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Peace in our tomb

Wednesday, 28th November 2007

The British media is reporting the Annapolis meeting with an absolutely stupefying degree of ignorance and blindness. The story pretty well agreed by one and all is that this meeting has the ingredients for a major breakthrough, because never before have the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships been so ripe for compromise and agreement; and yet it is likely to be yet another tragically missed opportunity, because both Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas are weak leaders who are unable to take their people with them.

The truth, as I have been repeatedly saying, is very different. America is putting Israel under enormous pressure to accept conditions which would entail its destruction. As a result, it is strengthening the mortal enemies not just of Israel but of the free world, against which they are currently at war. America is congratulating itself for having brought these rogue states to Annapolis because it thinks this augurs a breakthrough in their recognition of Israel and the beginning of an alliance against Iran. On the contrary, it means instead that these rogue states understand that America is offering them the means to weaken and ultimately destroy Israel — and thus in turn dramatically weaken the west. For these purposes, Iran is an irrelevance (except for the presence at Annapolis of Syria, through which its patron Iran will actually be strengthened). Such is the criminal stupidity of an America that has fallen under the catastrophic sway of the Baker-Hamilton 'new realist' doctrine, which holds that engaging with the mortal enemies of civilisation weakens them and strengthens those defending civilisation. It does not. It strengthens those enemies and weakens their designated victims.

None of this, of course, is reflected in the degraded British coverage, which is focused narrowly upon the Israel/Palestinian impasse and underpinned by a belief that Israel is the problem because of its fundamental illegiitmacy -- a belief based on profound historical ignorance. In the Telegraph Tim Butcher, for example, says inter alia:

…Israel is here to stay. It will stay, mostly, on the land won by Zionist fighters in 1948.

But Israel was not created by a Zionist land grab. What happened in 1948 was that, after the UN declared the State of Israel as an internationally recognised legal fact, five Arab states immediately invaded and tried to wipe it out. The land was therefore not ‘won by Zionist fighters’; it was the land of a legally recognised state defending itself against annihilation. The ceasefire lines at the end of that war have served as a de facto boundary of Israel ever since, but they are known in Israel as ‘Auschwitz borders’ because they are militarily indefensible — as was seen from the fact that Israel faced being wiped out in 1967 before the wholly unforseen victory of the Six-Day War. As a result of that war, which showed a shocked Israel just how vulnerable it was to being destroyed, it held onto the West Bank and Gaza until it disengaged from Gaza two years ago. Now the deal on the table at Annapolis — the old Saudi ‘peace’ plan —would force it to return to those ‘Auschwitz borders’.

In the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick points out that the legitimacy of Israel rests not on the UN vote of 1947, whose 60th anniversary falls today, but on the decision in 1922 by the precursor to the UN, the League of Nations, that a Jewish state should be set up in Palestine. (At that time, Palestine included what is now not only Israel but the West Bank and Gaza; when the Mandate to admninister Palestine and set up a Jewish national home within it was originally granted to Britain at the San Remo conference in 1920, Palesrine also consisted of what is now Jordan). This was because it was recognised that the Jews had an inalienable historic connection to that land on account of the fact that the Jews were the only people for whom it had ever been their national home. And that historic claim encompassed far more than present-day Israel -- but as a result of British perfidy, the Jews were finally left with a tiny fraction of the original promise. As Glick records:

As the League of Nations mandate made clear, Britain was supposed to preside over the territory of the Mandatory Palestine and to foster the establishment of a Jewish state which would eventually replace the British mandatory government. Yet almost from the get-go the British did just the opposite. They established the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan on the majority of the land slated for the Jewish state. Moreover, they took all possible steps to prevent the Jews from establishing a state on the remainder of the land. They blocked Jewish immigration and limited the right of Jews to purchase and settle the land to a tiny portion of the territory - which they believed would be too small to sustain a sovereign state.

It was due to the British failure to destroy Zionism and block the Jewish people from establishing their state that the UN partition plan was brought into being. That is, far from establishing a Jewish state, 181 simply accepted an already existing national entity. Despite the best efforts of Britain, the Jews had already established their state in 1947. It would have existed even if the resolution had not passed.

