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Gulf News
  • 9 months ago
A simple piece of paper became changed millions of lives. 100 years on, its influence is still very relevant.

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Transcript
00:00Well, before the end of World War I, what motivated Britain to get into the Middle East
00:12was in fact before the end of the World War.
00:15This was the spring and the summer of 1916, and the trench war on the Western Front was
00:21going very, very badly for Britain, with huge numbers of casualties.
00:26And so the idea came to mind that they would shift the front eastward, and a proposal came
00:32from the General Staff to the Prime Minister Lloyd George to begin a campaign in Palestine.
00:38And their policy, their Middle East policy began then, and that is to make a lot of promises
00:46to a lot of people.
00:48One of the major promises and the consequences we feel to this day was to the Arabs.
00:56Here the promise was made to the Sharif Hussein, who was the guardian of the holy mosques,
01:04that in exchange for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, the British would grant
01:11independence to the Arabs in the Middle East.
01:15As we know, the British really never had the intention of delivering on that promise.
01:22On the other hand, and here I don't want to say more importantly, but just as important,
01:29was a British promise to the Jewish people, the Balfour Declaration, a promise by Sir
01:39Arthur Balfour to create a homeland, a home in fact, a national home for the Jewish people
01:51in the land of Palestine.
01:53Most Israelis will refer to these words as the legal basis for the creation of Israel.
02:00What they do forget is to read the rest of the text, which is to say that in no way should
02:05this prejudice the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, their religious or civil rights
02:12should not be impeded.
02:14And here what is outrageous, of course, is that the non-Jewish population of Palestine
02:19constituted 92% of the people.
02:22Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, another Zionist leader who later became the first president
02:29of Israel, and others of the Jewish elite knew that there was another population.
02:35But in their minds they chose to look the other way.
02:39And when confronted by others, including British parliamentarians, including people like Lord
02:48Montague, who was responsible in the wording of the Balfour Declaration to say that this
02:54should not cause any prejudice to the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish people.
03:01When reminded that there was a people in the land of Palestine, they would retort that
03:07these Arabs living there would benefit very much from the financial investments we are
03:12going to make.
03:13They are going to be very happy.
03:15They are going to be in a much better lot than they are now.
03:19It wasn't until the second Aliyah, one that was far more serious, it was led by those
03:27who had participated in the revolutionary struggle of Russia, Jewish socialists such
03:38as Ben-Gurion, who had made it such that the Jewish National Fund, funded by Baron
03:48de Rothschild, to colonize the land, that the work would only be for Jews and by Jews,
03:57to exclude Arabs from any participation in any activity, that the Jews needed to engage
04:05in Avoda Ivrit, which is self-reliance.
04:08They needed to rely upon themselves, but it didn't take a very long time for the local
04:13people to understand that this was a foreign imperialist wave coming to take over their
04:21land.
04:22In 1948, 15th of May, Israel unilaterally declares its independence.
04:28The Arab countries try to lend a hand to the Palestinians, but we have to remember
04:35that these countries, whether Lebanon or Syria or Jordan, had just become independent.
04:44They had no armies to speak of.
04:46In the case of Syria, its army was less than 10,000 fighters with very rudimentary equipment.
04:54On the other hand, the Yishuv, the Jews, were far better organized, far better equipped,
05:05and they had a cause to defend.
05:09They were very highly motivated, so as a result, all in all, there was the Nakba, a catastrophe
05:16that befell the Palestinians, and the Israelis in that war took more land than was appropriate
05:24to them by the United Nations.
05:26The appropriation of the United Nations, the partition of Palestine, was also a joke.
05:32It was also outrageous, giving a small number of the Yishuv 55% of Palestine, whereas the
05:40Palestinians, who were the majority of the population, got 45% of the territory.
05:47Naturally, having been there for centuries, the Palestinians refused this partition,
05:54so did the Arabs.
05:55When it went to vote in the United Nations, those, of course, states who were at the United
06:02Nations were, for the most part, Western states who had been thoroughly lobbied by the Zionists.
06:11There were no third world states at the time, most of them were colonized, and so the vote
06:16obviously was imbalanced.
06:22But later still, Israel continued in its aggressive mode of behavior, and Israel does this because
06:29it can, because it has the power, it has the military power that is sustained by the United
06:35States, it has the diplomatic power that is sustained by the United States and others,
06:41and so we have an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978, we have another Israeli invasion
06:48of Lebanon in 1982, and we have really an Israel that is armed to the teeth, and that
06:56is in constant violation of all sorts of international laws, is in violation of all sorts of United
07:03Nations resolutions, until today it has not fulfilled its requirements under Resolution
07:09242 of 1967, or of 338, or of 339, all of which require Israel to withdraw from the
07:17territories it occupied.
07:19Israel defies the entire international community by building settlements in occupied territory,
07:25although this is clearly in violation of international law and in violation of the Geneva Convention,
07:33again because it can, it has the power.
07:39If the Arabs don't like it, go drink the ocean.
07:42The balance of power is extremely lopsided.
07:47Israel is a very powerful state, it is more powerful than any combination of Arab power.
07:54On the other hand, the Palestinians have next to nothing.
08:00And so in this situation, to talk about a two-state solution is almost funny if it weren't
08:10sad, and it seems to me that we will not have a Palestinian state next week or next month.
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