Palestine - Great Expectations That Founder On Fiction

[Published 11 October 2012]


Israeli novelist David Grossman is working with Algerian writer Boualem Sansal to launch a writers’ drive for world peace at the World Forum For Democracy in Strasbourg this week.

Their initiative is reportedly supported by some of the most respected names in literature including Claudio Magris, Antonio Lobo Antunes and Liao Yiwu.

The Forum brings together reformers and global leaders to identify democratic responses to the economic, social and political challenges which affect societies today.

The writers - in their quest to end conflict and bring peace to the world - have naturally included the resolution of the “Israel - Palestine conflict” within their purview.

However the views they express are indeed surprising - parroting Arab propaganda rather than relying on careful research - the indispensable tool normally used by writers of such distinction and undoubted repute.

They begin by stating :

"Israel maintains the Palestinians under occupation for more than 45 years, and this inhuman and immoral situation must stop."

All the Palestinian Arabs residing in Gaza are under the total administrative and security control of a Hamas dominated Government following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Our well intended authors are also apparently unaware that pursuant to arrangements mutually negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) under the 1993 Oslo Accords - 55% of the Palestinian Arabs residing in the West Bank are under the total administative and security control of the PA Government - whilst another 41% are under the total administrative control of the PA Government and joint security control of the PA and Israel.

Elections in the West Bank and Gaza were last held in 2006. Since then Hamas and the PA have been at each other’s jugulars. President Abbas’s use by date as PA president expired in 2009. Democracy is nowhere to be seen.

Suggesting Israel’s occupation is “inhuman and immoral” in the light of these facts is pure fiction

The statement continues:

Both sides are putting unrealistic conditions to resume negotiations ...

Are they serious? Israel has been offering to return to negotiations with the PA without any preconditions. It is the PA that is refusing to negotiate unless Israel stops building in the West Bank.

Grossman and Sansal continue:

"It is urgent that the international community intervenes firmly to bring the Iranian nuclear programme under control and steadily commits to the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, pushing the parties to immediately establish a true direct dialogue, leading as soon as possible to the creation of a Palestinian state next to the State of Israel, both with secure borders, on the basis of painful compromises for both parts though necessary for peace, as the abandonment of settlements or their exchange against land, the renouncement to the right of return of the 1948 refugees, the sharing of Jerusalem. This is still – but maybe not for long - a possible solution and there are men and women on both sides capable of achieving it. Let us help them do so."

Our well-meaning authors seem to be ignorant of the fact that Israel in 2001 and 2008 offered to cede its claims to more than 90% of the West Bank and agreed to a part of Jerusalem becoming the capitol of a Palestinian Arab State - but such offers were rejected. Even land swaps were broached in the latter offer.

They seem oblivious to the fact that no one in the PA or Hamas has the power to renounce any right of return of the 1948 refugees and expect to be alive the next day.

They also seem to overlook that what the Palestinian Arabs demand today could have been theirs - plus more - at any time between 1948-1967 with the single stroke of an Arab League pen - after all the Jews living there had been driven out.

Why the need for a state now when one was not demanded during those 19 years - and indeed rejected in 1937 when recommended by the Peel Commission or in 1947 when proposed by the United Nations?

Who are the men and women on both sides that are capable of doing what has not been able to be achieved for the last 19 years in trying to create a new Arab State between Jordan and Israel for the first time ever in recorded history? Naming them would have been great - even if it embarrassed those highly experienced negotiators from Israel the PA, and the Quartet - the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and America - who have tired endlessly for the last eight years to resolve the conflict but have got absolutely nowhere

Grossman and Sansal conclude:

"Writers have their part in this fight and we hereby express our determination to take it firmly and objectively. We urge all writers in the world to join us. Together, we can influence decision makers and public opinion and thereby also the course of events, ensuring that the values of peace are strengthened throughout the world. Our methods in this fight are literature, debate and vigilance. Maybe it is not much, but it is our way of maintaining our dignity in a world of violence and cynism."

They have been less than objective and their ability to influence decision makers and public opinion with their planned initiative is fanciful.

Samir El-youssef - a Palestinian writer - has succinctly summed up the Grossman/Sansal proposal:

"Rather than maintaining hope for peace, I see here nothing but a further attempt to renew the old failed approach to deal with the Arabic and Islamic world."

The old failed approach has certainly been an unmitigated disaster.

It is indeed time for a new approach in dealing with the Arabic and Islamic world in trying to resolve the 130 years old Arab - Jewish conflict.

Might I suggest negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan to allocate sovereignty in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - to be held under the chairmanship of the Secretary General of the United Nations with the approval of the Quartet, the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Co- Operation.

