The Myth of Palestine

...Perspectives THE MYTH OF PALESTINE BY MOSHE DECTER President Reagan's recent call for the Palestinian Arabs to be granted "something in the nature of a homeland" is a reflection of the mythology that today pervades much Western thinking about the Arab-Jewish conflict—and hinders its resolution To reason on the basis of this growing body of myths is to approach a historical problem a historically, assuring confusion Indeed, not until all the distortions and deceptions are swept aside can there be any hope of progress toward peace in the Middle East through prudent, pragmatic negotiations Consider the popular notion that a place called Palestine was the ancestral home of the Arabs who now live on the West Bank of the Jordan River The truth is that neither in fact nor according to the statutes of international law has Palestine ever been a country, let alone an Arab country The appellation derives from the Biblical name the Israelites gave the land of the Philistines, descendants of the Phoenicians who lived on the Mediterranean coast While that people disappeared early on from the stage of history, the term passed into Greek and Roman usage Thus after the Romans crushed the Jews' struggle for independence in 135 of the Common Era, the Emperor Hadrian tried to rename the kingdoms of Israel and Judah "Syria Palaestina" (In his passion to eradicate the Jewish national identity, he also attempted to substitute the title "Aelina Capitolina" for Jerusalem ) Further, even the various Moslem caliphs who ruled over Palestine between 640-1099 did not consider it a distinct entity Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Iraq, Arabia, and Yemen were the recognized major geographic subdivisions in the Islamic Empire, each one possessing a definite social, cultural, economic, historical, and political character Palestine—rendered in this period actually as "Filastin"—was treated as a part of Syria The word itself dropped out of sight for many centuries following the arrival of the Crusaders at the close of the 11th century The Europeans called their new country "The Holy Land" or the "Kingdom of Jerusalem" (or, as can be ascertained by looking at maps from medieval times onward, the "Land of the Jews") When the Arabs regained ascendancy in 1187, they divided the area into subdistricts under Syrian rule These were known by the names of their capital towns Gaza, Lydda, Jerusalem, Ramleh, Hebron, Nablus, etc The Ottoman Turks, who toppled the Arabs in 1516-17, consolidated the organization of the region somewhat, designating two principal administrative centers One was Beirut, with the townships under its control including Sidon, Safed and Acre The other was Damascus, encompassing such subdivisions as Jaffa, Gaza, Nablus, and Jerusalem As a whole, the territory was known as "Southern Syria " It was only after the British came upon the scene in 1918 that the name Palestine was resurrected But the Arabs never held exclusive dominion over the whole area so designated by Whitehall, they never created a self-contained national unit or any form of separate political or social identity there, they were not autonomous at any time, in short, a Palestinian Arab nation never existed It is far from clear, moreover, that the present Arab population in Israel and the West Bank is at all indigenous Prior to the British assumption of the League of Nations mandate over the territory in 1921, the wretchedness and poverty of life in Palestine had been driving the Arabs away in droves The trend was reversed, ironically enough, by the subsequent positive effects of extensive Jewish settlement and development As Jewish agricultural, industrial, technological, and commercial enterprises thrived—despite all the restrictions imposed by the British authorities, as well as a surrounding environment of great hardship and hostility—the country's economic absorptive capacity rapidly increased Starting in 1922, poor Arabs streamed in from drought-stricken Syria, from the Sinai, from Iraq, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt The benefits the migrants reaped in terms of health care, income, housing, education, literacy, trade union protection, and political and human rights vastly exceeded the standards of any Arab state Not surprisingly, therefore, between the two World Wars, the Arab population of Palestine rose by 75 per cent—apart from natural increase and from the decline in infant mortality that followed the Jews' revolutionary introduction of modern medical care The growth rate for the same period in Egypt, that most fecund of Arab states, was 25 per cent By 1948, there were fully twice as many Arabs in Palestine as there had been in 1917 More telling still, between 1922-47 the expansion registered in Palestinian areas where there was no Jewish development was relatively small (though even here it significantly outstripped the figures for Arab countries) 42 per cent in Nablus, 40 per cent in Jenin, 32 per cent in Bethlehem In Jewish cities, the Arab communities expanded by leaps and bounds during those years 90 per cent in Jerusalem, 134 per cent in Jaffa, and 216 per cent in Haifa It is a fair assumption, too, that British statistics of the time are an underestimation, since many Arabs are known to have crossed the borders without going through immigration formalities The Palestinians' roots in their "native soil," then, are far more shallow than is commonly understood—and their debt to Zionism much greater The region's long record of invasion, redivision, emigration, and immigration also undermines the today widely accepted assertion that the Palestinian Arabs are a "people " A people is a body of persons usually associated with a particular territory whose sense of kinship has been molded by a common ethnic origin, history, culture, language, and tradition—all of which distinctively differ from those of surrounding peoples As late as the end of World War I, two years after the signing of the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs of Palestine in no way fit this definition They thought of themselves as Syrians, or as dwellers of towns and villages in southern Syria The other Arabs and the rest of the world did not conceive of them as a separate people either, nor was "Palestine" viewed as their "homeland " What is more, Palestine was always ethnically heterogeneous Although with the spreading of the Islamic Empire Arabic was made the dominant language and Islam the predominant religion, the population was a shifting one When the Crusaders came after 460 years of Arab and non-Arab Moslem rule, they found a dozen races represented among the Holy Land's inhabitants For centuries thereafter, the country was almost continuously devastated, and the people perpetually displaced, by tribal warfare, civil strife and Bedouin depredations In the 19th century, masses of Egyptians and Syrians moved into, out of and through the area Until a few decades ago, in other words, no Palestinian national consciousness emerged because the territory lacked a unique