Now the British along with the Americans are continuing that process of throwing the Jewish people to the Arab and Islamic wolves. To get a better idea of the real implications of Annapolis, read, for example,

* David Horowitz, who reports that when he managed to get a question put to the Saudi foreign minister Saud al Faisal:

'What steps are you prepared to take right now toward normalizing ties with Israel?’

the answer was:

‘None.’

Furthermore, unlike other journalists the Israeli press were not even allowed inside the Saudi security barrier; and the refusal of the Saudis to make any contact whatsoever with the Israeli delegation at Annapolis means that the respective delegations will even use different doors to enter the meeting room. Apartheid, anyone?

* In the Washington Times, here's Frank Gaffney:

The interests of the free world in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction…

The gang assembled at the Naval Academy — Europeans, Russians, non-governmental organizations as well as Arabs — will largely insist that the Israelis allow the capital of a new Palestinian state to be established in the section of Jerusalem most holy to Jews (and Christians). Never mind that from East Jerusalem, the Israeli-controlled remainder of the city can be shelled at will with Kassam rockets or even mortars.

At Annapolis, virtually everyone will also agree that Israel must accept some arrangement affording rights to millions of Arabs who have been, as the esteemed historian Bernard Lewis pointed out in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, deliberately condemned to refugee status (in some cases, for as many as five generations) by their regional ‘brothers’ and U.N. enablers. Everyone understands this demand will translate demographically into the end of the Jewish State…

Today, Palestinians can remain in the terror business — can even officially and explicitly refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish homeland — and still enjoy the administration's political support and access to U.S. military equipment, training and vast amounts of taxpayers' funds.

* Professor Barry Rubin of the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya writes:

What most of Washington simply fails to understand is that any real demand for Palestinian or Arab concessions will be fodder for radical groups and frighten Arab regimes, pushing the latter away from support for America rather than toward it. And any Israeli concessions obtained by this process will not satisfy their demands either…

Iraq? Syria is the main sponsor of the terrorist insurgency. It has a deep interest in ensuring that no moderate, stable, pro-Western regime takes root in Syria.

The radical alliance? Syria is a leading factor in the problem, a partner with Iran for twenty years. Anyone who believes that Damascus can be split from Tehran understands nothing about the mutual benefits Syria gets from the alliance, far greater than anything the West could possibly give to its dictator President Bashar al-Asad.

Iranian nuclear? When Iran gets atomic weapons it will be a great day for Syria, ensuring its strategic protection, damaging Western influence, and helping the radical Islamist cause that Syria backs.

American credibility? It undermines years of U.S. efforts to pressure Bashar away from radical adventurism. Syria can now show that it can kill Americans soldiers in Iraq, murder democratic Lebanese politicians, foment Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip, and sponsor Hizballah’s effort to seize power in Lebanon without incurring any serious risk or cost.

On the contrary, Syria is now making demands on the United States for concessions in order to entice it to show up. This is happening at the very moment when plans for an international trial of Syrian leaders for political assassinations in Lebanon is gathering momentum, as Syria’s campaign to install a puppet government in Beirut has just been foiled.

Is the conference’s purpose, however ill-conceived, to make progress on Arab-Israeli peace and strengthen the Palestinian Authority? Having Syria present lets in the main Arab sponsor of Hamas, a state working tirelessly to throw out the current Palestinian leadership and raise the level of Arab-Israeli violence.

* Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal writes:

Yet the fact that Ms. Rice's Syria policy is now a facsimile of Speaker Pelosi's confirms Mr. Assad's long-held view that he has nothing serious to fear from this administration. So look out for more aggressive Syrian misbehavior in Lebanon, including the continued arming of Hezbollah; the paralysis of its political process; the assassination of anti-Syrian parliamentarians and journalists; the insertion of Sunni terrorist cells in Palestinian refugee camps, and the outright seizure of Lebanon's eastern hinterlands. Look out, too, for continued cooperation with North Korea on WMD projects: Despite Israel's September attack on an apparent nuclear facility, the AP reports that North Korean technicians are back in Syria, teaching their Arab pupils how to load chemical warheads on ballistic missiles. And don't hold your breath expecting Syria's good behavior on its Iraqi frontier to last much longer.

