. The Israelis will sit back and wait for them to mess it up. If the Palestinian Authority fails to stop Hamas from lobbing missiles into Israel, or if the factions fight among themselves in Gaza, creating a "failed state" before there is any Palestinian state at all, it will be more reason for Israel not to negotiate.

"The significance is the freezing of the political process," said Sharon's senior adviser Dov Weisglass, in an interview last year so frank that his boss tried to distance himself from the remarks. "When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. In effect, this whole package that is called a Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

As the Gaza disengagement proceeds, the louder and more violent the protests by the settlers and their supporters, the better it is for Sharon. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun explained it to Israel's Haaretz newspaper: "Sharon needs national trauma to impress upon the Israeli public and the international community that it is impossible to do this again."

The Palestinians, and left-wing Israelis, hope that the settler movement will be undermined: that it will be "Gaza first", not "Gaza last". But Sharon has made it as clear as he can, without embarrassing his American friends, that the purpose of the disengagement is to secure the future of most of the 235,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and the 180,000 living in and around Arab East Jerusalem.

Watch the television pictures, and see Israel withdrawing from Gaza. Listen to the Israeli commentators, talking of historic events and the pain of abandoning the settlements. Then look at these maps, and it will all make sense.

Lindsey Hilsum is international editor for Channel 4 News

To the above mis-guided poster; for starters pre-Six Day War Gaza was part of Egypt. In 1979 when Egypt and Israel made peace, Egypt took back the Sinai but refused to take back Gaza. So what makes that "Palestine" or giving it back to whom? And of course its a disengagement not a peace deal.
"Historically Arab East Jerusalem"didn't become so until '48 when Transjordan invaded and ethnically cleansed all the Jews from that part of Jerusalem, blew up 57 Synagogues and uprooted the Jewish graveyards. Are you the one that said that turn about is fair play?

These kinds of arguments have become irrelevant since the London Tube bombings last month. In a single moment the bombers laid to rest each and every argument that the problem in the Middle East has anything to do with Israel. The fact that the bombers were born and raised in Britain raised a green flag. One could almost hear the scales falling from eyes all over Europe. The problem was suddenly shown to be not Arab animosity toward Israel but Muslim animosity toward the West.

It is no longer possible for the English, French, and Italians to sneer at Israel's anti-terrorism fence as an "apartheid wall" when they are themselves deporting imams who proselytize for jihadi terrorism from their own countries.

London Tube bombings! 9-11!!! Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda! MOSLEMS ARE DEEE-MONNS!!!! FASCISM REIGNS TRIUMPHANT!!!!! KILL ALL RAGHEADS WORLDWIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

London Tube bombings! 9-11!!! Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda! MOSLEMS ARE DEEE-MONNS!!!! FASCISM REIGNS TRIUMPHANT!!!!! KILL ALL RAGHEADS WORLDWIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

London Tube bombings! 9-11!!! Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda! MOSLEMS ARE DEEE-MONNS!!!! FASCISM REIGNS TRIUMPHANT!!!!! KILL ALL RAGHEADS WORLDWIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a scared little man

I feel so rejected! I guess I'll just go away now.

HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW! HAW!