Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine to end Mandate for Palestine saga

 

The creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine –the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one single territorial entity comprising about 80% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine (Mandate) - will be a fitting end to the Mandate saga which began on July 24, 1922 with the unanimous approval of its terms by all 51 Members of the League of Nations. 

The remaining 20% of the Mandate territory will mark the final internationally recognised boundaries of Israel -3000 years after the loss of the Jewish ancient and biblical homeland to the Roman General -Pompey - following his conquest of Jerusalem and its surroundings in 63 BC.

This two-state solution in Palestine - one Arab the other Jewish - had not been that originally planned by the Principal Allied Powers at the San Remo Conference in April 1920 and confirmed by the Treaty of Sevres in August that year. 

San Remo had provided for: 

• Arab self-determination within the territory comprised in the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon and the Mandate for Mesopotamia - comprising 99.99% of the territory formerly part of the 400 years old Ottoman Empire liberated after World War 1
• Jewish self-determination within the territory comprised in the Mandate for Palestine located on both sides of the Jordan River - the remaining 0.01% of the liberated Ottoman Empire 

Two and a half of the 12 Tribes of Israel had settled East of the Jordan River after reaching the Promised Land - as recorded in the Old Testament. The other nine and a half tribes had continued on to settle West of the Jordan River.  

However the arrival of Abdullah - a member of the Hashemite dynasty - in Transjordan on 21 November 1920 accompanied by a band of armed troops en route to help his brother Faisal fight the French to retain Faisal's crown in Syria - resulted in:

• Great Britain - at the Cairo Conference held on March 12, 1921 - stopping Abdullah by creating the Emirate of Transjordan for Abdullah in 78% of Mandatory Palestine East of the Jordan River. The Emirate remained part of the Mandate until granted independence by Great Britain in 1946 - changing its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.
• Article 25 being inserted into the Mandate document on July 24, 1922--restricting the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in 22% of Mandatory Palestine West of the Jordan River
• The Council of the League of Nations approving these changed arrangements on September 16, 1922.

These changes have been preserved until today under article 80 of the United Nations Charter. 

The United Nations failure to observe the terms of its own Charter has been the greatest obstacle to achieving the Mandate-contemplated two-state solution. 

That two-state solution has however become politically attainable following a detailed plan for its creation in an article dated 8 June - written by Ali Shihabi a close confidante of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the next King of Saudi Arabia - and published in Al-Arabiya News – owned by the Saudi Royal Family. 

Successful negotiations between Israel and Jordan to implement Shihabi's plan would result in:

• The merger of Mandate territory located East and West of the Jordan River into one Arab State and
• the recognition of a Jewish State in the remaining Mandate territory West of the Jordan River 

The last chapter of the Mandate saga begun on July 24, 1922 is on the diplomatic horizon. 

Author's note: The cartoon--commissioned exclusively for this article--is by Yaakov Kirschen aka "Dry Bones"- one of Israel's foremost political and social commentators--whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

New York Times and Washington Post bash Israel with false claims

 

The New York Times and the Washington Post have once again engaged in Israel bashing — spewing out fake maps and phony history about Israel, its origins and indeed its continued existence as the Jewish National Home — first articulated in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and confirmed in article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

The following maps:                                                                                                                                     

• captioned: “Illustration by The New York Times/Photographs via Getty”
• appeared in: an article in the New York Times headlined “The myth of co-existence in Israel”
• was written by: Diana Buttu — identified as “a lawyer, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Palestinian citizen of Israel”

The Washington Post’s Glen Kessler — described as The Fact Checker — to his credit — was quick to point out the falsehoods in the maps:

“that showed a shrinking map of Palestine, from the borders of the British mandate for Palestine in 1947 to areas that would be under Palestinian control after adoption of a recent [Trump — ed] peace plan.”.

Kessler informed readers that:

“Patrick Healy, deputy opinion editor of the [New York] Times, issued a statement saying “it was not meant to be a literal, factual map ... this was an illustration conveying a sense of shrinking space for Palestinians. It is art.”

But obviously wanting to show up its arch competitor’s anti-Israel bias — Kessler then accurately pointed out:

“Still, a version of this map has been circulating for almost 20 years, supposedly showing how “Historic Palestine” had been taken over by Israel. As a technical matter, the map is a confusing mélange of images: it includes something that did not exist (Palestinian control over all the territory), something that did not happen (the proposed United Nations partition) and something odd (pre-1967 occupations by Jordan and Egypt are depicted as Palestinian-controlled).”

Fake maps such as these have been reproduced all over the media, internet and in textbooks published by respected publishers for decades.

McGraw Hill Publishing — in 2016—withdrew from sale and trashed unsold copies of one such textbook - Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World — containing these following maps:

McGraw’s Spokesperson — Catherine Mathis — then stated:

“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”

The New York Times should be ashamed of itself for publishing their similarly false and misleading maps.

Brownie points earned by the Washington Post in exposing the New York Times anti-Israel bias were however forfeited when Kessler continued “to summarize the two versions of whether there was a historic Palestine for readers who want to hear both sides of the story.”

The Pro-Palestinian version — according to Kessler - maintains:

“In the 18th century, the area saw the emergence of a new Palestine-based autonomous rule, spurred in part by the region’s commercial dynamism, especially its trade in cotton and grain. In effect, between the 1720s and 1775 under the ruler Zahir al-Umar, there was an independent Palestinian state — longer than the British mandate."

Why publish such fabricated nonsense at all?

Palestine had then been part of the Ottoman Empire for 250 years and continued to remain so until the Allied and Central Powers made their decisions on its future at the 1920 San Remo Conference.

Ending the flow of false information published by “respectable publications” remains a continuing challenge for Israel to combat and finally defeat.


Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”—one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Jordan reaches 100 as its ruling Hashemite dynasty implodes

 

Jordan continues to be the stumbling block to ending the 100 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs as it celebrates its founding 100 years ago on April 11, 1921 - whilst simultaneously 100 years of unbroken rule by the Hashemite dynasty has been publicly imploding.

Initially called the Emirate of Transjordan - the Hashemites - hailing from the Hejaz - now called Saudi Arabia – were anointed as Transjordan’s future rulers by Britain at the 1921 Cairo Conference as part of the machinations between Britain and France in the carve up of the territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire in World War I.

99.99% of Ottoman-liberated territory was designated for Arab self-determination under the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon and the British Mandate for Mesopotamia - whilst the remaining 0.01% was to be set aside for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in the area today called Israel, Jordan, Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) pursuant to the British Mandate for Palestine.

Two and a half of the twelve tribes of Israel had settled in Transjordan: Gad, Reuben and half the tribe of Manasseh:

Transjordan – 78% of the territory comprised in the Mandate - was however completely excluded as the site for any part of the future Jewish National Home - when Article 25 was inserted in the Mandate document unanimously endorsed by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.

