How Strong Is the Arab Claim to Palestine? - Jordan is the "independent Palestinian state" in the area; and was carved out of what was to become Israel.

How Strong Is the Arab Claim to Palestine?

Lawrence AusterOctober 01, 2004

There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian problem: the myth that this land was "Arab" land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution, let's get a few things straight: As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn't take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don't want it back.

[...] The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites.
As the foregoing suggests, any Arab claim to sovereignty based on inherited historical control will not stand up. Arabs are not native to Palestine, but are native to Arabia, which is called Arab-ia for the breathtakingly simple reason that it is the historic home of the Arabs.

The territories comprising all other "Arab" states outside the Arabian peninsula including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity now formally under the Palestinian Authority were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century, defeating, mass-murdering, enslaving, dispossessing, converting, or reducing to the lowly status of dhimmitude millions of Christians and Jews and destroying their ancient and flourishing civilizations. Prior to being Christian, of course, these lands had even more ancient histories. Pharaonic Egypt, for example, was not an Arab country through its 3000 year historyhttp://mideastoutpost.com/archives/000096.html

THE MYTH OF THE SO-CALLED "PALESTINIANS": ...

Date: 03-06-94 From: SHLOMOH SHERMAN To: LOUISE HAGAN Subj: Palestinian Mythology Conference: (9) Religion

[...]
OK. Let's talk about displaced people.
The Land of Israel (whom the gentiles call Palestine) was a Jewish country since the arrival of Abraham. There was always a Jewish presence there. In the years 70 CE and 135 CE, the Romans forcefully removed large numbers of the Jewish population from the LOI and brought them to Rome as slaves.

Nevertheless, the LOI continued as a Jewish country according to G-d's promises. During the 4th century, the Roman Empire became Christian, and Rome turned the LOI into a Byzantine country in which non-Jewish were brought in and settled by Rome. During the 5th century, there was an economic depression in the Eastern Empire and some of the Jewish population moved to neighboring countries to earn a living. At the same time, Rome encouraged more and more gentile Christians to take up residence in the country. Still, the majority of the population was Jewish.

During the 7th century, the newly converted Arab Moslems came up out of the Arabian Penninsula and conquered the LOI, driving out the Byzantines. Many of the native population, both Jewish and non-Jewish were forcefully converted to Islam and the country was forcefully ARABIZED. Those Jews still living there had pressure put upon them to become Moslems. Some did become Moslems and lost their Jewish identity. Those individuals of the population that became Moslem were ARABIZED. That is, they took up the Arab language and for all purposes were acculturated to "look like" Arabs.

From the 7th century onwards, LOI was an ARAB-SPEAKING country. That does not mean that the people living there were "real Arabs". They were not. They were, in fact, descendants of the original Jewish population and of the Greek speaking population that the Byzantines imported to Christianiize the Land.

Towards the end of the first Christian millenium, the Land was under the control of the Turkish Moslems. From the time immediately following the First Crusade, the Land fell into a sad state. The Turks misuded it economically and ecologically. A once fertile Land under Jewish rule now became a forrest-denuded, malarial swamp. Many people, both Jews and non-Jews left. Most of them were gentiles. The population thinned out. Hardly anyone lived there. The Land was administrated by absentee Turkish landlords. It had became a non-productive province and the Turks didnt care one fig about it. They had more lucrative and productive lands to administer.
Starting in the 1500s thru the 1900s, Jews from Europe returned in waves to the LOI. They found a small non-Jewish population scattered here and there throughout the Land. These people were of various nationalities. None of them called themsleves "Palestinians". There was no such entity. The Land was still ARABIZED and the returning Jews were loyal to the Turkish masters. They did everything possible to restore the Land because they loved in a way that no gentile inhabitants had. They cleared much of the swampland and planted trees and made the Land fertile again. The Turks gave them no thanks. The gentile inhabitants had never done anything like that. They had been content to just let the Land go to hell.

As the Land became productive under the hands of the returning Jews, it became more viable and economically productive. The presence of the Jews and their productivity created jobs. Gentile Arabs from the surrounding lands began to pour into LOI to finf work. The Turks encouraged this because they didn't want the Land to become "too Jewish." Beginning in the 19th century, the Turks encouraged Moslems from various countries to come to the LOI, promoising them free land if they did. Many Moslems took up the offer, many of them from BOSNIA came and settled there. THESE WERE EUROPEAN MOSLEMS THAT TOOK ON LOCAL ARAB COLORING AND ASSIMILATED INTO THE NON-JEWISH POPULATION, THEREBY BECOMING "ARABS".

