Who Are the Palestinians?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary, Alberta] Jewish Free Press

 

In the current crisis over the status of Jerusalem, following President Donald Trump’s recognition of the city as Israel’s capital, some background is in order.

Before the First World War, “Palestine” had been a non-existent country of uncertain size, never sovereign and for centuries part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. 

After the Versailles peace settlement, it acquired a formal designation and boundaries, when in 1922 it was officially created by the League of Nations. Known as the Palestine Mandate, it came under British jurisdiction. 

In addition to direct British rule in western Palestine, which the 1917 Balfour Declaration had earmarked as the venue for a national home for the Jewish People, the Mandate also included eastern Palestine. There, in 1921, the British acknowledged the Hashemite Prince Abdullah ibn Hussein as its governor.

So, while the original Palestine Mandate was supposed to include all of what is today Jordan, in 1921 the British lopped off everything east of the Jordan River and created the puppet state of Transjordan.

Only in 1946 was it formally separated from the Mandate and declared an independent state, as the British understood that their rule over Palestine west of the Jordan was coming to a close.

It’s important to emphasize that this much smaller Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, existed for two years -- from 1946 (the birth of Transjordan) until 1948 (the birth of Israel).  

Before 1946, as a border the Jordan River had little meaning for the self-identification of most of the Arabs living on either bank. The overwhelming majority did not self-identify as Palestinian, but more often as Syrian or part of the greater Arab nation.

Indeed, the word Palestinian until 1948 was more closely associated with Jews and Zionism than with the Arabs in the area. For example, the Jerusalem Post newspaper was called the Palestine Post. The Palestine Symphony consisted entirely of Jewish musicians. 

On the other hand, the Arabs in the Mandate who fought against Jewish independence were united under the name Arab Higher Committee, which had been established in 1936.

The UN-backed partition plan of 1947 proposed partitioning western Palestine between a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State.” These two were designed as ethnic jurisdictions.

But the Arabs in Palestine, joined by the neighbouring Arab states, refused to accept the partition. And once the Jews in Palestine declared independence in 1948, war ensued.

In the conflict that followed, the British-led Arab Legion captured all of what we now call the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem and east Jerusalem. (Egypt retained what became known as the Gaza Strip.)

The country, now renamed Jordan, in effect became a Palestinian Arab-majority state run by Bedouin tribes under Hashemite rule. No Palestinian state was created in the old Mandate.  

Between 1949 and 1967, in effect a version of the “two-state” solution – Arab rule (though not Palestinian) in the West Bank and Gaza, alongside Israel -- was in effect. 

Yet the Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, three years prior to the Israeli occupation of those territories. Obviously, they were planning to “liberate” Israel proper.

The Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza could have had a state after 1949. Why didn

’t they cast off Egyptian and Jordanian administration and create one, with east Jerusalem as their capital? 

Indeed, when Jordan’s Arab Legion conquered the Old City, its Jewish Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods, it forced out every Jew. Before that, Jews were a large and integral part of what is now called East Jerusalem, and at times were the majority population.

So the Palestinians didn’t even need to evict Jews from the city -- yet hey allowed Jordan to govern Arab-held Jerusalem.

Doesn't it say something that they made no real effort to found a state? Wasn’t Jordan’s annexation – recognized by only three countries, Great Britain, Iraq, and Pakistan -- also an occupation? Is it because the Palestinians were content to live under Muslim Arab rule?

Instead, their focus was bent on destroying Israel because they considered the Jewish state -- remember, in its pre-1967 boundaries -- illegitimate. Openly irredentist groups like Hamas still make that explicit.

Nonetheless, every people has the right to self-definition as well as self-determination, and in any final settlement, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs would have to acknowledge each other as distinct and legitimate nationalities, were peace ever to come to this troubled land. 

It will require majority Palestinian areas to become sovereign, while concurrently on their part acknowledging the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel in its ancient homeland. 

This will doubtless require border adjustments of various sorts, perhaps even involving Jordan, and determining the thorny issue of the final status of Jerusalem. A viable Palestinian state would have to be larger than its present configuration.

Such matters can only be dealt with once a “grand bargain” between the two entities takes place at a peace conference. Otherwise, unfortunately, only one state will survive — either Israel or an Arab Palestine.