Arab historical culture, and because many, if not most, of the residents lived there only briefly The weak attachment of the people to the place was demonstrated during the Israeli War of Independence, when half a million Arabs swiftly abandoned their homes at the behest of their invading brothers A deeply rooted peasantry does not easily give up its land As for the "Palestinian nationalism' that is currently much heralded, it developed strictly in reaction to the presence of an independent, equal, sovereign Jewish community—something all Arabs, except perhaps the Egyptians, persist in regarding as an unacceptable alien excrescence in their midst This was confirmed with stunning candor by the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organizations military operations department, Zuhair Muhsin, who told the Dutch newspaper Trouw on March 3, 1977 there are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese We are one people Only for political reasons do we carefully underline our Palestinian identity For it is of national interest for the Arabs to encourage the existence of the Palestinians against Zionism Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian entity is there only for tactical reasons The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity " Muhsin has succinctly expressed the basic strategic doctrine of eradicating the Jewish State And he has clearly underscored the tactic of exploiting a synthetic Palestinian national identity toward that end Most important at the moment, though, may be another myth that has come to dominate the Western consciousness-including that of many Jews—and form the framework of current policy This holds that the West Bank once rightfully belonged to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, that it has been "occupied" by Israel since the 1967 War, and that as the natural homeland for the Palestinian Arabs it must be liberated Yet again history paints a very different picture After World War I, two claimants arose to the lands of the fallen Ottoman Empire that the victorious European powers were about to parcel among themselves—the Arab nation and the Jewish people Both were quickly recognized as legitimate by the arbiters of international law, on the basis of fundamental considerations of politics, geography, demography, culture and historical justice The Arab claim was satisfied with the creation of a dozen Arab states, and eight more following World War II The Jews, meanwhile, in recognition of their millennial bond to the Land of Israel, were to have their claim satisfied in Palestine In 1919, when the League of Nations formally approved the distribution of lands, Palestine was universally understood to encompass what is now Israel, Jordan and the West Bank So Jewish and Arab spheres were formally established in the region simultaneously, and the usual story of Jewish infringement on an already vested and exclusive Arab domain is hardly the reality It should also be noted that the Arabs' territorial allocation was more than 100 times greater in area and hundreds of times richer in natural resources than the Palestine designated for the Jewish National Home Nonetheless, in 1922 a drastic encroachment was made on the Jewish land The entire area east of the Jordan River (35,468 out of 46,339 square miles) was arbitrarily removed by the British from the terms of the League's mandate in order to establish the Emirate (later the Kingdom) of Trans-Jordan—and, as was explicitly stated, to provide a place for Palestinian Arabs from the west side of the river Of course, London had its own imperial reasons for the step In the campaign against the Ottoman Turks, who were allied with the Germans during the War, the British had enlisted the aid of the Hashemite clan, then headed by Hussein ibn All, the great grandfather of the present King of Jordan The Hashemites had for centuries been the sherifs (princely guardians) of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and in 1916 they tried to arouse Arabia against its Turkish masters by proclaiming an independent kingdom in the Hejaz, the northwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula where the sacred towns are located Their action was not very effective The romantic tales of T E Lawrence notwithstanding, the overwhelming share of the struggle against the Constantinople regime was left to the British Army, the Arabs of the Ottoman Empire barely fought for their independence All the same, when in the aftermath of the conflict the British were designing to secure as many client states as possible in the new Middle East, they installed Sherif Hussein's son Faisal on the throne of Syria (although under pressure from the equally designing French, Faisal had to be transferred to Iraq) Next, they made his brother, Abdullah, Emir of Trans-Jordan As it turned out, the Hashemites were fortunate to be adopted by the British For in 1924 they were driven out of their own true home by the rampaging armies of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, a bold interloper In 1932, the Hejaz was formally joined to the other territories ibn Saud had earlier conquered in the peninsula to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia But the significant fact remains that Hashemite rule itself in what is now known as the Kingdom of Jordan results from an imperialist imposition In any case, Jordan never had any rights on the West Bank The United Nations m 1947 voted for the establishment of Jewish and Arab states in a still further truncated Palestine The Arabs aborted the vote under international law by rejecting the partition plan and instead launching an all-out war against Israel During this struggle in 1948 Jordan expanded westward It was ousted from the captured lands in the course of Israel's 1967 defensive war against another round of Arab aggression Given these circumstances, in no legal sense can Judea and Samaria be considered occupied Jordanian territory Several very basic questions come to mind in reviewing this history For example, is something that happened in 1920, '22, '32, or '48 of greater legal and moral standing than something that happened in 1967' More essentially, is the sheer act of conquest enough to validate sovereignty7 If yes, then it must do so in all instances everywhere Otherwise the rule becomes a travesty (as indeed it is in most of the world's forums) And, if yes, then Israel is the most recent and therefore the most legitimate conqueror of Judea and Samaria Or is a people's presence and right to a land validated, rather, by religious, cultural, traditional and national associations maintained uninterruptedly since the early stages of recorded history7 The descendants of the European adventurers who a few short centuries ago came as strangers to ruthlessly overtake the continents we refer to today as North and South America have moral and intellectual obligation to confront such questions honestly Moshe Decter, a former managing editor of the NL, is currently a freelance writer and editor m Washington...