Palestine has finally been recognised as a country after 65 long years. UN General assembly 67/19, which had a majority of 138 nations (including France, Japan and the V-BRICS emerging economies of Vietnam;Brazil;Russia;India;China and South Africa) voted in favour of Palestine being a non-member nation of the UN. This does not mean Palestine will automatically get official borders, nor does it mean the fighting in the Middle East will stop, but it does mean Palestine gets to tell the UN its point of view collectively as a nation.
This was merely days after the week long Gaza war between Israel and Palestinian militants, which was triggered when the militants attacked Israeli forces for blocking the Gaza Strip; Israel retaliated and killed Ahmed Jabari, acting head of Hamas' (one of Palestine's two main parties-the other being Fatah) military wing; the intention of Israel was to disable the militants through airstrikes on their bases and weapons stashes. Palestine's retaliation was to fire over 1400 Iranian and Russian supplied rockets over the border into Israel; over 400 were intercepted by Israel's 'Iron Dome' defense system with near 90% of those missiles being aimed at populated areas. The outcome of this war was a ceasefire between both Israel and Palestine with both sides claiming victory ( Israeli casualties: 2 soldiers killed,
20 wounded,4 civilians killed and 219 injured. Palestinian casualties: 55-120 soldiers killed [Palestine has fewer estimated while Israel has more],29 wounded, 57-105 Palestinian civilians killed [Palestine has more deaths estimated while Israel has less], 971 wounded [Palestinian figure] and 8 Palestinians executed by Hamas). There was also a bomb detonated on a bus in Tel Aviv where 28 were injured.
The fact that Israel wins the skirmishes and the wars, and the news of ever decreasing Palestinian land ownership, makes Israel look like an aggressor. Jews can not be solely blamed for Israel's actions as not all Jews are Israeli and not all of Israel's citizens are aggressive Islamophobes; Israel is a democracy and its policies change by whichever party is in power. The ultra-Orthodox and Zionist members are the ones truly against Palestine but do not make up a majority. Looking at the other side of the coin, the land acquisition by Israel has caused a rise of Islamists who brainwash normal Muslims into being anti-semitic and helping them carry out atrocities ranging from suicide bombings in Palestine to international terror attacks such as 9/11. The Islamists themselves are brainwashed not by 'freedom fighters' but fascists who want things their way. Islamists are seen worse than Zionists as they are also against the West and other non-Muslim countries like India.
The essay below describes the history of Israel and Palestine and who is 'right' or 'wrong'
Since the 1800s Jews and Muslims have been living
in relative peace with one another in Palestine. The Holy City of Jerusalem and
Temple Mount were under Muslim control. Holy to both religions, Muslims believe
their Prophet Muhammed visited Heaven from the Temple Mount; before that the
Jews had the Holy Temple on the mount and it was prophesised that the Messiah
would come if it was rebuilt. As well as being a minority at the
time, Palestine’s Jews agreed it was wrong to ‘force’ the Messiah by building the
Temple through war.
From the late 1800s the number of people from both
religions have been increasing in Palestine; more Jews came as they were
mistreated by anti-Semitics like Chimielnicki and Hitler and had the ability to emigrate as automobiles
were developed as a means of transport. The number of Muslims increased as Arabs from
surrounding countries expelled those who wanted a Palestine independent of
these countries. Arabia was under control of the Ottoman
(Turkish) Empire at this time and both Jordan and Palestine were part of the
same country .
After the end of the First World War, the Ottoman
Empire (allied with Germans) was replaced by the British Empire.
In 1922 it was proposed that British Palestine
would be made up of two areas : Transjordan (77% the size of British
Palestine, no Jewish immigration) and Palestine (23% of its size, for all
religions).
Jews
legally purchased land to live with the Palestinians and by 1943, paid $560,000
for nearly 400,000 acres (6% land). By 1947 land purchase increased to 463,000 acres.
The
rising number Jews in Palestine saw Muslims (Arab and non Arab) from other countries
expel them; approximately 900,000 were kicked out from 1948 to the early 1970s. A further 200,000 left on their own accord between 1948
and 1952.
Many of the expelled Jews (naturally) went to live
in Palestine as they thought that was the only place where they were welcome.
56% of Palestinian immigration between 1948 and 1952 was from the expelled Jews.
The more Zionist Jews (forming in Europe and
governing holocaust survivors after World War Two) added to Jewish immigration,
going as far as forcing holocaust survivors into Palestine and prohibiting
anywhere else for the Jews to go to (even for health treatment). During World War Two, the Zionists even fought
the British to lift immigration quotas (75,000 for the years between 1940
and 1944, set in the 1939 White Paper), killing 996 British between 1939 and 1948. 70,000
Jews arrived in Palestine illegally during the White Paper quotas being in
force.
