[Published 11 February 2018]
United Nations Secretary-General — Antonio Guterres — displayed how little he knows of the history, geography and demography of Palestine when addressing the opening of the 2018 Session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (“CEIRPP”).
Established by the General Assembly in 1975 - CEIRPP was responsible for the publication in 1978 of a false narrative of the Arab-Israel conflict - “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1947” (“UN Study”) - which has undoubtedly influenced United Nations thinking and decision-making.
Three examples highlight the falsity and outright bias of this UN Study:
1. Deliberately misrepresenting General Assembly Resolution 181 spoke of a “Palestinian Arab State” - when claiming:
“After investigating various alternatives the United Nations proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized.”
The actual wording of Resolution 181 stated:
“Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine….”
2. Omitting any mention of the fact that 78% of Palestine had become an independent Arab State in 1946 and been renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.
3. Falsely alleging:
“The decision on the Mandate [for Palestine] did not take into account the wishes of the people of Palestine”
The evidence contradicting this falsehood actually sits in the United Nations own archives.
That evidence comprises:
(i) Meetings of the Palestine Arab Delegation (Delegation) with the recently appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies - Winston Churchill - on 12, 22 and 23 August 1921CEIRPP concealed this crucial archival evidence - falsely inferring the Palestinian Arabs wishes had not been taken into account when in fact they had been fully considered.
(ii)Letters from 21 February 1922 to 23 June 1922 between the Delegation and the Secretary of State for the Colonies during the Delegation's stay in the Hotel Cecil in London.
Secretary-General Guterres told the CEIRPP opening session:
“I remain steadfast in the United Nations and my commitment to supporting the parties in their efforts to make the two-State solution a reality.
There is no Plan B.
A two-State solution is the only way to achieve the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and secure a sustainable solution to the conflict.”
Secretary-General Gutteres is apparently unaware that:
1. The term “Palestinian people” was invented in the 1964 Palestine Liberation Organization Charter which also specifically excluded any claim to exercise regional sovereignty “over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” and “on the Gaza Strip”
2. The Palestinian Arabs were never mentioned in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - being grouped in with “the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”
3. The “two-State solution” - Israel and Jordan — first envisaged in 1922 and actually proposed in 1937 - was accepted by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs on both occasions. It was 95% achieved in 1994 when the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty was signed.
4. The “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” went walkabout between 1948 and 1967 when an additional Arab State between Jordan and Israel could have been created with the stroke of an Arab League pen after all Jews living there had been forcefully expelled.
5. There are many Plan B’s involving Jordan — the major part of former Palestine — which remains the key to resolving this conflict.
Secretary-General Gutteres — with the greatest respect — needs a crash-course in the actual— not fictitious-history of the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict. Relying on this false UN Study to gain his knowledge and understanding of the conflict is not recommended.
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