Do the Palestinian People Exist?

UPDATE: Our European correspondent Lexington suggested that we include this quote, which will serve as an appropriate preface for the entire post:

On March 31, 1977 in the Dutch newspaper Trouw, in an interview with PLO executive committee member, Zahir Muhsein said:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, ‘Palestinians’, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

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Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from Xander Nieuws concerning the unusual opinions of an Italian Muslim leader about the nation of Israel and the Palestinians:

Muslim Sheikh: “Jews are entitled to all of Israel”

“Italian Muslim leader says Palestinian people does not exist”

Settlement freeze protesters


[Photo caption: Last month there were many protests against the halt as decreed by the government of Netanyahu in construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.]

Just as there is a small group of Jews that oppose Israel, there are — mostly literate — Muslims who are very pro-Israel. Professor Sheikh Adbul Hadi Palazzi is the leader of the Italian Muslim community and declared this week during his visit to Jerusalem that the Jews are entitled to all of Israel and the Palestinians not only have nothing to look for there, but as a people do not even exist.

Palazzi was in Jerusalem for an interview with Aryeh King, activist, director and founder of the Israel Land Fund organization. The location where two gentlemen met, the Intercontinental Seven Arches Hotel in East Jerusalem, was not chosen at random: in the same hotel the Palestinian terrorist PLO was founded, and there it was declared that the Palestinians would not rest until every Jew had been driven in the Mediterranean Sea.

King: “If people would understand this, they would know that it’s not at all about the “Green Line” (pre-1967 border) or about Hebron, Jericho or East Jerusalem. The struggle is about all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashdod. Unfortunately, there are many leaders, including Israeli, who do not understand this. Fortunately, there are also leaders such as Abdul Hadi Palazzi, who do understand this, and recognize the importance of Jerusalem (for the Jews) as the fact that here, at the site of the Dome of the Rock Mosque, the Temple of Solomon once stood.”

The Italian Muslim Community, the organization Sheikh Palazzi is leader of, has committed itself to a positive attitude by Muslims towards the Jews in Israel, and is basing itself thereby on authentic Islamic sources. According to him Israel should just continue to build Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (West of the river Jordan, also called “West Bank”), particularly while there are no negotiations with the Palestinians taking place.

“The Government of Israel must be brave,” according to Palazzi. “They should say to be ready for negotiations, but as long as the Palestinians reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, these negotiations are pointless.”

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“Until now, the Palestinian Authority have thought that time works to their advantage. They receive a lot, but in the meanwhile do nothing at all. Their leaders will be paid by the international community anyway, but that money is only used to strengthen their own position. But only when they understand that as long as they do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, time will not work in their advantage because there are no negotiations taking place, a change may occur.”

Palazzi is strongly opposed to the building freeze in settlements as announced by the Netanyahu government. “As long as there are no negotiations this is seen as a sign of weakness. Yes, the European Union and President Obama will protest if the building activities continue, but what can they do against it? Nothing! Therefore, the Israeli people should just grow in all areas, so as to show that negotiations are not intended to paralyze one party.”

“The Jews have the right to all of Israel as their own country. The completely wrong starting point of the (previous) negotiations was the avowed support for the Palestinian claim (to their own state). During the British Mandate, the area was divided into two countries: Jordan and Israel, with the river Jordan as a border. The world must accept that Israel won the Six Day War (1967) and conquered the region up to the Jordan [that had been illegally conquered and occupied by Jordan up until then]. The Jordanians who lived there should be able to remain, provided they accept their status as foreign residents on Israeli territory, as is usual in any other country. The claim that they now want to establish a state on Israeli territory should therefore not be accepted.”

Palazzi adds that the Palestinians as a people have never existed, and therefore have no rights at all to any part of Israel whatsoever. “The PLO did not represent a state and was no political authority. Most leaders of the PLO were from the elsewhere in the region, Arafat for example was an Egyptian, Faizal Husseini (Arafat’s chief assistant) was from Iraq. The biggest mistake, therefore, has been that these people were recognized as representatives of the local Arab population. Moreover, the Arabs who lived there initially refused to accept them as their leaders, but continued to view themselves more as Jordanians — and thus not Palestinians.”

However, “During ‘Oslo’ [the peace agreement in 1993] this was entirely changed; all Arab countries were afraid to speak out against the PLO. That is why the situation after ‘Oslo’ only got worse, both for Israel and the Arab population.”

