Trump seems set to expose UN fraud on boundaries of Palestine

[Published 23 April 2019]

President Trump appears set to expose more than forty years of deceptive and misleading information disseminated by the United Nations (UN) in relation to the boundaries of former Palestine.

This welcome development comes with President Trump’s Special U.S Envoy Jason D. Greenblatt telling Sky News in Arabic on 19 April:

“there is no reason to use the term ‘two-state solution,” the reason being that, “every side sees it differently.”

The UN must take responsibility for creating such confusion by perpetuating intellectual and political fraud originating with its 1978 publication: “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestinian problem”(Study)

Part 1 of the Study covering 1917-1947 was trashed by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN — Yehuda Blum — on 16 November 1978:

“Even the most cursory reading of this document can leave no doubt that the means and machinery of the United Nations have been misused once again to
disseminate highly selective and tendentious information under the guise, in this instance, of what purports to be a scholarly study.

The history of international conflicts, and particularly those with complex historical origins, can only be properly written by objective historians who enjoy complete academic freedom. The practice of writing and rewriting history according to the transient interests of a political body is of course characteristic of certain regimes. It is regrettable that the United Nations has now been drawn into that pattern.”

Blum then told the UN General Assembly on 30 November 1978:

“At the end of the first part of the publication, ostensibly dealing with the period of the Palestine Mandate, there appear a number of maps. The one map that is conspicuously absent is the official map of the Palestine Mandate which, until 1946, included Transjordan on the east bank of the Jordan River. This map was omitted because it does not fit into the PLO’s own scheme, as it would show too clearly that a Palestinian Arab state has already been in existence for 32 years on more than three quarters of the territory of mandated Palestine - that is, the state now called Jordan. That embarrassment is eliminated in this purportedly scholarly and impartial publication by the simple expedient of eliminating the map.”

Blum was not finished — pointing out to the General Assembly on 20 December 1978 that Part 2 of the Study covering 1947-1977:

“Taken in conjunction with the first part, it is clear that this pseudo-scientific “study” is designed to give currency, under the emblem of the United Nations, to a completely misleading version of the history of the Arab-Israel conflict.

Put briefly, that version has it that the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine was illegal, and all subsequent events, including the establishment of the State of Israel, are null and void. This wholly distorted view is set out in almost as many words in article 20 of the so-called PLO’s basic document, the “National Covenant”, and it forms the underlying thesis of the United Nations Secretariat publication in question. It completely ignores the Jewish people’s inalienable rights to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty in its homeland, the land of Israel.

Thus, what purports to be a scholarly study, supported by what appears to be a scientific apparatus, is no more than a crude piece of propaganda.”

Two States exist in former Palestine today: Arab Jordan - created in 1946 in about 78% of former Palestine - and Jewish Israel — created in 1948 in about 17% of that territory. These two states remain pivotal to ending the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict.

Trump seems ready to set the UN fabricated record straight when his peace plan is released.

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. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

Trump, Israel, Jordan and PLO need to define Palestine’s boundaries

[Published 14 August 2017]


President Trump’s attempt to end the Jewish-Arab conflict could well hinge on Israel, Jordan, the PLO and Trump defining the boundaries of former Palestine under the 1922 Mandate for Palestine (Mandate territory).

Defining the territory within which the competing claims of Jews and Arabs must be resolved is a first prerequisite to ending a conflict that has raged for the last 100 years.

False claims still continue to be made that Israel comprises more than 75% of the Mandate territory whilst Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza comprise the remaining 25%.

The latest such misleading claim appeared in the following article :

“On the 14 of May 1948, the state of Israel was declared. By the time Israel and the Arab States signed the Armistice agreement in 1948, Israel had gained control over 75% of mandate Palestine.”

The article further asserts that the 1967 Six Day War was:

“the beginning of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and annexation of East Jerusalem, territories which together made up the remaining 22% of Mandate Palestine.”

