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From Time Immemorial There is overwhelming historical and archeological evidence that Jews where living in the Land of Israel for thousands of years. Despite two exiles, one diaspora and persecution by colonial powers, there was a constant presence of Jews in Israel. Over many centuries, Jews maintained a single language, religion and culture and never rescinded their claims to nationhood. In the words of Abba Eban, "Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its 'right to exist'. Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgment…" Contrary to popular belief, Palestinians are not descendents of the Philistines, or "sea people" who settled the coast of Israel in 12BC and were long forgotten before the name Palestine was invented. Palestine is a creation of one of the great imperial powers that ruled this land - the Roman Empire. The Jews posed a strategic problem for Roman expansion. After the Bar-Kokhba revolt of 135 AD, Romans decided to solve the problem once and for all. Jews were sent into slavery, the names of Judea and Samaria were abolished, even Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina. The new name for the country was invented - Palestina. OK, so you said who they are not, but who are they, where do they originate? (From Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc)
Arab hostility towards Jews dates back to the origins of Islam. One of the first Muslim conquests was the extermination of the Jewish tribes in the areas of Mecca and Medina who refused to convert to Islam. The Koran itself contains many passages denouncing Jews, Christians and other unbelievers. Passages like "Fight against those who believe not in Allah" are shaping Muslim psyche up to this very day. The prophet Mohammed's pronouncement that there can not be two religions on the Arabian Peninsula is responsible for the fact that even today no Jew is allowed to enter Saudi Arabia and no Jew is allowed to live in Jordan. It also served as an inspiration for Osama Bin Laden and his followers, who rebelled against American bases on Saudi soil. Caliph Omar, who succeeded Mohammed, established the laws under which the non-believers, or dhimmi, were allowed to live among Muslims. The central tenants of these laws were special taxes that Jews (and Christians) had to pay for protectio, sprinkled with a generous dose of daily humiliations, like wearing special clothes and not being able to perform religious services in public. Islam spread very quickly throughout the Middle East, Asia, North Africa and Southern Europe. The Dome of the Rock, the first Muslim religious complex, was built in 692 AD on the Temple Mount to signify the preeminence of Islam over Judaism and Christianity. Jews were persecuted, robbed, raped, and killed by Muslims over the centuries and an endless successions of shahs, caliphs, sultans, pashas, generals and presidents.
Over the last twenty centuries, the land of Israel was ruled by Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols, Turks, and the British. The period of Arab rule was relatively short (633AD-750AD), but do you purposely differentiate here between Israel and the Land of Israel? Israel had been under Muslim occupation for hundreds of years. In the middle of 19th century, Palestine was God-forsaken and uninhabitablel. The least significant part of the Turkish Empire. The only thing it was rich in was history. A German encyclopedia published in 1827 described Palestine as a land "desolate and roamed through by Arab bands of robbers." Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in the late 1860s, wrote: "Stirring scenes occur in the valley (Jezreel) no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent - not for forty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings." The modern migration of Jews to Palestine began in the second half of 19th century. Contrary to lies promulgated by Arab propaganda, Jews settled on land purchased, not stolen, from Arab (and non-Arab) landowners; and on land that was unclaimed or thought to be uninhabitable (swamps, etc.) While the Jewish population of Western Palestine was growing, so was the Arab population, attracted by the economic opportunities presented by settlers. By the turn of the century, there were close to 60,000 Jews and 92,000 non-Jews - Arabs, Bedouins, Greeks, Armenians and many others. By 1947, the number of non-Jews living in what would become Israel grew to 463,000, of which half were recent immigrants (how many non-Jews were there by then?) In 1948, many so called "Palestinian refugees" were in fact recent arrivals returning home. The total number of Arabs in Palestine grew much faster than the Jewish population chiefly due to the policies of the Turkish and British administrations - very liberal immigration policies for Arab nationals and very restrictive policies for the Jews (the British "White Book" limiting the yearly immigration of Jews to 40,000-60000). At the result of World War I, the Middle East was 'liberated' from the Turks by the British. In 1917, General Allenby triumphantly entered Jerusalem, ending centuries of Turkish occupation. On November
2, 1917, the British Government published the famous Balfour Declaration: The former Ottoman Empire was divided among Britain and France. The new states of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon were established with arbitrary borders drawn by low-level British and French diplomats. In 1920, the British were given the mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. A year later, they further divided the land into West Palestine and Transjordan (Today's Jordan State). Jews were prohibited from settling to the East of the Jordan River.
