Posted on 01/15/2008 4:41:14 PM PST by SJackson
As was highlighted in this space on Sunday, US President George W. Bush displayed a critical understanding of the real obstacle to peace when he stressed last week that an agreement "must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people." This language is the clearest US rejection to date of the Palestinian demand of "return," which is a backdoor method of denying Israel's right to exist.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of repeating this formula and, even better, explaining what is behind it, namely that mutual recognition is a non-negotiable prerequisite for any serious talks on the two-state vision. After all, Israel could not come to the table without recognizing that the Palestinians have a right to a state. Similarly, the Palestinians need to accept Jewish national rights as a basis for, not a conclusion to, negotiation over a two-state framework.
That said, something else Bush said about this needs to be addressed. Later on in his summary statement on January 10, he stated: "I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue."
Here, too, the main thrust of the statement is constructive and important, since it reinforces the requirement for the new Palestinian state, not Israel, to constitute the address for Palestinian refugees. The reference to compensation can be understood as a workable alternative to the unacceptable and asymmetrical Palestinian demand to flood Israel with "refugees" (most of whom where born after their parents or grandparents actually left Israel).
But the reference to compensation is also problematic. First, though Bush did not mention Israel in this context, the mention of compensation could be construed as implying central Israeli culpability for the Palestinian refugee problem. This is historically unjust and incorrect, since the genesis of the Palestinian refugee problem was the Arab rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and the subsequent attempt to wipe Israel off the map by five Arab armies in the War of Independence.
It is true that some of the Palestinian Arabs fled the area at the urging of Arab leaders, while others were driven out by Israel during the war. But none of them would have had to leave had the Arab states not initiated aggression against Israel. Furthermore, it is these same Arab states, not Israel, that decided to cynically maintain the Palestinians as refugees down the decades, rather than use a fraction of their resources to resettle them, as Israel resettled the Jews who fled Arab countries.
As the Foreign Ministry's web site explains, "Israel does not bear responsibility for the creation or the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem. Thus it cannot declare, even as a gesture, responsibility for the problem." Our diplomats and leaders need to hammer this point home, and also stress that if there is to be compensation, that the Jewish refugees of this period not be forgotten.
The establishment of Israel afforded Arab tyrants the pretext to engage in massive ethnic cleansing against their own Jewish inhabitants. In effect a population exchange transpired in this region, with Jewish refugees from Arab countries outnumbering those Arabs who left Israel (about one million Jews compared to 600,000 Arabs).
The Jews, though, were never compensated for the property they were forced to relinquish. If compensation mechanisms are to be set up, then by right they ought to include reimbursement for Jews as well, especially as these Jews did not initiate aggression against anyone and in many cases resided in the various Arab countries centuries before Arabs or Islam appeared there.
The Jewish refugees' cause was first raised forcefully in the Knesset in 1975 by then-MK (later Israel Prize laureate) Mordechai Ben-Porat, who founded the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) to document property and assets left behind by Jews in Arab countries. In 2003, the government officially authorized WOJAC to list all that was confiscated from Jews by Arab governments.
Jewish lands were wrested from Jews by order of Arab regimes, as were Jews' bank accounts and even jewelry. This wasn't only limited to the time of Israel's establishment. Egypt stripped its Jews of all they had in 1956.
Occasionally there are murmured allusions to these facts from official Israel, such as from Menachem Begin in the first Camp David process and Ehud Barak in his 2000 Camp David talks. But the issue has not been pursued in earnest. It should be.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Lot's of "compensation" articles today, the topic must be on the table. Wonder what it costs to buy a palestinian state.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1948
2,500 Square Miles for Israel;
42,500 Square Miles for Abdullah
By OBSERVER
A mountain was in travail. The United Nations, the so-called peace loving nations, the self-styled free nations of the world, for almost two years busied themselves with the Palestinian problem. Committees and commissions, the General Assembly and the Security Council, all labored heavily. This fall the mammoth organization swam over the ocean from the metropolis of the New World, New York, to the metropolis of the Old World, Paris, where it resumed its ponderous deliberations on Palestine.
The mountain was in travail. For twenty months great nations, world powers, exalted statesmen, shrewd diplomats, presidents of states made declarations before their nations, before parliaments and congresses, to the press and on the air, concerning Palestine, its partition, the granting of statehood to the most ancient nation on earth. If the ticker tape with all these words were stretched in a straight line, it would reach the moon. If the pages of the articles and books that were published on their subject, and the cables and wires that were sent, were placed side by side, they would extend to the sun.
Then came the time for delivery in this great travail. The Secretary of State of the mightiest country in the world stepped forward and mounted the rostrum to address the delegates of fifty-eight nations. The press of the world and the radio carried his words; and millions, indeed hundreds of millions of people read them and listened to them in all parts of the world—in the Western Hemisphere, in the Eastern Hemisphere, people of the white race, the yellow race, the black race.
* * *
Secretary of State Marshal supports the Bernadotte plan. This plan is actually the third partition of Palestine. The first partition was executed when Great Britain, without authorization, severed Transjordan—more than three-quarters of the land—from the territory of Palestine mandated to her by the 51 nations of the League of Nations for the creation of National Home for the Jews. This area Britain gave to an Arab emir, Abdullah, with the understanding that the land this side of Jordan should serve as the National Home.
The second partition took place with the vote of the United Nations Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947. The 11-nation commission that had been sent by the United Nations to investigate the Palestinian problem proposed that the remaining part of Palestine be divided between the Arabs and the Jews. The Jews were to receive about half, including the entire Negev; but before this proposal came to a vote in the General Assembly, part of the Negev was cut off and transferred to the Arab portion of Palestine. Under pressure of the desperate need of Jewish migrants from Europe, the Jewish community in Palestine, with the exception of the dissidents, accepted this sacrifice also.
The third partition is in the making with the late Count Bernadotte’s recommendation that the Negev be amputated—a recommendation so generous that it chops off with the Negev a part of the land of Judah.
What, then, remains? What do the nations clamor? About what do the papers print headlines? It is the hour of delivery for the mountain that was in travail.
* * *
What remains is 2,500 square miles for the State of Israel. The State of New York can hold 21 such states as they offer for Israel; California has room for 63; Texas for 107 states of that size.
The Secretary of States is very generous. The President of the United States is exceedingly generous. The delegates of the nations are magnanimous. The freedom-loving nations of the world have an open hand.
Look at your common “gift.” You gave it with a feeling of greatness of mind and elevation of soul, these 2,500 square miles from an original 45,000 or from the more than 10,000 square miles on this side of the Jordan. To Abdullah—42,500 square miles; and to Israel—2,500 square miles. You “gave” it. The boys and girls of Israel fought for it, for the Negev and for Jerusalem, too; on the beaches, on the roads in the hills, on the streets, and bled and died. You gave them not one single gun to defend themselves.
Bells ring triumphantly in our soul; the sky is filled with angels rejoicing at our bounty and munificence. We have indemnified the martyred nation; we made good our bigotry, our negligence, our callousness.
The Palestinians have a homeland. It’s called Jordan.
Of course Jordan drove them out with the aid of the Iraqi air force.
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