Palestine: Reversing al Nakba and Ethnic Cleansing

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• published: 15 May 2011
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Palestine: Reversing Ethnic Cleansing. Dr.Salman Abu Sitta "Never in its 5000 years history has Palestine witnessed such massive uprooting of its people, ethnically cleansing of 675 towns and villages, such massive dispossession and confiscation of property, 93% of Israel's area is Palestinian property, so are the contents of its towns and village, public buildings, roads, railways, ports and of course, its water resources. Never before has Palestine witnessed such massive destruction of its landscape, its cultural and religious monuments and its landmarks. Never before has Palestine witnessed such erasure of its history, identity, its Arabic and Palestinian names and its heritage. Never before has Palestine been the subject of so many UN resolutions condemning these crimes and deeds and calling for removing this colossal injustice, with absolutely nothing done about it. The victims of this injustice are 11 million Palestinians of whom 7 million are refugees and displaced people, including 4.7 million registered refugees. They are languishing in exile while Jewish European immigrants are enjoying the fruits of their conquest, looting and plunder. But this unprecedented catastrophic event has a peculiar characteristic: It is like a constantly-running play. The players change, but the same story goes on and on. If you missed all events since WWI, you must have seen the carnage in Gaza last January. This is the latest replica of past events. Let us look back for a minute at the beginnings. The opening scene finds Herzl in 1903 approaching his lawyer to draft for him the charter for the first Jewish colonial project by the name of the "Jewish Colonization Trust" in East Africa. The lawyer was none other than David Lloyd George. The British found the project too ambitious and probably threatening to imperial interests, so they turned it down. In 1904 a professor of chemistry, Haim Weizmann, befriended his MP by the name of James Arthur Balfour and introduced him to Zionism. In 1917, that same Lloyd George became Britain's Prime Minister and Balfour became its Foreign Secretary. Together with Weizmann, they redrafted the old colonial document. It became known as Balfour Declaration. It was the last, and the only surviving, colonial project today. Scene 2: Finds the Allied planes dropping leaflets on Bilad ash Sham in the summer of 1916 promising the Arabs full independence as soon as they both defeat the Turks. At the very same time, a man who lived a long time here in Beirut and a young rich English aristocrat huddled in a room, with drawn curtains, and with a map of the Middle East before them. Thus George Picot got the piece of cake called north Syria, i.e. present Syria, and Lebanon and Mark Sykes got Palestine and Iraq. Since then, we are painted as Palestinians, and you as Lebanese and a little to the east, Syrians. Any villager in any one of these regions at that time would be baffled by this new designation. This treachery and betrayal by those diplomats, wearing top hats and exchanging polite conversation over dinner table, had to be dressed up in a civilized legal garb. They found the way. In the wake of WWI, The League of Nations bestowed upon Palestine its "Sacred Trust of Civilization" by which Palestine was put under Mandate class A; that is, it is fit for independence as soon as the Mandatory power, Britain, would finish its task of helping Palestine to build its institutions. This task is not finished till today and Palestine remains under the guardianship of the United Nations and its responsibility. Why was not the task finished after 92 years? It is because those powers who promised applying the "Sacred Trust of Civilization" are the same who betrayed it. The guardian became the villain. As a result, the Palestinian people suffered the loss of their patrimony and independence. The Mandatory Power, Britain, represented by Herbert Samuel, the Zionist first High Commissioner in Palestine, established in his first term, 1920-1925, the legal foundation of the components of the State of Israel. Moreover, in the following 28 years, the British Mandate allowed Jewish European immigrants into Palestine, thereby increasing Jewish population from 9% to 30% of total population. More ominously, Zionist Jews built an army of 120,000 soldiers by the end of the Mandate, or 20% of all Jews, which is 15 times the ratio in any country. This number of soldiers is comparable to the American forces in vastly bigger Afghanistan. In 1948, they bounced on Palestine and carried out the largest, longest, pre-planned and continuous ethnic cleansing operation in modern history. That was al Nakba." For the full speech: Palestine: Reversing Ethnic Cleansing. Dr.Salman Abu Sitta, AUB, January 14, 2010: http://www.plands.org/speechs/014.html For maps and other publications visit: http://www.plands.org/ Source: Palestine Land Society's Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRY71yQu-Xw