Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Real Issue Between Israel and Palestine: Wanting Peace, Not Israel Building a Few Homes

Nadene Goldfoot
Get this, folks.  Israel's length, from north to south, is only 263 miles.  The width of Oregon is just under 400 miles.  In width, Israel at the widest is 71 miles and the narrowest section is only 9.3 miles.  Just to get from Gresham, Oregon to Ladds Addition in Portland is 12 miles and takes me about 1/2 hour of slow driving.  Israel is not very big and is made of only 7,992 square miles.  Texas has 268,820 square miles and is about 33 times larger than  Israel. or still 26 times larger than a "Greater Israel."  Nobody was more shocked at the size than President Bush when he visited Israel.  He commented that his ranch was larger. 

Judea and Samaria have 2,270 square miles.  East Jerusalem has 27 square miles and is now united with the rest of the city. The Palestinians are demanding it as their capital.  Being they still refuse to recognize Israel and have a charter that calls for Israel's destruction, it won't be long until they try to take over all of Jerusalem.  The Golan Heights have 444 square miles.  Gaza has 140 square miles. Israel has already departed from Gaza but with its close proximity to Israel and the attacks from there, must guard it from gaining more weapons.  It has proven itself to be a most deadly neighbor.   

The League of Nations, the original United Nations, voted for a National Home for Jews and set aside 45,560 square miles on both sides of the Jordan River for this in 1922.  The USA voted yes for this on September 21, 1922 in both houses, and President Warren Harding signed it.

Yet, Britain, given the mandate over the land,had also  lopped off 3/4 of the area; 34,745 miles, which turned out to be the entire East Bank of the river Jordan and gave it to the Emir Abdullah, son of the Sherif of Mecca who called it Transjordan on April 11, 1921.  The population living there were 300,000 Beduins.  They were part of the population of the province of Syria which was part of the Ottoman Empire.  Thus, Britain perfidiously betrayed their mandate and despoiled the Jewish nation of 77% of its territory.

Abdullah was the Hashemite Emir and came to "Palestine" from the Arabian desert in November 1920.  He took the lands in 1921 and called it Transjordan, leaving the Arabs on the Western Bank nothing more than the name-Palestine.  He and his grandson, Hussein, erased the name "Palestine" and changed the name to Jordan in 1946 -"The Hashemite kingdom of Jordan."  In 1948 the people became "Jordanians."   Jordan is made of  35,637 square miles. 

It was only after 1967 that the people of Jordan started calling themselves Palestinians again, possibly because so many had moved there and the King Hussein married a Palestinian, in reality Lisa Najeeb Halaby who was born and raised in the USA and had had a paternal grandfather who was Syrian.  They married on June 15, 1978 and she converted to Islam and was called Queen Noor, becoming his 3rd or 4th wife. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel on October 26, 1994 to end an $18.3 billion dollar conflict, becoming the 2nd Arab state to do so after Egypt.   Jordanians had gone daily into Israel to work there.  Jordan has said that they do not want any more Palestinians to come into their country. 

Is a Palestinian state a solution for peace or is it a recipe for a most cruel war?

A Palestinian state would be 2,500 square miles in area, or 1/4 of the original 1/4 of Palestine.  Like Gaza has done, it will be a Muslim Brotherhood type state, with the goal to extinguish Israel, especially with Egypt's new government led by the Muslim Brotherhood.  They already honor those who have fought against Israel by naming things and places after them.  Right now Gaza is practicing a campaign of attrition by shooting rockets, missiles and mortars into southern Israel.  Stockpiles of weapons are known to be in Lebanon.  Hamas and Fatah have united with Hamas holding to the Muslim Brotherhood Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. 

A Palestine would become the 49th Muslim majority state.  22 of these states belong to the Arab League of which Syria is suspended right now for their actions. A Palestine might then be the 22nd or 23rd.  The 22 states now cover an area of 5,290,888 square miles.  Iraq, Libya and Syria are not treated as a serious problem such as Israel and the Palestinians are.  I don't see any organizations having BDS movements against Syria today. 

