By Edgar Mana-ay
Amid the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the conflict between Israel and Palestine continues with sporadic clashes along the Gaza and the West Bank borders. Peace, indeed, in the Middle East is very elusive despite the recent peace formula of US Pres. Trump brokered by his son-in-law Jared Kushner which the Palestinian outright rejected even before it was officially announced.
We just cannot turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the turmoil in the Middle East where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is serving as the fuse of all the powder keg conflicts, be it the Iranians, the Hezbollah or Hamas, the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) and all the other Arab groups who vowed to drive all the Israelites towards the sea.
Filipinos proliferate in Israel, the West Bank and even the Gaza strip mostly as farm workers, domestic help, teachers, nurses, and medical aides. So it would be best for us to understand what really are the issues in the conflict between the Israeli and the Palestinians.
A common myth was that Palestine was an Arab nation up until the creation of Israel by the United Nations in 1948 and then Israel took over their country. This is NOT TRUE. Great Britain in fact, controlled the “region of Palestine” which include all modern Israel and Jordan until she grew tired of governing the volatile area and asked the United Nations to decide what to do with it. Before Great Britain won the land in World War I, the TURKS of the Ottoman Empire had controlled the area for 400 years (1517 to 1917). The Turks were Muslims but not Arabs. Hence there was never a nation called Palestine.
In an effort to rid Judea of its Jewishness, the Romans renamed the area Filistia (Palestine) in 135 AD. They were tired of Jewish uprisings and decided to deport the Jews and change the name. The name came from the ancient PHILISTINES who have no connection to the present-day Arabs. The Philistines were long ago wiped out of existence in 1200 BC. It was really a REGION and not a NATION. There has never been a president of a nation called Palestine nor a government of Palestine. It could be compared to New England in the US, which is a region in America and has no government of its own. There has never been an independent Arab state in Palestine (which is a region).
In the “Balfour Declaration” of 1917, (Google ‘Balfour Declaration’) Great Britain promised to create a Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine. But in 1922 the British took 80% of the land promised to Israel and created the FIRST homeland for Palestinian Arabs or Arabs living in the Palestine region calling it JORDAN. In 1939, just as Hitler were exterminating 11 million Jews in Europe, Great Britain limited the immigration of Jews to the Palestine region to only 75,000! In 1947 the United Nation voted to create another nation, the Jewish State of Israel in the remaining 20% of historic Palestine. The Jews gladly accepted the plan while the Arabs declared war on Israel.
On April 20, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, the international community confirmed the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and commissioned Great Britain with “putting into effect the declaration made on November 8, 1917 by the British government and adapted by other allied powers IN FAVOR OF THE ESTABLISHMENT IN PALESTINE OF A NATIONAL HOME FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE. . .” The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), the founder of which was Ahmed Shukeiry and not Yasir Arafat as many believed, was then created by the Arabs to liberate the entire Palestine REGION so the Arabs can establish their own nation for the first time. The PLO was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. However, Jordan already controls the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza strip. If the PLO wanted an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, they should have been fighting Jordan, not Israel.
During the 7 Days War in 1967, Israel had no plans of attacking Jordan but Jordan attacked first believing what Pres. Nasser told him that Egypt was winning the war, so King Hussein also wanted more land from Israel. Jordan was defeated in matter of days and this is how the West Bank and Jerusalem ended in the hands of the Israelites. Had Jordan not attacked Israel in 1967, Israel would not be in control of the West Bank. Palestinian Arabs are not really the ethnic people of the West Bank. There is nothing in history books about a Palestinian people before the PLO. former US senator Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians an invented people. There is no language called Palestinian. Palestinian Arabs speaks an Arabic dialect similar to the Arabic of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Palestinian Arabs did not consider themselves as ethnic Palestinians. “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and natural bonds.” This is the official statement of a Palestinian representative to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
Today the West Bank was given by the UN to the PLO as part of a long-range settlement plan to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East. It is governed by the Palestinian Liberation Authority (PLA). Before it includes Gaza strip but the PLA was driven out by the Iranian backed terrorist groups of Hamas and Hezbollah (which now control Gaza and this is foreign occupation of the ethnic Gazan who existed even before the 12 tribes claimed the Promise Land) whose main aim is to drive the Israelis towards the sea, committing a continuing military incursion across the border of Israel. There could have been peace in the region with so many peace plans laid across the table by the US, UN and other superpowers for the past 70 years. But the Arab world through its proxies the Palestinian, Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah, PLO and other terrorist groups will not settle for anything less than the total banishment of the Jews out of Israel by any means.
In view of this, towards the long haul in the future, the Filipinos should not look towards the region as a greener pasture for employment opportunities. The enmity between the Jews and the Arabs is so deep seated starting even in the time of Abraham two sons, Isaac from his legal wife Sarah and Ishmael from his slave wife Hagar. Mohammed in the Koran claims that the Arabs were descendants of Patriarch Abraham through his son Ismael, hence the most revered place is the tomb of Abraham in Hebron in the West Bank. The Jews also claim descent from patriarch Abraham through Isaac, then to Jacob.
