Want to Prevent an Arab State of Palestine? Embrace the Idea - by Yisrael Medad

Will Israel embrace a future with sovereignty, or will it slowly but surely make the decision more difficult, if not impossible, in the very near future? Will it trust the P.A. to perform as it has historically (admittedly a gamble), or will it face a gamble on the results of the upcoming American presidential elections?

Yisrael Medad..
JNS.org..
30 June '20..

There are multiple rational, cogent and persuasive grounds why no one should be touting the idea of establishing an independent Arab “State of Palestine” in the area of Judea and Samaria, while there are good arguments for extending Israel’s law and administration to parts, or all, of Judea and Samaria.

Firstly, besides the very obvious security threat such a state proposes due to the topography involved, but also the sure probability that Hezbollah and radical Islamic forces and Iranian units would move in, as well as the subsequent erosion of Jordan (Black September will not be repeated), it would become a second such Arab state in Palestine—and that is patently unfair. The Arab Palestinian state of Jordan already exists, as stipulated in Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine, “in the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined.”

That came about because Great Britain desired that its Mandate for Palestine to reconstitute the Jewish National Home would be geographically restricted to the area west of the Jordan River; it viewed the Zionist provisions as “inapplicable to the existing local conditions” in the Transjordan region, and so they would be postponed or their application withheld there.

England’s policy was a result of the Emir Abdullah’s incursion into Maan in November 1920—a prelude to a march on Damascus as part of a campaign to recover Syria for his brother, Emir Faisal. There he remained for three months awaiting the British reaction. They were worried that Abdullah might complicate Britain’s relations with France, not about any fictional and non-existent Arab Palestinian people.

After all, from the Balfour Declaration to the San Remo decision to the British Mandate, the people living in the area of Palestine were “non-Jews” and “Jews.” Arabs did not exist there as a people. To convince Faisal’s champion to abandon his bluffed intent to foment strife in Syria, Abdullah was offered to head a British-sponsored Transjordanian administration. On March 28, 1921, Abdullah, who had proceeded to Amman, met Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, in Jerusalem and the deal to create a fictional Emirate was finalized.

It should be stressed that in his talks at the time with local Arab leaders, Churchill made his opinion clear that:

it is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national centre and a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the Jews and good for the British Empire. But we also think it will be good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine, and we intend that it shall be good for them, and that they shall not be sufferers …

Abdullah, however, never ceased to seek control also over territories west of the River Jordan.

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Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist and commentator.