The lie called 'Palestine'
The original title of this article is The Lie that Broke Israel's Back (Hat Tip: Ricky G). I didn't use that title - partly because I try to make up my own titles, and partly because I don't see Israel's back as broken. In fact, I see the shift toward the Right among the Israeli electorate as a sign that the majority's collective back is not broken.
Nevertheless, author Steve Apfel does a great job of summarizing the lie called 'Palestine,' and for that alone this piece bears reading.
"Occupied Palestinian Territory" (OPT) is a thing of smoke and mirrors. Historically, it never happened; legally, there never was Palestinian territory for Israel to occupy. Israel took the territories from Egypt and Jordan in 1967, and there's no getting away from that. So today Israel has more right than Jordan to be occupying the West Bank, and more right than Egypt to be occupying Gaza (if Israel's blockade may be called occupation). "Palestine" never enters the equation. Turn Middle East wars and laws upside-down and any way you like, but if the territories belong to any U.N. member, or quasi-member, they belong to Israel.
Not even the famous U.N. Resolution 242 can help. It told Israel to withdraw from territories once held by Jordan, illegally, and Egypt, and it envisaged those territories' return to those two countries. "Palestine" never got a mention in Resolution 242 -- for a couple of good reasons.
Palestinians were not among the belligerents involved in the Six-Day War. Anyway, the people who were going to stake claim to a nation they would call Palestine were a year away from being born.
More than anyone, King Hussein of Jordan understood perfectly that a cart before the horse never gets off the blocks. So he told the 1988 Arab League summit in Amman: "The appearance of a distinct Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel's claim that Palestine is Jewish."
Read the whole thing.
The Hashemite monarch was explaining to fellow potentates why a Palestinian nation had to be conceived in 1968. If it were not, then the West Bank and Gaza would be Israel's by dint of war and law. Arab armies had been vanquished in six days, the territories lost to Israel. That made it imperative for the PLO to revise its covenant, which it did on July 17, 1968. The PLO meddled with Article 24, erasing the old declaration that the West Bank and Gaza were not occupied and now insisting that they were. With that sleight-of-hand, a newborn nation came into the world -- with a newborn bastard illegal occupier.
Labels: Palestine, Palestinian lies, UN Security Council Resolution 242
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:31 AM
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