September 9, 1993
Yasser Arafat
Chairman
The Palestinian Liberation Organization
Mr. Chairman,
In response to your letter of September 9, 1993, I wish to confirm to you that, in light of the PLO commitments included in your letter, the Government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process.
Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
The above letter from the Israeli prime minister was part of the mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO which ushered in the Oslo Accords signed in the White House lawn September 13, 1993. The Palestinian people sought and received recognition with many sacrifices. Negating or denying the existence of the Palestinian people after government of the state of Israel recognized it shows how low US election fever has reached.
While Newt Gingrich's comments to a Jewish media outlet that Palestinians are an invented people was pretty bad, what was worse is what happened (or didn't happen) afterwards.
The statement made on the eve of the pre-Iowa Republican caucuses brought immediate response from Palestinians. PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi called the statement "ignorant and racist," and questioned whether someone making such a statement has what it takes to become the next president of the United States of America. Other Palestinian officials correctly identified that the statement is a green light to Israelis to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
When ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Republican nominees during the Iowa debate to comment on the statement, no one would deal directly with it. Republicans seeking the office of the presidency were tripping over each other as to who can show more support to Israel. No one even tried to acknowledge the existence of Palestinians.
Perhaps the least damaging statement came from congressman Ron Paul, who quipped that if Palestinians were invented, so was Israel. Everyone one else reiterated their total unequivocal and non-negotiable support for America's 'ally' Israel. If they had a problem with the 'invention' statement, it was that it might not have been very diplomatic!! Mitt Romney, the other leading Republican contender, who wants to move the US embassy immediately to Jerusalem the day he becomes president, said that he would have 'contacted' the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu before making such a controversial statement. Others agreed about the tactic but none dealt with the substance.
When it came the time for Newt Gingrich, he not only stood by his statement but added more. Stereotyping an entire nation, he called Palestinians "terrorists" and claimed wrongly that Palestinian textbooks teach hatred to Jews. He also claimed wrongly that the US government funds the printing of what he claimed to be hate-filled books.
While Israeli and US officials were quiet on the subject and major American politicians historians and thinkers were nowhere to be found, it took a self-proclaimed pro-Israel American Jewish writer to bust this bubble.
Writing in the NY Times, Thomas Friedman denounced this hypocritical love fest for the Jewish votes saying that this "competition" to grovel for Jewish votes -- by outloving Israel -- takes Republicans "to a new low. He called such action "loving Israel to death, literally."
Friedman explains that if Palestinians were not a nation then the US nominee is either supporting an apartheid system, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or laying the foundation for a binational state. Concluding: is this being pro-Israel?
Speaking in front of Republican voters, the statements made by Gingrich and the other nominees brought warm applause from the audience. While we may analyze Republican nominee statements as political pandering paid for by AIPAC lobbyists, this applause by a totally gullible and easily swayed American voting crowd is probably the scariest part of this sad incident.
Follow Daoud Kuttab on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daoudkuttab
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""Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire" until the early 20th century
I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic," he said."
Now what part of this isn't accurate? What part of this is not in line with what PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said in 1977:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. "
Again and again they chose no state with each offer that was extended to them. After 60+ years it is difficult that their goal changed. Newt was dead on.
Also to quote Zuhair Muhsin, former head of the PLO’s Military Department and an Executive Council member, in which he candidly conceded to a Dutch daily: “... the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”
This fiction is continued by their Arab brethren, Arab League spokesman Hisham Youssef admitted that the Arab countries refuse citizenship for Arabs who have been there for 6 decades “to preserve their Palestinian identity....if every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won’t be any reason for them to return to Palestine.”
A copy of a Palestinian Birth Certificate.
http://www.lastone.net.au/politics/cirtificate.JPG
The certificate was issued in 1925.
It lists the nationality of Mother Palestinian Nationality of Father Palestinian
You misstate the question: it's whether specifically the Arab peoples of Palestine had a national identity separate from the Syrians or, later, the Jordanians. At various times, the Arabs in Palestine referred to themselves as either.
It provides evidence that at one point a place called Palestine issued birth Certificates. It is also a legal government document that has been accepted by other governments as part of ones identity papers.
On this legal government document it states that the nationality of the parents is Palestinian.
While this birth certificate was issued while under the British mandate, It shows that Britain recognized and accepted the existence of a Palestinian Nationality.
Therefore they be and let there be light.
But, of course, the poster would not and couldn't produce a similar document prior to 1918 when the British expelled the Ottoman Turks from the region, nor would he/sh find such a document after Israel came into being.
The reason is obvious: "Palestine" has never been a single independent nationality or a state, never.