* And finally, here's David Meir-Levi on the monstrous Big Lie (perpetrated by Israeli leftists no less than their western comrades) by which Palestinian aggressors and Israeli victims have had their roles reversed:

This mendacious narrative is stalwartly bolstered by a growing host of pseudo-academics in Western universities, and by a cadre of Western journalists, who churn out books and articles that effectively rewrite history and archaeology in order to erase Israel’s connection to the Holy Land and thus deny both the Christian and Jewish historic and religious roots in the Land of Israel.

This propaganda campaign to legitimize the 60-year-old Arab war against Israel and to create the fiction of the ‘Palestinian people’ as the poor oppressed victims of imperialist colonialist Israel, illegally occupying ‘Historic Palestine,’ is a veritable war against History. It deals in lies, just the kind of lies Goebbels had in mind. And the biggest lie of all is the existence of a ‘Palestinian People.’…

This ploy was, perhaps inadvertently, revealed to the West in a public interview with Zahir Muhse’in, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, in a March 31, 1977, interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw.

‘The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.’ (Emphasis added.)

Arafat himself said the same thing, on many occasions, and asserts often in his authorized biography (Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker): ‘[T]he Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.’ But such admissions could not stem the enthusiasm with which these fictions were greeted by Western leaders. Within a few years, the USSR's invention of the fictitious narrative of Palestinian national aspirations and rights of self-determination created the facade of morality and legitimacy that the terrorists needed to curry favor with the EU, the UK, and the U.S. This same facade facilitated the Soviet implementation of its takeover, with the Arab bloc, of the UN General Assembly, and UN committees and functions outside of the Security Council.

The cause of ‘Palestine’ has always been a Trojan horse against the west — to which the west, led by a myopic America, has been and remains wilfully blind. The fact that for the past six decades Israel has been left to swing in the violent wind by an America and Britain which pay cynical lip-service to its elementary need for security while sanitising the cause of its would-be exterminators — whom it has repeatedly stroked, flattered, funded and armed instead of holding them to account for their genocidal belligerency — is the single most important reason for the perpetuation of the Middle East conflict and has inspired and strengthened terrorists across the globe.

People are blind to this because they want to believe that conflicts can be resolved without war or further bloodshed. This hope is so powerful that it drives them to swallow several dozen lies before breakfast. It means that anyone who talks about ‘peace’ is automatically fawned upon, however bloody his hands may be; he becomes by definition a middle-of-the-road moderate while anyone who cries foul at this is labelled a hardliner. Standing up for truth and justice thus becomes an extreme position, to be relegated to the margins of debate or excluded altogether. This is the equivalent of saying in the 1930s that those who warned of the threat from Hitler were hardliners as opposed to the sensible moderate people who were hailing ‘peace in our time’.

The supposed ‘hardliners’ are then treated as equivalent to the violent aggressors on the other side; so Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, for example, are said to be equally ‘hardliners’. Thus the would-be perpetrators of genocide are equated with their designated victims. Those victims are thus lined up for destruction and illegitimate aggression has its victory, courtesy of a ‘peace process’ that is much more likely to lead directly to war – a war in which the bad guys are handed an incalculable advantage by their victims.

Meanwhile, Matthew Kalman reports in the San Francisco Chronicle that fears of a Hamas coup in the West Bank have sent Palestinian Authority officials to Russia to be trained in counter-terrorism, and similar courses are being held in France, Germany and Algeria. For the first time, Mahmoud Abbas has said Hamas will have to be brought down by force:

Palestinian officials have not explained how Fatah might regain Gaza. The accepted wisdom is that Abbas cannot be seen to retake Gaza by relying on Israeli military support. But many Fatah supporters say they cannot overcome Hamas without Israeli intervention and are coming to see it as a lesser evil.