Transjordan’s exclusion from future Jewish settlement came after the exchange of the following telegrams between Britain’s State Secretary for the Colonies Winston Churchill and British Colonial Administrator John Schuckburgh in March 1921:

The coup de grâce was duly delivered by the Council of the League of Nations on September 16, 1922:

With impeccable Anglo-French doublespeak – the Jews were thus denied any right to reconstitute their National Home in any part of the Mandate territory east of the Jordan River. However – Jewish settlement anywhere west of the Jordan River – including Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) – has been preserved until today under Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Former American President Jimmy Carter summed up Jordan’s founding in Time Magazine on October 11, 1982:

“[Jordan’s King] Hussein is personally courageous but an extremely timid man in political matters. That timidity derives almost inevitably from the inherent weakness of Jordan. As a nation it is a contrivance, arbitrarily devised by a few strokes of the pen”

Transjordan remained part of the Mandate for Palestine until Britain granted it independence on 25 May 1946 when it was renamed “The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan”. A further name change to Jordan only came in 1950 after Transjordan had conquered Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem in 1948 – expelling all the Jews living there and uniting those areas with Transjordan to form a single territorial unit until their loss to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 which remains in force today despite many events that could have derailed it.

The two-state solution first contemplated in 1922 for Palestine:

• one for the Jews within 22% of the Mandate territory
• one for the Arabs exclusively in the remaining 78%

still remains the only realistic and politically-achievable basis for any two-state solution in 2021.

Subdividing Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza – 5% of the Mandate territory where sovereignty still remains unallocated – between Israel and Jordan – the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine exercising sovereignty in the other 95% – remains the key to ending the Arab-Jewish conflict.

After 100 years - Jordan’s ruling Hashemite dynasty finally needs to end its timidity.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Hashemite rule in Jordan on collision course with Trump and Israel

[Published 7 April 2019]

King Abdullah seems increasingly hell bent on ending 99 years of Hashemite-dynasty rule in Jordan.

This possibility is emerging as Abdullah is:

1. Seemingly refusing to commit to negotiating with Israel on President Trump’s soon-to-be-released deal of the century to end the Jewish-Arab conflict and

2. Taking active steps to place the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty in jeopardy.

Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1950) has always been the key to resolving competing territorial claims by both Arabs and Jews in former Palestine.

Transjordan comprised 78% of the territory placed under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine after being wrested from 400 years of Ottoman Empire sovereignty during World War 1. Mandatory Palestine was designated in April 1920 by the Principal Allied Powers at the San Remo Conference and in August 1920 by article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres as the location for reconstitution of the ancient and biblical homeland of the Jewish people.

Transjordan’s first Hashemite ruler — Abdullah I — arrived there in November 1920

Abdullah was en route by train from Hijaz to Syria with armed forces to assist his brother Feisal in his struggle with France to retain power in Syria. Winston Churchill
— at France’s request - offered Abdullah an Emirate in Transjordan — which Abdullah gratefully accepted on 11 April 1921.

Feisal was removed from Syria by the French and installed as ruler of Iraq under the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty dated 10 October 1922. France became the Mandatory for the territory comprised in the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon.

These British-Franco machinations cost the Jewish people dearly — when the Mandate for Palestine - adopted unanimously by all 51 members of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 - denied the Jewish people the right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in any part of Transjordan (Eastern Palestine) and restricted that right to the remaining 22% (Western Palestine).

The Jews reluctantly accepted this decision. The Arabs didn’t.

In 1946 Transjordan was granted independence by Great Britain.

In 1948 — immediately after the Mandate ended and Jews declared the State of Israel — Transjordan invaded Western Palestine conquering Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem (comprising 4% of Mandatory Palestine) — and unified these areas with Transjordan to form a new territorial entity — Jordan — encompassing 82% of Mandatory Palestine completely devoid of Jews.

The founding Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Charter in 1964 specifically excluded any PLO claim to sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

In the 1967 Six Day War Israel captured Judea and Samaria from Jordan. The PLO - claiming Jordan and Israel to be one indivisible territorial unit - removed its non-claim to sovereignty from the revised 1968 Charter.

In September 1970 the PLO unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Jordan’s Hashemite ruler King Hussein. Israel helped save Hussein.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 (Peace Treaty) — which has withstood many events that could have seen its termination.

That Treaty is again under threat — as Jordan has:

1. indicated it is not prepared to renew an expired 25 year lease of Jordanian sovereign territory farmed by Israelis and

2. given the PLO 40% representation on the body charged with administering the Moslem Holy Sites in Jerusalem — breaching the Washington Declaration and the Peace Treaty.

Jordan’s resistance to negotiating with Israel on Trump’s plan could see Trump shelving it and abruptly ending the 2018 five year $1.275 billion America-Jordan Memorandum of Understanding underpinning Jordan’s security and stability.

The PLO — as in 1970 — is waiting in the wings as current ongoing unrest in Jordan is destabilizing continuing Hashemite rule there.

Abdullah might find that spurning Trump and Israel could see him facing the PLO on his own.

Ilhan Omar needs to rethink her flawed position on Palestine

[Published 20 March 2019]


For far too long political debate has been reduced to name-calling and identity labeling with facts and reasoned arguments taking second place — consigning civilized discourse and the exchange of ideas and opinions into the trash bin.

Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has taken a positive step in reversing this burgeoning practice of personal denigration and arbitrary dismissal of opinions of those with whom one doesn’t agree — in setting out her opinion on resolving the Arab-Jewish conflict in an op-ed article in the Washington Post on 17 March.

Omar’s opinion is based on factual errors and her failure to take into account other relevant facts — as this sentence by sentence analysis of her position makes clear:.

1. “The founding of Israel 70 years ago was built on the Jewish people’s connection to their historical homeland, as well as the urgency of establishing a nation in the wake of the horror of the Holocaust and the centuries of anti-Semitic oppression leading up to it.”

The founding of Israel pre-dated the Holocaust - back to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War 1. Palestine — within boundaries to be determined - which had formed part of the territory of the Ottoman Empire for the previous 400 years - was designated by the Principal Allied Powers at the San Remo Conference held in April 1920 as the location for the ”establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.” This decision was unanimously endorsed by the League of Nations when granting Great Britain the Mandate for Palestine in 1922. The Mandate’s boundaries comprised what is today called Israel, Jordan, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza. However the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Transjordan - 78% of Mandatory Palestine - was postponed or withheld under article 25 of the Mandate.

2. “We must acknowledge that this is also the historical homeland of Palestinians.”

The “Palestinians” were not recognized as an identifiable people in 1917. The Mandate for Palestine regarded the Arab residents of Palestine as forming part of the “existing non-Jewish communities” in Palestine - whose civil and religious rights were not to be prejudiced. The “Palestinians” were only defined for the first time in the 1964 PLO Charter — article 6.3.

3. “And without a state, the Palestinian people live in a state of permanent refugeehood and displacement.”

The Palestinian Arabs acquired their own state and independence in 1946 in Jordan - 78% of Palestine. Hamas exercises full administrative control over the Arab residents of Gaza. The PLO exercises full administrative control over 95% of the Arab population of Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

4. “This, too, is a refugee crisis, and they, too, deserve freedom and dignity.”

A refugee crisis exists in Lebanon and Syria because the Palestinian Arabs living there have been denied citizenship for 70 years.

5. “I support a two-state solution, with internationally recognized borders, which allows for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own sanctuaries and self-determination.”

There are already two such states in 95% of former Palestine — one (78%) for the Arabs called Jordan — one (17%) for the Jews, called Israel.

6. “This has been official bipartisan U.S. policy across two decades and has been supported by each of the most recent Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as the consensus of the Israeli security establishment.”

New solutions are required after negotiations spanning 25 years have failed to create a second Arab state in former Palestine between Israel and Jordan. Redrawing the international borders between Jordan Israel and Egypt could be game changers.