The article fails to inform readers that:

1. in 1946 - 78% of the Mandate territory became a sovereign independent Arabs-only, Jew-free State called the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan — renamed Jordan in 1950

Israel is only 17% of the Mandate territory

2. Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza comprise the remaining 5% of the Mandate territory.

3. Israel, the PLO and Jordan have each separately acknowledged this geographically-accurate territorial subdivision of former Palestine- as the following statements make clear:

(i) Abba Eban - Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations - said in Newsweek on 2 December 1974:

“Palestine comes into modern history as a region extending on both sides of the Jordan, comprising the present sovereign territories of Israel and Jordan and the administered areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Of this original Palestine, 80 per cent became an exclusively Arab domain through the separation of Trans-Jordan from Palestine.”

(ii) Yasser Arafat — the first PLO Chairman told the New York Review of Books on 25 June 1987:

” Jordan and Palestine until 1945 were one State, actually. After the Second World War, Churchill himself said, “This is Transjordan, and this is Palestine. Before that Jordan was an emirate ...completely part of Palestine”

(iii) Transjordan’s King Abdullah addressed the Arab League meeting in Cairo on 12 April 1948:

“Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country”

Many more similar statements exist from Jewish, Arab and other sources.

If Trump concludes that a second Arab State — in addition to Jordan — is required in the Mandate territory - then Jordan - not only Israel, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza — should be included in determining that third State’s possible location.

However such a second Arab State — if governed by the PLO - the sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs since 1974 - would pose an existential threat to the continued existence of both Jordan and Israel as sovereign independent States - since article 2 of the PLO Charter expressly states:

“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”

One Jewish State and two Arab States in the territory of the Mandate will exacerbate — not resolve — the conflict.

Jordan — 78% of the Mandate territory — must be part of any territorial resolution.

Territorial negotiations — like gridiron and basketball — can only be played out within clearly designated boundaries.

Defining Palestine’s boundaries is indeed the key to Trump succeeding where all others have failed.

Palestine - Mapping The Truth Erases A Long-running Fiction

[Published 12 January 2015]


The US State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs has featured a map on its website - which both rejects and corrects the misleading use of the terms “1967 boundaries” and “1967 borders” — which have never existed in relation to any territorial subdivision between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

The map makes clear:

1. There was a 1950 armistice line that separated Israel from the Gaza Strip
2. There was a 1949 armistice line that separated Israel from the West Bank.

The use of dishonest and untruthful verbiage such as “boundaries” and “borders” has been a major factor in causing what now appears to have led to an irretrievable breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) designed to create a second Arab State in former Palestine — in addition to Jordan.

Absent from this State Department map is there any mention of these aberrant terms.

Instead the map seeks to present an honest and accurate position of the current territorial relationship that exists between Israel, the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza.

PLO propaganda — aided by sloppy media journalism — have been the drivers in introducing these false and misleading terms into the political diplomatic lexicon.

This campaign of deception and media indolence can at least be traced back to October 2007 — when USA Today under a headline — “Abbas wants return to pre-1967
borders” — reported PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas telling Palestine TV:

“We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We want it as it is.”

There were four “small” problems confronting Abbas — that he was not prepared to recognise - nor USA Today to question or challenge:

1. There had never been any pre-1967 borders—only the 1949 and 1950 armistice lines.

2. Those armistice lines had been agreed between Jordan, Israel and Egypt — long before the PLO came into existence in 1964.

3. The PLO in 2007 at best still only “had” about 40% of the West Bank it had obtained under the 1993 Oslo Accords. Israel “had” the other 60% - also granted under the Oslo Accords.

4. The Jews had a better legal claim to “have” at least that part of the West Bank they had lived in prior to 1949 — before being driven out by six invading armies - as well as those areas defined as State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes as stipulated by article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Undeterred by these roadblocks - Abbas continued making these misleading demands - with Islam On Line reporting the following statement by Abbas on 9 December 2009 under the headline — “Abbas Names 1967 Borders as Precondition for Talks”:

“We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state,”

The New York Times obligingly gave credence to Abbas’s claims on 19 May 2011 with a story under a banner headline “Obama sees ‘67 borders as starting point for peace talks” followed by this misleading report accompanied by a supposedly accurate map showing the “Green Line Pre-1967 border”:

“A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank — should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama’s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.”

