Month: March 2025

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There is a lot of talk about a ‘two-state” solution. Talk of dividing what today is Israel into an Arab (“palestinian”) state and the remainder remaining Israel. There are two reasons (maybe more) that this will never happen:

1. The Arabs (“palestinians”) don’t want it. They have been offered this time and time again, and time and time again they have rejected it wholesale.  The last time it was kind of forced on them. In 2005, Israel completely withdrew all twenty-five settlements, IDF installations, from Gaza. 9,000 Jews, some of whom had lived there since before 1900, were evicted.  Israel ethnically cleansed itself from Gaza, and Gaza became a sovereign Arab (“palestinian”) state.  Then they elected the terrorist group Hamas to govern them, and Hamas proceeded to militarize the entire region, destroying greenhouses that had been left for them by the Israelis, ripping up the water system to make rockets out of the pipes, installed 100s of KM of tunnels (to infiltrate into Israel), and installed a military presence, and weapon caches in private home, mosques, schools and hospitals.  They also destroyed every Christian Church left, some of which were over 2,000 years old. Then they began practically daily launching rockets into Southern Israel, which resulted in, well, they have, for all intents and purposes, been waging a war with the IDF ever since.

A similar situation exists in Samaria/Judea  (AKA, “The West Bank”) where the region has been divided between various Jewish and “palestinian” governed areas. Terrorists are active there as well, but nearly as bad as in Gaza.  Israel erected a “security wall” with military check points throughout to try to enforce peace between “palestinians” and Israelis.

Prior to all this, (1) a separate state proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 was offered to the Arabs (“palestinians”). They rejected it.  (2) In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the area into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jews accepted this, the Arabs rejected it (and then seven Arab countries invaded, kicking off the first Arab / Israeli War). (3) On 2000 it was proposed at Camp David, and again (4) by the Taba Summit in 2001.  (5) The Arab Peace Initiative proposed it in 2006-2008,  and lastly (6) there was the 2013-2014 Peace talks.

A separate Arab (“palestinian”) has thus been offered a total of 7 times (including a real one, forced on the Arabs – Gaza). 

Q: Why has this been rejected by the Arab (“palestinian”) leadership every single time, with a war or “intifada” ending the talk?
A: Each time an Israel was left to exist after the “partition.”  A Jewish state adjacent to an Arab state is not acceptable. The Arabs want is all or they want nothing. This position is even stated in the founding documents of Hamas, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

2. The other reason the two state solution will never happen is:
THE TWO STATE SOLUTION ALREADY EXISTS. Yes, that is correct. Not only does it already exist, but it has existed since 1946.

TIME FOR A HISTORY LESSON:

We begin with the British Mandate for Palestine.  After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, after World War I, the League of Nations instituted the Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948).  Also referenced as Mandatory Palestine it gave the UK the “mandate” to govern the region.  The entire Mandate for Palestine consisted of what is today the State of Israel and what is today Jordan (AKA, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, originally the Emirate of Transjordan). The whole region had been promised to the Jewish people as a homeland by the Balfour Declaration (1917), so the UK had an obligation to the Jewish people to give them Palestine for that very purpose. But, the UK also had made promises to the Arabs, to reward them for their participation in the demise of the Ottoman Empire. So they took care of their obligation to the Arabs first, in 1921, and hived off two-thirds of Palestine to create the Emirate of Transjordan.

And then everyone forgot about this.

When it comes to Israel, people have a habit of forgetting important facts.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel Switzerland.  It’s purpose was to purchase land, and secure deeds to land in the Levant. The JNF successfully fulfilled its mission, securing almost 80% of the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. The land was owned mostly by absentee Arab landowners, who were only too happy to sell their “worthless, barren, infertile, desert land” to the fool-hardy Jews (and at exorbitant prices).  95% of the area between Jerusalem and the Jordan river (AKA Samaria / Judea; aka “The West Bank”) had been purchased by the JNF between 1919 and 1947. Along side Arab Christian towns such as Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Ramallah; numerous moshav and kibbutzim were established LINK.

Everyone forgot about the Jewish National Fund, and their mission, after the Arab / Israel War of May 1948. They forgot that the JNF spent a lot of money to secure land for Jews to live in.

Well, not completely. To many people on the Left, land ownership and the buying and selling of land is just wrong. No one should own land. “The Earth belongs to all of us and we should all share it in peace, love and harmony.”  Therefore, anyone who pays anyone for the purpose of acquiring land is in the wrong. Worse, if you purchase land from an absentee land owner who happens to be renting that land out to someone else, and then you evict the renter so that you can use the land. Well, that’s outright theft!  The “true owners” of the property are the renters. You have no right to displace them.  What’s funny is that sometimes these sentiments only apply to land that Jews have purchased.

If you “Google”  “Jewish National Fund”  you’ll find a whole lot of propaganda and false accusations, depending on how close to Hamas the web producer aligns themselves.  The JNL is accused of using fraudulent tactics to secure sales. The actual number of dunams of land acquired by the JNL is deflated to almost nill.  And of course, in the cases where Arab renters had been living on given parcels, the JNL is accused of “stealing” that land.

