Antony Loewenstein

9 Responses to “A picture is worth a thousand words”

1. 1 Carrie Lewis
   Jun 1st, 2007 at 7:30 pm

   Before the 1947 U.N resolution which divided what was left of the British Mandate of Palestine the people of the region were generally regarded as Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Arabs. Many of the Palestinian Arabs had affiliations with Syria and regarded themselves as Southern Syrians. For example, the main Jewish Newspaper of that time was The Palestine Post. The Palestinian team that was an affiliate representative at the first World Cup of Soccer in 1934 was made up entirely of Jews. I have Israeli relatives who told me they regarded themselves as Palestinians pre 1948.

   When Israel declared its independence in 1948, its founders decided on the name Israel - they refused to take on the name given to the region by the Roman Imperialist invaders.

   Your distinction of “Jewish” and “Palestinian” is utterly false. The picture is not worth even three words.

   Furthermore, some Palestinian Arabs have stated they want a state based more or less on 1948 borders. These are open to negotiation and the Palestinian and Israeli delegations agreed on a borders at Taba in early 2001 before the deal was rejected by Arafat who wasn’t prepared to deal or compromise.

2. 2 Andre
   Jun 1st, 2007 at 11:56 pm

   An interesting contribution as always Carrie,

   Arabs and Jews lived alongside one another with a reasonable degree of solidarity and mutual regard, though the Arab population at that time outnumbered the Jewish population more than ten fold.

   A small detail that you seem to have overlooked, is that the “independence” of Israel was secured by terrorist attacks, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel. You have also ignored that the Israeli state did not stop there, but used the 1948 war as a pretext to carry out an existing plan to ethnically cleanse Israel of it’s remaining Arab population (hence map 2). So yes, the picture is indeed worth a thousand words - over 700,000 in fact.

   Most of the Arabs in the region at that time considered themselves Arabs, not Syrian or Jordanian or anything else for that matter.

   As for Arafat’s rejection of the offer, you are of course, assuming the Dennis Ross interpretation of Camp David and Taba; that Israel made huge concessions and that the Palestinians refused to make any concessions. Ross later admitted that Israel acted more like Israel’s lawyer than an impartial broker during those talks.

   The commonly held belief is that Arafat maintained an unyielding positions and missed a “huge opportunity”, an assumption based on the standard of what Israel wanted to keep as opposed to what Israel was legally entitled to under international law, in which case, Israel made no concessions. Furthermore, the land Barak was offering was not contiguous, and subject to permits, military order, with no viable independence.

   To this day, Israel continues to flout more than 60 UN resolutions. Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it’s illegal for any occupying country to transfer its population to Occupied Territories. All of the settlements are illegal under international law. Even leaked documents from the Israeli government acknowledge this. The World Court in July 2004 ruled that all the settlements are illegal, nevertheless, the Palestinians were willing to concede 50% of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. So already, the Palestinians had already made enormous concession.

   The World Court decision also declared Jerusalem to occupied Palestinian territory. The Palestinians were nevertheless, willing to divide Jerusalem roughly in half.

   Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in 2000, during the Camp David talks, stated categorically, under international law every Palestinian, roughly five to six million, has the right to return, not to some little parcels of 1% of Israel. The Palestinians never demanded the full return of six million refugees.

   As you can see Carrie, on every issue, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. The problem is that the status quo resides over what Israel wanted to keep and how much it was willing to give up.

   Former Israeli foreign affairs minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, admits that Taba presented problems. Taba ended when Barak withdrew his negotiators. It wasn’t the Palestinians who walked out of Taba. The Palestinians expressed reservations about the pending issues, whereas Israel came to the table stating that they were not willing to give any more ground.

   According to Ben Ami, who was involved in the talks, Israel felt it was committing suicide. Two weeks before general elections, the chief of staff, General Mofaz, said publicly that Israel were putting at risk the future of the state of Israel.

   At Taba, Barak instructed his team to conduct secret negotiations with Abu Alla.
   Barak’s legitimacy (as a government to negotiate such central issues as Jerusalem, as Temple Mount, the temple, etc), was being questioned, not only by the right, but by the people from his own government. Haim Ramon said at the time that “Shlomo Ben-Ami is ready to sell out the country for the sake of a Nobel Prize” , which made Labour’s position unsustainable.