One of the Al Himaya Wal Isnad [PA] officers said there is endless speculation among his colleagues that they might be sent to secure control of the territory. ‘We talk about an Israeli invasion of Gaza all the time,’ said the officer. ‘Of course we are training for the day after Israel cuts Hamas in half and then we can go in and clean up.’

The Annapolis farce is at best a sideshow to history; at worst, it will unleash yet darker horrors still.

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Brian

November 27th, 2007 5:56pm

The conference/meeting/confab is indeed a farce. I see no coherent rationale for it ever having come into being.

The ONLY things I have seen that might have been realistic -- though in my opinion, totally inadequate -- justifications for this charade are:

i) The need to address a domestic political issue ahead of our 2008 elections. (The Bush administration is currently being roundly criticized by Democratic candidates for not "engaging" our enemies. The Democrats are trying to use Bush's failure to do so as an example of Republican rigidity in foreign affairs, an attitude which they claim is responsible for the world's turmoil. Trust them -- they'll talk the world's way to peace in our time . . ..)

ii) Ed Morressey notes that no Arab state has established an embassy in Baghdad, and writes inter alia: "The US wants the Sunni states to have a significant presence in Baghdad, for two good reasons. We want Iraq to lean towards the more moderate Arab states in the region rather than ally with the theocratic Iranians. We also want to build the confidence of Iraqi Sunnis that they can engage politically with the central government, rather than act as outsiders and eventually fall back to violence for their aims. If we can hold Annapolis, they can open some embassies." http://tinyurl.com/yuqdr4

My own opinion is that neither reason comes close to justifying the betrayal of Israel in particular and democratic principles in general.

Gordon Ross

November 27th, 2007 6:39pm

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! Sock it to 'em, Melanie. What villainous stupidity! A reminder of the comments of Israeli author, Amos Oz is appropriate in the context of all this: In the 1930s, the graffiti on European walls read: "Jews to Palestine!",but after 1948 they were changed to "Jews out of Palestine!" i.e don't be here, and don't be there, or simply (which is what the perpetrators really want), DON'T BE! In the present climate of despair that is the result of the suicidal foolishness of "the international community", it looks as though, for the Israelis, it has to be a case of: "In Dixie land I'll make my stand to live or die in Dixie!".

Mladen Andrijasevic

November 27th, 2007 7:23pm

Let’s introduce a unit of diplomatic and political blunder . In October 2000 Madeline Albright ran after Arafat in the US Embassy in Paris trying to stop him from walking out of the peace talks . This unit I define as 1 Albright. For years we would have expected that any succeeding Secretary of State would have made blunders measured between 0 and 1 Albright, but recently Condi Rice has surpasses Albright and so the numbers are much greater than 1 . If fact, if this trend continues we will soon have to change the scale to a logarithmic one .

Mickmac

November 27th, 2007 7:50pm

Words don't properly convey my disgust at Pres Bush's hypocrisy and stupidity at Annapolis. America deserves all she gets for this betrayal of both Israel and the western world. We should all dump US Dollars and eliminate all international trading in US dollars forthwith. Then Americans can know what it means to live within their means and butt out of the rest of the world.

Gareth

November 27th, 2007 7:56pm

Who knows, perhaps George Bush understands all this and is acting in the hope that arab intransigence will be laid bare for all to see. That was the end result of the Oslo process, and little has changed in the meantime.

Maurice

November 27th, 2007 10:06pm

Gareth -- Little has changed since Oslo? Oslo established the PLO within the land of Israel and given it power there. It has used that5 power to murder about 1000 Israelis, wound and cripple and bereaqve thousands more, and forced Israelis to live with the ever present danger of terrorist attacks. Oslo gave the PLO power to drive out most of the Christians in PLO-land, and oppress the rest. It gave the PLO power to impose corruption, poverty and misery on the Arabs placed under its rule. Oslo enabled the PLO to raise a generation of children indoctrinated and brainwashed into believing that their highest aspiration should be to be "martyrs" by killing Jews. These are a few of the consequences of Oslo. The consequences of carrying this kind of folly any further will be even more dire.

