Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians remains an open sore in the Middle East even as Israel and Team Trump try to turn everyone’s attention to the red herring of Iran, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
The United Nations always has had, and rightfully so, a strong role in handling the conflict between Arabs and Jews over land in Palestine. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, Britain assumed administration of Palestine under a mandate from the League of Nations.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley at the United Nations on April 28, 2017.
In the aftermath of World War II, when an overburdened Britain declared that it was ridding itself of the burden of Palestine, and with the League of Nations having died, it was appropriate that the successor international organization, the United Nations, would address the issue. A special committee of the United Nations drew up a partition plan under which Palestine would be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The U.N. General Assembly approved a modified version of the plan in November 1948.
The plan was generous to the Jewish side, as reflected in heavy Zionist lobbying (especially lobbying in the United States) in favor of it, and Arab states voting against the plan in the General Assembly. Although Jews constituted only one-fourth, and Arabs three-fourths, of the population of Palestine at the time, the proposed Jewish state would get over half the land. Subsequent armed combat made the disconnect between population and land even greater. The land controlled by the Jewish state went from 55 percent of Palestine in the original plan of the UN committee, to 61 percent in the modified version that the General Assembly voted on, to 78 percent after the armistice of 1949, to 100 percent after the war that Israel initiated in 1967.
The U.N. partition plan remains Israel’s founding document: an international charter for the creation of the State of Israel. This is too easily forgotten among more recent rhetoric about the United Nations being allegedly an anti-Israeli forum. The same partition plan also was a charter for creation of a Palestinian Arab state. With the subsequent events determined by Israel’s superior armed might, that part of the charter has gone unrealized. It represents unfinished business. So members of the United Nations appropriately have remained, as is said in diplomatic parlance, seized of the matter.
Haley’s Off-Point Comments
One continuing manifestation of remaining seized of that unfinished business is a quarterly Security Council meeting in which any U.N. member state is allowed to speak and in which the agenda item is “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.” Palestine has, in fact, been the prime focus of these gatherings.
In 1948, some Palestinians, uprooted by Israel’s claims to their lands, relocated to the Jaramana Refugee Camp in Damascus, Syria
But in the most recent such meeting, held last week — and with the United States chairing the Security Council this month — U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley declared that she was going to talk not about Palestine but instead about Iran. Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, even though his country is one of the direct parties to the conflict over Palestine, eagerly devoted most of his speech to attacks on Iran.
The other participants in the debate focused more on the Palestinian problem, in accordance with the unfinished business, with traditional regional concerns, and with the published agenda item. There were, to be sure, some other criticisms of Iran, including from Iran’s local rivals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but even with them the problem of Palestine was not far from the surface. The Emirati representative, for example, stated that finding a resolution to the Palestinian question was a “fundamental priority” of his government, and that the UAE was deeply concerned about how the absence of a resolution was denying people in the occupied Palestinian territories their inalienable rights.
The current Israeli government repeatedly plays up the idea that with so much other turmoil in the Middle East, it is somehow not appropriate to focus international attention on the unfinished business in Palestine. The Israeli position involves not just a casting of doubt on the ability of diplomats to walk and chew gum at the same time, but also an assertion that most people in the Middle East don’t care much any more about the plight of the Palestinians. Many American sympathizers of the Israeli government speak in much the same terms and talk about insufficient ripeness in being able to do anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Finding Excuses
This is one of what has been a series of excuses for inaction. At other times the principal excuse may have been that there has been too much disunity on the Palestinian side for that side to produce an effective interlocutor — conveniently ignoring how Israel has done all it can to foment that disunity, even withholding tax receipts due to the Palestinian Authority when the Fatah-run P.A. has made any moves toward healing the breach with Hamas. Now the regional turmoil excuse, with that turmoil so obvious in Syria and elsewhere, has become the favored excuse du jour.
The World Press Photo of 2012, depicting a funeral procession in Palestine.