After continued pressure from the Zionists and the USA, quotas were lifted
and more Jews went to live in Palestine. See the tables:
|
Year
|
Jews
|
Muslims
|
Jewish
(non ruling people) Percentage
|
|
1533-1539
|
5000
|
145
000
|
3.18%
|
|
1690-1691
|
2000
|
219
000
|
0.86%
|
|
1800
|
7000
|
246
000
|
2.54%
|
|
1890
|
43000
|
432
000
|
8.08%
|
|
1914
|
94
000
|
525
000
|
13.64%
|
|
1922
|
84
000
|
589
000
|
11.17%
|
|
1931
|
175
000
|
760
000
|
16.94%
|
|
1947
|
630
000
|
1
181 000
|
31.97%
|
|
1960
|
1
911 000
|
1
090 000
|
61.42%
|
|
1967
|
2
374 000
|
1
204 000
|
63.88%
|
|
1975
|
2
959 000
|
1
447 000
|
64.77%
|
|
1985
|
3
517 000
|
2
166 000
|
59.52%
|
|
1995
|
4
522 000
|
3
241 000
|
55.74%
|
|
2000
|
4
969 000
|
3
891 000
|
53.37%
|
|
Year
|
Jews
|
Muslims
|
Muslim (non ruling
people) Percentage
|
|
1949
|
1
013 900
|
111
500
|
9.49%
|
|
1959
|
1
858 800
|
159
200
|
7.62%
|
|
1969
|
2
506 800
|
314
500
|
10.73%
|
|
1979
|
3
218 400
|
481
200
|
12.54%
|
|
1989
|
3
717 100
|
655
200
|
14.36%
|
|
1999
|
4
872 800
|
934
100
|
15.04%
|
|
2008
|
5
569 200
|
1
240 000
|
16.81%
|
After
World War Two, the ever-increasing amount of Jews from Europe, and withdrawal
of the British, the UN decided to partition areas within the new Palestine (but
still keep it as one country); the Jews would get 56% of Palestine (mostly the
Negev Desert) as that area contained more Jews (499,000 Jews and 438,000 Arabs) ), and the Arabs
would get 42% of the land (a population of 818,000 ‘Palestinian’ Arabs and
10,000 Jews ) ;Jerusalem would be a special UN administrative zone .
The Arabs did not accept the land allocation in
favour of the Jews so there were several conflicts that followed, the two most relevant were Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the Six-Day War of
1967. The 1948 war was an official war between two new states: Israel (the new
Jewish state) and Palestine (the Muslim state), after a year-long civil war
between the two religions (regulated by the British for it was their last year
of occupation). It was initiated by Muslims refusing to share
Palestine with an increasing number of Jews. The Six-Day War was
initiated by Jews as a pre emptive strike to Arabian sabre-rattling . Key armies from each war were
Egypt, Syria and Lebanon (supported in varying degrees by Jordan, Yemen, Saudi
Arabia and Iraq) against Israel (primarily financed by the USA
since they had the highest population of Jews outside of Israel).
As
the Jews won most of wars, they slowly gained control and much of Palestine became
Israel ; a nation where Jews were the majority and had their own government . To keep excessive bloodshed and further war, after the Six-Day
War they allowed the Muslims to keep the Temple Mount as they wanted to keep
the peace.
The end of the Six-Day War saw the rise of three
things: terrorism, war and oil prices.
The Arabs’ retaliation to their defeats was to
increase oil prices and restrict supply. Despite the conflicts,
the Middle East began to calm-notably Egypt and Israel making peace in 1979 and Jordan and Israel becoming friends in 1994.
Unfortunately, entire countries that support
Palestine and the Muslim occupation of the Temple Mount have little care
for the inhabitants of Palestine; Jordan massacred and exiled over 2000 Muslims
wanting to be part of Palestine in 1970 as the Hashemite King wanted to
maintain control and did not believe in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation
(PLO)'s extremism ; Kuwait and Saudi Arabia exiled Palestinians
between 1990 and 1991 as the PLO sided with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein:-leader of Kuwait’s
enemy.
Palestine's (now unified) government parties- Fatah
(PLO) and Hamas, both anti-Israeli and with members responsible for suicide
bombings and attacks on Israelis (hindering the peace process),fought each
other in 2007; the total number of casualties were approximately 616 (98 of
which were officially civilians). It came to
the point that Israelis had to intervene to stop it .
With
the Israel-Palestine conflicts, the death count between 1948 and 2009 was over
14,500. If one measure the death count between the time of
partition (1920) to today but also include the wars involving neighbouring Arab
countries, the Israeli death count is under a fifth of the Arabs’.
This, combined with Israel taking away more Palestinian land, made many Muslims
blame Israel solely for this. As ‘excessive’ as Israel is, they do everything
in retaliation to attacks caused by Palestine's government parties and various
Islamists groups; Israel takes more land from Palestine as both retaliation and
a means of policing the Palestinians, Israel’s retaliation then brainwashes
fundamentalists into believing the West have caused this, the Islamist attacks
cause further Israeli land acquisition; this is a vicious cycle.
The official and (on-going) peace process between the
Arabs and Israelis was to also be hindered at great costs from another entity:
Al Qaeda. Formally headed by Osama bin Laden (left) and now Ayman al Zawahiri
(right), it and its partner cells (the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria and many members working in Fatah
and Hamas), were behind the increasing number of terrorist attacks in non-Muslim
countries, most notably 9/11:-an attack on the World Trade Centre in New York
and the Pentagon in Virginia-killing approximately 3000 civilians.
Like other Arab countries, Osama bin Laden and
Ayman al-Zawahiri used the plight of the Palestinians as a ruse. From reading
and implementing theories by Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, their actual wish was for the
lands of Palestine and Saudi Arabia (the latter of which had Americans
stationed there during the Gulf War) to be kept strictly
Muslim at all costs ; they declared
war even on existing Islamic countries
that are allies with the Israel and/or the USA (see bin Laden telling Saudi
Arabians and Emiratis to rise against their government in his fatwas, bin Laden funding the Luxor Massacre in 1997 , and Al Zawahiri's branch of Al Qaeda assassinating peace-making Egyptian
President Anwar El Sadat in 1981. Al Qaeda recruits people from
countries with disputes between Muslims and non-Muslims (see Afghanistan; Pakistan
and Bangladesh having anti-Hindus and anti-Indians, Syria and Yemen being anti-Israeli,
and Egypt; Sudan and Nigeria’s apartheid between Christians and Muslims) to
wipe out the ‘infidelic’ non Muslims.