3. 3 Marilyn
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 4:11 am

   Yeah Carrie and you should see the map of villages destroyed by Ben Gurion and his gangs of terrorists during the ethnic cleansing.

   It is available in Ilan Pappe’s book and adult readers have thrown up when the see it.

   There is something truly shameful in not understanding that this is all illegally stolen land - Israel were told in 1948 to get out of the occupied lands and ignored it.

   They have been told every year since and they ignore it and now the millions of Palestinians who own the land are squashed like bugs in a jar behind walls and razor wire.

   These pictures tell me 700,000 stories.

4. 4 Carrie Lewis
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 9:19 am

   Both Andre and Marilyn have missed my point. The Jews of Palestine regarded as Palestinians pre 1948. The nascent Jewish State was attacked by 5 Arab armies and the Palestinian Arabs who stated they were fighting “a war of extermination against the Jews.” That war continues until today with both Hamas and Fatah threatening to destroy Israel and kill the Jews.

   The maps or the picture as you refer to it, is racist and offensive in that it suggests that the Jews weren’t entitled to be considered as Palestinian before the creation of the State of Israel. It also omits the fact that most of the land was crown land, a good deal of it unoccupied, before Israel’s independence.

   My three words about this picture are therefore: -

   “racist and offensive”.

   The only way to resolve the problem is not by suicide bombers, kassams and threats of violence and/or jihad. It’s by negotiation. Barak withdrew from Taba when Arafat refused to support his own negotiating team that had come to agreement with the Israelis on the new borders between the two states. It got too hot for Arafat and he pulled out. A week later both he and Shimon Peres were to have made speeches at the World Economic Forum expressing their desire for a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Peres fulfilled his part but Arafat produced an inflammatory outburst which achieved the desired result a few days later - it got Sharon elected as Israeli PM. That’s how Palestinian negotiators worked then i.e. Arafat vetoed all progress to embarras barak during an election campaign. Forgot what Dennis Ross is alleged to have sais, I got this first hand from one of the negotiators (on the Palestinian side).

   Marilyn - please give me a valid reference to the claim you make that “Israel were told in 1948 to get out of the occupied land”.

   Was it the Secretary General of the Arab League who threatened the Jews with “a momentous massacre”?

5. 5 Andre
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 9:54 am

   Your point is not being missed Carrie, but comes down to a distinction without a difference.

   The Palestinian Jews of pre 1948 were regarded as expendable by new settlers. After all, who can forget Ben Gurion’s quote when asked what should be done with the Arab Jews - to get rid of them. That attitude changed of course, when Gurion realized the Arab Jews could be exploited for propaganda purposes.

   And regardless of the whether most of the land was crown land and unoccupied, 700,000 Arabs were indeed ethnically cleansed from their homes.

6. 6 viva peace
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm

   Tragically the Muslims chose war over peaceful co-existence. They always do. They simply cannot cannot live among other people unless they dominate them. As Hanan Ashrawi said, “the biggest mistake we ever made was not accepting the 1947 partition.”

   Ain’t it the truth.

7. 7 Carrie Lewis
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm

   After all, who can forget Ben Gurion’s quote when asked what should be done with the Arab Jews - to get rid of them.

   Reference please?

8. 8 BenZ
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 3:56 pm

   Marilyn likes stories…

9. 9 viva peace
   Jun 2nd, 2007 at 7:18 pm

   Andre, Andre, Andre

   As a classic bigot, you will never learn.

   The World Court decision also declared Jerusalem to occupied Palestinian territory. The Palestinians were nevertheless, willing to divide Jerusalem roughly in half.

   Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in 2000, during the Camp David talks, stated categorically, under international law every Palestinian, roughly five to six million, has the right to return, not to some little parcels of 1% of Israel. The Palestinians never demanded the full return of six million refugees.

   1. The ‘World Court’ did NOT make any ‘legal’ ruling as it was not empowered to. All it could, and did, do was provide an ‘advisory opinion’ to the UNGA. A simple example will help you. Think of an inhouse lawyer for a corporation who advises his company whether or not take further action.

   The UNGA DID take further action by referring the matter to the ultimate authority; the UNSC, which unaminously ruled the ‘advice’ was garbage.

   2. Neither Amnesty International nor HRW has anything whatsoever to do with these issues. They have less credibility than Aunty Edna.

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