The Arik Network: ANN
20 facts about
the conflict in the Middle-East. Posted: 28/5/2002
The world's attention has been focused on the Middle
East.
We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and
destruction.
Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if
we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of
the matter -- facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were
learned.
Below are twenty facts that we think are useful in
understanding the current situation, how we arrived here, and how
we might eventually arrive at a solution.
1. When the United Nations proposed the establishment
of two states in the region -- one Jewish, one Arab -- the Jews
accepted the proposal and declared their independence in 1948. The
Jewish state constituted only 1/6 of one percent of what was known
as "the Arab world." The Arab states, however, rejected the UN plan
and since then have waged war against Israel repeatedly, both all-out
wars and wars of terrorism and attrition. In 1948, five Arab armies
invaded Israel in an effort to eradicate it. Jamal Husseini of the
Arab Higher Committee spoke for many in vowing to soak "the soil
of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood."
2. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was
founded in 1964 -- three years before Israel controlled the West
Bank and Gaza. The PLO's declared purpose was to eliminate the State
of Israel by means of armed struggle. To this day, the website of
Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) claims that the entirety
of Israel is "occupied" territory. It is impossible to square this
with the PLO and PA assertions to Western audiences that the root
of the conflict is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
3. The West Bank and Gaza (controlled by Jordan and
Egypt from 1948 to 1967) came under Israeli control during the Six
Day War of 1967 that started when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran
and Arab armies amassed on Israel's borders to invade and liquidate
the state. It is important to note that during their 19-year rule,
neither Jordan nor Egypt had made any effort to establish a Palestinian
state on those lands. Just before the Arab nations launched their
war of aggression against the State of Israel in 1967, Syrian Defense
Minister (later President) Hafez Assad stated, "Our forces are now
entirely ready… to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to
explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland… the time has
come to enter into a battle of annihilation." On the brink of the1967
war, Egyptian President Gamal Nassar declared, "Our basic objective
will be the destruction of Israel."
4. Because of their animus against Jews, many leaders
of the Palestinian cause have long supported our enemies. The Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem allied himself with Adolf Hitler during WWII.
Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO and president of the PA, has
repeatedly targeted and killed Americans. In 1973, Arafat ordered
the execution of Cleo Noel, the American ambassador to the Sudan.
Arafat was very closely aligned with the Soviet Union and other
enemies of the United States throughout the Cold War. In 1991, during
the Gulf War, Arafat aligned himself with Saddam Hussein, whom he
praised as "the defender of the Arab nation, of Muslims, and of
free men everywhere."
5. Israel has, in fact, returned most of the land
that it captured during the 1967 war and right after that war offered
to return all of it in exchange for peace and normal relations;
the offer was rejected. As a result of the 1978 Camp David accords
-- in which Egypt recognized the right of Israel to exist and normal
relations were established between the two countries -- Israel returned
the Sinai desert, a territory three times the size of Israel and
91 percent of the territory Israel took control of in the 1967 war.
6. In 2000, as part of negotiations for a comprehensive
and durable peace, Israel offered to turn over all but the smallest
portion of the remaining territories to Yasser Arafat. But Israel
was rebuffed when Arafat walked out of Camp David and launched the
current Intifada.
7. Yasser Arafat has never been less than clear about
his goals -- at least not in Arabic. On the very day that he signed
the Oslo accords in 1993 -- in which he promised to renounce terrorism
and recognize Israel, he addressed the Palestinian people on Jordanian
television and declared that he had taken the first step "in the
1974 plan." This was a thinly veiled reference to the "phased plan,"
according to which any territorial gain was acceptable as a means
toward the ultimate goal of Israel's destruction.
8. The recently deceased Faisal al-Husseini, a leading
Palestinian spokesman, made the same point in 2001 when he declared
that the West Bank and Gaza represented only "22 percent of Palestine"
and that the Oslo process was a "Trojan Horse." He explained, "When
we are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at
the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as 'temporary' procedures,
or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and
cheating them." The goal, he continued, was "the liberation of Palestine
from the river to the sea," i.e., the Jordan River to the Mediterranean
Sea -- all of Israel.
