That thesis is the raison d'ĂȘtre of his blog here
Now, in an important article, Geoffrey Clarfield and Salim Mansur have written a clear and cogent exposition of that view, argued not only by David Singer but by others.
Indeed, in their article the authors cite the opinion of another person who will be no stranger to readers of this blog, the Jordanian Palestinian politician and pundit Mudar Zahran, a Muslim friend of Israel and of secular democracy
Write Clarfield and Mansur, inter alia:
'Arab nationalism is dead. It lasted for 100 years and it has suddenly disappeared. In the former states of now war-torn Libya, Syria and Iraq, speaking Arabic now means nothing. However, being a member of a family, lineage or clan of either the Shia, Sunnis, Christians, Druze, Yazidi, Tuareg or Bedouin means everything.....
Yet the new Pope has just recognized yet another Arab state, “Palestine.” ....
Until the end of the First World War, most of the Arabic-speaking Middle East was under the authority of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Turks lost their empire when they fought against the allies during the war. And so, after four centuries of subservience to the Turks, Christian and Muslim speakers of Arabic, longing for independence, created Arab nationalism, a political movement that mirrored the ethnic and linguistic nationalisms that were then transforming the landscape of 19th-century Europe.
In this new ideology, an “Arab” was someone who spoke Arabic. The largely Christian Arab proponents of this ideology hoped that as citizens of newly created secular states, they would finally be given the legal and political equality denied to them for centuries under Islamic law and Muslim rulers. And so, after the First World War, a number of “Arab” states were created by the League of Nations, such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. By the end of the Second World War, they had all gained their independence.
Among these newly created states, there arose the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which became formally independent in 1946. Until then, it was legally part of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, implemented on trust from the League of Nations by the British government....
Jordan is a 20th-century British invention, dreamed up in the 1920s, for the peoples living in what Britain illegally hived off from the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1923. Until 1946 its British administrators called it just that — Eastern Palestine.
No one reads the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine document anymore. But according to international law, it is still valid. It is the legal basis for the creation of the Jewish state of Israel. Its provisions still stand, because all of the legal pronouncements of the League were subsequently recognized as binding, when the United Nations was created after the Second World War.
In 1923 the British arbitrarily violated the Mandate, morally and legally, by creating the “Emirate of Jordan” in Eastern Palestine. The British announced that this was a “temporary” measure, which they quietly and quickly made “permanent.” Jews were no longer allowed to live there....
The name, the “Hashemite” Kingdom of Jordan, makes reference to the fact that its ruling tribe, the Hashemis, were imported by the British from outside of Jordan in the Hejaz (what is now western Saudi Arabia). The Hashemis rule Jordan today as the Saudis do Arabia, claiming the name of the country by right of tribal conquest and occupation, but in their case with the connivance of the British, who unilaterally lopped off 70 per cent of mandated Palestine, and gave it to them as their compensation for their tribal revolt against the Turks during the First World War....
Today the majority of the country’s inhabitants are largely Muslim Arabs who now think of themselves as Palestinians. Before the Mandate, they had no national identity and like that of Jordan, there is no record of a self-defined, self-declared Palestinian national identity in any historical document before the early to mid-20th century....
The Jewish state of Israel lies west of the Jordan River and has sovereignty over that territory by historical and legal right. There is no “occupation.” If the Israeli government decides to give back some of this land in a territory-for-peace deal, it will have done so knowing it is sacrificing part of its historic homeland to hostile Islamic expansionists, not to “a people without a land,” for the Arabs of Palestine, that is the Palestinians, are a majority in Eastern Palestine.
The world has been living with a two-state solution for decades....The majority of Jordanians are Palestinians living in Mandated Palestine. There can be no peace without the recognition of this simple ethnographic truth. The Pope should know this.'Read the full article here
Meanwhile, in the UK, the usual big and bigoted show bizz egos try to work their usual Boycott mischief:
I'm in total agreement and have been arguing this for ages. Why do they need another Arab Palestinian State when they already have one? As soon as that question is asked and understood (it often needs a history lesson which is not believed) then there is only one answer, namely the destruction of Israel.
ReplyDeleteEzekiel 47:22 - 23 describes a one-state solution.....the sojourners who reside among you and have had children amongst you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel....
They are given an inheritance according to the tribe amongst whom they reside.
Both sides will need educating on that one!
Thank you, Ian. Nice to hear from you again.
ReplyDeleteI am far from convinced that a Palestinian Jordan replacing a Hashemite-Bedouin one is in Israel's interest.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Bedouin may not exactly love us they are keeping the peace treaty, guarding the border from their side and keeping the anti Israel rhetoric to a medium.
A Palestinian Jordan could easily descend to civil war Palestinian vs. Bedouin, Islamist vs. nationalist resulting in a Syria situation with an ISIS-al Qaeda presence.
Interesting comment, David. Thanks.
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