On May 14th, 1948, the United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. One of the first acts of the newly born State of Israel was to "extend the hand of peace and good neighborliness to all neighboring states and their people". The next day, the Arab countries responded by declaring war. Armies of five Arab countries invaded the newly born state. Azzam Pasha, the Secretary-General of the Arab League declared: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades." Miraculously, the Jewish State prevailed. In the mayhem of the war, hundreds of thousands of Arabs left Israel, not all of them on their own accord. The majority, however, left because of appeals from the Arab governments. They were convinced of their quick return, as the Jewish State would be crushed by Arab might. The quoted estimate of 600,000 to 900,000 refugees is largely inflated due to a very liberal definition of what constitutes a refugee, being anyone who claims to have lived in the area for at least two years. One of the least publicized facts of modern history is the virtual extermination of Jewish communities in Arab countries. Some of these communities predated the birth of Islam by a millennia. The Jewish population in Arab lands dwindled from 850,000 in 1948 to under 30,000 in 1982. The creation of the State of Israel coincided with a series of well organized desecrations, pogroms, confiscations of property and killing of Jews throughout the Arab world. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries immigrated to Israel and Western countries.
The Land of Israel is considered by Arabs to be a part of Umma - Muslim community, state, empire. This is why it is so difficult for Arab governments to admit Israel's right to exist. This is why the ultimate goal of Israel's neighbors is its annihilation. In 1954, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Muhammad Salah al-Din said: "The Arab people will not be embarrassed to declare: We shall not be satisfied except by the final obliteration of Israel from the map of the Middle East". But the Arab governments' hatred of Israel is not just based on religious or nationalistic fervor, and definitely not on compassion for their Palestinian brethren. Its primary purpose is as an escape valve for its own people who are oppressed under non-democratic corrupt Arab regimes. Palestinian Arabs became unwilling pawns in this game. Refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank were created by Egypt and Jordan; who had no intention of assimilating Palestinian Arabs in their vast lands or granting them independence. If they had done either of these things, the refugee problem would not exist today. The true intentions of Arab countries were quite farsighted - to create a time bomb for Israel to deal with in years to come. In 1970, when Palestinians tried to assert themselves in Jordan, the government of the "moderate" King Hussein brutally crushed their aspirations in what became known as Black September. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and the PLO and its leaders were expelled from Jordan to Lebanon, where they brought the near destruction of that country as well, until their expulsion by Israel in 1982. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was created in January 1964. Its charter states that "Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit" and "the homeland of the Palestinian Arab people". It also states that "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine" and "commando actions constitute the nucleus of Palestinian popular liberation war." True to its charter, the PLO has perpetrated thousands of terrorist acts killing thousands of Israeli citizens. The racist
nature of the Palestinian National Charter is evident in the following
statements:
On May 18th, 1967, the Voice of Arabs proclaimed: "The sole method we shall apply against Israel is a total war, which will result in the extermination of the Zionist existence." Two days later,
the Syrian Defense Minister and the future President, Hafez Assad,
announced: In addition to the rhetoric, Arabs closed the Suez Canal to Israeli ships, expelled UN observers and UN troops from Sinai and called for a massive mobilization of troops on the Israeli border. On June 5th Israel launched a preemptive strike. In a series of brilliant military maneuvers it decimated the armies of the Arab countries. As a result, it ended up controlling 18,000 square miles of the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank, including Jerusalem. Israel offered to return most of the territories (except Jerusalem and minor security adjustments) in exchange for peace. Arabs summarily rejected the offer with the famous three "no's" of the Chartoum declaration - no peace, no negotiation, no recognition.
