Amazingly great interview. And thank you so much for providing a transcript.
I don't actually think the Palestinians are the tail wagging the Arab dog. I don't think anyone in the Arab world ever cared about the Palestinians until they figured out they could use them as a front for their hatred of Israel and Jews.
Amazingly great interview. And thank you so much for providing a transcript.
I don't actually think the Palestinians are the tail wagging the Arab dog. I don't think anyone in the Arab world ever cared about the Palestinians until they figured out they could use them as a front for their hatred of Israel and Jews.
I'm a Jew, and I love Israel. Still. I think some more positive solution has to be found for the Palestinian problem. And that the day Rabin was assassinated was a sad, sad day for Israel, for the Jews, and for the world at large.
And that positive solution would be what, precisely? I just don’t see one until the day, if it ever comes, when the Palestinian Arabs give up their genocidal fantasies and bow to the reality that Israel is here to stay. Until then, they pose a problem to be managed, and in the changed circumstances of the Middle East, the problem they pose is eminently manageable.
All that is needed, which is shared by many Jews in Israel, is to extend Jordanian sovereignty to the Palestinian enclaves in Judaea & Samaria (secular West Bank) and then ceed the non Palestinian enclaves back to Israel.
Actually, the whole thing is Palestine -- both sides of the Jordan river -- a geographic, not an ethnic, political, or national, concept. (For example, the Jerusalem Post was originally called the Palestine Post.) The original idea circa 1920 was dividing part of it as the Jewish national home, the other part being an Arab state. The British made a mess of it, first by creating the kingdom of Jordan, but then conceding the idea that there needed to be *another* Arab state, the second one headed by violent, anti-Western rejectionists.
This led the British down the road to the infamous White Paper and their criminal wartime ban on Jewish immigration into Palestine (again, at the time, universally understood as a geographic concept).
Yes, correct. Thanks for the Tablet article. I had not seen this one yet. The British (and France for that matter) screwed up modern day Middle East after WWI by how they partitioned each of the Countries and the various tribes. One group, the Kurds, never got any land either, as they should have.
But the original Mandate for Palestine had all of it going to the Jews. However, the Hashemite King convinced the British to give him 77% (Transjordan) for favors done for the Allies during WWI. This is why we refer to Jordan as Palestine, as it was named Arab Palestine, with Israel being named Jewish Palestine.
I don't think there was ever an official concession of all of geographic Palestine to be the Jewish National Home. It was designated as "in" Palestine, but implicitly not "all" of it. Of course, British diplomacy historically was often deliberately fuzzy, to not tie anybody's hands prematurely. Britain was sometimes called "perfidious Albion" for that reason, although the need for creative ambiguity was often real.
The problem wasn't a Jewish National Home in Palestine. The problem was concessions to radical anti-Western figures like the Mufti (al-Husseini) and the eventual concession of a possible second Arab state. It was the need to keep that appeasement going (having done so much to create these radical forces in the first place) that bent British policy in the direction it went.
(There were other factors as well. The most important was the explosion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and movements in Europe after 1918. Through various channels, these had a profound impact on the nascent Arab nationalist movements and the embryonic Islamic revival. This development reached a fever pitch in the 1930s and 40s when Italy and Germany developed Arabic-language propaganda to spread antisemitic and anti-Western ideas. This effort left a long-lived residue in the Arab world which later mixed with Soviet-inspired ideas in the 1960s, like anti-colonialism. Fascism in these countries *was* the original anti-colonial/anti-Western movement. You hear echoes of this today, with Jews and Israel painted as Western imperialists.)
Perhaps that second Arab State was the initial “wedge” that became the two state solution, reducing the Jewish homeland. There are many stores of the various conflicts that occurred in the 1920’s and 1930’s leading up to the declaration of Statehood in 1948.
Yes, the "two-state solution" in western Palestine is the residue of the 1938 White Paper, with its concessions to the Mufti and his forces.
The origins of Jordan are also curious. The Hashemites were a Beduin ruling family of the Muslim holy places in Mecca and Medina, claiming descent from the Prophet. They were kicked out of those holy cities by the ibn Sa'ud family, later the ruling family of modern Sa'udi Arabia, in alliance with the ibn Wahhab family, leaders of the Salafi radical Islamic revival movement that we learned about 20 years ago. That alliance started in the 18th century (sic) as a reaction to the first modernizations of the Ottoman empire and the spread of European influences.
