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StymiestxBlitz    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther?   7/6/2003 9:01:50 PM why nbot move them all to Northern Canada they can live with the Caribou hahaha   Quote    Reply WinsettZ    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther?   7/29/2003 10:57:13 AM What a interesting joke. There are some expat communities in Europe. You're suggesting carving out a part of eastern Iraq, way out near Iran? Who would live there? Also, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon seperate Israel from Iraq. Suggesting transplant of a whole community is probably not going to be accepted. It would be easier to carve a piece out of Jordan and Syria, meld it to the West Bank. But neither wants to lose territory. Neither is Israel willing to give much...they don't have much to begin with. Interesting theory though.   Quote    Reply bsl    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther?   8/30/2003 7:54:09 PM Here's a dirty little secret: Jordan IS Palestinian. It's East Palestine, part of the original Palestine Mandate, a country invented by the British Foreign and Colonial offices out of thin air both to suit Imperial needs and to pay off the Husseini family, whom the British had betrayed when they switched support to Saud. This is one of the reasons you sometimes here "Jordan is Palestine" from some Israelis. In fact, the day Yassir Arafat gets control of a real country West of the Jordan is the day the clock is ticking on the survival of the Husseini dynasty East of the Jordan.   Quote    Reply gunner    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther?   9/5/2003 9:50:44 AM Mr Lerner, you refer to Jordan's creation resulting from a need "to pay off the Husseini family, whom the British had betrayed when they switched support to Saud." If I may direct your attention to link The League of Nations proposed the Palestinian Mandate and placed it under British protection, similarly with the French and Lebanon/Syria. It had previously been part of the Turkish empire, and was never a British colony or imperial province, or even suited to "imperial needs", any more than Basra is now or Schleswig Holstein was in the cold war. The British had to buy off various factions in order to create some regional stability and to repay 'honour debts' to tribes who had helped fight against the Turks. The Husseini Mufti was an outlaw and an ex-Ottoman turncoat who was unfortunately able to bully the British administration into giving him power. The British found it hard to shake him off, and were well rid of him when they did. It is largely due to his trenchant position on Arab-Israeli co-oexistence that we have the present conflict. Arab unrest in Palestine threatened to spill over into the French part of Mesopotamia, and Britain was worried about escalation across the region. The Colonial Office, prompted by Churchill, then subdivided Palestine and formed Transjordan so as to placate and appease militant palestinians, still not satisfied with their lot. This was an about face compared to initial British determination to create an integrated Jewish homeland, and resulted in an Arab ruled Palestinian enclave that was not open to Jewish population movement. link The above link describes the convoluted politics in the region in some depth, and explains why the Saudi Abdullah was installed as Emir of Transjordan, according to the principle of 'divide and rule'. The politics of the Middle East have always been notorious, and like the desert sands, they shift with the wind. Also like the desert sands, they get under the skin of everyone involved, so that the 'solution' that was thrashed out yesterday is buried under recrimination the next, and one is left with a raw, irritating itch.   Quote    Reply bsl    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther?   9/5/2003 7:14:03 PM I'm familiar with the history of the region, in general terms. I am fully aware, as apparently you are not, that while the Palestine Mandate was never a "colony" it WAS part and parcel of British Imperial policy. It was a "colony" by another name. Your reference to the Husseini dynasty of the Hejaz is incomplete. What you omit is that the British had recognized and worked with them. When they became inconvenient, British policy came up with the notion of replacing that dynasty with another they believed would be more amenable to British influence. Saud. Lawrence of Arabia was sent out to help Saud overthrow the Husseinis and organize Arabia, with the end, from the British point of view, of helping with WW1 and weakening the Ottoman Turkish enemies. British policy in the whole region,in fact, was Imperial policy for generations, with the overlay of the specific, additional demands of WW1 overlaid. How was the Mandate, essentially, a colony? The easy way to read the history, glancing at the surface without ever digging into the deeper context and policies of the participants, is to read a bit about what a "Mandate" was, under the League of Nations, then to take everything at face value. Sorry. That's wrong. In theory, the Mandate was a sort of trust arrangement