Palestinians keep freaking over possibility of Israel dividing up the Temple Mount

For decades, every since Israel divided up the Tomb of the Patriarchs into Muslim and Jewish sections to avoid bloodshed, Palestinians have been warning that Israel plans to do the same with the Temple Mount, dividing it up "temporally and spatially." 

Last week, an obscure Likud MP named Amit Halevi gave them lots of ammunition.

A Likud lawmaker is proposing a plan to divide Jerusalem’s Temple Mount between Muslims and Jews and to remove Jordan’s custodial status over the holy site.

Speaking to the Zman Yisrael Hebrew news site, Knesset member Amit Halevi outlined a plan whereby Muslims would control the southern end of the 37-acre complex which contains the Al-Aqsa mosque, while Jews would receive the central and northern area, where the Dome of the Rock sits.

It would also allow Jews to enter from any gate, and it would get rid of the Waqf as custodian of the site. 

Palestinian sites are reporting this as a "draft law" (it isn't) and they are certain that the current Israeli government is planning to do this.

In his weekly cabinet meeting, Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said "taking this step would cause overwhelming anger whose results cannot be controlled, because of the sanctity and religious value that Al-Aqsa Mosque constitutes for the Palestinian people and for Arabs and Muslims." 

President of the Palestinian National Council, Ruhi Fattouh, called it "a fascist step by the racist settlement government to impose its control over the city of Jerusalem and its religious and historical places, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque." He also called this a prelude to a religious war that will  ignite the region.

Hamas media today quotes an analyst who says that this plan proves that they were right all along about Israel planning to divide up the area. And there have been daily articles across all Palestinian media railing against this idea. 

The chances of such a plan becoming law is just about zero.  It probably won't even be drafted. 

Not that it is a bad idea. It would be more fair than the absurd situation now. But there is no way it would ever happen. Halevi is a marginal figure in Likud, and I haven't seen any grassroots support for the plan by anyone. 

It is to Palestinians what the "Palestine is Jordan" plan is to Jordan - something they are intensely worried about but for which there is no realistic path. But it gives them endless nourishment for outlandish conspiracy theories. 

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11/07 Links Pt1: The Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist; Netanyahu victory paves way for Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine; Lies and unapologetic antisemitism from the UN CoI.

From Ian:

PMW: The Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist

The Palestinian objection to the 1917 Balfour Declaration is one of the most explicit expressions of the Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist. This year, as in previous years, the Palestinian Authority and its leaders marked the historical event with a barrage of statements condemning the declaration, that ranged from outright rejection to elaborate conspiracy theories.

The common theme of all the statements, as Palestinian Media Watch has conclusively demonstrated, is the denial of the internationally and historically recognized connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the rejection of the legitimacy of the State of Israel, in any borders.

Leading the barrage was the PA Ministry of Information which claimed that the declaration was “the crime of the era” which “exceeded the crimes of colonialism”, and called on the Britain to “be ashamed of their sin”.

“The [PA] Ministry of Information said that the black Balfour Promise in its 105th year is the crime of the era, … this unjust promise is a dangerous precedent in the history of international relations… that … exceeded the crimes of colonialism…

The Ministry of Information reemphasized that Britain and all its diplomats should be ashamed of their sin, their historical injustice, and their denial of all the laws and conventions…” – which obligates them to recognize the State of Palestine and stop blindly siding with injustice, occupation, and colonialism.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2022]

PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh also condemned the declaration, claiming that “Britain gave that which it did not have ownership over to one who has no right”. Shtayyeh added his demand that Britain correct its historical mistake by recognizing the “State of Palestine:
“[At the weekly PA governmental meeting, PA] Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said… that the anniversary of the ominous Balfour Declaration will take place in two days, Wednesday [Nov. 2, 2022], ‘and through it Britain gave that which it did not have ownership over to one who has no right. We are still paying the price of this ominous declaration’s consequences in political, material, humanitarian, geographical, and other terms, and Britain must correct its historical mistake and recognize the sovereign and contiguous State of Palestine whose capital is Jerusalem, and the [Palestinian] refugees’ right of return.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 1, 2022]

Palestinians Vote For Terrorists, Then Claim Israelis Are 'Extremists'

The Palestinians, who keep complaining about the rise of the right-wing parties in Israeli elections, are the ones who brought the terrorist Hamas group to power.