Suitably emboldened with the New York Times unquestionably uttering the same nonsense as he was — Abbas sent a letter to the UN Secretary General dated 23 September 2011 applying for membership of the the UN.

Abbas—signing as “President of the State of Palestine [a non-existent legal entity—ed.], Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization”- brazenly repeated his earlier claims — this time seeking to implicate most of the international community in his fantasy.

“Furthermore, the vast majority of the international community has stood in support of our inalienable rights as a people, including to statehood, by according bilateral recognition to the State of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the number of such recognitions continues to rise with each passing day.”

Abbas was at it again in 2012—as BBC News reported him saying:

“Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. This is Palestine,”

With Abbas last week choosing the path of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court in preference to resuming negotiations with Israel — he surely has succumbed to his own propaganda and sown the seeds for his own fall from grace.

He has shown himself unwilling to be bound by the procedures laid out in the Oslo Accords, the Bush Roadmap and Security Council Resolution 242 — the internationally laid down parameters under which an end to the Jewish-Arab conflict was to be negotiated and resolved.

An opportunity could now be opening for negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan - the parties to those 1949 and 1950 armistice lines — to try and transform them into lasting and permanent borders.

A little bit of intellectual honesty can go a long way.

Palestine Is A State - Fact Or Fiction?

[Published 6 March 2012]


Recognition of the existence of Palestine as a State was ostensibly given the international imprimatur on 31 October 2011 - when 107 countries voted to admit Palestine as the 195th member state of UNESCO.

Palestine’s admission to UNESCO rested upon Article II (2) of UNESCO’s Constitution which states:

“Subject to the conditions of the Agreement between this Organization and the United Nations Organization, approved pursuant to Article X of this Constitution, states not members of the United Nations Organization may be admitted to membership of the Organization, upon recommendation of the Executive Board, by a two-thirds majority vote of the General Conference.”

Palestine’s application would presumably have been vetted by UNESCO’s 58-member Executive Board - to make sure Palestine qualified as a state to entitle it to become a member of UNESCO - otherwise the application would have had to be ruled out of order.

Article II (2) above indeed makes clear that there had to be a recommendation by the Executive Board.

To try and find out how the Executive Board came to its conclusion - I asked UNESCO two questions - to which I received the following answers on 1 December 2011:

QUESTION: Did the Secretariat or any other division within UNESCO prepare a report on the status of “Palestine” to qualify as a “state” to be admitted to membership of UNESCO? If so could I please be sent a copy?

ANSWER:There was no document submitted to the General Conference by the Secretariat relating to the status of Palestine.

QUESTION:On what basis can Palestine qualify to be admitted as a member State of UNESCO when it does not possess the necessary qualifications to be recognized as a State in customary international law as codified in article 1 of the Montevideo Convention 1933?

ANSWER:This question would need to be addressed to the UNESCO Member States that voted in favor of admission.

Not satisfied with these answers - I wrote a further letter on 2 December 2011 drawing UNESCO’s attention to the following:

Article II.2 of the Constitution requires “a recommendation of the Executive Board” as anecessary pre-condition for the admission of any states to UNESCO that are not members of the United Nations.

Can you supply a copy of the recommendation of the Executive Board to the General Conference to admit Palestine to membership of UNESCO and any reports that formed part of that recommendation or were considered by the Executive Board prior to making that recommendation.

There was no reply - only an impenetrable wall of silence erected by UNESCO ever since.

Now those of you who have read my many articles over the past 5 months know that I consider Palestine’s admission to UNESCO to be unconstitutional - being in breach of Article II (2) above.