Nancy Baumgartner

November 27th, 2007 11:51pm

Decades of moral relativism, multiculturlism, "tolerance", and "diversity" have trashed American education,social services, corrections/law enforcement, and now international policy. We have become a nation that accommodates outright criminal behaviors while mutualizing the "root causes" so that existing national and international problems are inadvertantly exascerbated. The Israelis must defend themselves with all might at their disposal and we Americans ought to be on the forefront of their defense. Unfortunately, now America may go from bad leadership (Bush) to worse leadership(Clinton).

Brian

November 27th, 2007 11:57pm

Gareth -- How much more clearly is it possible to see Arab intransigence?

I mean, if you couldn't see it clearly before this conference, you won't be able to see it after, even with an eyeball and brain transplant.

field

November 28th, 2007 1:02am

Annapolis seems to have got off to better start than one might have feared. It seems to be grounded in realism. Confidence building is seen as the prerequisite. Jerusalem is on the agenda. The refugee issue will be addressed.

BJ

November 28th, 2007 1:14am

"An absolutely stupefying degree of ignorance and blindness" It would be difficult to think of a better description of Melanie's latest blog entry. Are there any other nations it would be convenient to imagine don't exist?

Elena

November 28th, 2007 1:29am

Another brilliant article, thank you Melanie for being an honest reporter in the sea of anti–Semitic and anti-Western media and stand strong and tall in such difficult times.

Kattey

November 28th, 2007 3:24am

Why does the West tolerate the Palestinian brand of ignorance? that no matter what efforts are made, the Palestinians never "get it". They deny Israel's ancient presence and creation in the Holy Land. They even deny Allah's message, Quran, Chapter 13, 100-104 which tells them Israel is the land of the Jews. They insert themselves into prior history, they take credit for the work of the Jews. Since the Jews made Israel bloom the Muslims want it back more than ever, but never have been able to create a civilization to successfully manage a state. Isn't there a law against pretend ignorance? Don't give up Jerusalem, no right of return (Whoever came up with this cocamamie demand lives in a fairy tale.) What the Jews have conceded, and the money the world has donated to these people do no good. How long would the Holy Land thrive under their rule? Besides, they have their own holy land in Arabia.

John C

November 28th, 2007 8:41am

Annapolis is an irrelevant sideshow. As ever, not a word from Phillips on the real news story of the week - i.e. the funding crisis surrounding Gordon Brown. How about it Mel, give us something other than the same old same old for once? Not everybody is as obsessed with Middle East politics as you appear to be. Broaden your horizons a bit, I beg you.

Liz A. Bowen

November 28th, 2007 10:19am

John C: By a "real news story" do you mean the pap that is dished up for you by the BBC? Yes, Gordon Brown and the rump of Blair's sleaze ridden Scottish Raj has gone terminal but is that really news to you? Even the politically craven BBC has reported, deferentially, on that one. If the result of Annapolis is that Israel is not only weakened AND abandoned but confronted with a nuclear armed islamic theocracy sworn to destroy it then how long do you think that would remain irrelevant to you?

N. Simon

November 28th, 2007 10:36am

By inviting terrorists, their supporters and their financiers to Annapolis, the US administration has now legitimised them, acknowledged them and given them recognition.

How does this fit in with Bush's so-called "war on terror"? It doesn't. He may as well negotiate with Al Qaeda, and if enough Muslims in the USA want their own state with half of Washington DC as their capital, he'd be a hypocrite if he didn't honour their request.

Israel is the sacrificial lamb that has so far been the buffer zone between radical Islam and the west. When the buffer is incapacitated or removed, we will see far more terror attacks in the Europe and America. All because Bush has legitimised and given credibility to these people.

