After countries have been at war, normally the winner of that war commands the peace treaty as well as the final borders. This has been standard as far back as written history; some historians would even argue it goes further back as such evidence has been found on cave wall drawings.
Wars create a lot of things; death, injury, homelessness and devastation. It also creates scars that last with family and friends of those that were affected or served forever. One other thing that wars cause is new borders and lines to be drawn.
Just to name a few, after World War II Poland got land that belonged to Germany, parts of Poland became Ukraine, Russia still has some Japanese islands. After World War I it was even more confusing, France regained Alsace and Lorraine, which Germany had taken from France in the Franco-Prussian War. Germany took it back in WWII and after the war ended France got back control of the two provinces.
This is nothing new and has been going on since man first raised sticks and stones to gain territory from another. It seems it happens in every war except when it comes to Israel. Throughout the worlds history countries borders change and new lines are drawn as a consequence of war, but for some reason Israel is always the exception to that rule. But I digress.
Did anyone else bother to actually listen to or read Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN last Thursday when the U.N. General Assembly voted in favor of the resolution that upgraded the Palestinians'' status to a nonmember observer state?
I know… It was a disgusting, vile speech that was full of lies and false accusations. It was approved by more than a two-thirds majority of the 193-member world body, a vote of 138 to 9 with 41 abstentions.
I must admit, even I threw up in my mouth a few times, but if one were to really pay attention to the words Abbas used they would hear that he admitted to what I and countless others have been saying for years, but once again, I digress.
I had originally planned on taking his speech and breaking it down with something he obviously knows nothing about, the truth. However, given his lies and insinuations as well as the fact that the speech was 1912 words it would take me 5 or 6 articles to even begin to cover it. I did however spend almost two hours on my radio show ‘America Akbar’ going over his speech last Thursday.
Let’s just look at the obvious; the Palestinians are an invented people. Former Speaker of the House of U.S. Representatives, Newt Gingrich caught hell for making that statement while running for President in December 2011. But he was correct nonetheless.
Once again, don’t take my word for it; a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Zahir Muhsein said it long before Gingrich or me. Muhsein, the PLO leader that was born in the West Bank, yes, that’s right, he was born in the West Bank town of Tulkarm in 1936 a time when the area was the Palestine Mandate, stated it as well.
Muhsein told the Dutch Newspaper ‘Trouw’ in an interview in 1977 that there were "no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese", though Palestinian identity would be emphasized for political reasons. He stated in the interview,
“Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation. Look, I have family members with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian citizenship. We are ONE people. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity.”
Who better to listen to then a man who was not only born in the West Bank during the Palestinian Mandate, but a PLO leader as well? So as he stated “The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity.”
Walid Shoebat, the man who claims to be a former member of the PLO involved in terror activity, also born in the West Bank stated how all of a sudden everyone became Palestinian,
“One day during the 1960’s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.”
The Jewish Virtual Library website lists other examples of Arabs claiming there is no such thing as Palestine, but rather it is “southern Syria”,
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations echoed this view in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947, which said Palestine was part of the Province of Syria and the Arabs of Palestine did not comprise a separate political entity. A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.”
Even the founder of the PLO, Yasser Arafat spoke of the overall intent of the Arabs and it wasn’t to get back a stolen “Palestine”, it was to eradicate Israel. He stated it on a very telling day as well, September 13, 1993, the same day the Oslo Peace Accord ceremony was held in Washington D.C.,
“Since we cannot defeat Israel in war we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”
But now we even have Mahmoud Abbas’s own words and they came while he was delivering his speech asking the UN General Assembly for “non-member status”.
Mixed in with the 11 times he used the word “occupation”, accusing Israel of keeping “people besieged by a racist, colonial occupation”, and admitting that “the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), [is] the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, he admitted, knowingly or unknowingly something that has been the subject of many arguments since the late 1960’s. He admitted to Jordan being Palestine. He said,
“Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181 (II), which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two States and became the birth certificate for Israel.”
Let’s understand this, the UN “partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two States”, that is correct. One state was for the Palestinian Jews and the other was for the Palestinian Arabs. That other State, the one for the Palestinian Arabs, yes that was Jordan. The latest statistics are that over 70% of Jordanian citizens are Palestinian.
I am aware of the lack of historical education that is being taught in public schools today, I know that many people get their news from the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but how many more Arabs, especially those claiming to be Palestinian, have to admit that Jordan is Palestine before the world starts to listen?
After all, he said it, I didn’t.
Gadi Adelman is a freelance writer and lecturer on the history of terrorism and counterterrorism. He grew up in Israel, studying terrorism and Islam for 35 years after surviving a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem in which 7 children were killed. Since returning to the U. S., Gadi teaches and lectures to law enforcement agencies as well as high schools and colleges. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, Frontpage Mag, Family Security Matters and dozens of other sites. He can be heard every Thursday night at 8PM est. on his own radio show “American Akbar” on Blog Talk Radio. He can be reached through his website gadiadelman.com.