The Turks then began the policy of restricting the Jews to certain areas of the Land, giving the more favored area to Moslems. Much of this area consisted of the present day Judea and Samaria, the so-called "West Bank of Palestine". After the First World War, when the British conquered the Turks, they took the LOI away from the Turks and made it a British "protectorate". They continued to call the Land "Palestine" and called EVERY INHABITANT IN IT, BOTH JEW AND GENTILE, "PALESTINIANS". That name was an English invention just as the "ARAB" inhabitants of the Land had been a TURKISH INVENTION. In those 2 centuries, 19th and 20th, NO ONE WAS DISPLACED EXCEPT JEWS!!!

The British then proceded to do what they have done everywhere they have gone, divide and conquer. They promised both the Jews and the non-Jews that the Land would be given to their communities, but because they were very interested in oil and had a basically anti-Jewish attitude, they favored the "Arabs". The first thing they did was stop all Jewish immigration into the country while they allowed and encouraged gentile immigration. Nationalism was on the rise. The non-Jewish Arabized population of the LOI wanted a national identity and they were content to take the name and identity imposed upon them by the Turks and the British, namely "Palestinians". The Jews did not need to take that identity. They had their own G-d given identity.

The leadership of the "Palestinian" nationalist movement needed a rallying focus, so they used the commonality of religion. Islam became the focus of "Palestinianism". In 1929, a pogrom was organized in Hebron. Every member of the Jewish community there was murdered, man, woman, child. The British knew who the instigators were. They did nothing to apprehand them. In 1936, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem called for another pogrom against the various Jewish communities of the LOI. By that time, the Jews of the LOI had obtained weapons for their own self defense. They fought back. The British moved through all the Jewish areas and confiscated all weapons they found in the hands of Jews. They left the weapons of the Arabs alone.

It was a known fact that the British did not like the Jews because the Jews refused to act like good colonial third world natives. They considered themselves the equals of the British. The British could not stand it. They were used to treating all colonials as second class citizens. The Jews said to them, "We are not natives. We are as good as you." The British did not like that at all. They could depend on the Arabs to act like good little dark skinned boys. That made them comfortable. AND the surrounding Arab countries had OIL!!! Why irritate them by irritating their co-religionists in the LOI?

In order to placate the Arabs, the British told the Jews that they were NOT going to hand over the "whole land of Palestine" to them, only the "west bank of Palestine." Do you know how the "Palestinian leadership rewarded the British?" They signed a deal with the Nazi Germans to advance the German cause in the Middle East. War between Germany and Britain was immanent and everyone knew it. The Germans promised the Arabs that if they would ally themselves with Germany, they (the Germans) would solve the "Jewish problem" for the Arabs at the war's conclusion. The Jews remained loyal to the British government. It didn't matter one whit. In order to gain back the Arab sympathies on the eve of war, the British assured the Arabs that no further Jewish immigration into the Land would be allowed. Ships carrying Jews from Europe tried to enter "Palestine". The British refused them entry and forced them to return to a Europe where the gas chambers awaited them.

WW II broke out. The Arab sympathy was with Germany. They prayed for a German victory. Anwar Sadat, later to become President of Egypt, became a German spy and anti-British terrorist. The Grand Mufti was to be put under arrest by the British but he escaped andfled to Germany, spending the duration of the war there. During the war itself, Jews tried to enter "Palestine" to escape from the Nazis. The British turned them away. After the war, the British continued their policy of not letting Jews enter even though many DISPLACED European Jews had no where else to go.

At this time, the UN wanted the British to give up their mandate on "Palestine". The British further renegged and told the Jews that only part of the "West Bank" would be theirs. They would have to share the area with the non-Jewish residents. The Jews agreed. The Arabs did not. THEY WANTED THE WHOLE LAND FOR THEMSELVES.