Hopefully Congressman Omar will rethink her flawed position and continue this dialogue…

Palestine - Abbas Abandons Peace Negotiations With Israel

[Published 18 August 2016]


Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to prosecute Britain for publishing the 1917 Balfour Declaration amounts to an outright rejection of the right of the Jewish people to have their own State in former Palestine - the major stumbling block to peacefully resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict for the last 100 years.

Abbas effectively abandoned further peace negotiations with Israel when his Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki announced Abbas’s decision during an Arab League meeting in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott on 25 July:

“We are working to open up an international criminal case for the crime which they [Britain] committed against our nation — from the days of the British Mandate all the way to the massacre which was carried out against us from 1948 onwards ...

... With the commemoration of 100 years since this historic massacre, and following the continuity of this tragedy, we request that the Secretary General of the Arab League assist us in prosecuting the British government for publishing the Balfour Declaration which caused this catastrophe against the Palestinian people.”

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) — from its founding in 1964 — had labelled the Balfour Declaration a “fraud” - revising this position in 1968 by claiming it was “deemed null and void.”

Such unsubstantiated assertions of British fraud and illegality are supposedly now to be legally challenged — but can Abbas be taken seriously?

Abbas has not similarly threatened France - although France’s Secretary General For Foreign Affairs - Jules Cambon — informed Nahum Sokolow on 4 June 1917 — 5 months before the Balfour Declaration:

“You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine. You consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.

The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongfully attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.

I am happy to give you herewith such assurance.”

Abbas is not proposing to sue all 51 member States of the League of Nations who unanimously adopted and incorporated the Balfour Declaration in the Mandate for Palestine — when calling for the “reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine”.

Threatened legal action against Britain only will probably never eventuate — let alone have any chance of success.

Abbas’s latest grandstanding ploy comes as he desperately tries to recover lost political ground to Hamas by reinforcing his own Jew-hating credentials.

The Nouakchott Declaration has however served to focus attention on thirty years of long-overlooked international political decisions taken between 1917 and 1947 which resulted in:

1. 99.99% of the Ottoman Empire lands conquered by Britain and France in World War 1 being set aside for Arab self-determination whilst only 0.01% - Palestine — was set aside for Jewish self-determination

2. 78% of Palestine being closed in 1922 to Jewish settlement and development of the Jewish National Home — such territory subsequently becoming an independent sovereign Jew-free Arab State in 1946 — today called Jordan.

Burying Arab heads in the sand by refusing to accept these decisions remains an exercise in futility.

When Arab minds acknowledge these historic and legal realities - the peaceful resolution of the century-old conflict between Arabs and Jews becomes certainly attainable.

Balfour Declaration Falsehoods Fuel Jew-Hatred and Israel-Bashing

[Published 30 October 2017]


The centenary of the Balfour Declaration issued on 2 November 1917 is being used to unleash a barrage of falsehoods designed to denigrate the Jewish people and delegitimise the Jewish State of Israel.

Among those current egregious falsehoods:

1. Raja Zaatry - an official of the High Follow-up Committee - the Arab community’s leadership body in Israel - has asserted:

“In 1917 less than 10% of the population was Jewish and more than 90% Arab. The British gave to the Jews something that didn’t belong to them,”

The British Government gave nothing to the Jews in 1917 other than its “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” expressed in the Balfour Declaration. Palestine in 1917 still remained under Turkey’s rule as part of the 400 years old Ottoman Empire.

2. Vincent Fean - British consul general to Jerusalem between 2010 and 2014 - reportedly said the UK should uphold its commitment to helping achieve a two-state solution promised in the Balfour Declaration - if only to prevent radicalization at home - stating

“I firmly believe that this unresolved issue contributes to radicalization in our own country among the Muslim community and if only for that self-interested reason we should think of doing something about it.”

The Balfour Declaration promised no two-state solution.

Islamic State has caused Muslim radicalization in Britain.

3. The Balfour Apology Campaign and the Palestinian Return Centre — protesting the Royal Albert Hall being used to host a Balfour Declaration Centenary event on 7 November - have urged the public to sign a letter containing the following statement:

“The 1917 Balfour Declaration directly caused the 1948 Arab-Israeli War where Israel ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians and then established a state in Palestine.”

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was directly caused by six Arab armies from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq invading Palestine in total violation of international law. No invasion — no war.

4. University of Manchester academic Nick Thoburn grabbed some media space by reportedly saying he was dismayed that the University had allowed a Balfour Declaration commemoration event to take place on its campus - adding for good measure:

“Lord Balfour (declared), chillingly, that Zionism was ‘of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land'"

Chillingly - our news-grabbing academic selectively misquoted what Lord Balfour actually said:

“The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”

Nick appears to have been engaging in deliberate spin.

Nick should be looking for another job outside academia if this is the standard of his intellectual expertise.

5. Ambassador Jonathan Allen - UK deputy permanent representative to the UN told the Security Council on 17 October:

“And let us remember, there are two halves of Balfour, the second half of which has not been fulfilled. There is therefore unfinished business.”

Ambassador Allen was spouting pure unadulterated fiction. There are no two halves of the Balfour Declaration.

There is however “unfinished business”: allocating sovereignty in the last remaining 5% of Palestine between Jordan and Israel — the two successor States in Palestine — as was first envisaged by Article 25 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

The sooner this business is concluded — the sooner the Arab-Jewish conflict can be resolved.

It surely is time to end 100 years of relentlessly hounding 15 million Jews world-wide and falsely and misleadingly lambasting their tiny Jewish State.

Balfour Declaration Centenary Shames Arab and UN Deniers

[Published 23 October 2017]


The continuing Arab refusal — aided and abetted by the United Nations - to recognise the international legitimacy of the Balfour Declaration 100 years after it was first issued on 2 November 1917 - remain the greatest obstacles to resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict.

The current Arab culprits are the Arab League, the PLO and Hamas who unconditionally reject the binding international legal validity of the Balfour Declaration. However their efforts to nullify the Balfour Declaration would have been undermined long ago had the United Nations not lent its support by propagating a fictitious narrative of the Jewish-Arab conflict.

United Nations involvement has occurred through the “Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” which has published “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” containing numerous false and misleading facts on the Jewish-Arab conflict which remain uncorrected.

The Balfour Declaration — when issued - was merely a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” having no binding legal effect - since “Palestine” was still then part of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire and had been so for the previous 400 years.

The Balfour Declaration first gained international endorsement following Turkey’s defeat in World War 1 when the Treaty of Sevres - concluding a truce with Turkey - was signed on 10 August 1920 by:

1. The British Empire, France, Italy and Japan (“The Principal Allied Powers”)

2. Armenia, Belgium, Greece, the Hedjaz, Poland, Portugal, Roumania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene State and Czechoslovakia (constituting with the Principal Allied Powers “the Allied Powers”) and

3. Turkey

Article 95 of the Treaty provided for:

“the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

This acceptance of the Balfour Declaration by the Allied Powers was subsequently embraced by all 51 member countries of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 - when the terms of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated in the preamble to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

Those 51 countries were:

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, British India, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Persia, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of China, Romania, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Union of South Africa, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela

Article 25 of the Mandate was subsequently invoked on 23 September 1922 to restrict the Jewish National Home to just 22% of the territory encompassed by the Mandate - whilst the remaining 78% eventually became an Arabs-only, Jew-free State in 1946 - now called Jordan.