Writers of the world - are you prepared to sign up to such an initiative?

With your active support this proposal could become a best seller in a very short space of time. It is not fiction. It is based on history, geography, demography and international law - unlike the fairy tales that form the basis for the “two-state” solution.

Maintaining your dignity in a world of violence and cynicism will certainly be heightened by supporting this proposal.

If you hesitate to get involved - exercise your undoubted writing skills to tell me why.

But please this time round - facts not fiction

Palestine - Cutting Abbas Down To Size

[Published 4 October 2012]


PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority President — Mahmoud Abbas — continues to promote the deceptive and misleading claim that the areas lost by Jordan and Egypt to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War constituted 22% - not 5% - of historic Palestine..

His propagation of this dishonest fact was shamelessly repeated in the presence of world leaders at the United Nations last week:

”The two-State solution, i.e. the State of Palestine coexisting alongside the State of Israel, represents the spirit and essence of the historic compromise embodied in the Oslo Declaration of Principles, the agreement signed 19 years ago between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Government of Israel under the auspices of the United States of America on the White House Lawn, a compromise by which the Palestinian people accepted to establish their State on only 22% of the territory of historic Palestine for the sake of making peace.”

In fact:

1. Israel comprises only 17% of former Palestine,

2. The West Bank and Gaza 5%, and

3. Jordan makes up the remaining 78%.

Abbas’s spurious claim has been repeated on hundreds of Arab oriented web sites asserting that the Jews established the State of Israel on 78% of Palestine in the War of Independence in 1948 and subsequently conquered the remaining 22% - the West Bank and Gaza - in the Six Day War of 1967.

This propaganda has created the perception that Israel now occupies 100% of Palestine, the Arab residents of former Palestine have been deprived of a State of their own in Palestine, and that the only just solution to resolve Arab grievances is the creation of an Arab state in at least that 22% of Palestine captured by Israel from Jordan and Egypt in 1967.

Quarantining Jordan and Egypt from shouldering any responsibility in negotiating the resolution of a lasting two-state solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict has been the single most important factor leading to the failure of negotiations over the last 19 years designed to achieve the objectives of Oslo.

Instead the PLO has been seeking to create a “three state” solution in historic Palestine comprising two Arab states — Jordan and Palestine — and a third non-recognized Jewish state — Israel — 20% of whose population are currently of Palestinian Arab descent.

In addition the PLO is demanding that millions of other Arabs of similar descent be given the right to emigrate from their present countries of abode — not to the newly to be created state of Palestine or the existing state of Jordan - but to Israel.

Abbas has been acting in blatant contravention of the 1968 PLO Charter and 1971 Resolution of the Palestinian National Congress.

Article 2 of the PLO Charter states:

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

Jordan (then called Transjordan) was part of the British Mandate between 1920-1946 — when it ultimately was granted independence by Great Britain in dubious circumstances — since to do so breached article 5 of the Mandate document—which stated:

”The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.”

For the PLO - the sole spokesman of the Palestinian Arabs — its own Charter therefore makes it abundantly clear that Jordan remains an inseparable part of former Palestine.

The PLO’s stated position was reinforced at the 8th Palestinian National Council meeting in February-March 1971 - which declared:

” Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from the earliest times. The creation of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity. .. In raising the slogan of the liberation of Palestine and presenting the problem of the Palestine revolution, it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the River from the West, nor did it believe the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separated from the struggle of the masses in Jordan…”

Despite these clear and unrevoked declarations - the Quartet - Russia, America, the European Union and the United Nations - still remain foolishly fixated on creating an independent Arab State between Israel and Jordan in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - thus separating the East Bank of the Jordan River from the West Bank and dividing the Arabs who live on each side of the Jordan River from one another.

Israel’s then Defence Minister Yitzchak Rabin succinctly sized up the situation when declaring on 27 May 1985:

“The Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the river Jordan, there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees. One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb”

How right Mr Rabin was and how wrong the PLO, the Quartet and the UN will be in continuing to pursue an outcome based on propaganda and misinformation - not geography, history and demography.

Jordan - and possibly Egypt - must be brought into any future negotiations and not allowed to escape playing any part in finding a solution to the final carve up of historic Palestine — having been the last two sovereign Arab States to occupy Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 1948-1967.

Jordan is part of the problem. It - and possibly Egypt - must become part of any solution.

Trying to achieve any resolution to the Jewish-Arab conflict within 22% of historic Palestine — whilst totally ignoring the other 78% - is — and has proved to be — a recipe for disaster.

Those who sat in the UN Chamber listening to President Abbas should be the first to repudiate his false statement and forcefully tell him so.

Size certainly does matter where “Palestine” is concerned.