In a note distributed before the Security Council meeting, the United States asked countries to consider, “Who are the regional players that most benefit from chaos in the region?” One honest and accurate answer to that question would be: the Netanyahu government, because of the excuse that chaos provides in deflecting international attention and pressure away from the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory.
The assertions about Middle Easterners no longer caring much about the Palestinian problem are simply not true, as evidenced by government statements, temperature-taking among Arab publics, and exploitation of the issue by extremist groups. Although undoubtedly there has been some diversion of attention toward other troubles, the reasons for widespread resonance of the Palestinian issue are still present. These reasons include sympathy with co-ethnics and co-religionists, a more broadly felt sense of injustice, and awareness of the destabilizing potential of letting the problem fester, including especially the extremist exploitation of the issue.
A Dormant Peace Plan
Leaders of the Arab states, in an Arab League summit meeting last month, found time to reaffirm their call for a two-state solution and their commitment to the 15-year-old Saudi-initiated peace plan that offers full and normal relations with Israel in exchange for ending the occupation of lands Israel conquered in the 1967 war. Modifications to the plan have made clear that mutually agreeable land swaps would be acceptable to the Arab governments.
Controversial maps showing the shrinking territory available to the Palestinians. Hardline Israelis insist that there are no Palestinian people, that all the land belongs to Israel and that it therefore inaccurate to show any “Palestinian lands.”
The summit meeting’s host, King Abdullah of Jordan, stated, “There can be no peace nor stability in the region without a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause, the core issue of the Middle East, based on the two-state solution.”
In addition to whatever this reaffirmation says about the Arab regimes’ walking-and-gum-chewing ability, it also puts the lie both to the notion that the region doesn’t care about the Palestinian issue any more and to the notion that the Arabs are unwilling to live in peace and in a normal relationship with Israel. This fresh statement by the Arab League received far too little attention in Washington and by the Trump administration.
Last week’s session at the Security Council demonstrated that, despite the efforts of Haley and Danon, people outside of their two governments really do still care a lot about the untenable and destabilizing plight of the Palestinians. The Council session, and the attempt to turn a discussion about Palestine into a discussion about Iran, also demonstrates how much the Trump administration’s tortured effort to attribute all malignity in the Middle East to Iran is motivated by the Israeli-originated use of Iran as a grand diversion.
The Israeli government’s principal response whenever it begins to feel uncomfortable attention to its occupation is to declare that Iran is the “real problem” in the region and that’s what people should be giving their attention to instead. The Trump administration has been following the same script. That script is not an effective way to address either actual issues with Iran or the problem of an occupation that in a few weeks will reach the half-century mark.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is author most recently of Why America Misunderstands the World. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
At some point in time the American people will finally come to the realization that jewish Trump is no different than the psychotic Neocons that brought you 9/11 and the wars that followed and you will see Trump do everything in his power to ensure Israel gets everything they want from the US including a raise in their already high and illegal 3.2 Billion dollar annual paycheck!
Obama already gave it to them for the next ten years.
Stop worrying about the Palestinians and free the WEST from the influence of you know who…………….
Another way to express it ;
“It is not the Israeli occupation of Bethlehem that is the problem but the Israeli occupation of Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, ….”
Oh, and Israel “initiated” the war of 1967? Guess there’s no need to read further.
“The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha’aretz, 19 March 1972.
Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: “In June 1967, we again. had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
“The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha’aretz, 19 March 1972.
On 4 April 1972, General Haim Bar-Lev, Rabin’s predecessor as chief of staff, was quoted in Ma’ariv as follows: “We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Days War, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”
On 3 June 1972 Peled was even more explicit in an article of his own for Le Monde. He wrote: “All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our ‘defence’ against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army.”
In a radio debate Peled also said: “Israel was never in real danger and there was no evidence that Egypt had any intention of attacking Israel.” He added that “Israeli intelligence knew that Egypt was not prepared for war.”
In an interview published in Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin said this: “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”
Regarding any threat from Egypt, the former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was “no threat of destruction” but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could “exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.”
Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan said that many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland. “They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land…We would send a tractor to plough some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get nervous and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was…The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”
Thank you for showing SOME that they are either IGNORANT of their own history or worse, LIARS……
“…the proposed Jewish state would get over half the land…”
Are you forgetting about Jordan, an Arab state carved out of the Mandate that took 80% of the available land? Your contention that Jews got “over half” of the land is totally wrong.
Brandon Simmons, you are shilling lies, and Mr. Pillar does not start the story at the beginning. The Syrians, whose nation was occupied by the Turks, offered to fight for the Allies in exchange for support for independence after the war(the Lawrence of Arabia story, he should be called Lawrence of Syria). After the war, The League Of Nations established The Mandate For Syria. The Syrians were then betrayed as the Mandate was jointly administered by France and England who divided the Mandate Of Syria in two zones, then each zone was further severed to make four sub-mandates( Syria, Lebanon, TransJordan, Palestine) contrary to the terms dictated by The League Of Nations, and the will of the Syrian People. Lawrence was likely murdered by the zionists as he strenuously objected to this betrayal. The first Governor of the illegal sub-mandate of Palestine, appointed by the Brits, was jewish. The Brits later severed the Golan from the illegal sub-mandate of Palestine and it was attached to the illegal sub- mandate of Syria, why the zionists think it belongs to them. The term Greater Syria is used to refer to historical borders of Syria inclusive of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, State Of Palestine, and zionist entity(plus Syria’s Hatay Province illegally severed by France and gifted to Turkey, Hatay is on the extreme NW coast of Syria, the southward jog in the Syria/Turkey border seen on a contemporary map. The mess in the Middle East is the result of the failure to respect the sovereignty of Greater Syria, and the cause is the zionists.
The zionists and mossad make Hitler look like a choir boy..
One’s religion/world view is the basis for one’s politics. Change the former, change the later.
In Zionist founder Herzl’s 1896 book Der Judenstaat, about the million or so indigenous Palestinians, he wrote, “[we shall] spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
In his 1923 book, The Iron Wall, Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the “Revisionists” wing of Zionism, wrote, “There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between the Arabs, not now and not in the foreseeable future. All well-meaning people, with the exception of those blind from birth, understood long ago the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority … a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.”
Responding to the 1937 recommendation of the Royal Peel Commission to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state confederated with Jordan, future Israeli President David Ben Gurion said, “… after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state – we will abolish partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.” And again in 1937, Ben Gurion stated: “The compulsory transfer of Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own feet during the days of the First and Second Temple.” And in a letter to his son, also in 1937, he stated: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle in those places then we have force at our disposal.”
And in 1940, Joseph Weitz, who was head of land purchasing for the World Jewish Organization, and head of one of several ‘transfer committees’ (committees to study ways of transferring the Arabs from Palestine) wrote: “Transfer does not serve only one aim – to reduce the Arab population – it also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is: to evict land now cultivated by Arabs and to free it for Jewish settlement. Between ourselves it must be clear that here is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them. Not one village, not one tribe, should be left.”
The agenda of Zionism…from its own mouth
americanum – excellent post!
The UN General Assembly had no jurisdiction or authority whatsover to impose a partition of Mandate Palestine on the people who inhabited that former Ottoman territory. The Partition Plan was actually envisaged by the British already in 1937 (the Peel Commission), and the Jewish Agency in Palestine agreed in principle, since their goal was to take whatever it was given, and then conquer the whole land by force. In 1947 the same thing happened. The Jewish authorities of Palestine ostensibly accepted the GA Resolution, thus presenting themselves as the “reasonable” party, while the Arab States (some of which gained independence after other League of Nations Mandates expired), staunchly opposed the forceful partition. The Arabs rightfully claimed that the UN Charter called for application of the principle of self determination (e.g. by a referendum of the whole Palestinian population: Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, etc.). Truman himself realized that the UN Partition Plan was going nowhere, and in March 1948 (too late, of course), he suddenly called for the Mandate to be converted into a Trusteeship Territory system, under the new UN Charter. The “Partition Plan” also called for Jerusalem to hold a special international status, as a Corpus Separatum (separate body), which will be outside of the Jewish and Arab States. The Jewish armed groups immediately proved that they did not care a bit about the Partition Plan. They took all the land that was possible, including West Jerusalem, expelled by force around 750.000 Arabs whose families had lived there for centuries, and in 1967 took the whole land.The UN 1947 Resolution was illegal and there is nothing to write home about it seventy years later.