with a trustee running a bit of land for the benefit of a third part group of beneficiaries. Britain, the trustee, Palestine, the trust, and the people, both Arabs and Jews, the beneficiaries. In fact, the arrangement was made to further British Imperial and Colonial policies. At that time (just after WW1), Britain still controlled Egypt, indirectly, in order to control the Suez Canal. It also had very important interests in the Persian Gulf, which had become strategically crucial to the British Empire a generation before, when the Royal Navy switched over from coal to oil fired propulsion. And, of course, Suez and the Red Sea were the choke points through which communications and trade between the UK and the Gulf, the Raj, and the colonies in East and Southeast Asia ran. The entire Palestine policy, as actually implemented, was run in order to help secure these goals. The ORIGINAL British policy, the domestic policy articulated in the Balfour Declaration, was mostly tossed out very shortly after it was published. The British, who had committed themselves to favoring Jewish settlement in Palestine began to restrict that settlement till the point, in the 1930s, when they tried to stop it, entirelly. OTOH, almost immediately after receiving the Mandate from the League of Nations, Britain split the land East of the Jordan away from the Mandatory territory, creating the new state of "Transjordan", whose throne they gave to the Husseinis who had been thrown out of the Hejaz with British conivance. If you were correct that the Husseinis became enemies, and were untrustworthy, please explain this? In fact, the British were paying them off, while using their new country as a landbridge between their forces in Egypt and in Iraq. Iraq, another country created out of the conquered Ottoman territories, had been awarded to ANOTHER branch of that same Husseini family, by the British. They had no historical ties to the region. They were Arabian. The point was for Britain to have control, through their ostensible clients, all the way from Suez to the Persian Gulf. Egypt through Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq. The oilfields, in this era, were mostly in the north of Iraq. You do understand, don't you, that there WAS no historical "Iraq". There was, of course, an ancient Arab presence in Mesopotamia. Had the idea been simple nationalism, helping the Arabs achieve their national aspirations, then the actual Iraq would not have included the land on which the oil was found. THAT land was Kurdish, then, as it is, now. More so, actually, since there were fewer Arabs in the Kurdish area in those days, although more of other nationalities. To try to interpret the history of the ME under the British (and, the French) without looking at their underlying political goals and policies is worse than useless. It creates inevitable mistakes. You will never, ever understand what happened without understanding why it happened and understanding why means you need to look into the British Foreign and Colonial Offices. You're making a grave mistake to interpret British actions as intended to satisfy Palestinian Arab goals. The examples you cite actually involve the British imposing OUTSIDE Arab rulers on regions without ever consulting the locals. The new countries were created to serve British ends, not the ends of any locals, Arabs or Jews or Christians. And, if you check that original mandate, you'll find that it didn't provide for any Transjordan, at all. Had the real policies followed been the ostensible policies, the region would have come out looking very different, indeed, and not merely with respect to Israel. The Kurds, especially, were screwed by Britain and France, alike, who had almost no interest in nationalism or self determination, at all, but were very interested in safeguarding their colonial, strategic, and economic interests.   Quote    Reply gunner    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther? (BSL)   9/7/2003 9:07:15 AM BSL: "I'm familiar with the history of the region, in general terms. I am fully aware, as apparently you are not, that while the Palestine Mandate was never a "colony" it WAS part and parcel of British Imperial policy. It was a "colony" by another name". Interesting. It's a very complicated part of the world, isn't it? I hope your general familiarity is up to it, and that you can objectively sift through all the American/Jewish propaganda on the one hand and the anti-semitic Arab myth of Palestine on the other :) Can you give any references to support your attestation that Palestine was a "colony" by another name", and perhaps make me more aware? Maybe some damning quote from Hansard, or even a list of Governor-Generals from the period. I'd settle for any English names on the Transjordanian Board of Secretaries, established in 1921, at a pinch. In the final event, a colony needs colonists in order to justify the description. There were very few British settlers in Palestine, other than Jewish emigrees and British bureaucrats. Perhaps I'm wrong, however, and I can therefore refer to Japan and Okinawa being American colonies after WW2? DDR a Russian colony? I would argue that 'colonialism' or 'Imperialism' are simply terms for the way Britain and other countries, including the USA, governed foreign territories at that time. There was no 'Office for International Development' or 'Foreign Office' in the sense that we know them today. There was, however, an existing institution with the experience and the resources to oversee protectorates like those in the ME. It was the Colonial Office. Why re-invent the wheel? 