According to Palazzi, there are more and more Muslims who silently agree with him. This, according to him, is among other reasons partly due to the repeated threats of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to destroy Israel. As proof of this he mentions the demonstration at the Iranian embassy in Rome, which was called for by his organization, where another Muslim organization also joined them. “There are many Muslim leaders in Rome who have fled the extremist situation in their home countries. Therefore they consider the threat they faced in those countries as the same as threat that Israel is now undergoing. “

See the video here.

VH adds that the video features:

8 thoughts on “Do the Palestinian People Exist?

  1. Palazzi adds that the Palestinians as a people have never existed, and therefore have no rights at all to any part of Israel whatsoever. “The PLO did not represent a state and was no political authority. Most leaders of the PLO were from the elsewhere in the region, Arafat for example was an Egyptian, Faizal Husseini (Arafat’s chief assistant) was from Iraq. The biggest mistake, therefore, has been that these people were recognized as representatives of the local Arab population.

    How nice to see this concept get some real ink. The following excerpt is required reading for anyone who wishes to pretend that they have even a vague understanding of the Arab – Israeli crisis.

    It is from the Front Page Magazine article, “The Communist Roots of Palestinian Terror, by David Meir-Levi.

    In the PLO’s original founding Charter (or Covenant), Article 24 states: “this Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the west Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area.” For Arafat, “Palestine” was not the west Bank or the Gaza Strip, which after 1948 belonged to other Arab states. The only “homeland” for the PLO in 1964 was the State of Israel.

    However, in response to the Six-Day war and Arafat’s mentoring by the Soviets and their allies, the PLO revised its Charter on July 17, 1968, to remove the language of Article 24, thereby newly asserting a “Palestinian” claim of sovereignty to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

    Part of the reframing of the conflict, along with adopting the identity of an “oppressed people” and “victim of colonialism,” then, was the creation, ex nihilo, of “historic Palestine” and the ancient “Palestinian people” who had lived in their “homeland” from “time immemorial,” who could trace their “heritage” back to the Canaanites, who were forced from their homeland by the Zionists, and who had the inalienable right granted by international law and universal justice to use terror to reclaim their national identity and political self-determination.

    That this was a political confection was, perhaps inadvertently, revealed to the West by Zahir Muhse’in, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, in a 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw:

    “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism. [Emphasis added.]

    Arafat himself asserted the same principle on many occasions. In his authorized biography he says, “The Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasir Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.”.

    But even these admissions—that the concept of a “Palestinian people” and a “Palestinian homeland” were invented for political purposes to justify and legitimize terrorism and genocide—could not stem the enthusiasm of western leaders. Within the space of a few years, the Middle East conflict with Israel was radically reframed. No longer was little Israel the vulnerable David standing against the massive Goliath of the Arab world. As the PLO’s Communist-trained leaders saw the inroads that Vietnam, Cuba, and other “liberation struggles” had made in the west, Arafat promoted the same script for the Palestinians. Now it was Israel who was the bullying Goliath, a colonial power in the Middle East oppressing the impoverished, unarmed, helpless, hapless, and hopeless Palestinians. [Bold text added]

  2. I refer the readers of GoV to my comment in the Daily Telegraph on 6th June 2007:

    All the Arab dictatorships (and Kingdoms) have it within their power to end the ages-long war between themselves and Israel. They should agree that Israel has a right to exist, and accept that the Palestinians will not recover land now held by Israelis. Instead they continue to hold aloft the deliberately deformed Palestinian people as a banner of poverty and brutality, to extract guilt money and influence from the West. They have made the Palestinians the political “Rat Children” of the Middle East.

    Gloss: “Rat Children” is the English name for the chuhas in Pakistan. See here.

  3. To deny Israel is to go against their own words – in acting like pharaoh they are apostates by their own admissions they should recognise not only Israel as is, but greater Israel.

  4. What’s in a name? Whatever the people who were, and are,living in the area are called is irrelevant,they possess human rights and can’t be written out of existence.

  5. DWMF: All the Arab dictatorships (and Kingdoms) have it within their power to end the ages-long war between themselves and Israel.

    While true, it is precisely for this reason that the conflict has not already ended nor will it end anytime soon, save by means of catastrophic measures (e.g., the “Samson Option”).

    Surrounding Islamic tyrannies have little, if any, incentive at all to see this crisis resolved for whatever reason. First off, recognition of Israel would constitute a frank admission that the combined military might of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan was totally incapable of defeating a tiny nation populated by the Jewish “apes” and “dogs” of Arab propaganda.