The surrounding Arab countries ] told the non-Jewish residents of the Land that when the British left, their armies would come in and drive the Jews into the Sea. The non-Jewish population was encouraged to evacuate the Land in order to open the way for the Arab armies to operate. Many of them did just that, hoping to come back immanently to a land JUDENREIN. The Bitish left in May, 1948. Israel declared itself a state in the truncated area that the British had left them. Five Arab countries attacked Israel. The Jordanian army moved into the area of the "West Bank" that was to become the "Palestinian" state, and instantly annexed it to Jordan. No one protested. Jordan ruled the "Palestinian" state for 19 years. No one protested and said that the "Palestinians" were displaced and had to have their own country.

For 19 years the Jordanians treated their West Bank people like second class citizens. They were denied 3 basic rights. They were not allowed to open factories in the west bank, they were not allowed to build universities on the west bank, no west bank "Arab" was allowed to have a driver's license. No one protested. The Jordanians denied Jews access to their holy places in Jerusalem. No one protested. The Jordanians took tomb stones from Jewish cemetaries and turned them into lutrines. No one protested.

In May, 1967, Egypt and Syria got together and declared war on Israel, threatening to drive the Jews into the Sea. No one protested. King Hussein of Jordan called upon his "Arabs" in the west bank to get knives and kill every Jew that they found. The Israelis warned the Jordanians that if they entered the war, Israel would take the west bank away fomr them. Jordan entered the war and lost the west bank that it had illegally annexed 19 years earlier. The Israelis found evidence of inhumane treatment of people in the West Bank by the Jordanians. No one protested. Everybody was busy protesting against the Israeli "aggressor" and the "poor displaced Palestinians".

Some people have all the propaganda luck. The bleeding heart liberal media went anti-Israel to sell more newspapers. The Soviet Union took up the "Palestinian" cause to win the Arabs over to their side in the cold war. From 1967 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Israel acted as the best ally of the United States, handing over the latest in captured Soviet weaponry to America, asking nothing in return. Israel was repaied by the anti-semitic State Dept of the USA by being pressured to give back territory to the "poor Palestinians".
Meanwhile one thing remains to be told.
In 1948, when Israel bacame a state, there were Arabs living there. The Israelis granted them full citizenship. No Arab was asked to leave Israel.

That same year, Arab countries, including Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, and others KICKED OUT THEIR JEWISH CITIZENS AND MADE THEM LEAVE ALL THEIR EARTHLY BELONGINGS BEHIND! No one protested.

You call yourself a Christian and you grieve for the poor displaced Palestinians? You are just one more gentile hoodwinked by the Arab propaganda mill, abetted by the anti-Israel media who want to sell newspapers, and the Oil company whores who think oil is more important than justice. Cry your crocodile tears, sister. Don't expect any sympathy from me. The fact that you allow your sympathy for the poor mistreated "non-jews" of the Middle East to over-ride your concern for Biblical prophecy tells me a lot about the so-called Christians in this country who claim to be Bible believers. You are Bible believers so long as it is not good for the Jews. And the hell with real justice and G-d's word.

ADDENDUM June 22, 2003 - Incidently, there never was a national or geographical entity called "Palestine" in the historical sense that we usually ascribe to nations or geography. "Palestine" was the designation given to the Land Of Israel by the Romans when they incorporated it into their Empire as a province. They named it after the Philistines, the traditional enemies of Israel, in order to humiliate their new Jewish subjects. Since the Arabs living in the Land Of Israel insist that they are the descendants of the ancient Caananites, why don't they refer to themselves as Caananites rather than Philistines?
Arab humor: Take my hostage, please!http://www.kingsolomon.com/literary/essays/palmyth.html

Substantial Immigration of Arab Migrant workers into Western Palestine from 1880-1948http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/immigration.html

MYTH
"The British helped the Jews displace the native Arab population of Palestine."

FACT

Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the first High Commissioner of Palestine, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration “in the ‘interests of the present population’ and the ‘ absorptive capacity’ of the country.”1 The influx of Jewish settlers was said to be forcing the Arab fellahin (native peasants) from their land. This was at a time when less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than nine million.
The British actually limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine by partitioning the country.
In 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine — some 35,000 square miles — to create a brand new Arab entity, Transjordan. As a consolation prize for the Hejaz and Arabia (which are both now Saudi Arabia) going to the Saud family, Churchill rewarded Sherif Hussein's son Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey by installing him as Transjordan's emir.
The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, contradicting the provision of the Mandate (Article 6) stating that “the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.” By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews.2
Ultimately, the British admitted the argument about the absorptive capacity of the country was specious. The Peel Commission said: “The heavy immigration in the years 1933-36 would seem to show that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the country for Jews.”