'November 1920 Winston Churchill is appointed Colonial Secretary, and makes plans to set up a Middle East Department. One of his principal tasks will be to find a solution to Britain's difficulties in Mesopotamia (approximately equivalent to modern Iraq) where attempts by the Imperial Government of India to impose a colonial administration have provoked a large-scale rebellion'. link Note that there previously existed no such ME Dept, and that 'attempts to impose' (not the existence of) colonialism by the British Raj were not endorsed by the British Home Government. BSL: "How was the Mandate, essentially, a colony? The easy way to read the history, glancing at the surface without ever digging into the deeper context and policies of the participants, is to read a bit about what "Mandate" was, under the League of Nations, then to take everything at face value." That's one easy way. Or one could just make stuff up. That's even easier :) BSL: "Your reference to the Husseini dynasty of the Hejaz is incomplete. What you omit is that the British had recognized and worked with them. When they became inconvenient, British policy came up with the notion of replacing that dynasty with another they believed would be more amenable to British influence. Saud. Lawrence of Arabia was sent out to help Saud overthrow the Husseinis and organize Arabia, with the end, from the British point of view, of helping with WW1 and weakening the Ottoman Turkish enemies. If you were correct that the Husseinis became enemies, and were untrustworthy, please explain this?" Sorry, this twisted History Channel excerpt is wrong. T E Lawrence was sent out to help the Arab Bedou overthrow the Ottoman Turks, and it was he, in fact, who worked with Hussein ibn Ali al Hedjazi, and with his sons, especially Feisal, the future ruler of Iraq. Lawrence failed to negotiate a treaty with Hussein in 1921. Had he succeeded, 'this would have endorsed British policy in Palestine and would in exchange have given Hussein some British support in the Hedjaz. Hussein did not sign the treaty. In 1924, impervious to British influence, he had himself declared Caliph. This prompted Ibn Sa'ud to launch the offensive which led, first, to Hussein?s abdication later that year and secondly, in December 1925, to the final Hashemite surrender by his son Ali.' link By this time, Lawrence had been in England for 2 years and had re-enlisted anonymously. I find it unlikely, therefore, that he could have had much influence with the House of Sa'ud. I also feel that unilateraly declaring oneself Caliph and rejecting diplomacy warrants one being seen as an enemy and a criminal by all who oppose that turn of events. 'Emir Abdullah?s appointment, in 1921, to administer Trans-Jordan was a pragmatic decision taken by Churchill after the Cairo Conference. The British had not invited Abdullah into TransJordan. At the end of 1920 he had arrived in Maan (then still part of the Hedjaz) with a considerable force of armed men at his disposal. His intention was to drive the French out of Syria and succeed to the throne which they had stripped from his brother Feisal (the same Feisal who later was installed as ruler of Iraq). The British were in no position to risk a military confrontation when in March 1921 he moved to Amman and established an administration there. Concerned about their relations with the French in Syria they recognised his fait accompli, on condition that he left Syria alone. Churchill?s arrangement with Abdullah was at first only a temporary expedient. However, it succeeded and Jordan was declared independent, with Abdullah as its ruler, in May 1923.' link How I wonder, does an independent sovereign country also exist as a colony or Imperial province? The population at that time was made up largely of bedouin tribesmen, who were followers of the current King Hussein's grandfather, Abdullah - himself originally from Arabia. Today, these families - known as East Bank Jordanians - are outnumbered by the descendants of Palestinian refugees from Israel and the West Bank. BBC 'Saudi Arabia was established in 1932 by King Abd al-Aziz - known as the Lion of Najd - who took over Hijaz from the Hashemite family' BBC So called British support for Sa'ud didn't bear fruit for another decade, then? BSL: "Iraq would not have included the land on which the oil was found. THAT land was Kurdish, then, as it is, now." "The Kurds, especially, were screwed by Britain and France, alike, who had almost no interest in nationalism or self determination, at all, but were very interested in safeguarding their colonial, strategic, and economic interests." It may have had a Kurdish population, but there has never been a 'Kurdistan' per ce, so there was no historical precedent