By Jeremy Salt
From the deceitful dealings which led to the partition of historic Palestine, Israel is flagrantly showing the world that it was taking everyone for a ride, all along.
After the Peel Commission of 1937, there was no official move towards a ‘two-state solution’ until UNSCOP (UN Special Commission on Palestine) was charged with finding a solution in 1946.
By this time, in 1939, with war approaching and Arab opinion to be appeased, Britain had issued a ‘white paper’ recommending restrictions on Jewish ‘immigration’ into Palestine. The Zionists were furious and soon began biting the hand that had fed them for so long, killing British soldiers, and blowing up railways.
At the same time, they began moving towards where the power now lay, the United States, where President Truman was quick after the war to cash in on sympathy for Jewish refugees by proposing open-door ‘immigration’ into Palestine.
The British government was furious, but was getting ready to wash its hands of Palestine and leave the responsibility for clearing up the mess it had made to the United Nations.
By late 1947, UNSCOP (UN Special Committee on Palestine) was ready with its majority recommendation for partition. It was rejected outright by Arab governments and by the Palestinians. This was their land, and the UN had no right to take any of it away.
Naturally, it was accepted by the Zionists, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, as UNSCOP proposed to give them most of Palestine, including the agriculturally rich coastal region.
In November 1947, the plan went to the General Assembly and was passed by a bare two-thirds majority vote.
What is absolutely essential to remember here is that, in fact, this was a US vote, and only superficially a UN vote. It was the opposite of the real intentions of UN members, which were to reject the partition plan. They had made that clear only a few days earlier, when meeting in their entirety as an ad hoc committee.
This was the test run for the advocates of partition. Once it failed, the White House put pressure on vulnerable delegations (Haiti, Liberia, the Philippines and others) to change their vote and, out of the 17 who had voted against partition or had abstained, seven voted for it when tabled at a plenary session, just enough for it to scrape across the line.
This explains how, with the high point of decolonization approaching and self-determination a major UN objective, UN members could actually vote for a colonial-settler project. They were bullied into it by the White House, with President Truman assigning the task of fixing the vote to his counsel, Clark Clifford.
It is equally important to remember that the State Department was no part of this. Its job was to work out what was best for US foreign policy, not what was best for the president. Many of the senior staff was deeply concerned at the ramifications for the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds by supporting the establishment of a European Zionist settler state in Palestine.
As was the case when Truman announced recognition of the state of Israel in 1948 without informing US delegates at the UN, the President was playing his cards close to his chest and was capable of deception to suit his electoral interests. The US had changed direction, because of the violence in Palestine, and the delegates were working successfully towards a UN trusteeship when Truman betrayed them.
Having been passed, against the real wishes of UN members, against the opposition of the Palestinians and Arab and Muslim governments, the 1947 decision was then stymied by the Zionist war/ethnic clearing operation of 1948.
The trail, thereafter, meanders through murderous Zionist attacks on Palestinians, including those in Gaza – in the 1950s still under Egyptian control, and on surrounding Arab states in what Israel would invariably describe as self-defense.
The PLO response, after 1967, varied from outright rejection of Israel in the immediate aftermath of the war to one state in which Muslims, Christians and Jews could live as equals. That had no chance of flying with Israel, and neither were ‘western’ governments predisposed to put pressure on it to comply with UN resolutions and international law. It got away with every crime it was committing and, from that, learned it could get away with almost anything including – as we now see – genocide in Gaza and creeping genocide on the West Bank.
The ‘peace proposals’ came from everywhere – the US, the EU, individual Arab governments and the OIC (the Organization of the Islamic Conference, now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation) and the Arab League – but, no matter who was proposing or what was being proposed, all these initiatives quickly turned to dust. The stumbling block always was Israel, holding territory after 1967 even ‘western’ governments recognized as occupied, but not prepared to hand one inch back.
In 1977, the long run of Israeli Labor governments ended with the election of Menahim Begin, a territorial ‘maximalist’ like his idol, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and his successor, two decades later, Benyamin Netanyahu. Like Netanyahu, Begin was a terrorist who put Jabotinsky’s ‘iron wall’ into practice, orchestrating along with ‘defense’ minister Ariel Sharon the worst atrocities since 1948.
The ’peace negotiations’ with Egypt after the 1973 war were based on the idea of a ‘comprehensive settlement,’ as President Sadat professed to believe it would be, in line with UNGA resolution 242, issued after the 1967 war, calling for the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territory but not ‘the’ occupied territory, let alone ‘all’ the occupied territory, including the Golan Heights.
Begin was prepared to negotiate a settlement only on the basis of the return of occupied Egyptian territory and eventually got what he wanted. Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai, and the ‘peace treaty’ signed in 1979 was elastic enough on the future of the West Bank and Gaza for him to accept the trade-off.
A “transitional period” of five years was laid down to provide for the election of a “self-governing authority” for the West Bank and Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces. Representatives of the Palestinians (the PLO not mentioned), Jordan and Israel, would meet to decide the “readmission” of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. They were never allowed back.
