Culture For All
Writing an article on the Palestinians is a difficult task because one has to contend with so many preconceived ideas. Even using the phrase "Palestinian" assumes that there is such a thing as a separate people known as "Palestinians" who historically come from a place called "Palestine". There is even confusion over what area "Palestine" actually refers to. In this article I challenge the false yet widely held concept of a Palestinian nation.
For the purpose of this article I am rejecting the use of the word "Palestinian" and adopting the phrase "UNRWA Arabs".
All refugees are supported by a United Nations organization called the UNHCR. That is, all refugees apart from Palestinians, who have been given their own organization called the UNRWA. There are significant differences in the way the two organizations function:
"[The UNHCR's] primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. [...] In more than five decades, the agency has helped an estimated 50 million people restart their lives."
Source"UNRWA is the main provider of basic services - education, health, relief and social services - to over 4.4 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East."
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While the UNHCR attempts to help refugees move on with their lives, the UNRWA is primarily interested in funding over 4.4 million people (and growing at an incredible rate). To decide who gets this funding, the UNRWA defines what a Palestine refugee is on their website:
The UNRWA defines a Palestinian refugee as "persons whose normal place of residence was [the British Mandate of] Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. [...] UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants".
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I want to be very clear on this fact. According to the UNRWA a 'Palestinian' is someone who lived in British Mandate of Palestine "between June 1946 and May 1948"; while a 'Palestinian refugee' is a Palestinian who "lost their home and livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict."
Since so many people these days claim that there are a people called Palestinians who are indigenous to a land called Palestine, take note that in order to be classed as a Palestinian by the UNRWA you (or your ancestors) only had to live in the British Mandate for 2 years prior to the 1948 war.
Naturally the next question has to be, what land area is the UNRWA using to define "Palestine"?
The ancient Hebrew word פְּלְשְׁתִּים (pronounced "plishtim") comes from the root word פולש(pronounced "polesh"), meaning "invader". This word was applied to a group of Greeks who used to raid the coast of Israel in the area we know today "Gaza". Goliath from the biblical story "David and Goliath" was a Philistine, an invader. Ironically the Hebrew word is now being used to describe Arabs who claim to be indigenous to the land.
The phase "Palestinian" found its way through history due to Roman influence. When the Roman Armies invaded the land they renamed Judea to "Syria-Palestina" in reference to Israel's old enemy. The Romans also attempted to rename the Holy City of יְרוּשָׁלַיִם (Jerusalem) to "Aelia Capitolina", however this name did not stick.
Many armies swept through the region, however none made it their home. Many Jewish people were expelled from their homeland into the Diaspora, however there has always been some Jewish presence and the Jewish people as a whole have never given up the old hope to return home. This hope to return home is called Zionism. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for over 3,300 years.
During World War I the British wooed the Zionists by means of the Balfour Declaration in order to gain the support of world Jewry for the Allied cause and to secure strategic control over the region called Palestine. The declaration, contained in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour to a British Zionist leader, approved the establishment in Palestine (the Geographical region) of a “national home for the Jewish people":
"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
The Mandate for Palestine was a Mandate for Jewish self-determination.
After World War 1, the League of Nations broke down the Ottoman Empire into Mandates. The Mandate of Palestine is shown below:
July 1923 the British changed the definition of Palestine in order to restrict Jewish settlement, as shown below:
The “Mandate for Palestine” laid down the Jewish right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law and valid to this day.
The Palestinian [British] Royal Commission Report of July 1937 addresses Arab claims that the creation of the Jewish National Home as directed by the Mandate for Palestine violated Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, arguing that they are the communities mentioned in paragraph 4:
The reference to Palestine as a land area, not a country or a people, was immortalized by the British in 1937.
World War 2 1939 - 1945
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