Palestinians Have Avoided Opportunities for Statehood

Just repeating the facts that prove Palestinian Arabs have never wanted peace with Israel. From Palestinians Have Avoided Opportunities for Statehood:

The Palestinians [Arabs], backed and at times manipulated by the Arab world, have done nearly everything possible to avoid setting up their own state. They:

1) rejected UN Resolution 181 in 1947 and attacked Israel, thereby precipitating war and exile.

2) They avoided creating a state in the West Bank and Gaza between 1949 and 1967,

3) created UNRWA which perpetuated rather than solved their refugee problem,

4) rejected Egypt and Israel's offer of autonomy in 1978,

5) jailed at state-building under Oslo after 1993,

6) invoked suicide terrorism that alienated some of their most ardent Israeli supporters, and

7) failed again at consolidating the territorial foundations of a state after Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005.

20 Years of Research Reveals: Jerusalem Belongs to Jews

From IsraelNN.com ( links inserted by Smooth Stone) :

Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law."

Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years. The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.

Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel.

San Remo
The relevant resolution reads as follows:

"The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust... the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration... in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

Gauthier notes that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - but says nothing about any "political" rights of the Arabs living there.

The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is a "a sacred trust of civilization" to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world." Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish national home in Palestine.

League of Nations
The League of Nations' resolution creating the Palestine Mandate, included the following significant clause:

“Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

No such recognition of Arab rights in Palestine was granted.

In 1945, the United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations - and assumed the latter's obligations. Article 80 of the UN Charter states: "Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed, in or of itself, to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."

UN Partition Plan
However, in 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan. It violated the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine in that it granted political rights to the Arabs in western Palestine - yet, ironically, the Arabs worked to thwart the plan's passage, while the Jews applauded it.

Resolution 181 also provided for a Special regime for Jerusalem, with borders delineated in all four directions: The then-extant municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns up to Abu Dis in the east, Bethlehem in the south, Ein Karem and Motza in the west, and Shuafat in the north.

Referendum Scheduled for Jerusalem
The UN resolved that the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a separate entity under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The regime was to come into effect by October 1948, and was to remain in force for a period of ten years, unless the UN's Trusteeship Council decided otherwise. After the ten years, the residents of Jerusalem "shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City."

The resolution never took effect, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem after the 1948 War of Independence and did not follow its provisions.

After 1967
After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel regained Jerusalem and other land west of Jordan. Gauthier notes that the UN Security Council then passed Resolution 242 authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until it had “secure and recognized boundaries.” The resolution was notably silent on Jerusalem, and also referred to the "necessity for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem,” with no distinction made between Jewish and Arab refugees.

Today
Given Jerusalem's strong Jewish majority, Gauthier concludes, Israel should be demanding that the long-delayed city referendum on the city's future be held as soon as possible. Not only should Israel be demanding that the referendum be held now, Jerusalem should be the first order of business. "Olmert is sloughing us off by saying [as he did before the Annapolis Conference two months ago], 'Jerusalem is not on the table yet,'" Gauthier concludes. "He should demand that the referendum take place before the balance of the land is negotiated. If the Arabs won’t agree to the referendum, there is nothing to talk about."

Israel: UN Giving Palestinians Fictitious Sense of Reality

November 29th, 2007 marked the 60th anniversary of Resolution 181; the United Nations voted to created two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The Arabs rejected the offer, the Jews accepted the offer. To cope with their shame of making one of the stupidest mistakes in Islam's 1,400 year history which includes various episodes of regression, repression, imperialism, murder, slaughter, genocide, terrorism, and beheadings, the Muslims fabricated a holiday to be celebrated on subsequent November 29ths, and call it the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People". It's enough to make one puke. Fortunately, the Jews have articulate and educated representatives to sling the mud back, like Israel's ambassador, Dan Gillerman. From Israel: UN Giving Palestinians Fictitious Sense of Reality:

On Thursday, Israel's ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman addressed the General Assembly during discussions on "the [ridiculously hyped] International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People":

"This Assembly hall is also the birthplace of the annual 21 resolutions defaming Israel - with a litany of predetermined, impractical, and completely biased conclusions - that have only given the Palestinians a fictitious sense of reality and a discourse of rights without responsibilities, both of which render the United Nations completely incapable of playing a meaningful role in addressing the conflict."

