WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Too many Americans view “two-states” as an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish western Palestine conflict. We have to make clear that Palestinian Arabs are not being “occupied” by Israel, and that the land of Israel, western Palestine, is our Jewish people’s national home.
Palestine’s EXISTING Partition into Jordan, Gaza and Israel Is Fair to Both Sides
Some years ago, I went with a carful of grassroots pro-Israel activists to attend a polite address to US Jews by Jordan’s Ambassador to the US at a JCC brunch in New Jersey. Some at my table immediately criticized me for applauding when he got up to speak. “I’m applauding at the start of his speech,” I said, “because I won’t be able to applaud when he’s finished.” One of the questions asked at the Q&A at the end was why not divide Jordan, by far the biggest chunk of Palestine, between Hashemite and Palestinian Arabs, by far its majority. The ambassador emphatically replied that Jordan’s territory is not up for division.
So why, in the viewpoint of most of the world, is far smaller Jewish Israel’s? Because of widespread belief in the fairness of how Blinken put it in meeting with P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in November, that the U.S. is committed
“to working toward the realization of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for the establishment of a Palestinian state.” (JNS, 11/8/23, “US Wants Gaza Under Palestinian Authority”)
To those of us (most Israelis themselves and, alas, just a minority including me of American Jews) who believe that amputating from Israel historic Jerusalem (Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all) and Judea-Samaria biblical hill country heartland into “two states along the 1967 [i.e., 1949] lines with mutually agreed swaps” would be Jewishly and militarily fatal to our people’s homeland of Israel, the issue is how to disabuse so many people of such a solution’s fairness to both Arabs and Jews.
We have to drive home two facts:
[1] Palestinian Arabs are not being “unbearably” (US President Obama), “suffocatingly” (UN Secretary General Gutteres) “occupied” by Israel, but live in Jew-free places in Palestine; and
[2] by history and international treaty the land of Israel, western Palestine, is the Jewish people’s, ours.
Palestinian Arabs have never ruled Palestine ever. Foreign Arab dynasties – Ommayad, Abbasid, Fatimid – ruled it from afar between 638 and 1099, that’s all. Before that, going back to the Late Bronze-Iron I Age transition, it was ruled by Israelites (Jews), Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, European Alexander and his successors, Hasmoneans (Maccabees, Jews), European Romans, European Byzantines, and after that for two centuries by non-Arab Mamluks and then for four centuries by non-Arab Turks. After World War I the League of Nations whacked up the ex-Ottoman Mideast into Mandates for Arabs and one for Jews, a Jewish national home at least in the part of Palestine west of the Jordan (the three-quarters east of the River becoming all-Arab Transjordan, today’s Jordan).
But that Palestine Mandate’s western Palestine Jewish national home did not occur – how would Gutteres put it? – in a vacuum. The Mandate expressly recognized “historical Jewish connection with Palestine.” Last week I cited a recognized authority’s year 1695 book that Palestine was then sparsely populated, mainly by Jews. I summarized Jewish presence all through the post-biblical period. Historian Parkes wrote that such presence, tenaciously maintained all through the centuries in spite of every foreign ruler discouragement, had written our time’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.” (You can read about this in my book, Israel 3000 Years.)
Palestinian Arabs are the big majority population of all-Arab Jordan, sitting upon 78% of the Palestine Mandate. Yes, it has a Hashemite Arab king, but he could be a constitutional monarch like Chuck, and Jordan be Democratic & Arab. And Palestinian Arabs are the exclusive population of another piece of Palestine, de facto state Gaza. Given their proudly proclaimed promise to perpetrate October 7’s pogrom “again and again,” Israel has a passing interest in limiting its weaponry, but that hardly rises to unbearably suffocating “occupation.” And, in addition to judenrein Jordan and Gaza, Israel’s leaders, Bibi and Gantz, agreed under the Trump plan to internal autonomy for Arabs in Judea and Samaria in a bigger area of that than where they mainly live now. How’s all that for folks whose fans howl “From the River to the Sea”?
Arlene Kushner had an excellent posting, “From Israel: The Pernicious Lies of ‘Settler Violence’!!”, (arlenefromisrael.info, 1/3/24) this week, in which she, by me, rightly connected President Biden’s unjustified “settler violence” and “indiscriminate bombing” charges with his “pushing hard” for a “two-state solution.” Beyond refuting these unjust charges, we must make the points that the three existing Palestine states – Jordan, Gaza and Israel – are fair to both sides, that Palestinian Arabs are not being “occupied” by Israel, and that the land of Israel, western Palestine, is by both history and international treaty our Jewish people’s national home.
PS: If this #1198 was forwarded to you, we invite you to subscribe. Just email me. And forwarder, thank you.