or prior border to take into account. Tell me what any other country has done since to foster Kurdish Nationalist realisations? I really can't see that there is an argument about oil (I certainly have not presented one). Obviously the economic resources of any region are taken into account by those in charge, and developed/exploited where they can be. So what? In fact, the Iraq Petroleum Company was owned by the British, French, Dutch and Americans, so no one country's "colonial, strategic, and economic interests" were exclusive. By contrast, which countries get to control the spoils of the new Iraq? America (mostly) and Britain (a little) alone. BSL: "The ORIGINAL British policy, the domestic policy articulated in the Balfour Declaration, was mostly tossed out very shortly after it was published. The British, who had committed themselves to favoring Jewish settlement in Palestine began to restrict that settlement till the point, in the 1930s, when they tried to stop it, entirelly." "You're making a grave mistake to interpret British actions as intended to satisfy Palestinian Arab goals. The examples you cite actually involve the British imposing OUTSIDE Arab rulers on regions without ever consulting the locals. The new countries   Quote    Reply gunner    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther? (BSL)   9/7/2003 9:28:05 AM Sorry, my last post got chopped off! BSL: "The ORIGINAL British policy, the domestic policy articulated in the Balfour Declaration, was mostly tossed out very shortly after it was published. The British, who had committed themselves to favoring Jewish settlement in Palestine began to restrict that settlement till the point, in the 1930s, when they tried to stop it, entirelly." "You're making a grave mistake to interpret British actions as intended to satisfy Palestinian Arab goals. The examples you cite actually involve the British imposing OUTSIDE Arab rulers on regions without ever consulting the locals. The new countries were created to serve British ends, not the ends of any locals, Arabs or Jews or Christians" Let's look at that Balfour Declaration and see who has made the mistake: Historians disagree as to what the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, intended by his declaration. The letter has no mention of the word "state", and insists that nothing should be done "which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". The text says that the British "favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object" BBC With the Balfour Declaration, Britain's aim was to win the support of Jews for the Allied cause in World War I -- both those Jews in nations at war and those in neutral nations such as the United States. On 24 July 1922 the declaration was incorporated into the League of Nations mandate for Palestine which enumerated the terms under which Britain was given responsibility for temporary administration of the country on behalf of the Jews and Arabs living there. www.arab.net So, would you call that "mostly tossed out very shortly after it was published"? It was WRITTEN INTO THE MANDATE! The mandate lasted from 1922-1948, during which time the British found themselves, because of their contradictory promises, in a most difficult and untenable situation -- but one primarily of their own making. On one hand, the Zionists anticipated large numbers of Jews migrating to Palestine and even begin to speak of the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other hand, the Palestinians feared dispossession at the hands of the Zionists and naturally rejected British promises to deliver their country into the hands of what were, by virtually any definition, outsiders. www.arab.net Anti-Zionist attacks took place in both Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1920 and 1921, and a British policy statement in 1922 denied Zionist claims to all of Palestine, limited Jewish immigration but nonetheless supported the idea of a Jewish national home. The British proposed setting up a legislative council as had been done in many of their other territories, but the Palestinians, upon learning of how this was to be done, rejected the idea as discriminatory. www.arab.net Now, that looks to me like Britain handled the situation badly, but like any responsible world power, tried it's best to satisfy both sides with a compromise, and maintain a balance of interest. The same arguments were used by Arabs and Jews then as today to upset the chances of co-existence. BSL: "(The Husseini) had no historical ties to the region. They were Arabian. The point was for Britain to have control, through their ostensible clients, all the way from Suez to the Persian Gulf." Here's some history for you: Palestine was invaded by Muslim Arab armies which captured Jerusalem in AD638. Thus began 1300 years of Muslim presence in what became known as Filastin. The conquering Muslims did not force their religion upon the Palestinians and in fact, it was more than a century before most of them converted. Once they converted, however, they did adopt Arabic and Islamic culture as their own. www.arab.net So the people of Palestine were used to rule being imposed by outsiders. Besides which the Husseini were Bedou. The Bedouin are nomads, with no homeland. They may become associated with a prefered (or enforced) geographical area, but are found from Africa to Anatolia, so have great 'historical ties' to the entire fertile crescent, and are as legitimate rulers as any others in the region. But you knew that already. Headlines were made by a recent study that found Jews and 'Palestinians' were the same genotype (semitic), and more closely related to one another than previosly accepted. 