"It is all the more bewildering that of late the Jewish character of the State of Israel has been called into question....The resolution that gives the 29th of November significance - General Assembly Resolution 181 - speaks of the creation of the 'Jewish State' no less than 25 times. Even before that, the notion of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel was cemented in the 1922 League of Nations British Mandate on Palestine, which put into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to establish a national home for the Jewish people. The Arab refusal to recognize the existence of our Jewish state has been at the core of the Palestinians' inability to achieve a state of their own."

60 Years Ago Today: UN Votes for Jewish and Arab States

Excerpted from UN Watch:

Sixty years ago today, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to created two states, one Arab and one Jewish, out of the former British mandate of Palestine. The world body played an integral role in fashioning the original two-state solution that the international community so desperately seeks today.

It is odd, then, that not only did the UN today decline to celebrate this proud moment, but it actually held rites of mourning—somber ceremonies around the globe, pursuant to Arab-sponsored resolutions, commemorating the annual “Palestinian Solidarity Day” with carefully screened speakers who, one after another, mercilessly slammed the Jewish state.

Today in Geneva, for example, the opening statement by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, read by a representative, lamented the “indignities and violence of occupation and conflict that Palestinians continue to suffer.” His message did mention that Israelis have died, too, but overwhelmingly pointed the finger at the Jewish state. The chairman of the “Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People,” Prasad Kariyawasam of Sri Lanka, accused Israel of committing “collective punishment” in Gaza. The Arab League’s Saad Alfarargi denounced the “ruthless daily attacks by Israel,” its “oppressive policies,” and its “apartheid wall.”

Remarkably, the next to join the jackals was a representative of World Vision—a major organization partly funded by the U.S. government (and which last year received $944 million from Americans), and whose mandate speaks of “relief and development,” not overt political activity. The speech by Thomas Getman, the organization’s Geneva-based international relations director, said not a thing about Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror attacks and their calls to destroy Israel, granting the terror groups effective immunity.

Instead, Mr. Getman sought to promote hatred of Israel among the assembled delegates, so innocently inviting them to “think about the first child that each of us saw in a terrible situation because of the Israeli occupation.” Conveniently left out of this picture were the Israeli pre-schoolers and other children who are attacked daily by Palestinian Kassam rockets--and the men that launch them. (Mr. Getman’s extremist political activity, conflicting with World Vision’s humanitarian mandate, is nothing new; in 2006, when the representative of a human rights NGO was cut short during a UN debate by Syrian objections—Damascus had demanded a special agenda item on “occupation,” but sought to censor any suggestion that this might include its own occupation of Lebanon—Mr. Getman shouted at the NGO representative, and published an open letter siding with Syria.)

So much for how the UN honored the 60th anniversary of one of its most famous resolutions.

That the only ones holding celebrations today were Jewish groups is, some might argue, hardly surprising. After all, back in November 1947, it was the Jews who, from Tel Aviv to Buenos Aires, danced and cried tears of joy when the international community voted to recognize the revival of a Jewish homeland. After 2,000 years of exile—and two years after the Nazi Holocaust that murdered one third of the Jewish people—genuine self-determination, even if only on a truncated portion of the original League of Nations mandate, was a dream come true.

(This video powerfully conveys the sense of drama and exhilaration among Jews worldwide, whose ears were glued to radio sets as each country vote was announced.)

And it was the Arabs who immediately rejected the UN vote—“My country will never recognize such a decision,” said Syria, echoing its peers—and initiated bloody riots the very next day. These were followed with the opening of hostilities against Palestine’s Jewish community by irregular forces, and then, after the British left on May 14, 1948, with the full invasion of Israel by the armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and Iraq.

So is it any wonder that it was once again only the Jews who, in several communities around the world, were today celebrating?

By treating this day as a catastrophe, both the Arab states and the UN undermine their stated commitment to the two-state solution. Until November 29, 1947 becomes a day of UN celebration, the organization effectively encourages today’s call by Hamas for the cancellation of resolution 181.

What happened in 1967 that caused Israel's borders to change?

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