The Jews reluctantly accepted these decisions — but the Arabs never have. The Arabs (with the exception of Jordan and Egypt) still claim 100% of former Palestine by refusing to recognise the Jewish State.

Peace cannot occur until the UN demands Arab recognition of the Balfour Declaration. The UN’s continuing refusal to do so is truly shameful.

United Nations web of deceit snares International Court of Justice

[Published 10 May 2017]


The United Nations publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” (“Study”) has falsely misrepresented that the Mandate for Palestine was a class A Mandate — deceiving the International Court of Justice and many other reputable sources.

The Study has been published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The Study falsely asserts without substantiation:

“All the mandates over Arab countries, including Palestine, were treated as class ‘A’ Mandates, applicable to territories whose independence had been provisionally recognized in the Covenant of the League of Nations”.

The Study then erroneously concludes:

“Only in the case of Palestine did the Mandate, with its inherent contradictions, lead not to the independence provisionally recognized in the Covenant, but towards conflict that was to continue six decades later.”

However the 1937 Peel Commission Report comprehensively debunks the Study’s concocted claims:

“The Mandate [for Palestine] is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience “A” Mandates, accorded with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. Thus the Syrian Mandate provided that the government should be based on an organic law which should take into account the rights, interests and wishes of all the inhabitants, and that measures should be enacted ‘to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent States.’ The corresponding sentences of the draft Mandate for Iraq were the same. In compliance with them National Legislatures were established in due course on an elective basis. Article 1 of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests ‘full powers of legislation and of administration,’ within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory.”

The Study for reasons unknown completely ignores this detailed Peel Commission rebuttal.

The Study’s unchallenged statements - seemingly authentic bearing United Nations imprimatur — appear on many websites including:

1. The Rights Forum — which claims to strive for a rights-based policy of the Netherlands and the European Union with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 10 December 2009, the International Day of Human Rights, The Rights Forum was launched by its Chairman former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt - assisted by an Advisory Council of former Ministers and Professors in International Law.

2. The Global Education Project — which states it adheres to rigorous standards and strives for an impartial and comprehensive presentation of the most relevant information necessary for both accurate and adequate education.

3. ProCon.org — which asserts it is America’s leading source for non-partisan information and civic education - serving more than 25 million people each year including teachers and students in more than 9000 schools in all 50 states and 90 foreign countries. It claims that 34 US state governments,17 US state Departments of Education, 23 foreign governments and 22 US federal agencies have cited ProCon.org materials.

4. A large number of anti-Israel sites and books have also embraced these Study’s false claims.

However the biggest fish snared in the Study’s web of deceit is the United Nations own primary judicial branch — the International Court of Justice — which In paragraph 70 of its Advisory Opinion of July 9, 2004 stated:

“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the First World War, a class ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant. ...”

The Study’s fabricated narrative has certainly reaped — and continues to reap - huge dishonest dividends.

Palestine - 1922 Two-State Solution Key To Resolving Arab-Jewish Conflict

[Published 22 October 2015]


United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon has jetted into Jerusalem on a fool’s errand - with tensions continuing to escalate between Arabs and Jews as their conflict spanning almost 100 years remains unresolved.

The Secretary-General observed:

“Beyond the immediate tensions, what is missing is the resolve to restore a political horizon for talks, and a political process that delivers real results and hope… We must, for the future of our children, turn back from this dangerous abyss, safeguard the two-state solution and lead people back onto the road towards peace,”

Safeguarding this “two-state solution” – code words for creating a second Arab State in Mandatory Palestine in addition to Jordan – is a lost cause. Restoring talks on this failed political process after twenty years of fruitless negotiations is meaningless United Nations babble speak.

The Secretary-General needs to focus on the “two-state solution” actually existing in 2015 – Israel and Jordan – the two successor States to the 1922 Mandate for Palestine – which eventually emerged after:

1. the 1920 Arab riots and

2. the political machinations of France and Great Britain between 1920 and 1922.

The riots were intended to pressure decisions affecting the fate of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) at the San Remo Conference starting on 19 April 1920 - following the liberation of those territories from 400 years of Ottoman Empire rule in World War 1.

The Arabs opposed a Jewish homeland in Palestine – and went on a murderous rampage to express their rage. 5 Jews and 4 Arabs were killed and hundreds wounded between 4 April and 7 April 1920.

However,the riots had little impact on the decisions taken at San Remo and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Sevres.

The resulting Mandate for Palestine – adopted unanimously by all 51 member States of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922:

1. Gave recognition to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country

2. Empowered Great Britain as the Mandatory Power to be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as would secure the establishment of the Jewish national home whilst safeguarding the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine and the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The Mandate, however, contained Article 25 – a provision used to deny the Jews the right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Transjordan - 78% of the territory of Mandatory Palestine.

The inclusion of Article 25 followed French pressure on the British to stop Abdullah – the second son of the Sharif and Emir of Mecca Hussein bin Ali – leaving Transjordan whilst en route to Damascus with an armed force of 400 Arabs to help his brother Feisal resist French attempts to remove him from power in Syria.

Britain obliged by appointing Abdullah Emir of Transjordan on 11 April 1921. This Emirate became the independent Jew-free Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946 – today’s Jordan.

Achieving these British and French objectives closed the door firmly on any right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Transjordan - confining that right within the remaining 22% of Mandatory Palestine – today’s Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza.

Redrawing the current boundaries of that fateful 1922 decision - taking into consideration today’s changed circumstances on the ground - remains the key to ending the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Pencils and rubbers wielded by Israeli and Jordanian negotiators can end the indiscriminate murder and maiming of Jews by Arab gun-toters, knife-stabbers, stone-throwers and car-rammers - and the inevitable Jewish response.

Remembering Australia's First Jihadist Attack - 1 January 2015

[Published 30 December 2014]


The Department of Veteran’s Affairs announced last March that the centenary of the Battle of Broken Hill on 1 January 2015 would not be formally commemorated by the Australian Government.

That decision will now be seen in hindsight by many as a wise one indeed — following the fallout resulting from the horrific Martin Place siege perpetrated by self-styled Islamic cleric Man Haron Monis just two weeks ago - that claimed his life and those of two innocent civilians.

However Nicholas Shakespeare has written a novella — ”Oddfellows” - based on this little known event — to be published by Random House in January - ensuring this centenary will not pass unnoticed.

Shakespeare has written a poignant article - “Outback Jihad” - in which he graphically describes what the locals call “The New Year’s Day Tragedy”:

“The tragedy was a desperate response, in the least likely spot, to a jihad announced on the other side of the world. On 11 November 1914 — 100 years ago this month — the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V, and caliph of all Muslims, who had earlier signed a treaty with Germany, declared a holy war against Great Britain and her allies, “the mortal enemies of Islam”. The Turkish sultan’s call overlooked the Christianity of his own allies in Germany and Austria-Hungary, and was virtually ignored by Muslims, save for some small-scale mutinies in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in Broken Hill where two disaffected “Turks” decided to launch a suicide mission under a homemade Turkish flag. Their target: a train of 40 open ore wagons carrying more than 1200 holiday-makers…

At 10 am on 1 January 1915, the long and crowded train pulled away from the Broken Hill platform. It had been a town ritual since 1901: on New Year’s Day, the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows, a friendly society founded to embrace education and social advancement, held a picnic 25 kilometres away at a shady creek in Silverton…
Less than ten minutes after leaving the station, the train slowed down, the driver having been warned that sand had drifted across the line. The engine stoker was standing out on the footplate when he noticed a red cloth fluttering above a white cart. His first thought: someone’s exploding defective ammunition. But he dismissed it. No one would be venturing out with a powder magazine on New Year’s Day…

... They chugged past. The driver noticed what looked like an insignia on the red cloth. What this was, he couldn’t make out. Then a breeze sprang up, the cloth unfolded, and the driver saw a yellow crescent, like a banana, and a star.