As part of this treaty Britain was obligated to set up a Palestinian nationality, which would be offered without discrimination to Jews Christians and Muslims who habitually resided in Palestine. This was known as the Palestinian Citizenship Order on 1 August 1925.
http://bcrfj.revues.org/index6405.html
List of countries that did not exist as separate independent states in 1918
India
Pakistan
Australia
Canada
Egypt
Syria
Trans Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Libya
Sudan
Mozambique
South Africa
Namibia
Swaziland
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Vietnam
There are more but this is all I could think of at the top of my head.
Indian nationals carried British Indian passports. Like Palestinians carried British Palestinian passports. Because India up to the granting of independence in 1947 did not exist ever as a separate independent state. Did that mean that a bunch of Europeans could immigrate to it and take it over.
Wrongly?! Really?
Here's a factual tape of Palestinian high school graduation ceremony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kpwRzFpI8E&feature=player_embedded#!
Some choice peaceful quotes ...
" and our rifles are not rusty even if they have fired thousands of bullets"
Sign: in the name of the martyrs( suicide bombers)
"School that taught us nationalism in the name of Palestine: Haifa, Acre, Jaffa.."
Nice. Who doubts Palestinain high schools teach peaceufl co-existence with their Israeli neighbors...Not me, man.
Salah Yasin, general director of the Curriculum Center at the ministry, spoke on behalf of the ministry... Yasin rejected the accusation that the curricula lack the notion of rapprochement.
Followed directly contradicting himself
f"We cannot discuss peace with the Israelis when they continue to occupy our land..."
" and all cities with Israeli names are in fact Palestinian..."
http://www.pcdc.edu.ps/abufarha_continuing.htm
That's some rapprochement!!!!
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” nation.
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” state.
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” kingdom.
* There were never in the history of the world “Palestinian” kings.
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” capital.
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” essence.
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” heritage.
* There was never in the history of the world a “Palestinian” culture.
The “Palestinians” are Arabs who were brought to the region by the Ottoman empire as part of the Muslim occupation in the region.
"Palestinians", of course, is derived from the Hebrew p'lishtim (פלישתים) which means invaders, referring to those people in ancient times who invaded the country, Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) from the sea (Crete?) and who settled in the southwestern part of it, in places such as Ashdod, Ashq'lon, Gat, Eqron and 'Azzah.
The term, after it has been Romanized, Anglicized and eventually Arabized was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its attempt, towards the end of the 1960s and early 1970s to invent a people for political expediency of bringing Israel's demise (again, read the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s Charter!!).
What the PLO leaders didn't realize was the fact that the term they chose was originally a Hebrew one, appearing in the Hebrew Bible; and, that it means invaders...
* There was an Israeli kingdom in the land of Israel.
* There were Israeli kings in the Israeli kingdom of Israel.
* There was an Israeli capital in the kingdom of Israel.
* There was and there is an Israeli essence.
* There was and there is an Israeli heritage.
* There was and there is an Israeli culture.
You guys are imposing this byas thoughts for too long already, is about time that you guys change your approach and be more constructive, by the way, don't call me anti-Semite, I am for an Israel state as well for a Palestinian state.
How else to explain that which is clearly stated in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s charter, as well as that of Hamas. And, how else one is to understand the categorical refusal on the part of the Muslim-Arab leadership, local and regional, to accept Israel's RIGHT to be, to exist as THE NATION STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE?
Mind you, however, that while many on these fora would be happy to agree with the above, many of those same people have spent considerable time on these very fora arguing that, while there is certainly a Palestinian people, somehow the Jews, who have considered themselves to be a people for over 3,000 years, somehow are not.
Next, while Mr. Kuttab, any other benighted souls, may wish to see Gingrich's statements as political pandering to the Israel-bashers' standard bogeyman, AIPAC (which is mainly funded by American Jews), they are in reality first and foremost pandering to evangelical Christian GOP voters. The GOP may pick up a few votes from the .02% of the US electorate that is "ultra Orthodox" with that kind of mishegas, but Jews vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and will do so again this next election. [cont.]
Really?!!!
Obviously it has been a loooong time since author visited Palestinians schools in Gaza.
Or for that matter watched Palestinian Al Aqsa TV educational children program.
170 EU assembly members want probe into EU funds for Palestinian budget"There is substantial proof that EU funding has wrongly been used to finance school textbooks promoting hatred and inciting to martyrdom."
The Palestinian Ministry of Education instructions to history teachers.
Objective 5 - The student will understand the reasons why the peoples of the world hate the Jews".
H.R.2601 — Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007
"These new textbooks, while an improvement over past texts, fail in many respects to foster attitudes amongst the Palestinian people conducive to peace with Israel, including references to the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, failure to acknowledge the State of Israel, and failure to discuss Jews in sections dealing with religious tolerance."
When Palestinains textbooks begin include Tel Aviv, stop referring to the State of Israel as "Zionist entity" and cease referring in glowing terms to martyrs and Jihad we may revisit this discussion.