The British conceived of the idea of giving the Hashemites two thrones as a kind of consolation prize, because they had played the pivotal role of helping foment the anti-Turkish revolt co-led by Lawrence. They created the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (the eastern side) as one kingdom, and the kingdom of Iraq as the other. The Iraqi Hashemites were overthrown in the secular republican revolution in Iraq in 1958 and murdered by the Ba'athists. The Jordanian branch has been challenged a number of times by the Mufti's men and their heirs, most notably by the murder of King Abdullah in 1951 at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
UNRWA keeps track of the Palestinians refugees. In 2019 that number was 5.5 million. In the book, The War of Return, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, they state that the majority of those registered by UNRWA have never fled their homes, they are descendants, by now in the fifth generation, of the original refugees. Of the 5.5 million, 2.2 million live in Jordan, who were granted citizenship by Jordan between 1949 and 1967. Another 1.1 million live in Lebanon and Syria. Leaving 2.2 million living in Gaza (1.4 million) and the West Bank (.8 million).
Bibi’s strategy is correct, (1) eliminate Iran as a threat, and (2) make peace with Saudi Arabia and the other peaceful Sunni Arab nations and the Palestinian conflict will follow. This dynamic, creating peace with the majority of the Arab states (Abraham Accords) steps away from the failed approach of the Oslo Accords, which predicated Israeli-Arab peace on first solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An approach that is sadly still maintained by the US State Department and the Biden Administration.
The dichotomy between the unsuccessful Oslo accords and the successful Abraham ones is significant. It speaks to not only Bibi’s intentions but the Arab states as well. They were quite willing to abandon the Palestinians for what they perceived to be the greater good.
Thank you, in his book, Bibi discusses the back channeling that he did, long before Trump was elected, to lay the groundwork for the later to be named, The Abraham Accords.
And yes, the peaceful Arab countries care much more about their safety visa vi, the Iranian threat, than the plight of the Palestinians.
My belief is that Saudi Arabia will wait to sign an Abraham Accord agreement with Israel until after Salman bin Abdulaziz passes into the ether. Such agreement will be one of the first things that MBS does.
You didn’t listen to what Bibi said, he said the Palestinians don’t want peace. They want Israel. So no amount of negotiating and giving up ground for peace will settle the score. The Palestinians have to want peace and to recognize Israel. Until that happens, Israel needs a strong leader who will fight for Israel.
The evidence is pretty compelling that the Palestinians don’t want peace. How many intifadas do you need ?
Ehud Barak, in his book, My Country My Life, stated that there were two reasons Arafat walked away from the Camp David Accords in 2000: (1) the Palestinians rejected Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall, and (2) the Palestinians wanted the right of return. These demands are not from someone that wants peace. They are from someone that wants to displace someone.
Yes. The right of return is an extremely thorny issue. Agreed.
But imo (flimsy evidence, I must admit..) the Palestinian demand for right of return was simply a throw away in return for the removal of the sacrosanct Israeli precondition of acceptance of the right for the state of Israel to exist.
In my mind, if Israel did not demand that precondition, to be agreed upon before any negotiations were to begin, an agreement would have been in place decades ago - with the ensuing years de facto testimony of Palestinians recognizing the existence of a very powerful (and predominately Jewish) state beside them. Not all agreements need be verbalized or ordained. Just reality accepted.
In essence, Palestine can justly be accused of not wanting peace. As Israel.
I understand your point. It is interesting to consider what would have happened if Israel had not demanded the precondition of the “right to exist” before any peace agreement could be considered. It’s a though one for sure.
Netanyahu wants peace with the Arab world, but not with his most immediate neighbours, the Palestinians - especially now since it appears that his potential coalition partners are ultra orthodox, ultra nationalist and hardly conducive to any concessions in that regard..
And this is why the whole situation with the Palestinians becomes ever more polarized—it's the fundamentalists on both sides, Arab and Israeli, that are driving the rancor.
Amazingly great interview. And thank you so much for providing a transcript.
I don't actually think the Palestinians are the tail wagging the Arab dog. I don't think anyone in the Arab world ever cared about the Palestinians until they figured out they could use them as a front for their hatred of Israel and Jews.
I'm a Jew, and I love Israel. Still. I think some more positive solution has to be found for the Palestinian problem. And that the day Rabin was assassinated was a sad, sad day for Israel, for the Jews, and for the world at large.