I have unsuccessfully urged UNESCO to seek an advisory ruling from the International Court on the meaning of Article II (2) and on other clauses in the Constitution that appear to be inconsistent with it.

UNESCO can approach the Court to resolve these issues under Article XIV (2) of the Constitution which states:

“Any question or dispute concerning the interpretation of this Constitution shall be referred for determination to the International Court of Justice or to an arbitral tribunal, as the General Conference may determine under its Rules of Procedure”

Not one of the 194 UNESCO member states seems remotely interested in pursuing this option. All have apparently accepted the fact that Palestine is a State.

No member State has objected to the flag of Palestine flying above UNESCO headquarters in Paris alongside their State’s respective flags.

Under Article II (7) - each Member State is entitled to appoint a Permanent Delegate to UNESCO.

On 23 January 2012 - Mr. Elias Wadih Sanbar was appointed Permanent Delegate of the member state of Palestine - without demur or objection from any of the other member states.

Given the apparent acceptance of Palestine as a state on an equal par with all the other 194 member states of UNESCO - my questions to all of them are:

1. Why is the world not now celebrating the realisation of the two-state solution on 31 October 2011 and an end to the long road to Palestinian statehood begun in 1993 with the Oslo Accords?

2. When will the state of Palestine start opening its doors to welcome those Palestinian Arabs that have been left to fester in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab states for the last 64 years?

3. When will UNWRA be disbanded - now that the State of Palestine exists?

4. Why is the UN still carrying the following outdated material on its website:
“In late April the Security Council is due to hold its quarterly open debate on the Middle East. The focus of discussion will likely be whether the Quartet has been able to achieve sufficient impetus to break the stalemate in the Israel/Palestine peace process.

The Quartet—comprising the EU, Russia, the UN and the US—will next meet on 11 April in Washington, DC.”

Why waste the Security Council’s time with another debate on efforts to break the stalemate in the Middle East - when the stalemate was broken on 31 October 2011?

Isn’t it time the Quartet disbanded and announced the cancellation of its next meeting set for 11 April 2012? Has it any function now - following international recognition by the 194 member states of UNESCO that Palestine is a State?

Not one of the 195 member states of UNESCO ( including Palestine itself) can pinpoint the State of Palestine on a map or the boundaries which it encompasses. This surely is testimony to the mess that the world has landed itself in because it has chosen to ignore international law and UNESCO’s Constitution.

The world will have to live with its flight into fantasy and folly and bear the consequences of its unlawful decision.

You can’t be half pregnant - nor can you be half a state. If you call yourself a State - represent yourself as a State when seeking entry to world organizations - and get accepted on the basis of being a State - then you are a State.

Time to focus now on the claims of other groups with long standing demands for self determination - such as the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Basques and the Corsicans.

They should now all apply to join UNESCO - using Palestine as the precedent - confident in the knowledge that if UNESCO can miraculously turn fiction into fact by recognizing “Palestine” as a “State” - it can make the aspirations of these other long suffering people become a similar reality.

What is good for the goose must surely be good enough for the gander

Paulson's Prognosis Pinpoints Palestine's Panacea

[Published September 2008]

“This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get at the heart of the problem” US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson [Times Online 20 September 2008] - The Paulson Prognosis

The threat of a world economic meltdown does wonders in helping concentrate the mind on how to resolve the intractable 130 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews over a piece of land once called Palestine that today comprises two sovereign States - Jordan and Israel - and two tiny slivers of land that currently belong to no one - the West Bank and Gaza.

It has taken a roller coaster week of unprecedented turmoil, crises and upheaval for Governments, their central banks and stock exchanges to realise that unquantified wads of money - not just pocket money - had to be thrown at resolving - and thereby avoiding - a world financial crisis that threatened outcomes last experienced in the Great Depression 80 years ago.

Finding the vast amount required - estimated to eventually exceed US$ 1 trillion - was not seen as being an option or even negotiable but as an absolute essential to ending the crisis for one simple reason - the alternative of risking a world recession and global shutdown could simply not be countenanced.