At that moment, a pair of white turbans bobbed up from the trench—dark faces, the tips of rifles—and the driver heard two gunshots. One bullet hit the sand, spitting dust against the engine. The second bullet struck the brake van, embedding itself in the woodwork…”

In the ensuing melee and mayhem that followed for the next three hours—six people (including the attackers) were killed and seven injured.

Shakespeare records:

“The two soldiers of Allah were not Turks, but British passport-holders from India’s north-west frontier, a region now divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

One was Badsha Mahomed Gül:

“Born in the mountainous Tirah region, Gül had come to Australia as a cameleer. When the camel business declined, he had worked in a silver mine until the outbreak of war, and was laid off after all contracts with the German smelters were cancelled…

Three days after the tragedy, a confession was discovered, tucked under a rock and written in a mixture of Urdu and Dari, in which, astoundingly, Gül claimed to have visited Turkey four times — and even to have enlisted in the sultan’s army…"

Gül’s accomplice was Mullah Abdullah:

”.. a disgruntled old cameleer with a limp. Aged 60, he had lived in Broken Hill for 15 years. Different skin colour, strange clothes, not Anglo-Saxon —boys laughed when he hobbled by and chased him down the street, throwing stones. He never retaliated, but several times complained to the police, who failed to act.”

Eerily reminiscent of Man Haron Monis and his numerous brushes with the legal system:

“He (Abdullah) was not trained as a priest, but he had priests in his family. In the absence of a religious leader, he had begun to take on that role in “Ghantown”, as the North Broken Hill camel camp was known.

As well as acting as imam, he served as the butcher of his community, slaughtering animals in the manner stipulated by Islamic law. The fact that he was not a member of the butchers’ union in the most unionist town in the country brought him into conflict with those who needed little excuse to treat a Pathan from north-west India as an enemy alien. The most aggressive of his persecutors was the local sanitary inspector, a short, mournful-looking Irishman called Cornelius Brosnan.”

Broken Hill’s current mayor — Winston Cuy — acknowledges there are sensitive issues in the incident such as religion and civilian deaths.

“Broken Hill will be recognising it. What are the words you use and how do you commemorate it?”

Christine Adams — Curator of the Broken Hill Sulphide St Railway and Historical Museum — provides a sensible pointer:

“We think that it needs to be treated with a certain amount of tact. It was two people, what they did was a terrible terrible thing, it wasn’t a nation”.

Palestine - Imminent Breakthrough Or Lost Opportunity?

[26 May 2014]


The publication of “A Palestinian State - Not A Priority” in the Palestine Telegraph on May 23 offers the tantalising prospect of a possible breakthrough in resolving the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Three reasons support such optimism:
Firstly - the Palestine Telegraph is published in Gaza - its web site declaring:

“The PT is a non-profit project that depends totally on donations from people of good will committed to freedom of speech for all people. Our success will come from the commitment of our volunteer reporters and the interest of people of good will seeking true change in our world; one where all people are respected and indeed have equal human rights…

...The Palestine Telegraph/PT is the first Electronic Newspaper based in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, staffed by Palestinians and international volunteers; professional journalists and members of the New Fourth Estate—citizen journalists who do not take assignments from editors or paychecks from corporate controlled media.”

Secondly - the article’s editor - Yoram Ettinger - is a distinguished Israeli whose CV includes:

“(Since 1993) Consultant to Israel’s Cabinet Members, to Israeli legislators and to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on US-Israel bilateral projects, US policy and Mideast politics.

Executive Director of “Second Thought—A U.S. Israel Initiative,” dedicated to generate out-of-the-box thinking on US-Israel relations, Middle East politics, the Palestinian issue, Jewish-Arab demographics, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.”

Thirdly - Ettinger’s article contains the following powerful message for Gaza’s readers to digest - indeed for all who seek to end this conflict that has raged unresolved for the last 130 years.

“The Palestinian issue has benefited from the Arab/Muslim talk, but—due to the Palestinian record of intra-Arab subversion—has never been supported by the Arab/Muslim walk. Arab/Muslim policy makers have never considered the Palestinian issue a strategic interest, but rather a tactical instrument to advance intra-Arab or Muslim interests and to annihilate the Jewish state.

Irrespective of this, Palestine has been a geographic, not a national, concept, as evidenced by the lack of distinct, cohesive national character of its Arab inhabitants. This lack of cohesion has been intensified by the violent internal fragmentation along various lines: cultural (such as Bedouin vs. rural vs. urban sectors), geographic (e.g. mountain vs. coastal Arabs, southern vs. northern, Hebron vs. Bethlehem, Nablus vs. Ramallah, Nablus vs. Hebron), ethnic, ideological, political (pro- or anti-Jordan), historical and tribal identity. Such turbulent fragmentation was fueled by the multitude of Arab or Muslim migration waves from Bosnia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Lebanon.

The establishment of a Palestinian state was not on the agenda of the non-Arab Muslim Ottoman Empire, which ruled the area from 1517 through 1917. The Ottomans linked the area, defined by most Arabs as a region within Southern Syria or the Levant, to the Damascus and Beirut provinces.

The British Empire, which dominated the Middle East from 1917 until the end of World War II, did not contemplate a Palestinian Arab state, while establishing a series of Arab countries throughout the Middle East. Moreover, the 1917 Balfour Declaration dedicated Palestine, including Jordan, to the Jewish homeland. The 1920 San Remo Resolution, formulated by the principal Allied Powers, formalized the Balfour Declaration-based British Mandate for Palestine, which was ratified on Aug. 12, 1922, by the League of Nations, eventually transferring 77 percent of Palestine (Jordan) to the Arabs. The U.S. House and Senate approved it unanimously on June 30, 1922. In 1945, the Mandate for Palestine was integrated into the U.N. Charter via Article 80, which precludes alterations, and is still legally binding.

Jordan and Egypt occupied Judea and Samaria and Gaza from 1949 through 1967, but did not ponder the establishment of a Palestinian state; nor did the Arab League.

According to Dr. Yuval Arnon-Ohanna of Ariel University, who headed the Palestinian Desk at the Mossad Research Division, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, stated in September 1947 that the core problem was not a Palestinian state or Jewish expansionism. The only priority was the duty to uproot the Jewish presence from Palestine, which was defined by Muslims as “Waqf”—an area divinely endowed to Islam and not to the “infidel.”

Such an article appearing in a Gaza Electronic Newspaper written by so eminent an Israeli with such close links to the Israeli Government would have been unthinkable just one month ago.

Did the publication of this article somehow accidentally slip through the Hamas Government censor’s scrutiny or does it signify the willingness of Hamas to engage in negotiations whose agenda for the first time would be based on the facts presented so succinctly by Ettinger?

Until now the PLO has dismissed the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and everything that has happened since then as being null and void.