In 2006, a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the elimination of Israel.

The Palestinians who voted for a jihadist terror group would therefore seem to have little justification to complain about the outcome of any Israeli election.

The statements that Palestinian leaders and officials are making in response to the latest elections are identical to those they issued after previous rounds of voting in Israel.

After Israel's 2020 election, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum... urged Palestinians to step up the "resistance" against Israel to thwart then US President Donald J. Trump's plan for peace in the Middle East, titled "Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People."

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, any elected government in Israel that does not submit to 100% of their demands is a bad and dangerous government.

The second camp, represented by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and several other armed groups, is seeking to replace Israel with an Islamist state. This camp does not believe in Israel's right to exist....

The Palestinians... continue to engage in fear-mongering after each Israeli election in efforts to intimidate the Israeli public into complying with their demands. They also have used this tactic for three decades to frighten the international community into pressuring Israel to make dangerous territorial concessions.

The Palestinian claim that there is no partner for peace in Israel is totally false. In fact, the opposite is true.... The sad fact is that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side.

The next time the Palestinians wring their hands about Israeli elections, the international community might remind them that it is Palestinian terrorism that drives the Israeli ballot-box results.

The Palestinians also need to be reminded that it is their own leaders, and not those of Israel, who reject peace.

Rather than bemoaning the Israeli election results, Palestinian leaders should be granting their own people even a part of what the Israelis wish for them in the Abraham Accords: equal justice under the law, freedom to speak and publish without fear of retribution, freedom to become prosperous, and freedom to live lives that have opportunity apart from the cottage industry of terrorism -- lives free from their own leaders' corrupt, unending suppression.

David Singer: Netanyahu victory paves way for Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

Bibi Netanyahu’s triumphal return as Israel’s next Prime Minister affords him the opportunity to fulfil one of his major election promises: Ending the 100-years old unresolved Arab-Jewish conflict.

It has been a long and arduous road for Netanyahu to travel since he told the United Nations on 11 December 1984:
“Those who accept the notion of a Palestinian people must therefore wonder: how many Palestinian Arab peoples are there? Is there a western Palestinian Arab people and, just across that narrow stream known as the Jordan River an eastern Palestinian Arab people? How many Arab States in Palestine does Palestinian self-determination require? Clearly, in eastern and western Palestine there are only two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews; and, just as clearly, there are only two States in that area, Jordan and Israel.

The Arab State of Jordan, containing some 3 million Arabs, does not allow a single Jew 10 live there. It contains four fifths of the territory originally allocated by the predecessor of the United Nations. the League of Nations, for the Jewish national home. The other State, Israel, has a population of a little over 4 million, of which one sixth IS Arab. It contains less than one fifth of the territory originally allocated to the Jews under the Mandate.

The claim of self-determination, then, is misleading, for the inhabitants of Jordan which, incidentally,Hussein's grandfather, King Abdullah, wanted originally to call the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine - are largely Palestinian Arabs, and within that population, western Palestinian Arabs are the majority. It cannot be said, therefore, that the Arabs of Palestine are lacking a State or their own, the ultimate expression of self-determination. The demand for a second Palestinian Arab State in western Palestine, and the twenty-second Arab State in the world, is merely the latest attempt to push Israel back into the hopelessly vulnerable armistice lines of 1949.”

The United Nations rejected Netanyahu’s warning - pushing ahead instead to try and create that 23nd Arab state between Israel and Jordan in territories allocated to the Jews to reconstitute the Jewish National Home under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter.

