http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=280738
Poof! Suddenly Jordanian nationals were transformed into a ‘Palestinian nation, Jordanian territory into a ‘Palestinian homeland’.
Alchemy: a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation
– The Oxford Dictionary
I do not think there is a Palestinian nation at all. I think there is an Arab nation. I think it’s a colonialist invention – a Palestinian nation. When were there any Palestinians? Where did they come from? I think there is an Arab nation.
– Azmi Bashara
The Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation…. The Palestinian people believe in Arab unity. In order to contribute their share toward the attainment of that objective, however, they must, at the present stage of their struggle, safeguard their Palestinian identity and develop their consciousness of that identity.
– The Palestinian National Charter
A recent op-ed article in The New York Times by Dani Dayan, chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, titled, “Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay,” reignited the debate on the viability and desirability of the two-state solution.
Plausible perils
In it, Dayan correctly points out something that should be evident to any unbiased observer of the events of the past two decades: “The insertion of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan would be a recipe for disaster.”
He warns that “the new state [would become] a hotbed of extremism. And any peace agreement would collapse… Israel would then be forced to recapture the area.”
This is not an implausible scenario, given the precedent of the Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon, the seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza, and the ever-tightening grip of assorted Islamists on Sinai. In the absence of persuasive arguments to the contrary, there is no reason – other than unsubstantiated hope and unfounded optimism – that a similar fate would not – sooner or later – befall the “West Bank,” were the IDF to evacuate it.
The question then arises: Why would any rational person embrace a policy that so clearly threatens to wreak tragedy on Israelis and Palestinians alike?
Transparent trickery
In the course of modern history mankind has often been afflicted by political perspectives and policy prescriptions that were manifestly misguided, and by doctrinal dogmas that were demonstrably disastrous. Few, however, have been so transparent in their undisguised trickery as what has come to be known as the “two-state-solution” (or TSS).
Based on the flawed and failed notion of land-for-peace, whose validity has repeatedly been disproven, but somehow never discredited and certainly never discarded, it has inexplicably monopolized the debate on the Israel-Arab conflict in general, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict in particular, for decades.
What makes the dominance of the TSS-approach so difficult to fathom is that it is not anchored to empirical fact or to logical consistency, and that the Arabs openly admit that it is nothing but subterfuge.
This assertion cannot be dismissed as some radical right-wing rant. It is the unavoidable conclusion that emerges from the deeds, declarations and documents of the Palestinians.
Nationhood as alchemy
To understand how unmoored the TSS-approach is from fact and logic, consider how devoid of substance the key elements which allegedly underpin it are, such as the “Palestinian nation” and “Palestinian homeland.”
To illustrate this seemingly far-reaching assertion, suppose for a moment that the Arabs had not launched the war of annihilation against Israel in 1967. Who then would have been the Palestinians? More important, what would have been Palestine? At the time, the Arab Palestinians resident in the “West Bank” were not stateless.
Until 1988, all were Jordanian citizens.
Moreover, the 1964 version of the Palestinian National Charter explicitly proclaimed, not only that the “West Bank” was not part of the Palestinian homeland, but that it was part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. (Article 24). Don’t take my word for it. Check it.
So had the Arabs not launched a war of annihilation against Israel, the Arab residents of the “West Bank” would have been Jordanians, and territory of the “West Bank” would have been Jordan.
Of course, this leaves unanswered the previously posed question of who the Palestinians would have been, and where Palestine would have been. Let me urge patience. There will be more on that later.
After all, the Arabs did launch their overtly genocidal aggression against the Jewish state, which resulted in spectacular failure.
From this mixture of defeat and disappointment, “a seemingly magical process of transformation/creation” began to emerge before our very eyes. Poof! As if by some mysterious alchemist mechanism, Jordanian nationals were transformed into a “Palestinian nation” and Jordanian territory was transformed into a “Palestinian homeland.”
Palestine is where the Jews are
On May 27, 1967, barely a week before the outbreak of the Six Day War, Ahmed Shukairy, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor as chairman of the PLO, bellowed: “D-Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation.”