However three weeks ago Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told MIddle East Monitor:

“Both nations, Jordan and Palestine, share the same history and present,”

Jordan and Palestine’s joint modern history commenced with the Balfour Declaration and Mandate for Palestine - and subsequently unfolded as accurately recounted in Ettinger’s article.

As negotiations to effect a reconciliation between Hamas and the PLO reportedly gain momentum - the beginnings of a commonly-agreed Jewish and Arab narrative based on fact - not fiction - could hopefully become the basis for resuming future negotiations,

Imminent breakthrough or yet another lost opportunity?

Palestine - Beware The Snake Oil Salesman

[Published 26 May 2013]


Paul Larudee - one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement - has made some incredibly misleading statements in his latest article “The Palestine Liberation Movement is not about Anti- Semitism” - published in Dissident Voice on 23 May.

Having studied linguistics and earned a PhD - Larudee should be the first person to understand that the written language is one of the prime means of communication between humans and requires precision in its use to avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding.

Larudee has in his choice of words created a false and misleading impression of the Palestinian cause that bears no relationship to the conflict between Jews and Arabs that has remained unresolved for the last 130 years in relation to the former territory called Palestine.

Larudee claims:

“The Palestinian cause has nothing to do with Jews…

Hamas exposes the falsity of Larudee’s claim - as the Hamas Covenant makes clear in article 15:

“The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”

The PLO also discredits Larudee’s statement - as article 20 of its Charter explicitly states:

“Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong”

Jew-hatred permeates the “Palestinian cause” - and Larudee’s attempt to whitewash this pernicious conduct is specious and false.

Who is Larudee trying to fool and for what purpose?

Larudee further states:

“It (the Palestinian cause) has everything to do with the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and with denial of their right to sovereignty, to self-determination and above all their Right to Return. It does not matter who expelled them. It is their land and they have the right to return. It does not matter who denies their existence. They have a right to return.”

Larudee’s claim that “Palestine” belonged to the “Palestinians”, that it is their land, that they were denied the right to sovereignty and self determination and have the right to return there is not borne out by the historical record.

Palestine had belonged to the Ottoman Empire for 400 years - forming a very small part of the territories lost by Turkey to the Allied Powers in World War 1.

The Arabs were offered self determination and sovereignty in 99.99% of such conquered territories by the Allied Powers - whilst the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted in the biblical and ancient homeland of the Jewish people within the remaining 0.01% - then called Palestine.

The civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine were not to be prejudiced - but the Arab residents of Palestine rejected this decision of the Allied Powers and subsequently the League of Nations

Indeed the territory set aside for the Jewish National Home in 1920 was to be further restricted to just one-quarter of Palestine in 1922 - whilst the remaining three-quarters was to become an exclusively Arab state that is today called Jordan.

This minuscule area left for Jewish self-determination was earmarked to be further emasculated when the United Nations recommended its partition into Jewish and Arab states in 1947 - which the Arabs also rejected.

Larudee’s use of the term “Palestinians” is not inadvertent or unintentional but serves to mask his support for the Arab claim to sovereignty in the entirety of former Palestine to the exclusion of all its other non-Arab residents

The term “Palestininans” was only defined for the first time in 1964 when the PLO Charter proclaimed:

“The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, whether in Palestine or outside, is a Palestinian.”

The operative words are “Arab citizens” - disqualifying any non- Arab citizens from being classified as “Palestinians”

Larudee’s claim that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians underscores his support for this racist and exclusivist claim by the PLO - negating the decisions supporting Jewish claims that had been recognized by the League of Nations in 1922, the Peel Commision in 1937 and the United Nations in 1947.

The PLO claim to sovereignty in all of Palestine continues to be the major obstacle to ending the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Larudee has every right to support this spurious claim - but it continues to plague the “Palestinian cause” and prolong the resolution of the long running conflict between Arabs and Jews.

Larudee pleads to remove anti- Semitism from the discussion of Palestinian rights.

He should be encouraging Hamas and the PLO to remove their overt declarations of unabashed Jew-hatred from their respective Charters as an essential first step.

Hopefully the removal of these vile provisions could lead to the end of a conflict that could and should have been resolved in 1947 or in the following 20 years when sovereignty for Palestinian Arabs in Palestine was denied by their Arab brethren.

The last thing the “Palestinian cause” needs is snake oil salesmen peddling false claims - a sure prescription for continuing disaster.

Palestine - Balfour Declaration Raises Arab Hackles

[Published 28 April 2013]


The Palestinian Arabs are up in arms at the news that the original 1917 Balfour Declaration will be released by the British Library for display in Israel alongside Israel’s Declaration of Independence at the opening of a new museum in Tel Aviv in 2015 on the site where Israel declared its independence in 1948.

An angry Palestinian Legislative Councillor Abdallah Abdallah is reported by Ben Lynfeld in the Scotsman this week as stating:

“Britain should not be proud of this declaration. It is a declaration which deprived Palestinians of their national home and led to the expulsion of two-thirds of the Palestinians. Britain should be apologising to the Palestinian people for the Balfour Declaration rather than sending it to Israel.”

Lynfeld inflates Abdallah’s claim when he writes:

“The document (Balfour Declaration) promised British support for the establishment of a Jewish “national home” in Palestine, whose inhabitants at the time were almost entirely Arab.”

Abdallah and Lynfeld’s claims repeat unsubstantiated allegations that need to be challenged whenever they appear.

They are nothing but propaganda made with the intention of ultimately becoming accepted as incontrovertible statements of fact in the long running and unresolved conflict between Arabs and Jews.

Looking at the historical documentary records - both Abdallah and Lynfeld’s claims are groundless.

The “Palestinians” or the “Palestinian people” are defined in Article 5 of the 1968 PLO Covenant as follows:

“The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father - whether inside Palestine or outside it - is also a Palestinian”

All other residents of Palestine and their descendants - non-Arab Moslems and Jews - are not regarded as “Palestinians” according to the racist provisions of this Charter.

This “Arabs only” view is supported by Article 1 of the PLO Charter:

“Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

“Arab ” is clearly the key word that identifies those claiming to be “Palestinians” or claiming to be part of the “Palestinian People” in 2013.

Yet at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 - there were very few Arabs living in Palestine - as the Interim Report on the civil administration of Palestine between 1st July 1920 and 30th June 1921 makes very clear:

“There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ.* (*See Sir George Adam Smith “Historical Geography of the Holy Land”, Chap. 20.) Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems.

A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants.

The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years.”

The myth that there was an overwhelming majority of Arabs living in Palestine in 1917 is clearly exposed as false in this Interim Report.

This conclusion is supported by the following further facts:

1. Censuses conducted in Palestine at the time divided the residents into “Moslems”, Jews”, “Christians” and “Others”. The term “Arabs” never rated a mention.

2. The Balfour Declaration itself only spoke of “the existing non- Jewish communities in Palestine”.

3. Circassian immigration into Palestine in the 1870’s after their expulsion from their homeland in the northern Caucasus.

Arabs certainly lived in Palestine in 1917 - but they comprised no more than 10% of the population according to the Interim Report.

Lynfeld further reports that the Arab League, in a statement condemning the British library’s decision, said Palestinians were in control of 98 per cent of the territory at the time of the Balfour Declaration.

Again, such a claim is unsustainable.

Who controlled the remaining 2% of Palestine is not stated by the Arab League. The Palestinian Arabs certainly did not control the other 98%.