9. To this day, the Fatah wing of the PLO (the"moderate"
wing that was founded and is controlled by Arafat himself) has as
its official emblem the entire state of Israel covered by two rifles
and a hand grenade -- another fact that belies the claim that Arafat
desires nothing more than the West Bank and Gaza.
10. While criticism of Israel is not necessarily the
same as "anti-Semitism," it must be remembered that the Middle East
press is, in fact, rife with anti-Semitism. More than fifteen years
ago the eminent scholar Bernard Lewis could point out that "The
demonization of Jews [in Arabic literature] goes further than it
had ever done in Western literature, with the exception of Germany
during the period of Nazi rule." Since then, and through all the
years of the "peace process," things have become much worse. Depictions
of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany,
and medieval blood libels -- including claims that Jews use Christian
and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods have become prominent
and routine. One example is a sermon broadcast on PA television
where Sheik Ahmad Halabaya stated, "They [the Jews] must be butchered
and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will
torture them at your hands.' Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter
where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever
you meet them, kill them."
11. Over three-quarters of Palestinians approve of
suicide bombings -- an appalling statistic but in light of the above
facts, an unsurprising one. The State of Israel
12. There are 21 Arab countries in the Middle East
and only one Jewish state: Israel, which is also the only democracy
in the region.
13. Israel is the only country in the region that
permits citizens of all faiths to worship freely and openly. Twenty
percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish.
14. While Jews are not permitted to live in many Arab
countries, Arabs are granted full citizenship and have the right
to vote in Israel. Arabs are also free to become members of the
Israeli parliament (the Knesset). In fact, several Arabs have been
democratically elected to the Knesset and have been serving there
for years. Arabs living in Israel have more rights and are freer
than most Arabs living in Arab countries.
15. Israel is smaller than the state of New Hampshire
and is surrounded by nations hostile to her existence. Some peace
proposals including the recent Saudi proposal demand withdrawal
from the entire West Bank, which would leave Israel 9 miles wide
at its most vulnerable point.
16. The oft-cited UN Resolution 242 (passed in the
wake of the 1967 war) does not, in fact, require a complete withdrawal
from the West Bank. As legal scholar Eugene Rostow put it, "Resolution
242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between
1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace
and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967
until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved.
When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed
forces 'from territories' it occupied during the Six-Day War --
not from 'the' territories nor from 'all' the territories, but from
some of the territories."
17. Israel has, of course, conceded that the Palestinians
have legitimate claims to the disputed territories and is willing
to engage in negotiations on the matter. As noted above, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered almost all of the territories
to Arafat at Camp David in 2000.
18. Despite claims that the Israeli settlements in
the West Bank are the obstacle to peace, Jews lived there for centuries
before being massacred or driven out by invading Arab armies in
1948-49. And contrary to common misperceptions, Israeli settlements
-- which constitute less than two percent of the territories --
almost never displace Palestinians.
19. The area of the West Bank includes some of the
most important sites in Jewish history, among them Hebron, Bethlehem,
and Jericho. East Jerusalem, often cited as an "Arab city" or "occupied
territory," is the site of Judaism's holiest monument. While under
Arab rule (1948-67), this area was entirely closed to Jews. Since
Israel took control, it has been open to people of all faiths.
20. Finally, let us consider the demand that certain
territories in the Muslim world must be off-limits to Jews. This
demand is of a piece with Hitler's proclamation that German land
had to be "Judenrein" (empty of Jews). Arabs can live freely throughout
Israel, and as full citizens. Why should Jews be forbidden to live
or to own land in an area like the West Bank simply because the
majority of people is Arab?
In sum, a fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle
East will reveal that one nation stands far above the others in
its commitment to human rights and democracy as well as in its commitment
to peace and mutual security. That nation is Israel.
The state of Israel and America will win the war against
terror.
Note: this text was not written by me.
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