No Law, No Peace
Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a riggedvote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. It was a formula for a massive injustice. Some 56.4 percent of Palestine was to be given for a Jewish state to a people (many of them recently arrived alien immigrants) who constituted 33 percent of the population and owned 5.57 percent of the land.
But the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal- meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy or confer even spurious legitmacy,unless approved by the Security Council.
The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for a vote!Why not? Because the US knew that if approved it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
So the partition plan was VITIATED(became invalid), and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine – after Britain had been driven out of it by Zionist terrorism – was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel UNILATERALLY declared itself to be in existence – actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that the Zionist state, which (it bears repeating) came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless?.. Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not take from the Palestinians by force.
Also true is that most if not all of the Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews.The incoming Zionist Jews were mainly foreign nationals of many lands, descended from those who became Jewish by conversion to Judaism centuries after the fall of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel and what is called the “dispersal” into “oblivion” of its people. The notion that there were, are, two entire peoples with an equally valid claim to the same land is an historical nonsense. The relatively
few Jews with a valid claim were the descendants of those who stayed in Palestine through everything. They numbered only a few thousand at the time of Zionism’s birth in 1897; they regarded themselves as Palestinians; and they were fiercely opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise- because they rightly feared that it would make them as well as the incoming, alien Zionist Jews enemies of the Arabs among whom they had lived in peace and security).
The question that should be addressed to all who demand that Hamas recognise Israel and to President Obama in particular, is this: WHICH ISRAEL is to be recognised? Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war or a Greater Israel?
In a recent article for Counterpunch, Virginia Tilley, associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at South Africa’s Hobart and William Smith Colleges wrote: “It should be incumbent on the international community to confirm where the borders will be before asking that Hamas recognise Israel’s ‘right’ to them.” Nobody could put it better or more honestly.
IT’S MY VIEW THAT UNLESS PRESIDENT OBAMA IS PREPARED TO DECLARE AND INSIST THAT THE ISRAEL TO BE RECOGNISED IS THE ONE THAT EXISTED ON THE EVE OF THE 1967 WAR, THERE WILL BE NO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ON HIS WATCH (however long or short that may be).
If George Mitchell, a good man with real and rare integrity, returns from his listening visit to the region with a recommendation that the U.S. must talk to Hamas without pre-conditions, it’s my view that President Obama, if he says “Let’s do it”, will face his first presidential confrontation with Zionist lobby, with Secretary of State Clinton, probably,on its side. And that will tell us whose side Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanual, is on. Watch this space as they say.
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