Palestine at the time of the Balfour Declaration formed part of the Ottoman Empire which was under the total control of Turkey for virtually the whole of the previous 400 years - until it was lost in World War 1.

The Allied Powers who met in San Remo in 1920 and subsequently signed the Treaty of Sevres with a vanquished Turkey in the same year allocated 99.99% of the captured Ottoman Empire for Arab self-determination and just 0.01% for Jewish self determination.

The Arab League is indulging in pure fantasy and delusion in claiming otherwise.

The unanimous vote of the League of Nations in 1922 endorsing the Balfour Declaration recognising the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine rebuts any claim that there was at the time of the Balfour Declaration any group of residents calling themselves the “Palestinians” or the “Palestinian people”.

The existence of such a people before this claim first appeared in the original PLO Charter in 1964 is false and misleading.

But isn’t that what propaganda is precisely about?

Palestine - Obama Chooses Zionism Over Rejectionism

[Published 8 April 2013]


Veteran Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery points out in his latest article “Obama’s Empathy Deficit in Palestine” that there are two completely divergent Jewish and Arab narratives driving each other’s current claims to the territory once called Palestine.

“Our conflict is tragic, more than most. One of its tragedies is that neither side can be entirely blamed. There is not one narrative, but two. Each side is convinced of the absolute justice of its cause. Each side nurses its overwhelming sense of victimhood.”

Avnery is very upset that President Obama had apparently chosen to empathise with the Jewish narrative during his recent visit to Jerusalem, Ramallah and Amman.

“The trouble with Obama is that he has completely, entirely, totally embraced one narrative, while being almost completely oblivious to the other. Every word he uttered in Israel gave testimony to his deeply-rooted Zionist convictions. Not just the words he said, but the tone, the body language, all bore the marks of honesty. Evidently, he had internalized the Zionist version of every single detail of the conflict.”

The reasons Avnery attributes for Obama empathising with Israel are shallow and misconceived.

“It was really amazing. He must have studied us thoroughly. He knew our strengths and our weaknesses, our paranoias and our idiosyncrasies, our historical memories and dreams about the future.

And no wonder. He is surrounded by Zionist Jews. They are his closest advisors, his friends and his experts on the Middle East. Even from mere contact with them, he obviously absorbed much of our sensitivities.

As far as I know, there is not a single Arab, not to mention Palestinian, in the White House and its surroundings.”

This shabby explanation indicates little understanding of the multitude of advice that is received by any President from a variety of sources and the need for the President to ultimately sort the wheat from the chaff.

Avnery’s outburst regrettably leaves his readers in the dark by failing to actually quote President Obama’s carefully crafted remarks:

“For the Jewish people, the journey to the promise of the State of Israel wound through countless generations. It involved centuries of suffering and exile, prejudice, pogroms and even genocide. Through it all, the Jewish people sustained their unique identity and traditions, as well as a longing to return home. And while Jews achieved extraordinary success in many parts of the world, the dream of true freedom finally found its full expression in the Zionist idea – to be a free people in your homeland.”

It is indeed this Zionist idea that has been rejected both by Avnery personally and by the Palestinian Arabs in their narrative.

The Palestinian Arab narrative ignores Obama’s sweep of history - starting its narrative from 1948 by characterising the conflict as the “Israeli - Palestinian conflict”- thus allowing such narrative to completely ignore a host of critical events that occurred between 1917-1947.

This rejectionism is clearly evident in article 20 of the 1968 PLO Charter:

"Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of their own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

The Palestinian Arab narrative conveniently ignores the fact that the two-state solution was first suggested in 1922 and actually proposed and rejected by the Palestinian Arabs in 1937, 1938 and 1947.

The Palestinian Arab narrative has no memory or remorse for the Arab riots in 1920 and 1929 that targeted and slaughtered Jews or the 1936-1939 Arab revolt which wrought similar havoc on Jews living in Palestine during those turbulent years.

Starting from 1948 the Arab narrative can avoid confronting the reality that Winston Churchill told a delegation of Palestinian Arabs leaders in 1921 urging him to halt Jewish immigration to Palestine:

“It is manifestly right that the Jews,who are scattered all over the world,should have a national centre and a National Home,where some of them may be reunited. and where else could that be but in the land of Palestine, with which for more than three thousand years they have been intimately and profoundly associated?”

The flawed Arab narrative also avoids accepting responsibility for the Arab pressure put on Great Britain to severely curtail Jewish immigration to Palestine between 1939 and 1945 - resulting in hundreds of thousands of Jews perishing at the hands of the Nazis when their lives might have been spared had Great Britain ignored such inhumane Arab demands.

The Arab narrative has always rejected - and will continue to reject - the will of the international community expressed in the 1920 San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres, the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the 1945 United Nations Charter.

Avnery’s dismay at President Obama’s adoption of the “Zionist idea” is explained on Avnery’s own website:

“After some years of sporadic political activity, in 1946 Avnery founded the Eretz Yisrael Hatzira (“Young Palestine”) movement, also known as the “Bamaavak (Struggle) group” from the name of its publication, which he edited. This group provoked an unprecedented uproar because of its contention that the Jewish community in Palestine constituted a “new Hebrew nation” within the Jewish people, and that this nation belongs to Asia and is a natural ally of the Arab national movements.”

From Avnery’s viewpoint the Jewish community in Palestine in 1945 had no biblical or historical connection with Palestine - or any right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine - despite the League of Nations imprimatur to do so.

Avnery’s rejection of the Zionist idea identified with the viewpoint of the Arab population of Palestine in 1945 - whose opposition to Jews immigrating to Palestine had been violently resisted ever since the Allied Powers decided in 1920 that Arab self- determination should occur in 99.99% of the liberated Ottoman Empire - whilst Jewish self-determination should take place in Palestine - the remaining 0.01%.

President Obama has indeed empathised with the Jewish narrative - which dates the “Jewish - Arab conflict” as having begun in 1880 - not 1948.

Until both narratives at the very least commence from an agreed starting date - one can confidently predict that any talk of peacefully resolving the ongoing and unresolved conflict is a complete waste of time.

Hopefully President Obama has taken the first step to ram this message home.

Palestine - Two Opportunities Better Missed

[Published 3 May 2012]


Israel’s former Foreign Minister - the late Abba Eban - is remembered for his many wise and pithy comments - of which the following is probably the most memorable:

“The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”

The Arabs have been unyielding in their refusal to recognize a Jewish state in its biblical and ancestral homeland throughout the history of the 130 years conflict between Jews and Arabs in former Palestine.

The idea that such a Jewish state should be allowed to exist on just 0.01% of the former Ottoman Empire captured by Britain and France in the First World War - has been an ongoing anathema for the 22 Arab states who received the remaining 99.99% for Arab self-determination.

Opportunities to create another Arab state - and so end the conflict - were afforded by the Peel Commission in 1937, the United Nations in 1947, between 1948-1967 and in 2001 and 2008.

All such opportunities were missed by the Arabs.

Now the opportunity to conclude a peace treaty with Israel under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap has also gone begging - following the rush by the Palestinian Arabs to unilaterally seek to achieve statehood by joining the United Nations and when that failed - UNESCO.

Ironically - these are two opportunities that should have been avoided like the plague.

The attempt to join the United Nations was a failure - after the 15 members of the Committee on the Admission of New Members could not agree on whether Palestine’s application to join the UN complied with the two following fundamental requirements in Article 4 of the UN Charter:1.