Ian

November 28th, 2007 11:22am

To those who think that there is a Palestinain nation, I ask one question, "Where can I find a history of this Palestinian nation?" Other 'New' nations like Croatia or the putative Kurdistan can show you there history. Israel, from Roman times until the end of the British Mandate has always been part of somebody else's state. The Romans kicked most, but not all, of the Jews out. They renamed it Palestne after the Philistines. This latter group were fronm the same ethnic grouping as the Romans, Greeks and Trojans. After successive occupations, Jews and various other groupings including some Arabs remained in the Land. As detailed in Melanie's column, it was eventually returned to its rightful owners who needed a home after the horrors of WW2. The Arabs have then been engaged in propaganda and war to take it off them. The so-called Palestinain Arab is a pawn in that war. These people could have been resettled in any of the Arab lands with Arab oil money as well as money and land stolen from Jews expelled from Arab lands. Instead a nation without history has been created 'ex nihilo' and set about destroying the archaeological evidence of Israel's ownership and denying the written history thereof. Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state. Why do they want another? In the end the Arabs will lose but the consequences will be fearful and very bloody for us all.

korova

November 28th, 2007 12:30pm

"The supposed ‘hardliners’ are then treated as equivalent to the violent aggressors on the other side; so Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, for example, are said to be equally ‘hardliners’." This would be the same Benjamin Netanyahu who last year celebrated the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun? So you cannot tell the difference between a 'terrorist organisation' and a man that celebrates a terrorist act? A terrorist act, incidentally, that resulted in the deaths of 28 Britons. Seems a pretty obvious equivalence to me.

John C

November 28th, 2007 1:10pm

To Ms Bowen: have you ever wondered why Israel is surrounded by nations that are desperately scrambling to obtain nuclear weapons? But to be honest, what happens in Israel is of little consquence to me, just as it is of little consequence to the vast majority of the British population. What *is* of consequence to me is weak government and the parlous state of the economy. These are the true, and important, issues of the day, not the endless (and futile) squabbling over a few hundred square miles of desert in the Middle East.

Stuart

November 28th, 2007 1:52pm

Hang on! Peace is simple. Palestinians stop attacking Israel and stop incitement (Clause One of The Rodamap) Israel stops responding and so there is no conflict. Palestinians declare themselves a State. Everyone recognises it. We all go Home! Placing all sorts of pre-conditions in the way is like saying "Unless you give us what we want then we will keep attacking you". Blackmail!

Stuart

November 28th, 2007 2:00pm

John C. You said "To Ms Bowen: have you ever wondered why Israel is surrounded by nations that are desperately scrambling to obtain nuclear weapons?" Yes, to create a nuclear threat against Israel. (Are you one of these people who asks why people are always nasty to Jews (hence there must be something in it)?) "But to be honest, what happens in Israel is of little consquence to me, just as it is of little consequence to the vast majority of the British population." That will be until someone drops a nuke on Israel and Israel retaliates and starts WW3. I will guarantee that if someone seriously threatens Israel with a nuke then Israel would consider pre-emption to try and prevent a full-scale war. But that is of little concern to you.

Lujack Skylark

November 28th, 2007 2:01pm

Bush's job is to lower the USA defenses. He gets an A+. There is no southern USA border. Bush's job is to lower Israel's defenses. He gets an A+. Bush doesn't want Israelites to live in Samaria, Judea or east Jerusalem. USA troops are in Iraq to kill terrorists, yet Bush now kisses terrorists who want to kill Jews.

Stuart

November 28th, 2007 4:03pm

The so-called "Israeli Lobby" seems to pale into significance compared to the "Saudi Lobby". They whip up Anti-semitic hate, refuse to shake hands with Israelis, run an Apartheid Regime based on fear and yet never get a single sanction. They refuse to stand to scrutiny over dodgy arms deals. Israel, the target of Saudi/Arab hate seems to be the sacrifice. Why? What stranglehold do the Saudis have over us? Shouldn't Guardianistas be protesting about "The Saudi Lobby"?

korova

November 28th, 2007 4:07pm

"Shouldn't Guardianistas be protesting about "The Saudi Lobby"?" Stuart - we have been lobbying against the Saudis for years. Strangely the right seem to be more than willing to do business with them. Wonder why that might be? Oil perhaps??