EXCELLENT COMMENT!
I WAS THINKING OF POSTING IT MYSELF.
I DONT LIKE PILLARS RATHER WIMPY WAY OF REFERRING TO ISRAEL.HE SHOULD BE FAR MORE HARD HITTING.
also it must be known that the only way israel was allowed to become a UN member was that they agreed to allow all the 750000
disspossed palestinians to return home. they havent allowed one! they put immense pressure on the members even having american sympathizers blackmail member countries with desperately needed post WWll rebuilding funds if they didnt allow israel to become a member.
everything, and i mean EVERYTHING, about israel is about pressure; from the very beginning in the 1890’s when they first began to pressure the christian and muslim palestinians to sell their land to the present pressure on trump to bomb syria
israel is a totally illegal state; from its creation to the absolute present!
To FobosDemos…
Exactly!!! See Thomas Suarez “THE TERROR STATE”.
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA
Trump should be sent to Gaza. His comments about told how “Palestinians are bought up to hate Jews” could only have come from a Jew. He needs to go to the West Bank and talk to Palestinians and see first hand what the Jews are doing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HpzevsUYVX0&feature=youtu.be
OT but of general interest :
NOTE FROM PUBLIUS TACITUS–Dr. Postol expressed his appreciation for those who noted his mis-reading of the French Intelligence Report. He is correcting the record and adding to the critique. I think you will find it worth your time to read and analyze.
French Intelligence Report of April 26, 2017 Is Based on False Citations To Evidence by THEODORE A. POSTOL
” In my effort to understand the exotic claims of the French Intelligence Report (FIR) I missed that the report was in fact focused on an event that occurred not on April 4, 2017 but instead on April 29, 2013. This completely negates my earlier finding that the FIR described the attack of April 4 as occurring at a different location from Khan Sheikhoun…..”
At Sic Semper Tyrannis blog at turcopolier[dot]typepad[dot]com
Good article and it is a good reflection of just how powerful and influential the Jewish lobby is. It can be argued that Israel is the primary beneficiary of US efforts to constrain Russia, and China, to have imposed regime change on Iraq and Libya, to wage a proxy war in Syria and its efforts to impose regime change on Iran.
No one denies the US offers 100% unconditional support of Israel. There is an very apparent lack of articles in MSM that are critical of Israel. And even alternative news sites such as Consortium News, the few articles that offer some critique of Israel really provide little more than a slap of the wrist. But this is very understandable because there is a very real risk that objective and factual criticism of Israel will bring the weight of the Jewish lobby down upon you. Nowhere else is this more evident than in attempts to discuss the Holocaust story from a perspective that differs from the official account. How many people are aware that, in most western countries, legislation makes it illegal to challenge and/or deny the Holocaust and that people are jailed in Europe each year for this thought crime. In Canada and the US, Amazon has quietly started censuring and banning books that do not promote the official Holocaust story. I have personally found many people will immediately shut down any discussion that does not offer full support to Israel. My opinion is there seems to be a religious-like dogma developing western culture which demands uncompromising support to Israel and that anything less is considered to be heresy.
And even alternative news sites such as Consortium News, the few articles that offer some critique of Israel really provide little more than a slap of the wrist.
Mondoweiss.net is a notable source for how an honest broker should work.
In Washington, the dictates of conscience are generally trumped by the dictates of lobbyists. This is especially true with regard to the Palestinian question. Those few who defy the pro Israel lobbies are usually swept from office in the next election cycle. The young singer/song writer Robert Zimmerman had it right when he wrote “money doesn’t talk, it swears”.
In Washington, the dictates of conscience are generally …
few and far between.