The return of the 1948 refugees was not mentioned, while the return of “displaced” Palestinians and Syrians to the occupied Golan Heights would be left to the states’ parties, Israel and Syria. Needless to say, this ethnically cleansed population was never allowed back, either.
That Israel had no intention of leaving Gaza was evident in the speed of settler colonies established there, 21 between 1967 and 2005. Begin was determined to destroy the PLO, the only candidate for a self-governing Palestinian body. In 1982, he succeeded in driving it out of Lebanon, at the cost of about 20,000 civilian and Palestinian lives, including those massacred at Sabra and Shatila.
The removal of Palestinians from Gaza was an agenda item in December 1967, when Prime Minister Eshkol suggested that restricting their access to water might encourage them to leave.
It was clear even then that none of the plans for the West Bank was likely to come to pass, except in the most strangulated form. Israel disbanded its settlements in Gaza only begrudgingly, but remained in full military occupation, as well as controlling everything that went in or out of the territory.
As for Jerusalem, Sadat wrote in a letter to President Carter (March 17, 1978), “Arab Jerusalem” – presumably the eastern part – was part of the West Bank and must remain under “Arab” (not specifically Palestinian) sovereignty. Furthermore, all measures taken by Israel in the occupied territories were “null and void.” In fact, what ended up as null and void was his statement.
The ‘peace’ treaty signed by Egypt and Israel in 1979 was brokered by the US. The ‘peace process’, which followed in the 1990s, ran into Israeli obstacles from beginning to end. Israelis and their overseas lobbyists have since made much of the 97 percent return of territory supposedly offered by Ehud Barak during the 2000 Camp David ‘peace summit’ with Clinton and Arafat.
In fact, he was kite-flying. His standing in public opinion had slumped and there was no way the Knesset would have accepted what he was proposing anyway (he was voted out of office in 2001), regardless of the endless qualifications Arafat could not accept.
Insofar as Jerusalem was concerned, Barak extended the city’s eastern municipal boundaries to include the village of Abu Dis. That was where the Palestinians were going to have their capital, not East Jerusalem.
Having squeezed as much as it could out of Arafat, Israel dumped him. He was turned into a prisoner in Ramallah before his 2004 death in a French hospital. Almost certainly, he had been poisoned on the orders of Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Beirut, then ‘prime minister,’ who had long regretted missing the opportunity to kill him in 1982.
Arafat was succeeded by Mahmud Abbas, whose full-time job as President of the Palestinian Authority was collaborating with Israel, to the immense damage done through his treachery to the Palestinian people.
The number of settlements and settlers in the 1967 occupied territories (now about 800,000) was proof of Israel’s real intentions. The evidence was so obvious that talk of a ‘two-state solution’ was not to be taken seriously, well before most people concluded it could not be taken seriously.
Now, Israel is openly and flagrantly showing the world that it was taking it for a ride all along. Its formula for peace is no two states between the river and the sea. Only one Jewish state, with no Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, if Israel can get away with it, and probably none eventually in pre-1967 Israel either, except as a charming ethnic remnant that will bring in tourist revenue.
This short-long term plan is already rebounding. The world is sick of Israel. States everywhere are cutting relations and imposing boycotts. These are going to snowball rapidly in the coming years. Soon, all the ‘friends’ will drop off and Israel will end up totally reliant on the US.
Given the choice of endlessly backing Israel as it sinks into the depths of infamy, even the US will probably get to the point of cutting it loose. Sometimes, it can be hard to tell who is the monkey and who is the back, who the tail and who the rest of the dog, but no state can endlessly carry this burden. The American people are waking up fast, especially the young generation that will be voting against Israel in every venue.
Is there anyone else ready to replace the US and come running to help Israel with billions of dollars of economic aid and armaments every year? China, Russia, the BRICS states, anyone ready to put their reputations, their money and the needs of their own people on the line for Israel? None of them seems up for it.
The suggestion that a war criminal, Tony Blair, should be teamed up with a collaborator, Mahmud Abbas, to run Gaza is evidence that the ‘western’ backers of Israel have completely lost the plot.
If they are not serious, why not Abbott and Costello, or Beavis and Butt-Head? But Abbott and Costello are as dead as the two-state solution, and Beavis and Butt-Head was only an animated comedy series. Actually, a bit like the ongoing plan for Gaza, but more animated. Maybe Cheech and Chong could be asked to run Gaza, if they are not too busy with another project.
The proponents of the Gaza plan are apparently serious. Abbas will have his presidential palace, if he does not die before he opens the front door, Trump his golden statue facing the offshore gas fields, and the swivel-eyed Blair will fly in, from time to time, to justify his pay packet, while Israeli jets whiz overhead to cut down any marauding Palestinian child. The Palestinians will be locked away somewhere, anywhere, it does not matter.
This will be the death even of the blackest satire. Where can it possibly go after this, except into the afterlife? Tom Wolfe, be glad you died in time. Rabelais, Dean Swift, Gogol, Chaplin, Dorothy Parker, Mel Brooks, look on in envy. Who could have thought of this? You’ve all been outdone.
– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press) and The Last Ottoman Wars. The Human Cost 1877-1923 (University of Utah Press, 2019). He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