And that positive solution would be what, precisely? I just don’t see one until the day, if it ever comes, when the Palestinian Arabs give up their genocidal fantasies and bow to the reality that Israel is here to stay. Until then, they pose a problem to be managed, and in the changed circumstances of the Middle East, the problem they pose is eminently manageable.
Status quo is good for now.
Jordan is Palestine.
All that is needed, which is shared by many Jews in Israel, is to extend Jordanian sovereignty to the Palestinian enclaves in Judaea & Samaria (secular West Bank) and then ceed the non Palestinian enclaves back to Israel.
Actually, the whole thing is Palestine -- both sides of the Jordan river -- a geographic, not an ethnic, political, or national, concept. (For example, the Jerusalem Post was originally called the Palestine Post.) The original idea circa 1920 was dividing part of it as the Jewish national home, the other part being an Arab state. The British made a mess of it, first by creating the kingdom of Jordan, but then conceding the idea that there needed to be *another* Arab state, the second one headed by violent, anti-Western rejectionists.
This led the British down the road to the infamous White Paper and their criminal wartime ban on Jewish immigration into Palestine (again, at the time, universally understood as a geographic concept).
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/failed-british-double-cross-israel
Yes, correct. Thanks for the Tablet article. I had not seen this one yet. The British (and France for that matter) screwed up modern day Middle East after WWI by how they partitioned each of the Countries and the various tribes. One group, the Kurds, never got any land either, as they should have.
But the original Mandate for Palestine had all of it going to the Jews. However, the Hashemite King convinced the British to give him 77% (Transjordan) for favors done for the Allies during WWI. This is why we refer to Jordan as Palestine, as it was named Arab Palestine, with Israel being named Jewish Palestine.
I don't think there was ever an official concession of all of geographic Palestine to be the Jewish National Home. It was designated as "in" Palestine, but implicitly not "all" of it. Of course, British diplomacy historically was often deliberately fuzzy, to not tie anybody's hands prematurely. Britain was sometimes called "perfidious Albion" for that reason, although the need for creative ambiguity was often real.
The problem wasn't a Jewish National Home in Palestine. The problem was concessions to radical anti-Western figures like the Mufti (al-Husseini) and the eventual concession of a possible second Arab state. It was the need to keep that appeasement going (having done so much to create these radical forces in the first place) that bent British policy in the direction it went.
(There were other factors as well. The most important was the explosion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and movements in Europe after 1918. Through various channels, these had a profound impact on the nascent Arab nationalist movements and the embryonic Islamic revival. This development reached a fever pitch in the 1930s and 40s when Italy and Germany developed Arabic-language propaganda to spread antisemitic and anti-Western ideas. This effort left a long-lived residue in the Arab world which later mixed with Soviet-inspired ideas in the 1960s, like anti-colonialism. Fascism in these countries *was* the original anti-colonial/anti-Western movement. You hear echoes of this today, with Jews and Israel painted as Western imperialists.)
Perhaps that second Arab State was the initial “wedge” that became the two state solution, reducing the Jewish homeland. There are many stores of the various conflicts that occurred in the 1920’s and 1930’s leading up to the declaration of Statehood in 1948.
Yes, the "two-state solution" in western Palestine is the residue of the 1938 White Paper, with its concessions to the Mufti and his forces.
The origins of Jordan are also curious. The Hashemites were a Beduin ruling family of the Muslim holy places in Mecca and Medina, claiming descent from the Prophet. They were kicked out of those holy cities by the ibn Sa'ud family, later the ruling family of modern Sa'udi Arabia, in alliance with the ibn Wahhab family, leaders of the Salafi radical Islamic revival movement that we learned about 20 years ago. That alliance started in the 18th century (sic) as a reaction to the first modernizations of the Ottoman empire and the spread of European influences.
The British conceived of the idea of giving the Hashemites two thrones as a kind of consolation prize, because they had played the pivotal role of helping foment the anti-Turkish revolt co-led by Lawrence. They created the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (the eastern side) as one kingdom, and the kingdom of Iraq as the other. The Iraqi Hashemites were overthrown in the secular republican revolution in Iraq in 1958 and murdered by the Ba'athists. The Jordanian branch has been challenged a number of times by the Mufti's men and their heirs, most notably by the murder of King Abdullah in 1951 at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
A crazy history indeed.
Don’t forget the part where the House of Saud attacked and killed rival tribes to take control over Saudi Arabia.
