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The Palestinian People, as known today, was largely the concept of Soviet Russia

Reader comment on item: The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine [Long version]

Submitted by Wallace Edward Brand (United States), Aug 24, 2011 at 09:51

During WWI, the British, appealing to the Arab nationalism movement centered in the Arabian Peninsula, offered self government to those Arabs who fought on its side in WWI against the Germans and Ottomans. The Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula, with Lawrence, did so. Their efforts may have been overblown by American newsman Lowell Thomas, but they did side with the Allies against the Ottoman Turks who had been ruling them for at least 400 years. The Arabs local to Palestine did not. According to Winston Churchill, in the deliberations over the British 1939 White Paper, the Arabs in Palestine during WWi allied with the Ottomans against the British.

During the summer of 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte was sent by the UN to Palestine to mediate a truce and try to negotiate a settlement.

Bernadotte found little enthusiasm among the Arabs for independence. Contradicting Professor Porath, he wrote in his diary:
The Palestinian Arabs had at present no will of their own. Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism. The demand for a separate Arab state in Palestine is consequently relatively weak. It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Transjordan.
In 1973, Zahir Muhsein admitted to the Dutch newspaper Trouw that there was no such thing as the "Palestinian People" and that it was a term created solely for political reasons. He also denied any motivation for "palestinian self determination" and stated that just as soon as the Jews had been annihilated the PLO would merge with Jordan. He was a member of the PLO Executive Committee.

I show in the following article that the concept of a separate Palestine People as that term is used today, dates only from 1964. It appears in the preamble of the PLO Charter drafted in Moscow and affirmed by 422 members of a Palestine National Council, created contemporaneously. Each of the members was hand picked by the KGB. All this comes from Major General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking defector feom the Soviets during the Cold War. See: Brand,"Soviet Russia, the Creators of the PLO and the Palestinian People" http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/03/soviet-russia-creators-of-plo-and_31.html. He had personal involvement in Soviet activities in the Middle East.

The concept of the Palestinian People has been a changing concept. It first applied, prior to 1967, only to Arabs in Palestine within the Green Line, excluding those in Jordan and those in the West Bank and Gaza. After 1967, the Charter was amended to remove the exclusion for Gaza and the West Bank, and later, after Oslo, the Arabs within the Green Line were excluded. So now it includes only Arabs in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem -- the part of Jerusalem formerly ruled by Jordan and perhaps also the Arabs claiming to be refugees, wherever they may be.

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