Reply #52: This Is Pretty Thin Gruel, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Perhaps the best point to begin with is your contention regarding Jordan. The claim that "In the original partition, Jordan was supposed to be 'Palestine'" is false. England created Jordan, originally as the Emirate of Trans-Jordan, to provide itself a means of maintaining order among Bedouin tribes who were at the time prone to raids into Syria under pretext of resisting the French quashing of the Arab Kingdom at Damascus the English had briefly installed Feisal in. Since these originated in land nominally under English control, but actually un-garrisoned, and relations between England and France were growing quite tense in the Middle East for a variety of reasons we need not explore here at length just now, it was of great importance to England to do something to reduce this particular irritant, and the establishment of an Arab government under Feisal's brother Adbullah was the means chosen. Abdullah was not eager to take the job, and did not like the boundaries, as they did not include Jerusalem and cut him off completely from the Mediterranean. Among the mollifications offered him was an assurance no part of the "Jewish national home" envisioned in the Balfour Declaration would involve his territory. At no time was it stated by the English authorities the entire territory west of the river would become thus that "national home". Nor did the Balfour declaration have the slightest legal standing at that point, being merely a declaration of the policy of an English government currently in office. It acquired legal standing only by its incorporation in the Palestine Mandate granted England by the League of Nations, which occured after the creation of Trans-Jordan. The incorporation of the Balfour language in the Mandate was conditioned by an English 'White Paper', the gist of which was summed up at the time by Churchill as indicating that anyone who imagined that in consequence of the direction to create a Jewish national home in Palestine it was to become as Jewish as Manchester was English was very much mistaken.

There was only ever one partition of the Palestine Mandatory Territory, and that was the one directed by the United Nations in 1947 on the occassion of the Mandate's dissolution. This cleaved the area into a Jewish Zone and an Arab Zone, with Jerusalem set aside as an International City, and envisioned the establishment of two seperate states, with certain interlockings regarding customs, posts, and the like. Zionist leadership formally accepted the Partition and acted to declare themselves a state: the Arab Nationalist leadership in Palestine rejected it and chose to go to war to establish itself over the whole of the territory. Neighboring Arab governments went to war both to destroy the "Zionist entity" and to occupy whatever they could seize of the Arab Zone for themselves. Trans-Jordan was particularly intent on preventing the establishment of any government under the leadership of the Grand Mufti al'Husseini, whom King Abdullah hated with a passion. The hostilities ended with the Arab Zone occupied variously by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and Jerusalem occupied by Israel and Trans-Jordan. All these occupied areas were incorporated into the territories of the occupying state, with the incorporation by Irael receiving some degree of international recognition that has persisted down to this day, and those of Jordan and Egypt being regarded more dubiously. Both Arab powers exerted themselves to quash any development of Arab Palestinian statehood, while fostering Arab Palestinian revanchism directed against Israel.

To claim that this unhappy history, comprised of mis-judgement, defeat, and even elements of fraternal betrayal, somehow establishes that there is no, and has never been any, national conciousness among the people of Arab Palestine is simply nonesense: it simply establishes that that people has never been able to give effective expression to that national national consciousness in political institutions exercising sovereignty.

You may forgive me for not devoting further time to consideration of the question of Pan-Arabism, and the various peculiarist Arab nationalisms within it in the course of the twentieth century, and closing here with that matter left untouched.