I am just thankful that the Arabs continue to fight amongst each other, rather than banding together.
'Jordan is Palestine.' Circa 1967, correct. But now?
Perhaps the Palestinians don't want Jordan governing them. And I doubt that Jordan would want to have anything to do with the Palestinians either..
UNRWA keeps track of the Palestinians refugees. In 2019 that number was 5.5 million. In the book, The War of Return, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, they state that the majority of those registered by UNRWA have never fled their homes, they are descendants, by now in the fifth generation, of the original refugees. Of the 5.5 million, 2.2 million live in Jordan, who were granted citizenship by Jordan between 1949 and 1967. Another 1.1 million live in Lebanon and Syria. Leaving 2.2 million living in Gaza (1.4 million) and the West Bank (.8 million).
Bibi’s strategy is correct, (1) eliminate Iran as a threat, and (2) make peace with Saudi Arabia and the other peaceful Sunni Arab nations and the Palestinian conflict will follow. This dynamic, creating peace with the majority of the Arab states (Abraham Accords) steps away from the failed approach of the Oslo Accords, which predicated Israeli-Arab peace on first solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An approach that is sadly still maintained by the US State Department and the Biden Administration.
Strong post, Brian. Interesting stats..
The dichotomy between the unsuccessful Oslo accords and the successful Abraham ones is significant. It speaks to not only Bibi’s intentions but the Arab states as well. They were quite willing to abandon the Palestinians for what they perceived to be the greater good.
A Kissinger like gamble on both sides.
Interesting times indeed..
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2022/11/30/palestinian-terrorist-groups-continue-to-build-tunnels-under-unrwa-schools/
Thank you, in his book, Bibi discusses the back channeling that he did, long before Trump was elected, to lay the groundwork for the later to be named, The Abraham Accords.
And yes, the peaceful Arab countries care much more about their safety visa vi, the Iranian threat, than the plight of the Palestinians.
My belief is that Saudi Arabia will wait to sign an Abraham Accord agreement with Israel until after Salman bin Abdulaziz passes into the ether. Such agreement will be one of the first things that MBS does.
I agree that a more positive solution has to be found for the Palestinians. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be Netanyahu who finds it.
Exactly.
And this is why I'm not pleased with Netanyahu's reemergence into power.
You didn’t listen to what Bibi said, he said the Palestinians don’t want peace. They want Israel. So no amount of negotiating and giving up ground for peace will settle the score. The Palestinians have to want peace and to recognize Israel. Until that happens, Israel needs a strong leader who will fight for Israel.
The only thing keeping Netanyahu and his brethren from wiping out all the Palestinians is the media would find out.
Maybe instead of "giving up ground" - how about stop sending settlers to move into people's houses when they're away from home at a funeral?
Netanyahu would say that. He's been saying that for twenty years..
But that does not necessarily mean it's true.
The evidence is pretty compelling that the Palestinians don’t want peace. How many intifadas do you need ?
Ehud Barak, in his book, My Country My Life, stated that there were two reasons Arafat walked away from the Camp David Accords in 2000: (1) the Palestinians rejected Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall, and (2) the Palestinians wanted the right of return. These demands are not from someone that wants peace. They are from someone that wants to displace someone.
Yes. The right of return is an extremely thorny issue. Agreed.
But imo (flimsy evidence, I must admit..) the Palestinian demand for right of return was simply a throw away in return for the removal of the sacrosanct Israeli precondition of acceptance of the right for the state of Israel to exist.
In my mind, if Israel did not demand that precondition, to be agreed upon before any negotiations were to begin, an agreement would have been in place decades ago - with the ensuing years de facto testimony of Palestinians recognizing the existence of a very powerful (and predominately Jewish) state beside them. Not all agreements need be verbalized or ordained. Just reality accepted.
In essence, Palestine can justly be accused of not wanting peace. As Israel.
But that's just me..
I understand your point. It is interesting to consider what would have happened if Israel had not demanded the precondition of the “right to exist” before any peace agreement could be considered. It’s a though one for sure.
Netanyahu wants peace with the Arab world, but not with his most immediate neighbours, the Palestinians - especially now since it appears that his potential coalition partners are ultra orthodox, ultra nationalist and hardly conducive to any concessions in that regard..
Right.
And this is why the whole situation with the Palestinians becomes ever more polarized—it's the fundamentalists on both sides, Arab and Israeli, that are driving the rancor.
"The Palestinian Problem."