United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the one to successfully deliver this unpleasant - but totally necessary - prognosis.

The unresolved Arab-Jewish conflict with its sinister overtones of possible nuclear war and surging oil prices threatens the health of the very world economies and societies that today only continue to survive because of the Paulson Prognosis.

Billions of dollars have already been spent over the last 60 years - as a consequence of the war in 1948 between Israel and six invading Arab armies - in perpetuating the only refugee crisis in the world that apparently appears incapable of resolution by resettlement and rehabilitation.

The cash budget for 2008 approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a staggering US$ 541.8 million. Preservation of refugee status - not its elimination - remains a cardinal tenet of its continued and privileged existence.

Since October 2000, UNRWA has launched Emergency Appeals to the donor community to fund the Agency’s Emergency Programmes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. From October 2000 until December 2007, the Agency received a total of US$826.6 million in pledges, which was less than two-thirds of the amount requested. In December 2007, UNRWA launched an appeal for US$ 237.7 million to cover the cost of its emergency activities in 2008. In May 2008 the requirement was revised and increased to US$ 263.4 million. Against 2008 Appeal UNRWA received US$ 128.3 million in pledges as of 31 May 2008. [http://www.un.org/unrwa/finances/index.html]

Additionally billions of dollars - US$7 billion pledged in Paris alone in December 2007 - have been spent by the international community since 1993 in a concerted effort to create conditions for a new Arab state to be established between Israel and Jordan, to resettle and rehabilitate there those Arabs made refugees in 1948 and their descendants and to end the state of war between Israel and its Arab adversaries.

This money has been misappropriated, badly spent, poorly directed, irresponsibly controlled and has not had the slightest impact in achieving any of these objectives - which remain as unattainable now as they have for the last 60 years.

The uncertain nature of Iran’s current nuclear program, its threats to eliminate Israel and Israel’s refusal to become a sacrificial lamb constitute a potent cocktail that could well risk a world nuclear meltdown on a scale that would make this past week’s threatened economic meltdown pale into insignificance.

Can the international community continue to stand by and take the risk that this will not happen - possibly as early as within the next six months?

As we have seen this past week, events can take a very sudden turn for the worse after a slow period of gestation - which in hindsight probably justified action being taken far earlier, with less fallout and at possibly much less cost than had to be found this week to ensure the world’s economic survival.

President Bush’s Road Map was a sincere and well intended attempt to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict. Its failure to get to first base after six years of trying has proved it to be totally ineffective as a cure. The writing has been on the wall for at least four years but the international community has closed its eyes, allowed the conflict to deteriorate and the rhetoric to increase.

It is abundantly clear that a huge amount of money needs to be strategically targeted and urgently spent to make a real difference by getting at the heart of the problem before it once again suddenly degenerates into outright war with possible nuclear as well as economic consequences world wide as its legacies.

The Security Council of the United Nations needs to unanimously resolve taking the following steps to resolve the conflict as a matter of grave urgency:

1. Setting up an international claims tribunal with sufficient funds to process and pay all claims made by

(a) Arabs from Palestine and Jews from Arab countries who became refugees as a result of the Arab - Israeli War in 1948 - and their descendants.

(b) Current host countries in resettling and rehabilitating those refugees now living within their national boundaries and closing down and demolishing any existing refugee camps.

2. Declaring that any claimed right of return by any refugee or his descendants to his original country of origin is deemed abandoned on settlement of his claim.

3. Immediately dissolving UNWRA and transferring its budget and responsibilities to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

4. Establishing an International Boundaries Commission to redraw the international boundaries between Jordan, Israel and Egypt with the participation and joint consent and approval of all three countries to such new boundaries.

The old saying - “when life gives you lemons - make lemonade” - is surely one that the international community should heed at this point of time. It is going to be a very expensive drink indeed but its cost pales into insignificance compared to the medicine that awaits us if we don’t.