RUTHFULLY YOURS

May 25th is Jordanian Independence Day: Celebrate by saying “Jordan is Palestine”

by Jerry Gordon

May 25^th is the Kingdom of Jordan’s Independence Day.   The Hashemite Kingdom reckons that date when Britain granted Independence on May 25, 1946.  However, in 1923 the Hashemite King Abdullah I had been gifted the eastern half of the original League of Nation Palestine mandate for a Jewish Homeland as Transjordan by then British Colonial Secretary, Sir Winston Churchill.

Israeli PM Netanyahu tells the US Congress about this first act of ‘shrinkage’ in his speech today:

In 1920, the San Remo International Conference confirmed the Balfour Declaration and gave Britain the mandate over both sides of the Jordan River.  King Feisal of Iraq, in the name of the Arab delegation to the 1919 peace conference after WWI, wrote: “Our delegation here in Paris are fully aware of the suggestions the Zionist Federation made to the peace conference. In our eyes they are modest and fitting, and we will do our best to have them accepted. We will welcome the Jews warmly when they come home”.

Prof. MK Arieh Eldad, M.D.

Two years later, the eastern bank of the Jordan, an area of about 90,000 square kilometers, was separated and closed to Jewish immigration.  What remained for the Jews was the west bank of the Jordan, an area of only 26,000 square kilometers. The decision to hand over the land east of the Jordan to the head of the Saudi royal family was decided on by Great Britain for political ends.

When King Abdullah I of the newly Independent Jordan joined the other four Arab armies who invaded the embryonic State of Israel in May, 1948 and seized the Old City of Jerusalem destroying over 38 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter after a siege establishing  the occupied West Bank encompassing the Biblical Judea and Samaria.  The Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem lasted 19 years until the June War of 1967 that saw Israel oust Jordanian Legionaries from Jerusalem,  Judea and Samaria.  Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arab Muslims fled across the Jordan in both 1948 and 1967. Many of their 4 million descendants filled the UNWRA refugee camps in the Kingdom and the surrounding Arab countries of Lebanon, Syria, as well as those in West Bank and Gaza.  Palestinian Arabs now account for more than 80 percent of the population of the Kingdom of Jordan.

That is why Prof. MK Arieh Eldad, M.D.  of the Hatikvah Wing of National Union Party is celebrating Jordan’s Independence Day by simultaneously delivering petitions with thousands of signatures  stating that “Jordan is Palestine” to Embassies in Israel, Washington, DC, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Norway, the Netherlands and Slovakia. View the petition here.

In a press release for this event, Dr. Eldad, notes the compelling rationale for why “Jordan is Palestine” based on the history cited by PM Netanyahu in his speech to Congress, today:

The recent revolutions in Arab countries of the Middle East prove that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the main problem of the region. Any attempts to force Israel to create or accept a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza will only enhance the instability in this region. The world-community is experiencing growing frustration in the face of the recurrent failures to resolve this conflict.

But this conflict is not a territorial conflict, but a religious war – a clash of ideologies. As such, the Palestinians will never be ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish State and declare the end of the conflict.

Nevertheless, the world-community wants to grant the Palestinians a state in an attempt to end the conflict. Such results can be achieved only if the world-community recognizes the historical, demographic and geopolitical fact that the Palestinians already have a state in Jordan. Jordan is the national state of the Palestinians. As King Hussein – the late father of King Abdulla the 2nd – said time and again: “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”

[The petition] calls on King Abdulla to declare Jordan as the National Palestinian State. If he chooses not to do so, he may find himself confronting his citizens in Amman’s streets and circles within Jordanian society that will demand it. The petition will be delivered to the Jordan Embassy in Israel on May 24th, on the occasion of the Jordanian Independence Day.

Prof. Eldad notes:

We are sure that “Jordan is Palestine” is the only realistic alternative to the failing “Two States” solution.

An event involving Prof. Eldad   discussed in our NER interview with him was prominently featured by Republican House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, in his speech at the 2011 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC on May 22^nd as a rationale for why the Palestinian conflict with the Jewish State of Israel persists.

So, my message to you this afternoon is this: If Israel goes, we all go.

In order for us to win this great struggle, we must have the courage to see the world not as we wish it to be, but as it truly is.

It is not morally equivalent when the offenses of terrorists are equated with the defenses of Israel.

The following story illustrates Israel’s dilemma.

A Palestinian woman from Gaza arrives at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba for lifesaving skin treatment for burns over half her body. After the conclusion of her extensive treatment, the woman is invited back for follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic. One day she is caught at the border crossing wearing a suicide belt. Her intention? To blow herself up at the same clinic that saved her life.

What kind of culture leads one to do that?

Sadly, it is a culture infused with resentment and hatred.

It is this culture that underlies the Palestinians’ and the broader Arab world’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

This is the root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is not about the ’67 lines.

The irony is that Prof. Eldad created the National Skin Bank for burn treatments in Israel. He authorized the issuance of the tissue for this Palestinian woman apparently burned in an attempted honor killing, only to be forced back to destroy herself in an attempted suicide bombing in Beersheba.   The people who perpetrated this heinous barbaric act  do not recognize the value of human life, let alone human rights, especially those of the citizens of the Jewish State of Israel, whose destruction they seek.  Kol Hakavod to Prof. Eldad for this petition to celebrate the realities that “Jordan is Palestine”.