    To put this into its proper perspective; Imagine minuscule Costa Rica routinely beating America’s much vaunted military machine like a cheap dime store drum. That is the scale of this matter and it must be remembered that in high context Muslim cultures, humiliation is worse than death. Furthermore, Palestinian terrorism was specifically evolved as a form of low intensity warfare intended to replace the obviously ineffective conventional military actions that the aforementioned quartet of Arab nations proved to be so utterly incompetent at prosecuting.

    Over the course of this conflict, Palestinian terrorism has been elevated and enshrined as a pinnacle form of Islamic jihad. The amount of psychological and propagandistic capital invested in this one particular terrorist venture cannot be overstated. To suddenly reverse course and accept as inevitable the existence of Israel would be an open confession of jihad’s ineffectuality and that the Muslim religious cause is impotent against its sworn enemies.

    Please remember that there are radical Islamic clerics who would prefer to see the entire earth expunged of all human life−with every Muslim in paradise and all Kuf’r rotting in Hell−rather than share this world with even a single unbeliever. Now, consider that the intensely murderous dislike for an average Kuf’r pales into insignificance when compared with the white-hot, incendiary hatred felt by most Muslims towards the Jews.

    How is it then, that we should expect these same, repeatedly humiliated, Islamic leaders to abruptly accept the existence of Israel when such an acknowledgement just as readily signifies a confession that the avowed Qur’anic goal of conquering all dar al harb is impossible? Many devout Muslims would interpret it as an act of blasphemy or apostasy, both of them punishable by summary execution according to Islam’s own shari’a law.

    You can bet the farm that few, if any, MME (Muslim Middle East), despots are willing to place their necks in that particular noose.

    They should agree that Israel has a right to exist, and accept that the Palestinians will not recover land now held by Israelis.

    To close, literally every single Islamic tyranny in the entire MME, not just those bordering on Israel, has made the amicable resolution of this interminably perpetuated crisis an absolute precondition before even the slightest internal governmental reforms can proceed.

    Given how MME governments remain among some of the world’s MOST corrupt regimes, what hope can there be that they will suddenly acquiesce with respect to recognition of Israel when it would toll the death knell for their own preeminence?

    Simply put, there LESS THAN ZERO incentive for any Muslim recognition of Israel. Ergo, not one stitch of international dialogue is worth a single scintilla with respect to resolving the Arab−Israeli crisis and Israel, by all rights, is entitled to unilaterally pursue any and every means of ensuring its own survival.

  6. I really don’t get why we support the Palestinians. If it would be after me, I’d cease any diplomatic relations with them and give the go ahead to Israel to wipe them out. A people having their homeland, just like Europe is the European people’s homeland is something normal. Israel or any nation being colonized is something to be frowned upon. Funny enough, the Palestinians are denied citizenship in a lot of Muslim countries so that they stay there.

  7. Excellent piece.
    Professor Palazzi is also addressing the victim mentality foisted on the Pan Jordanians, which reminded me of an article from this past summer.

    Stop Treating Arabs Like Animals by Dan Illouz.

    It is not always easy to have freedom of choice – you can choose right and you can choose wrong. Then, you are responsible for your actions. Still, even if it is not easy, it is what makes us human. Stop treating Palestinians as if they are incapable of making choices and being responsible for the consequence of those choices! Stop treating Palestinians like animals!

  8. rebelliousvanilla: I really don’t get why we support the Palestinians. If it would be after [up to] me, I’d cease any diplomatic relations with them and give the go ahead to Israel to wipe them out … Funny enough, the Palestinians are denied citizenship in a lot of Muslim countries so that they stay there [in the “occupied” territories].

    As an addendum to this entire sordid mess, please do not forget that, throughout the entire MME (Muslim Middle East), Palestinians are largely regarded as something lower than pond scum. Saddam Hussein imported Palestinian gangsters for the specific purpose of using them as violent enforcers against indigenous Iraqi ethnic groups.

    It should come as no great surprise that these same terrorist thugs-for-hire are now clamoring for admission to the United States as a “persecuted minority”. (Insert loud sobbing noises >here<) None of this prevents a majority of Islamic nations from loudly bewailing the supposed (and largely, voluntarily, self-inflicted) plight of the Palestinians, an overwhelming majority of them will have absolutely nothing to do with any notion of resettlement because it would present an avenue of reconciliation that would then place the ball squarely in the courts of MME dictatorships that have rejected any and all reforms until there is some resolution of the (purposefully protracted), Arab – Israeli crisis. Finally, resolution of the Arab – Israeli crisis would signal an abandonment of Islam’s genocide against the Jews. Again, this might as well represent total blashphemy to many Muslims and most likely would incites scores of fanatics to go after Muslim heads of state (not that that’s a bad thing, mind you).

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