'Recent DNA research carried out at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University College in London has shown that many Jews and Arabs are indeed closely related. More than seven out of 10 Jewish men and half of Arab men whose DNA was studied inherited their Y chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the Middle East in the Neolithic period in prehistoric times.' link Therefore there is really no such ethnic group as 'Palestinians'. The term describes a geographical region, within which Jews, Christians and Moslems have lived for centuries, and which has been under foreign (Arab, Frankish, Ottoman) rule for so long as to make 'nationalism' a misnomer. "You do understand, don't you?" :p   Quote    Reply bsl    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther? (BSL)   9/7/2003 5:26:22 PM "That's one easy way. Or one could just make stuff up. That's even easier" At least the discussion boards of places like THE GUARDIAN tend to feature some debaters who've actually studied some of the questions at issue. Cutting and pasting a few facts isn't a substiture for a real education. Someone who had spent even a brief time on the history of the region would recognize virtually every point I've made as representing the view of one or another school of serious academic historians. Failure to recognize any of this doesn't do much to establish anyone's credentials. I won't waste much more time time. I'll answer a few points, then move one: 1)"Historical Kurdistan". Nice refutation of an argument never made. The was never an historical "Iraq" either. The question was "Why was it invented, by the British?"; in context of British policy of the era in the region. Was it intended to satisfy local desires or to satisfy imperial and colonial ends? As I pointed out at some length, it was the latter motivation at work, both, specifically, in Iraq, and generally, in the whole region. 2)How do you have an imperial/colonial policy when you don't have colonists? This is an especially embarassing boner. British foreign policy specialized in this for several hundred years. Long before Britain assembled the Raj and an Imperial jewel, it ran the place, indirectly, through a variety of tactics. Diplomatic pressure. Diplomatic bribes. Military pressure and bribes. Economic subsidies. Playing one ruler or potential ruler off against local rivals. (Sometimes, literally, brother against brother.)Playing one small principality off against a neighbor. Britain attempted to exercise the same sort of control in several areas of the House of Islam as it did in other parts of the world during the 1930s on through the 1960s. There was nothing even vaguely new or mysterious about this. What had changed was the rest of the world. The Age of Imperialism was over, and the British Empire was bankrupt, literally, in financial terms, and figuratively, in the lack of support for it's imperial policies both inside Britain and in the rest of the world. 3)The "spoils". This is rather amusing, if part and parcel of both traditional marxist analysis and the newer, semicoherent line of the antiglobal/postmodern/anticapitalist/structuralist/etc. movement. In fact, the real idea lying at the heart of the Western, market oriented point of view was that economics was not a zero sum game, and that there was room for everyone to profit in an honest, free market world. The notion goes back at least to Adam Smith, of course, but it was, on the whole, antithitical to the traditional imperial point of view, which looked back, more, towards the ancient feeling that economics involved the distribution of wealth, a static good, which if you had, someone else, didn't. The deep thinkers who are so angry about American policy towards a variety of countries might take a second to note that American policy left countries with natural wealth - notably, the Islamic oil producers - with complete ownership and control of those resources, and bought them, from willing sellers, at prices America did not set. The traditional Imperial approach to the same resource was to seize the land under which the resource lay, assume control and ownership, and exploit it for the empires own ends. The traditional Islamic way of seeing the world was in accord with this latter weltanschuaung; not the American, free market POV. The idea that an Islamic world with military and technological superiority over the rest of the planet which would have quietly purchased a resource fundamental to their economies, instead of conquering it, is almost too ridiculous to mention.   Quote    Reply gunner    RE:Why not move the Palestinians farther? (BSL)   9/9/2003 4:23:02 AM