Thom

November 28th, 2007 4:21pm

Palestine itself did exist; it is the name granted to Israel by the Roman Empire after it quelled the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE; it was originally an insult to ancient jews living there as Palestine was from the greek/latin for of the term philistine to describe a mortal enemy of the jews; one who was constantly invading Israel in its early history, before its eventual eradication as a people. More accurately the Islamic colonisation of Palestine occured after the crusades in 638 CE - Even during this a sizeable Jewish populace that had survived the diaspora has remained. It is a myth that is all too eaten up by the west that Palestine is a concept used to describe an indigenous arab population; it is a mockery that such a thing continues to provide the arab peoples living in Israel with this legitimacy and that this piece of factual ancient history is ignored so readily. Well done Mel for pointing out the extreme stupidity of the powers in the US and the UK. It is no coincidence that many of the nations that oppose Israel are sick and undergoing great internal turmoil when looked at from the view point of Genesis 12:3-4.

Anthony Posner

November 28th, 2007 6:17pm

Even if the conflict could hypothetically be resolved, it cannot be resolved when the Palestinian leadership is divided ( Hamas/ Fatah)
Until The Palestinians and their leaders have a real consensus about the future of Gaza and the West Bank, the current negotiations will go nowhere. It is a waste of everybodys time.
Even if an agreement is reached it will not bring peace.

Phillip Reece

November 28th, 2007 6:35pm

John C, I suppose the fate of Czechoslovakia didn't bother your grandfather.

BJ

November 28th, 2007 11:59pm

Anyone who knows anything about the Palestinians would be able to tell you about their literary culture, national dress, dialect of Arabic and distinctive physical features. Nobody has answered my question about what other national groups believe they exist but in fact don't?

Bill M, Phila

November 29th, 2007 2:01am

MP: To follow your line, "As a result, it is strengthening the mortal enemies not just of Israel but of the free world, against which they are currently at war." Let's then not forget the $20 billion arms deal pending with Saudi Arabia which Bush is trying to push through before winter recess.

Harvey

November 29th, 2007 3:26pm

Perhaps someone can tell me why Israel is the only country in the Middle East allowed to own nukes? Can't be good for the balance of power in the region, can it?

Phillip Reece

November 29th, 2007 5:28pm

Harvey, Sole Israeli possesion of nuclear weapons IS good for the balance of power in the region, only a myopic relativist fool would think otherwise.

korova

November 29th, 2007 8:37pm

Phillip Reece - Do you know the meaning of the word 'balance'?? Given that you read this blog, I suggest illiteracy is the least of your many problems.

N. Simon

November 29th, 2007 9:49pm

BJ says about the Palesitnians: "...their literary culture, national dress, dialect of Arabic..." Considering that Gaza was part of Egypt and W. Bank was part of Jordan, and the majority of the Palestinians have mixed heritage, of course they'll have dialects from as far away as Iraq, Saudi, Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc. As for literary achievements... what historical literary achievements are the Palestinian Arabs known for? Distinct physical features? Meaning they don't fit in with the features of any other Arab state??? Give me a break! And as for national dress? They didn't have one, because the only people known as Palestinians before 1967 were the Jews. And Palestine was an area, but never a country.

BJ

November 30th, 2007 12:15am

The reality is that Palestinians speak Arabic with a Palestinian accent. Even today there are children in the refugee camps speaking with accents from towns their families had to leave in 1948. There is a Palestinian culture of poetry and prose. Their women have a national dress. They are also distinquished by their height, the darkness of their skins in some cases and facial features. There are many nations in the world which have never or rarely been a "country" or a state. The point is that in common with other colonial peoples the Palestinians have a desire for national self determination. Inconvenient to some but a fact nonetheless.

Phillip Reece

November 30th, 2007 4:43pm

So Korova, You think Iranian nukes are a good thing?, as for the ridiculous 'balance' argument i would suggest that 'balance' between a parliamentary democracy and a holocaust denying, terrorist supporting, woman oppressing theocratic despotism is in fact an imbalance of the worst kind, they are not equivalent in any way shape or form so why should they be militarily equivalent?.

Allan Sharp

December 3rd, 2007 5:57pm

This Annapolis conference definitely has the stench of a modern-day 'Munich', except that Benes (Olmert) will be feted as a hero particularly if his concessions lead to the dismemberment of Israel. That must make G W Bush today's Chamberlain.