The Palestine Campaign turned the tide of World War One. It was won by allied troops, including a large fighting contingent of Palestine Jews. No Arabs fought on the west side of the Jordan River, part of which is called, by ignorant activists and politicians, “the West Bank.”
America remained neutral until April 1917 and didn’t get into the fight until the summer of 1918 by which time the Palestine Campaign was over. The Allied Powers met in San Remo in 1920 to decide the future of the defunct Ottoman Empire, with the United States participating only as observers.
Arabs were rewarded with independence in Syria, Lebanon and Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). Jordan was created later as a reward for Arab participation in the Palestine Campaign on the East Bank of the Jordan River. This East Bank was given to the Hashemite tribe, a minority in Jordan. The majority of Jordanians are Palestinian Arabs, as is the queen.
This fact has been conveniently forgotten by those physically and verbally fighting against Israel. Those with an aversion to history have held back peace for decades with a two-state non solution that demands Israel giving up its ancient historic homeland to the west of the Jordan and dividing Jerusalem, its eternal capital.
The Allied Powers gave Britain the mandate for Palestine based on the principle of the Balfour Declaration which had become official British policy of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people while protecting the civil and religious rights of all its citizens, something which Israel has diligently done. The name Palestine did not denote a specific people, but a geographic area.
This was reaffirmed at the 1922 League of Nations Conference on the Mandate for Palestine, the League of Nations being the forerunner of the United Nation.
The world celebrated the return of the Jews to their ancient biblical and.
Then things went wrong.
British officers arrived in Jerusalem to administer British policy, but instead turned against their own government policy by encouraging a raging anti-Semitic Arab leader to incite for the murder and expulsion of Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, and throughout pre-state Palestine.
The notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini was the architect of anti-Jewish terror which has lasted a century. After fleeing Jerusalem, he joined Adolph Hitler to plan the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in the Middle East.
He became the mentor of Yasser Arafat who deceived the world at the 1993 White House ceremony by promising to deliver “peace of the brave.” Instead, he gave Israelis peace of the grave. Over a thousand Israeli Jews were slaughtered by Arafat’s terror war. This after a peace agreement signed in America. And America has propped up a corrupt Palestinian Authority with tax-payers’ money which the PA has spent in promoting and rewarding anti-Jewish terror.
Under Trump, this funding stopped but was renewed again by the Biden Administration despite two existing US laws that forbid the Federal Government from funding the Palestinians until they stop paying reward money to their killers.
Recently, the Israeli Government approved 3,134 new homes to be built in Judea & Samaria, within Area C.
We keep hearing that Judea & Samaria is “occupied Palestinian land.” Nothing is “occupied Palestinian land” until the Arabs sit down with Israel and agree conditions of peace, borders, cooperation.
700,000 Jews live in 30 towns and villages in Area C, and 3,000 new homes is a drop in the bucket of natural growth requirements.
According to the Oslo Accords, signed under the Clinton Administration, the West Bank was to be divided into three parts – A, B, C.
Area A to be under full Palestinian Arab control, administratively and security.
Area B to be under Palestinian Arab administration, with joint Palestinian Arab and Israel security.
Area C to remain under sole Israeli administration and security control until a permanent peace can be reached with the Palestinian Arabs, which is highly unlikely given the last and current history of their divided leadership.
Palestinian Arabs can build homes in Areas A and B without any Israeli or American permission. Israel can only build in Area C, according to the Oslo Accords, and, when we do, the US Administration is angry.
Blinken told Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Ganz, that Jews building homes in Judea & Samaria was “unacceptable.”
Ned Price called Jews building homes as being “completely inconsistent with lowering tensions and reduces the prospects of a two-state solution.”
The discrimination between rampant Arab construction and modest Jewish building is blatant and appalling.
What was missing from Price’s biased venom was the absence of an official acknowledgement that Israel had made a historic gesture to Mahmoud Abbas by allowing 4,000 non-Israeli Arabs to build over 1,300 homes in Israeli-held Area C. On the other hand, it is forbidden under punishment of death by the hand of the Palestinian Authrotiy for any Arab to sell his land or build a home for a Jew in either Area A or B.
The perfidy continues.
Israel is expected to agree that the only way to attain peace is to carve pieces of our land, including Jerusalem our eternal capital, and feed them to the hungry beast. That means to divide our capital in order for the United States to serve an enemy as it was when Jordan invaded Israel, drove Jews out of their homes in the Old City and east Jerusalem and gave them to non-Israeli Arabs.
The 1967 liberation of Jerusalem and Judea & Samaria are intertwined. Both places are integral parts of the biblical heartland. Any accommodation with the Arabs must take this, and the topographic advantages of retaining the high ground, into consideration. Both must be controlled by Israel as an integral security necessity, as well as biblical legitimacy, in any agreement with the Palestinian Arabs.
It is puzzling that the Biden Administration is willing to put such strain on US-Israel relations over this minor issue of opening a consulate in the middle of Israel’s capital in west Jerusalem to serve non-Israeli Arabs who publicly declare Israel as an enemy state that must be annihilated.
When Israeli officials recommended that the State Department locate their office in Ramallah or in Gaza City, the State Department took great offence. Yet they remain deaf to Israel’s claims that there is no legal or historic precedent for a capital to be used by the United States to serve an external nation or entity, let alone an enemy.
Both sides of the warring Palestinian factions, backed by their Congressional supporters, are pushing the current Administration hard on this point.
It is clear that there is a growing anti-Israel, even anti-Semitic, groundswell in the Democrat Party, led by a radical grouping within the ruling government, that is dictating thought, language, and policy.
Some observers say that the anti-Israel strategy adopted by the US State Department is a sop to the leftist radical wing of the party. This is precisely the point. They are the ones who are calling the shots, not Biden in the White House, nor Blinken in the State Department.
As we have learned from our history, when a great power tacks away from its original and affirmative support and caters to those who are baying for Jewish blood, bad things happen.
Planting a consulate in Jerusalem to assist an enemy is akin to planting a stake in the heart of Judaism.
Perfidy against Jews is never a good thing.
Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. Author of ‘1917 From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’