[Fill in name]'s article of [fill in date] attempts to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel by casting aspersions on the circumstances of its founding and by distorting the history of the conflict. This biased piece lays the blame for the Palestinian's suffering solely at Israel's doorstep, ignores the decades of Arab violence and terrorism that have taken so many innocent Israeli lives and completely absolves the Palestinians of any responsibility for their own fate. It is deplorable that 60 years after its establishment, attempts to delegitimize the existence of Israel have not disappeared. How absurd that one of the few countries whose establishment was approved by a Resolution of the United Nations should have its basic right to exist questioned.
The establishment of the Jewish state in the Land of Israel is no accident of history. Israel is where Jews have lived continuously for 4,000 years, the place from which Jews never left by choice, only by force, and the land to which they had prayed for two millennia to return. The restoration of Jewish sovereignty in this tiny strip of land was not an injustice, but rather the righting of an historic wrong.
Even so, the Palestinians refer to the establishment of the State of Israel as al-Naqba, "the Catastrophe". While one can sympathize with the Palestinian feeling that a terrible tragedy has befallen them, [fill in name]'s article presented a grossly one-sided picture of the situation. Most importantly, his/her/their article failed to acknowledge that this is mostly a self-inflicted disaster, one that could have been easily avoided.
For example, Israel has often been accused of responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. This approach ignores the historic facts and the political manipulations of the issue that followed Israel's establishment.
The origin of the refugee problem can be found in 1947, when the Arab leadership rejected UN Resolution 181, which called for the establishment of both an Arab state and a Jewish state in the British mandate territory. The Palestinians would have had a country and there would not have been a single refugee had the Arabs been more concerned with establishing their own state than with destroying the nascent Jewish homeland.
Moreover, had the Palestinians not begun an uprising against the UN Resolution in 1947, followed by an invasion of five Arab armies in 1948, the Palestinians would never have become refugees. For it was during this war that large numbers of Palestinians chose to leave.
For most Palestinians it was a choice. The vast majority left following the calls of the Arab leadership that they should clear the way for the invading armies. Today's Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, admitted as much when he wrote in 1976 in the official PLO journal Falastin al-Thawra: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland…" Others left fearful for their lives, not wanting to be caught up in the battles that were raging around them. Only a handful were forced to leave by the Israelis during the fighting, even though this was common practice in wars of this period.
One point is abundantly clear - there was never any "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians. Indeed, 160,000 answered Israel's calls to stay, becoming citizens with equal rights. Today, Arab-Israelis number nearly 1,500,000, and serve in the Knesset (parliament) and are Supreme Court justices, ambassadors and high-ranking government officials.
The only ethnic cleansing that actually took place during this period was of Jews, who were expelled from every one of their ancient and modern communities in the West Bank and Gaza. Those who were not expelled were massacred. From 1948-1967, not a single Jew was allowed to live in these territories.
While the fact remains that whatever the causes, many Palestinians did indeed become refugees, the question must be asked as to why the Palestinians remained refugees for six decades. This situation is even more perplexing when one considers that an even greater number of Jews fled or were expelled from Arab states during this period. Yet 600,000 Jews were integrated into Israeli society, despite the poverty of the young Jewish state.
The answer to this question lies in the decision that was made to deliberately keep the Palestinians as refugees, in order to use their plight as a political tool against Israel.
This is not the only example of attempting to attack Israel at the expense of Palestinian interests.
Again and again, the Palestinians were offered their own state, only to reject it out of hand. Among the prospects for establishing a state that the Palestinians missed were their rejections of the 1937 Peel Commission, the 1939 British White Paper and UN Resolution 181 of 1947. In addition, from 1948-1967, the West Bank and Gaza were under Jordanian and Egyptian control respectively, yet no efforts were made to establish a Palestinian state. The latest lost prospect came in 2000, when Yasser Arafat discarded the generous offer made at Camp David.
Throughout this long self-made tragedy, one fact is crystal clear – the Palestinians were less interested in creating a state of their own than in obliterating that of their Israeli neighbors.
The Palestinians had opportunity after opportunity to establish their own country, and could today be celebrating, together with Israel, 60 years of independence for two states, living side-by-side in peace and security. Let us hope that no more opportunities will be lost, and that the vision of two nation states for two people will come to fruition speedily.
בברכת חג עצמאות שמח,
אליסון רובין
6 במאי 2008
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