1. Was Palestine a state?

2. If so, was it peace loving?

The Committee took their work seriously - as the following two paragraphs in their Report indicates:

“It was stated that the criteria set out in Article 4 of the Charter were the only factors that could be taken into consideration in the Committee’s deliberations. In support of this position, reference was made to the Advisory Opinion of 28 May 1948 of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on the Conditions of Admission of a State to Membership in the United Nations (Article 4 of the Charter).

It was also asserted that the Committee’s work, whatever its outcome, should be mindful of the broader political context. The view was expressed that a negotiated solution remained the only option for a long-term sustainable peace and that final status issues had to be resolved through negotiations. Support was expressed for a two-State solution based on pre-1967 borders, resulting from political negotiations, leading to an independent State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. It was stressed that the granting of Palestine’s right to self-determination and recognition must not be seen as contrary to Israel’s inalienable right to exist.”

The legal issues inherent in deciding whether Palestine was a “State” were also canvassed by the committee as the following paragraphs in their Report indicates:

“On the criterion of statehood, reference was made to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which declares that a State as a person of international law should possess a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other States.

With regard to the requirements of a permanent population and a defined territory, the view was expressed that Palestine fulfilled these criteria. It was stressed that the lack of precisely settled borders was not an obstacle to statehood.

Questions were raised, however, regarding Palestine’s control over its territory, in light of the fact that Hamas was the de facto authority in the Gaza Strip. It was affirmed that the Israeli occupation was a factor preventing the Palestinian government from exercising full control over its territory. However, the view was expressed that occupation by a foreign power did not imply that the sovereignty of an occupied territory was to be transferred to the occupying power.”

Given the diversity and range of views expressed - it is no wonder that the Committee was unable to attest to Palestine’s current status qualifying it to meet the Charter’s requirements for membership.

Undeterred at the outcome - Palestine ran off to UNESCO hoping to get a better result there in its quest for statehood.

The application to join UNESCO was treated very differently to the UN application.

There was no vetting Committee to look at and first decide whether Palestine was a state - again a necessary prerequisite to entitle it to apply for membership under Article II paragraph 2 of UNESCO’s Constitution.

Whilst there was no requirement in the UNESCO Constitution that Palestine be “peace - loving” - there was a provision that stipulated a two-thirds majority vote of the members was required. There appears to have been no consideration whether that meant members “present and voting” or whether it required two thirds of the 194 members to vote in favour.

The 58 members of the Executive Board simply voted to recommend to the Members that Palestine be admitted as a member of UNESCO - without apparently considering any of the issues that had so perplexed the Security Council’s Committee. This recommendation then went to a meeting of the 194 members - when 107 of those present and attending voted in favour. 129 were required - if a two-thirds majority of the 194 members was necessary.

This foray into UNESCO has turned out disastrously for Palestine, UNESCO and the scores of millions of people worldwide reliant on UNESCO - as events since that decision on 31 October 2011 have shown.

The idea that the two-state solution should be achieved by a negotiated solution has gone out the door. 194 countries have now recognized that Palestine is a state and that the Palestinian Arabs are no longer homeless. No more negotiations are required to create a state for the Palestinian Arabs.

If the state of Palestine now wants to make demands on Israel - a new negotiating process will first have to be agreed on between Israel and Palestine.

The Oslo Accords and the Roadmap have become extant - and Israel is now free to make decisions without regard to their provisions.

Palestine can only blame itself for the position it now finds itself in. The 194 nations that made the decision to admit Palestine as a member state of UNESCO - where the UN Security Council for good legal reasons feared to tread - are equally culpable .

All of these countries have forfeited the right to talk of international law as the final determinant in this long running conflict or any other conflicts - following their willingness to breach international law when it suits them.

The law of the jungle has taken over from the rule of law.

If these 194 countries ever come to their senses - the following further words of wisdom from Abba Eban will prove to be prescient:

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

Such wise behaviour will only emerge when international law - not political opportunism - is applied to settle the Arab - Jewish conflict.

Palestine - Time To Tell The Truth

[Published 15 December 2011]


Republican front runner for next President of the United States - Newt Gingrich - has done himself and his campaign great credit in branding the Palestinians as an invented nation.

Gingrich stirred up a real hornets’ nest when he said in an interview with the Jewish Television Network:

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire. I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic"

Gingrich has subsequently refused to back down and has now gone even further in stating:

"The fact is, the Palestinian claim to a right of return is based on a historically false story. Somebody oughta have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland, point out the context in which Israel came into existence, and “Palestinian” did not become a common term until after 1977. This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage. And we refuse to tell the truth when the other side lies. And you’re not gonna win the long run if you’re afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth."

This propaganda war has been successfully waged by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since its creation by the KGB in 1964.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service in an interview with Front Page Magazine on 1 March 2004 spilt the beans on the PLO and its connection to the Soviet regime when he said:

"The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the “Palestinian territories” occupied by Israel, and the “Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia,” created by the KGB in 1975, which organized numerous bombing attacks against US airline offices in Western Europe.

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow."

The language used in the 1964 version of the PLO Charter was slick - designed to establish that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians”. Who could possibly disagree with that motherhood statement - especially if it was repeated ad nauseum?

The problem was that the Charter’s definition of “Palestinians” included only the Arab residents of former Palestine and a limited number of Jews.

"Article 6. The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian parent after this date whether in Palestine or outside is a Palestinian.

Article 7. Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine."

It didn’t take long for this gratuitous acceptance of some Jews to virtually vanish when the 1968 edition of the Charter declared:

"The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians."

Non-Arab Christians and non-believer residents of former Palestine were totally rejected as being Palestinians. Their descendants as well as the descendants of any of the Jews who had lived in Palestine since the beginning of the Zionist invasion were persona non grata in their homeland of their birth.

If that seems like racism,smells like racism and is still contained in the PLO Charter today - then it is racism.

Article 24 in the 1964 version of the Charter also excluded any claim by the Palestinians to the West Bank and Gaza - and by inference to Jordan - which together had comprised about 80% of former Palestine

"This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area."

This article was subsequently deleted from the Charter following Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and Egypt’s loss of Gaza in the Six Day War in 1967.

The significance of that deletion - and indeed the invention of the Palestinians in 1964 - was underscored when the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Zuhair Mohsen told the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.

“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

Total rejection of international law by the Palestinians was also part and parcel of this invented nation - since the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1946 had already recognized the legitimate right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine whilst the United Nations had admitted Israel as a member on 11 May 1949.

Article 17 of the 1964 Charter expressed this view in the following manner:

"The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination."

By 1968 Article 17 had been excised and replaced by Article 20 which declared:

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Gingrich’s statements are indeed the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The PLO has seen its propaganda campaign succeed to a stage where “Palestine” has been admitted as a member “state” of UNESCO in apparent contravention of the UNESCO Constitution, the Montevideo Convention and customary international law..

The PLO’s stated intention of liberating and replacing both Israel and Jordan in the United Nations as its 192nd member still remains unrevoked in the PLO Charter.

Seventeen years of fruitless PLO negotiations with Israel have now been virtually abandoned - with the two-state solution envisaged by the Oslo Accords and advocated by President Bush in his Roadmap now in its death throes.

Gingrich’s message to the PLO is clear - return to the negotiating table and hammer out a deal with Israel or face the consequences if this has not happened and Gingrich becomes America’s next President.

The PLO cannot say it was not warned.