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name Palestine did not figu re as a
defined political, cultural, territo–
rial and demographic entity.
lt
was
only after 1917, after the British
conquest and rule, that the name
was formally reinstated as a politi–
caljgeographic term. By then, the
very name, which for Muslims had
never been more than an adminis–
trative subdistrict, had long since
been forgotten by them.
The territory of Palestine was
conquered by many different
armies, including those of the
Arabs, but the whole of Palestine
never belonged to the Arabs, and it
is far from clear historically that
the present Arab population is at
all indigenous to the land.
Palestine was never an exclu–
·siYe.ly..
A:r_~b
country, even though
Arabic gradually . oecame t·he lan–
guage of the majority population
after the Arab invasions of the 7th
century. T here was never an Arab
state in Palestine, and there never
was a separate Palestinian Arab na–
tion.
Palestinian Arabs never created
their own self-contained unit or
any form of separate política! or
social identity; they were not au–
tonomous at any time. Their "na–
tionalism" is strictly a reaction to
Zionism, to the Jewish return to
Eretz Israel,
to Jewish settlement
in Palestine, to the Jewish State of
Israel. ...
Two additional , powerful myths
have come to domínate the West–
ern consciousness in recent years
and, tragically, constitute the
framework of received political
wisdom on the ultimate
destiny of tbe Arabs who
inhabit Judea and .Sa–
maria.
One myth is that the
"West Bank" is territory
that once rightfully be–
longed to tbe Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan but
was conquered by Israel
in 1967 and has been oc–
cupied by it ever since.
The second myth is
that there exists no Arab
homeland in which the
Arabs of Judea and Sa–
maria may exercise "self–
determi nation" ... and
that therefore such a land
must be wrested from Is-
July/Auguat 1986
'
rae! and from territory it controls.
Myths such as these will never
serve as the basis for a stable and
equitable peace. However potent
their sway, these myths must be
resisted by a determined resort to
the facts of history.
The European powers that
emerged victorious from World
War I undertook to break up ·and
distribute the lands of the defeated
Ottoman Empire. Two claimants
arase to those territories-and
were recognized as legitimate in
internat ional law on the basis of
fundamental considerations of poli–
tics, geography, demography, cul–
ture-and historical justice. The
two claimants were: the Arab na–
tion and the Jewish people.
The Arab claim was satisfied to
such an extent that a dozen Arab
states were created in the after–
math of World War I, and eight
more after World War 11.
The Jewish claim was to be sat–
isfied in Palestine, whicb in 1919,
when the League of Nations was
set up and the distribution of lands
validated in law, was universally
understood to encompass the terri–
tory that now comprises Israel, the
"West Bank" and Jordan.
Thus, the Jewish and Arab
claims in this vast area carne to the
forum of liberation together- and
not, as is usually implied, by way of
Jewish encroachment on an already
vested and exclusive Arab domain.
lt
must also be borne in mind
that the territorial allocation made
to the Arabs was more than 100
times greater in area, and hundreds
srael has
demonstrated, time and
again, its readiness
to compromise and make
concessions for peace.
of times richer in resources, than
the "Palestine" designated for the
Jewish National Home.
In 1922, a drastic encroachment
was made on the tiny Jewish land:
The entire area east of the Jordan
River-35,468 out of 46,339
square miles, four-fifths of Manda–
tory Palestine- was arbitrarily re–
moved by the British from the
terms of the League of Nations
Mandate which they held. They
did this to establish the Empire
(later the Kingdom) of Jordan–
and, explicitly, to provide a reserve
of land for Palestine Arabs across
the Jordan River, in recognition of
the fact that the East Bank was
then part of Palestine and that the
Palestine Arabs were at home on
the East Bank.
The British acted for their own
imperial reasons.
In the military campaign to de–
feat the Ottoman Turks, allied to
the Germans in World War I , the
British enlisted the aid of the
Hashemite clan, then headed by
Hussein ibn Ali, the great-grandfa–
ther of the present king of Jordan,
whose family had for centuries
been traditional
sherifs
(princely
guardians) of the holy Muslim cit–
ies of Mecca and Medina.
The British design was to create
client states out of a carved-up Ot–
toman Empire. In 1920, the British
installed Sherif Hussein's son
Faisal on the throne of Iraq, and in
1922 they installed the Sherifs
other son Abdullah as Emir of
Transjordan. (Iraq gained its inde–
pendence in 1932; Transjordan in
1946.)
In 1947 the United Nations' call
for the creation of Jewish and Arab
states in a still further truncated
Palestine divided by partition, was
aborted, in fact and in international
law, by the Arab rejection of the
call, and by the war which the
Arabs ·launched against Israel.
Jordan, in any case, had no right
in law to any portian of Palestine
west of the Jordan River, and Jor–
danian expansion on to the "West
Bank" in 1948-49 was the result of
an unlawful military adventure. lts
ouster in 1967 was the conse–
quence of a defensive counterac–
tion. Jordan retains no right to
Judea and Samaria, which can in
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