MYTH
"The British allowed Jews to flood Palestine while Arab immigration was tightly controlled."

FACT

The British response to Jewish immigration set a precedent of appeasing the Arabs, which was followed for the duration of the Mandate. The British placed restrictions on Jewish immigration while allowing Arabs to enter the country freely. Apparently, London did not feel that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country's absorptive capacity.
During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine declined because of the war, famine, disease and expulsion by the Turks. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000. Thus, the Arab population grew exponentially while that of the Jews stagnated.
In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.5
The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.

The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal.
Jewish Immigrants to Palestine...
By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.
The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”
The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is...due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.”http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf2.html

British Opposition to Jewish Immigration to Palestine ... But throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. ...http://palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_oppose_immigration.php

...The Israelis have been in a position of extreme restraint since day one, because the British always considered the Jews provocateurs just because they were there. They treated the Arabs as natives in the Jewish national home, and, they allowed Arabs to come in illegally and take places that were being frantically cleared by Jews for other Jews to come from Hitler's Germany. It's a very concise and very traceable history. If you trace it, it loses the complicated factor and it becomes quite clear.http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/janfeb01/findingtruth.html

Myths: False Premises... 4) The Arabs were there first; it was Arab land. 5) The Jews 'stole" the Arab land....7) Palestine is Israel; and all Israel constitutes Palestine. "In 1948 Palestine became Israel". 8) Only Jews immigrated into Palestine; whereas Arabs were natives for millennia.

Facts: The Reality:

C) Even after the Roman defeat in 70 A.D. the Jews (with their Zionist dream) never vacated the Holy Land.

D) The area known as Palestine covered areas both East and West of the Jordan; and the Arabic-speaking people there thought of themselves as Syrians, Turks, or simply "Arabs"... but never as "Palestinians".

E) The Arabs did not begin to think in terms of "nationalism" until early in the 1900's. Even T.E. Lawrence was not able to inject them with "nationalism" as late as World War I.

F) Islamic religious prejudice often resulted in anti-Jewish violence, throughout the Middle East, even before Israel became a state in 1948.

G) The British later described these religious persecutions as being "Arab Nationalism", so as to justify limiting Jewish immigration from Europe.

H) The British illegally "gave" Mandate lands (specifically allocated for a Jewish national home) to the Arabs instead.

I) The Arab peasants had been rendered landless by their own Arab landlords, natural disasters, excessive taxes, and Arab money lenders.

J) In 1923 Britain illegally gave Abdulah 77 percent of Palestine (the whole "East Bank") to protect rights to Arab oil, and the Suez canal, etc. for purposes of the British Empire. This created Transjordan; which became Jordan in 1946.

K) Thus, Jordan is the "independent Palestinian state" in the area; and was carved out of what was to become Israel.

L) In 1947 the UN further carved up the 23 percent west of the Jordan, into Israel, another Palestinian state (which the Arabs rejected) and an internationalized Jerusalem.

M) The Jews accepted the UN proposal; the Arabs did not.

N) The UN has changed the definition of "Refugee" for the Arabs only; who therefore need only be in the land two years to qualify.

O) The homelands to which many Arabs fled in 1948 and 1967 include lands from which many of them had recently come.http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/septoct99/factmyth.html

______________

Palestinian nationalism is the biggest scam in history. The Arabs are not native to Palestine. They're native to Arabia. Why do you think so many ancient Palestinians have names like Al Masri and Al Mugrabhi? Is the arabic language native to Palestine? The ancient Palestinians are people that migrated from Egypt, Syria and elsewhere to find jobs that the Zionists created as they were building up desolate and barren Palestine 1870-1948. And Arabs continue to migrate to Israel to this day!http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/rosner/entry/who_s_israel_is_it