Britain's chopping off part of the Jewish Homeland for a "Palestine" left the future Israel with 10,891 square miles and less now on the West Bank of the river.  They were to have only 1/4 of what had been agreed to and voted upon. 

To top this off, the British did their best to keep Jewish immigrants from entering the country while Arabs and other Muslims entered freely from all parts of the Middle East.  Why did they want to move to this "Falastin"?  They could find jobs with the Jewish settlements already there.  Look at their surnames:  Masri (Egyptian), Mugrabi (Moroccan), Turki (Turkish), Ajami (Persian), Haurani (Syrian), Halabi (Aleppan), Kurdi (Kurdish), Hindi (Indian) and others.  There were even Circassian Muslims and Armenian Christians who weren't a part of the Palestinian society that moved to the area. 

WWII started with the Holocaust killing 6 million Jews who had no way of leaving Eastern Europe, but who couldn't have entered into the Jewish Homeland at any rate because all Jewish immigration had been stopped and land couldn't be sold to Jews as the British banned that.  Nobody spoke up for the Jews.  The leftists had no demonstrations.  Nobody cared.

Today, Israel and its Judea and Samaria make up 10,891 square miles.  The Arab League has 5,290,888 square miles.  Are the Arabs short of territory?  Texas is 26 times larger than "Greater Israel."  2,500 square miles of Israel's 1/4th are to become a state called "Palestine." 

There are the 22 Muslim-Arab countries that the 1.5 million Muslim residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza's "Palestinians" came from that they could return to.  What about the 24 million people who do not have a single country to call their own?  There are 1 million Dr use living in Syria, Lebanon and Israel that would like their own state.  13 million Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran also need their own.  10 million Christian Arabs in the Middle East live in other lands without being warlike. 

"Territories" and building are not the real issue.  There is ample space for the "Palestinians."  Peace is the issue, and Abbas has just gone over to the Hamas side which stands for Israel's obliteration, not peace.  Who thinks that peace can ever be obtained by squeezing two populations into one single bed that have been at odds with each other for 4,000 years in some form or other?  Perhaps the Bible was right in that everyone needs his own home and under the shade of his own vine.  Jews and Arabs do share the same grandfather,  Abraham.  Only a heart with a goal of peace in it will find that the Middle East can become a Garden of Eden.  The Hamas-Fatah marriage will not do the trick.  Israel wants peace.  It can't create it all by themselves.  It's a two-way street. 

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League
Eliyahu 'Amiqam of Tel Aviv 7 April 1991 in pamphlet to Mr. George Bush. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Noor_of_Jordan
http://www.answers.com/topic/abdullah-ii-of-jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transjordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Israel
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/227456/Gaza-Strip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Jordan_Treaty_of_Peace
Jerusalem Teknolam Foundation-1991, Jerusalem Post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas

1 comment:

  1. Unfortunately, given the position of Israelis and Palestinians it seems they would never, ever be able to live alongside each other. By your argument of how big Texas is compared to Israel, wouldn't the cost of buying land from Mexico along the Texas border be much cheaper to create a New Israel, a Jewish State far from the rockets of Hamas? You might think this is an absurd idea, but if nothing else, comparing the cost of doing this is likely to reveal that more money has already been spent by the US and Israel, than the cost of land in Mexico. A lot of land has been selling for $3 to $12 an acre in Mexico. Take an average price of $125, to include some premium shoreline on the gulf, and multiple that by the land mass of Israel or 12,877 square miles. You get a little over $1 trillion dollars. The US war in Iraq cost about $3 trillion to produce a Caliphate for ISIS. What if we got together to offer $10 trillion to Mexico to buy land for a Jewish state where they would never, ever have to be afraid of Palestinians?

    ReplyDelete