As a result of the 1967 war, Israel ended up controlling territories populated with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. While a lot is being said about the so-called "brutal Israeli occupation", little credit was given to the unprecedented economic growth in the territories that far surpassed the growth in other Arab countries. Since 1967, 261 new Arab settlements and 144 new Jewish settlements were built in the West Bank and Gaza. Most of these settlements were built after the 1973 war when Israel was ambushed by Arab armies. It was thought that settlements would provide an early warning and defense system. Not everyone in Israel agreed with the pro-settlement policies of successive Israeli governments. Israel offered to dismantle the majority of settlements in exchange for peace. Terrorism and Propaganda - a Two-Pronged Strategy After another disastrous war in 1973, the Arab countries realized that Israel cannot be defeated militarily. They adopted a two-pronged strategy - terrorism to undermine the foundation of the Jewish State, and blatant anti-Jewish propaganda that will fall on willing ears in the Soviet Block, Third World countries and the latently anti-Semitic West. This strategy, generously financed by the Saudis, proves to be very successful to this very day. It succeeded in convincing the UN to equate Zionism with Racism. It also succeeded in claiming the lives of thousands of Israelis. Israel has proven time and again that, given a willing and credible partner, it is ready to make peace. In November 1977, Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt visited Jerusalem. The Israeli government negotiated a peace agreement that has lasted for 25 years. It gave up the territories, it gave up oil fields and dismantled strategic defenses as well as Jewish settlements. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League for nine years for making peace with Israel. President Sadat paid the ultimate price for his courageous peace initiative - he was assassinated in 1981 by Muslim extremists. A similar "land for peace" agreement was reached in 1995 with King Hussein of Jordan.
The Balfour Declaration was predicated on protecting the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population of Israel. True to its spirit, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs are much better off than their brethren in the Arab world, as witnessed by their continuing sizable immigration into Israel. United Nations published the "Arab Human Development Report 2002" which was authored by prominent Arab scholars. It looked into the reasons for Arab countries falling further behind in the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) that gauges a country's performance by its record in average income, literacy, life expectancy, etc. The report stated three main reasons - lack of freedom, lack of knowledge, and discrimination of women. Israeli Arabs enjoy the same rights as Israeli Jews. Out of 120 members of the Israeli Parliament, 10 are Arab nationals. Thousands of Israeli Arabs are educated in Israeli Universities, and Israel is one of the very few countries in the Middle East were Arab women are allowed to vote.
Despite decades of a brutal terrorist war conducted by the PLO against Israelis and Jews, Israel opened negotiations in hope that ever-lasting peace could be achieved in the Middle East. In an atmosphere of global euphoria, a peace accord was signed in Oslo. Rabin and Peres shook hands with Arafat, and all three were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The world, with tears in its eyes, was ready to shower billions of dollars on the fledging Palestinian Autonomy. The visions of a new Middle East that would be as politically stable as the European Union, and as economically viable as Asian Tiger were abound. The reality was very different. Arafat was not bashful in revealing his true intentions. In a speech at a mosque in Johannesburg in May 1994, Arafat declared, in English, "I don't consider this agreement any more valid than the agreement which was signed by our prophet Mohammed at Quraish." Arafat was referring to the famous ten year peace pact that Muslims signed with the Quraish tribe at Hudaibyia. The tribe was crushed two years later when the Muslim force gained enough strength. Arafat was not kidding. The Oslo agreement promised "to live in peaceful coexistence, mutual dignity and security." Arafat pledged to "turn the lives of the infidels into hell." Oslo assured that "except for the Palestinian Police and the Israeli military forces, no other armed forces shall be established in the West Bank and Gaza strip." Arafat not only did nothing to dismantle Hamas, Islamic Jihad and an alphabet soup of assorted terrorist organizations, but he established a new one - Tanzim or Al Aksa Brigades which proudly claims responsibility for murdering innocent civilians. Oslo promised to ensure that "respective educational systems contribute to the peace between Israeli and Palestinian peoples". The Palestinian Authority, with the help of generous donations from the European Union, has indeed revamped its education system. The new textbooks read - "treachery and disloyalty are character traits of the Jews, and therefore one should beware of them."
In 1999, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, with the decisiveness of a former Army General, hit the 'fast forward to peace button'. The world was at the brink of peace. Clinton was eager to leave behind the legacy of solving the unsolvable. Israel made an unprecedented offer of territorial concessions, on status of Jerusalem and refugees. Arafat said NO. The only constructive thought that he offered was the suggestion that the Temple didn't exist in Jerusalem but in Nablus. In December, the Clinton administration brokered another offer - 97% of territories; East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian State;a $30B international fund to cover repatriation and resettlement of refugees; and an international presence in Jordan Valley to ensure security. The answer was again NO, without a counter-offer. Why not 100%? Why only 97%? Good question. The only problem is that Arafat never asked. Arafat's answer was the second intifada. Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians lost their lives. There is no end in sight.
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