By "Bushbadee" Jedi Knight
A little history seems in order here.
First and formost we should remember that Israel did not invade those territories, the Arabs did.
Second that Israel has occupied that land for over 3500 years.
Third the racists are the Arabs who want all the Jews out of the land they claim while 1.2 million Muslim arabs live at peace in Israel/
But let us come up a few thousand years and look at this past century.
First off, the only arabs who owned land in Israel were the Turkish Pashas and Egyptian offendi's
The arabs that were there were for the most part share croppers.
There is an excellent Historic novel about this and the arabs flight from Israel and it is called "The Haj" by Leon Uris.
Most of the arabs in Israel entered starting in 1922.Hardly any one lived in Israel prior to that from 1886 to post 1915/There was a series of 6 locust plauges which just about wiped the country out.Some 40,000 people died of starvation in the 1915 plauge.
If any one would like to see it from an origonal source, I have a copy of the Dec 1915 issue of National Geographic and will send a copy of the article to any one who requests it of me at my address below.
In about 1885 the first large scale immigration into Israel occured.Yes it was by Arabs, but these arabs were Jews.
Some 3000 Jews left Yemen when the goverment of Yemen declaired that all children of Jewish families were to be taken from them and raised as MUslims.The Yeminite Jews fled, settled in Israel and started the first collective farm there.
Now as more 'Zionist money poured into Israel to support the Jews through the locust plauges, more arabs also poured in to get the jobs that were now available.Most of them make more in a month than they made as tennant farmers so they abondoned the farms and went to work for the Jews.This did not make the arab land owners very happy.
Most arabs that entered Israel settled near Jewish communities by a factor of 10 to 1.
In 1922 a pipeline was started.This brought a huge influx of arabs into Palistine EY. (That was the proper name as used by the british on their stationary, not Palistine.)Some 300,000 entered legally between 1922 and 1942.Another 300,000 entered illegally across the desert.There were not many controls except at the ports keeping the Jews out.
If you look at stamps from Palistine EY at the time, you will lfind that Hebrew is one of the languages on the stamp, proving the land had a large Jewish population and the name Palistine EYEY = Eretz Yisroel.
So the fact is that most of the so called Palistinians are rather late in entering Israel and are not native to the land.
Now the next big migration into Israel by Arabs occured after the 1948 war. UNRA built refugee camps for the Arabs. They were supplied with housing, food, money, medical care and many other things they did not have before.The only requirement to enter a camp was that you had resided in Israel for 2 prior years.Comparitively, the living the camps was pretty good at the time, so suddenly arabs from all the neighboring countries became Palistinian refugees, There was a large surge of Arabs into the country. Hey what would you expect Free food.
Oh I almost forgot.Palistinians.Prior to about 1968 if you called any of these arabs Palistinians, they would have spit in your face. They called themselves "Southern Syrians" for the most part. At least all that knew called themselves that.
Another note (If you called an Egyptian an arab, you were liable to get punched in the teeth. My lab parner in college was an egyptian. He make it clear to me, arab was a curse word.)
So you see these so called Palistinians are not native to the area.Basically they are squatters trying to take over another country just as they took over Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and many other middle eastern countries..

--

To answere me personally address mail to
bushbadee@msn.comhttp://forum.bismikaallahuma.org/arab-israeli-conflict/710-palistine-ey-southern-syrians-who-squatted-there.html

Speaking of history, I want to raise another historical prospect that no one seems to talk about.
The Arabs are not native to "Palestine." They Arabs are native to Arabia, now known as Saudi Arabia.
They only way they got to this current disuputed area is by... guess what? Jihads, when they swept across the middle east, conquering various cities, brutalizng the natives, and forcibly converting many to Islam.
Damascus? Was once a Christian City.
Egypt? The native Egyptians, today called the "Copts" are Christians, and second-class citizens to the Muslim Arab rulers. (But don't expect any of the Israel critics to get upset about the stratification of Egypt. They never shed any tears for the persecution of the Copts.)
And Jerusalem too, which was controlled by Christians, with some Jews remaining (as there has been a Jewish presence there for millenium) was also conquered, Churches burned and turned to mosques, dhimmi laws enforced.
So tell me... why is the Palestinian Arab more "native" to the region when he got it by conquering and pillaging, then the Jews or the Zionists? He too got there the same way you accuse the Zionist... an accusation which does not even hold water, when you study the prices and money spent when the Zionist bought tracks of land.http://letters.mobile.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/07/11/gaza/view/index17.html

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