Last week’s session at the Security Council demonstrated that, despite the efforts of Haley and Danon, people outside of their two governments really do still care a lot about the untenable and destabilizing plight of the Palestinians.
Unfortunately, the Israel lobby has corrupted most politicians in the U.S., especially in Washington. Something similar applies to the fawning corporate media. My senators are like Elizabeth Warren – good on domestic issues. Unfortunately, like Senator Warren they are lobby puppets. The lobby may not have as much clout with the governments of other nations, but it is working on them and apparently with some degree of success.
Often the whole 100 Senators vote in favor of an Israeli motion- would they ever agree on any other issue?
ADVICE FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH….
Rosemerry, when I contact my Members of Congress (which is
often), I try to find a basis which they can support and have
supported in the past. I know to begin with that it is
impossible to be elected in my state without the support
of the Jewish lobby.
So to oppose bills against BDS (AIPAC) I emphasized
free speech issues and the rights of those to free expression
while becoming educated. I note that other nations (LIKE
iSRAEL!!!!) may have other rules. The US does not.
And so forth….
It may take some ingenuity on your part to basically
“talk in tongues”. To get what you want by not actually
saying it.
Just remember your goal: “I want a NO vote!”
As a Congressional advocate I found this worked.
I passed a reformulation of rules for Social
Security, defeated a Presidential veto (funds for
developmentally disabled)….testified before
Congress five times.
One issue per communication (although you actually have
plenty more!) etc.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA
Does anyone really think that after all this time the US and Israel will abandon their blatant injustice?
If the surviving Jews were to be compensated with land and their own state after World War II, it should have been where they had lived for the past 1,000+ years: somewhere in Europe, probably carved out of the Third Reich. The Rhineland offered lots of industrial and financial opportunities for people with their professional skills. Instead they were settled on land stolen from Arabs in the Middle East. Now the great turmoil taking place throughout the Middle East and the migration of millions of Muslim refugees towards Europe are largely due to policies demanded by Israel to create more Lebensraum in a Greater Israel and enforced by its primary enabler the United States. In a way, Europe is paying the price today that it should have better addressed back in 1947. Who knows what goes through Frau Merkel’s Dummkopf as she sells out her own people to accomodate Netanyahoo und Drumpf.
The Jewish banksters financed Hitler. Why should they get a piece of anything for fomenting war after war and profiting from those wars?
Does it really come as a surprise to anyone that a nation like the USA, which abrogated all its “treaties” with Native American Indians to steal their lands and round them up into reservations, would NOT support the same behavior on the part of Israel? Manifest Destiny seems to fuel the foreign policies of the USA AND Israel! Some higher spiritual force or deity ALLOWS nations like the USA and Israel to steal other people’s lands and slaughter thousands in the process! The world’s power structure is based on lies and injustices!
Hitler and German Nazism was a litmus test for what the Israelis and their Mossad have become. Heil Israel!
PAUL PILLAR’S FANTASILAND
Mr. Pillar’s article might be acceptable for those who are
unaware of what actually happened and are equally
oblivious to what has happened during the last
half century of so-called “negotiations”. This also
applies to what continues to happen daily.
For background history
Thomas Suarez: THE TERROR STATE (2017)
Naseer H. Aruri: DISHONEST BROKER: THE US ROLE
IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE *
**(To year 2000)
To be brief, as “mike K” makes clear, the current Administration
has made it clear that it is entirely allied with the oppressor
Israeli government. The former Administration shared similar
proclivities.
The issue is not this Administration’s policies but whether
the Palestinians will survive or disappear as the Native
Americans did in North America. Also interwoven are
policies elsewhere in the world. These are various beyond the
Middle East but also include deals by private Israeli
corporations to train US police in the control of those
protesting the shooting persons of color.
The “burden” of Great Britain was consiously designed by
the US. Joyce and Gabriel Kolko: THE LIMITS OF ;POWER.
Pillar basically begins his unreal narrative with no
acknowledgement of documented fact. One can only
hope for improvement in future contributions.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA