-Caveat Lector- http://www.ummah.net/unity/palestine/history/palwhopal.html
WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS? Not only did the Zionists devote extraordinary efforts to defeat the Palestinians and destroy their society, but also they denied their existence. Israel Zangwill, a founder of Zionism, claimed that Palestine was �a land without people, waiting for people without a land.�(Israel Zangwill, �The Return to Palestine�, New Liberal Review,II, Dec. 1901, p.627) But later on he came to admit that, �There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he does not like to face...Palestine proper has already its own inhabitants.� (�The Voice of Jerusalem�, London, 1920, p.88) [mentioned in F&F, p.4] The earliest Zionist colonialists in Palestine knew that the land they are settling on was inhabited. Christopher Sykes, pro-Zionist historian, said in his �Crossroads to Israel 1917-1948� that �This is the problem with Palestine, it was inhabited.� But some chose to ignore this minor problem while others tried to overcome it. Herzl, the father of Zionism, believed that the native Palestinians would resist the takeover of their country and therefore recommended that they be dealt with through �assured supremacy�, est. brutal force and military superiority. (Herzl, �The Jewish State: a modern Solution to the Jewish Question�, Rita Searl, 1946, p.29) [quoted in Facts and Fables, by Clifford A. Wright, p.2] He preached that the Zionists should acquire the land of their choice by armed conquest. The denial of the Palestinian existence is well and alive until today, where the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and living in Israel, are officially known as �the Arabs of Israel�. This denial of the Palestinian existence is a wholesale dehumanization of a people. �Who are the Palestinians?", exclaimed Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, �There was no such thing as a Palestinian people in Palestine. It was as though there was a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.� (The London Sunday Times 15 June, 1969) [ quoted in Palestinians/ The Making of A People, by Baruch Kimmer & Joel S. Migdal] In 1982 during the invasion of Lebanon, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, described them as, �two-legged beasts� in a speech in the Knesset. (Begin and the �Beasts�, by Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliout) [quoted in F&F, p.3] One of the basic facts of the Palestinian Arabs is that they exist, and have always existed and will continue to exist in spite of all the conspiracies that aim at liquidating them. The point from which their existence has been challenged arose in the war of 1948, which led to the physical dispossession of more than 800,000 of this indigenous population of Palestine. Palestine disappeared from the map and its people also disappeared from the mind and conscience of much of the world. But the fact remains that the major portion of the territory, now called Israel, is still legitimately belongs to the indigenous Palestinian people. WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS? The Palestinian Arabs of today, Muslims and Christians, are not, as popularly believed, the descendants of the Arabian desert conquerors of 1300 years ago. In fact, they are mainly the descendants of the original native population--Canaanites, Edomites, and Philistines. They were there when the Hebrews (of whom the Jews claim descent) invaded the land in about 1550 B.C., and lived for a short period as the Biblical myths claims in fact there are no mention to the Hebrews domination except in the Old Testament. But if we accepted the Jewish legend for argument we will find that the native inhibitors of the lands survived the Israelites occupation, retained possession of a large part of the country. They remained there when the last Hebrew left the country nearly 2000 years ago. Then, they intermingled first with the Arabs in the seventh century, then with the Crusaders in the 11th century. They continued the occupation in their Arabaized character until the Zionism invasion in 1948. According to Ottoman sources, more than half a million people lived in Palestine in 1850. Of those 80% were Muslims, 10% were Christians, and 7% were Jews. (F&F, p.4, source Janet Abu-Lughod, ed. �The Transformation of Palestine�, p.140) By 1914 the British estimated Palestine�s population at 689,272 of whom no more than 60,000 or 9% were Jews. (The Great Census of Palestine�s population 1922, p.142) The most accurate census at the time was the 1922 conducted by the British. Of the total 757,182 population, 78% were Muslims, 10% were Christians, 11% were Jews. 75% of the Jews were Europeans and their offspring. About 1% classified as others. The census did not include nearly 50,000 Bedouin in the Negev Desert. Now the Palestinian number is estimated at six million. But this could neither be accurate nor simply unreliable. The fact that an accurate census of the Palestinians has been impossible is a major symptom of their plight. It is not only their displacement in 1948, but also their continual and systematic displacement by Israel. In 1982 when Israel invaded southern Lebanon, it had forced the Palestinian even further from their homes, now occupied by Israel. Though some Zionist have acknowledged that Palestinians existed as persons, they have never acknowledged them as a nation. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A NATION: To be a nation means to feel an intimate attachment to a homeland, perceiving their past, present and future to be inextricably linked with the land they hold dear. Also it means a group of people speaking a common language, dwelling in unbroken territorial continuity and possessing a common consciousness of their own unique historical development. And the only real title which any people has to its country comes from birth and continual possession of the land. This is the criterion that the common acceptance of humanity has set up as a universal principle. It is recognized as the basis of integrity and security of all nations and no just international order can be established in the world today on any other foundation. The Palestinians opposed from the beginning in 1880, the immigration of European Zionists to Palestine for the purpose of colonization. As early as 1891 Palestinian leaders demanded that Sultan Abdul Hamid II, ruler of Palestine, forbid the acquisition of land titles by European Zionists in Palestine. (Neville J. Mandel, �The Arabs and Zionism Before WWI�) The Palestinian opposition to Zionism and the British Mandate and other rules before the Mandate, confirm that the Palestinians existed and developed into a people distinguishable from, but not without close ties to their neighbors. Of all the violent struggles in Palestine, three revolts have defined the modern history of the country�s Arab. The first was against the Egyptian empire builders who ruled the country for most of the 1830s. The second revolt, from 1936-39, was against the British Imperial rule and was the first real effort to demonstrate decisively this fledgling nation�s political will. The third was the Intifada which began in 1987. Its goal, like the rebellion in 1936, was to lay the foundation for political independence, against Israel. This sustained opposition to Zionism and sustained demand for independence cannot be dismissed as isolated acts of individuals unrepresentative of their community as a whole. The Palestinian actions and arguments were essentially nationalist. (Palestine and the Palestinians, by Nor Maslaha) The Intifada finally extracted a response from the world public opinion as it brought to light the enormity of the normal suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Since then the Palestinian people began to acquire the irrevocable status of a people dispossessed and under a brutal military occupation in international consciousness. PALESTINE RECOGNIZED: The Israeli scholar Y. Porath has shown that �at the end of the Ottoman period the concept of Filastin was widespread among the educated Arab public, denoting either the whole Palestine or the Jerusalem Sanjak alone.� (Porath, �The Emergence of the Palestinian National Movement�, 1929, Frank Cass, 1974, pp.8-9) When the Western Powers established the boundaries of �mandated Palestine� they implicitly recognized the reality of Palestine and enhanced it as an area of special significance whose people were a people distinguishable from their neighbors. Palestine also was recognized by tourists. Baedeker�s famous guidebook, published in 1876, was entitled Palestine-Syria. Herzl, himself, in his letter to the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid, referred to �Palestine� and neither seemed to be confused by the term. Palestinians regarded it as their homeland and others recognized it to be so. The king-Crane Commission appointed by US President Woodrow Wilson submitted a report after the 1919 Versaille Peace Conference which said: �If... the wishes of Palestinian population are to be decisive as to what to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine--nearly nine-tenths of the whole population--are emphatically against the Zionism program.� (Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, eds. �The Israeli-Arab Reader: a Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, Penguin 1984, p. 29) [quoted in F&F. p.8]. FILASTIN, THE ARABIC NAME: The Arab name for Palestine, Filastin, was derived from the Latin Palaestina, In turn, the Latin term was derived from Philistina, the name given to the area by the ancient Philistines. When the Arabs arrived they named the territory Djund Filastin. Palestine�s geographic location, being at a crossroads between three continents, and its religious background made its history distinguishable from its surrounding region. Palestine has always been a country of farmers. Beginning with the settled agriculturists--the fellaheen or peasants--and their ties to the powerful land owning families that dominated rural economic and social life. It was peasants and landowners who put their stamp on day-to-day life in Palestine and who were the center of the bloody battles throughout the centuries. But for the Israelis to acknowledge the existence of the Palestinians is to be reminded that the fact of Israel�s existence is the dispossession of the Palestinian people. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send your FREE holiday greetings online! http://greetings.yahoo.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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