In Samaria /Judea (“the west bank”) after June 1967 when the IDF recaptured the land, the accusation was that Israel was illegally occupying the land. Because, after all, when land is purchased by Jews, but then captured by Jordan, subsequently ethnically purged of all it’s Jewishness; then settled by the Arabs.  When subsequently that same land is recaptured and restored to it’s prior owners, that land is “stolen” and “illegally occupied.” 

<SIGH>

It’s time for the United Nations to intervene, admit that Jordan is palestine, and encourage those Arabs who don’t want to live in a palestine run by the Jews, to relocate to Jordan and leave Israel.

Jordan IS palestine. Palestinians should live in Jordan.

 

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Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.

An example of this occurred after May 1948, when the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan occupied Samaria / Judea, and the western part of Jerusalem; their “winnings” in the Israel/Arab War of 1948.  Jordan proceeded to bulldoze whole villages, farms, moshavim and kibbutzim (some of which had existed since the mid 1800’s); destroy synagogues and all Jewish infrastructure. They wanted to erase the Jewish presence from that territory. They succeeded.

Is this what Israel is doing today, particularly in Samaria/Judea (aka “the West Bank”)?  That’s how it looks to a lot of people, with Jewish settlements growing by leaps and bounds throughout that the region.  If this is true, if Israel is committing ethnic cleansing, a noticeable change in the Arabic population should be obvious. Let’s see:

1947 Mandate for Palestine Population:
Arab (Christian and Moslem): 1.8 million
Jewish: 630,000

2024 Israel Population (excludes Gaza):
Arab (Christian and Moslem): 2.1 million
Jewish: 7.7 million

It looks like the Arab population of Israel has increased by almost half!  Either ethnic cleansing by Israel is either just an outright lie, or they are really, really bad at it.

What I personally find more interesting it the change in population in Bethlehem, the city Jesus was allegedly born in.  Every Christmas Bethlehem becomes the worlds biggest tourist attraction, bringing in Christians from all over the planet.  When I lived in Israel in 1974, there was a significant Arab Christian population there, as one would expect:

1974 Population of Bethlehem:
Christian: 24,000
Muslim: 6,000

and now:

2024 Population of Bethlehem:
Christian: 2,800
Muslim:  22,872

Here’s your ethnic cleansing, but it’s not being perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians. No, it’s the policy of Islamic extremists against Christians.  https://honestreporting.com/history-repeating-itself-as-bethlehems-christians-face-extinction/

 

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Some have asked why, whenever I write out the words “palestinian,” or “palestine,” I always put quotes around the words, and never capitalize the “P.”  And why is every phrase or word between quotes or brackets () italicised?

The italicising rule comes from the Associated Press Stylebook, which states that any word or phrase between either quotation marks or brackets, should be italicised.

The reason why some words are placed between quotation marks is that they convey a false concept or an idea that should be questioned.  “Palestinian”  is a made up identity. The idea that there is or ever was a people called “palestinian” is a false one. There has never been a country, region or land mass called “palestine,” and therefore “palestinians” do not exist. “Palestine” itself is nothing but a trendy label that only became fashionable in the late 1960s.

After their sack of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Jewish Temple, and the Bar Kochba rebellion, the Romans renamed the country of Judea Syria Palestina, in order to disassociate the Jews from their land.  The area was only called Syria Palestina until the end of the Roman Empire, from 135 to 475 CE.  It would not be referred to as Palestine again until September 29, 1923, with the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine (Sept 29, 1923 until May 14 1948).

Before September 1923, the land that is now known as “palestine” was just a random piece of land that was constantly being fought over by various empires and kingdoms. The people living there didn’t identify as “palestinians,” they were just a mix of different ethnic and religious groups.

So where did this whole “palestinian” thing come from? Well, it all started with a little organization called the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). They were formed to represent the interests of “palestinian” Arabs and to fight for their right to self-determination. And what better way to rally support than to create a catchy identity?

And so, the term “palestinian” was born. It became the buzzword of the Arab world and suddenly, everyone wanted to identify as “palestinian.” It was like being a part of a cool, exclusive club. But let’s not forget, this was all a marketing ploy by the PLO. They wanted to create a strong national identity and garner sympathy from the international community.

But the truth is, there was never a “palestinian” nation or state in history. The land was always a part of different empires and kingdoms, from the ancient Egyptians to the Ottoman Empire. And even when the British took control of the land after World War I, they never called it “palestine.” They called it the British Mandate for Palestine (or sometimes, “mandatory palestine”).

And let’s not forget that Israel, which is often seen as the oppressor of the so-called “palestinian people,” has a much longer and established history in the land. The Jewish people have a deep connection to the land and the city of Jerusalem, whereas the identity of “palestinian” was created out of thin air in the 20th century.

So, there you have it. The truth about “palestine.” It’s not a real place with a real history. It’s just a trendy label that was created for political purposes. But hey, if you still want to identify as “palestinian,” go right ahead. Just know that you’re basically rocking a hipster identity that only became cool less than 60 years ago.

 

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