Both the Security Council and General Assembly subsequently passed a plethora of anti-Israel resolutions using highly-inflammatory language such as “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and recognising two separate peoples in the process – “Jordanians” and “Palestinians” – even granting observer status to the non-existent “State of Palestine”

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Where is "Home" for a Jew? And Why the Double Standard for Arabs Still Living in the British Mandate for Palestine? (Judean Rose)

The anti-Israel crowd likes to insist that Israel can’t be “home” for a Jew, because the Jews were gone for thousands of years. The Arabs, they say, have a more recent claim. But what about the Arabs who live in Jordan, comprised of 80 percent of the British Mandate for Palestine? How can they “return” to “Palestine” when they are already IN Palestine—Mandate Palestine. Aren't they already home?

The Right of Return in the eyes of the world applies only to Arabs, never to Jews. The "key of return" has come to symbolize the hope of Arabs to boot out the current residents of homes their ancestors fled in 1948. Why is it not equally valid for Jews, with their own symbol of hope, the mizrach sign that points to Jerusalem and denotes the direction of prayer, to return to the Jewish homeland? Does it matter where they lived after expulsion? What is the expiration date on reclaiming a home and who gets to determine this date?

An Arab woman holds a symbolic "Key of Return"

Framed mizrach with the word מזרח on the wall (Jan Voerman, De treurdagen 'the sorrowful days', c. 1884)

A more basic question might be: Where is home? Is it the place where your grandparents lived or the city of your birth? Because if you tell me that I should go back to Pittsburgh because I was born there, isn't it the same for those who were born in Amman, Lebanon, Syria, and the many other countries to which Arabs fled in 1948? They had children and grandchildren born in these countries. And of course, those who fled to Jordan never really left. They just moved to a different part of "Palestine."

As did those who fled to Syria. 

Veteran (now dead) White House Correspondent Helen Thomas once suggested that “Jews Get the Hell out of ‘Palestine’” and “go home” to Poland and Germany. Thomas covered the White House through ten presidential administrations, from Kennedy to Obama. But telling Jews to go back to Poland and Germany, as it turns out, was considered beyond the pale. Because everyone knew that it was in Germany and Poland that Jews, not so long ago, had been systematically gassed and burned in the millions. Thomas, in essence, wasn't sending Jews home, but to their deaths. 

Even those who agreed with Thomas' sentiment probably would have wished her more circumspect. Thomas had allowed the veneer of the professional journalist to slip, revealing her hate. The optics were not good. As a result, Thomas was forced to retire in disgrace, a victim of her own loose lips. At 89, she was still in full possession of her mental faculties, the verbal fart notwithstanding. She knew exactly what she was saying. She just hadn’t known she would not get away with it.

I remember Thomas often, though not with fondness. She comes to mind when I respond to comments on Twitter or Quora suggesting I have forfeited the right of return. Not long ago, for example, when I spoke of returning to my homeland, Mary-Lee Lutz commented, “If everyone returned to the place where their ancestors lived thousands of years ago we’d all live in Africa,” and “Your home is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Come home. You will be welcomed back.”

Lutz says Pittsburgh is my home, because this is where I was born and raised. This business of others defining "home" for Jews in exile, has become part of the anti-Israel, really antisemitic narrative. Jews are often told that Europe is “home," as in the aforementioned case of Helen Thomas. If we follow this logic, how then do we account for Sephardim and Mizrachim—Jews who were not in Poland and Germany? How do we account for the continuous, though sometimes minority Jewish presence in Israel? And as was alluded to earlier, how do we account for the Arabs who were not born in the State of Israel, for example, most of the over 80% of the Arab population of Jordan that calls itself “Palestinian?”

The creation of Transjordan was meant to placate the Arabs. They were angry after the Balfour Declaration declared British government support for the creation of a Jewish national home in British Mandate Palestine. The Arabs wanted their own national home in British Mandate Palestine. So the British carved away some 80 percent of the Mandate from land they’d promised to restore to the Jews, and gave it instead to the Arabs.

There, one might reasonably say to the Arabs of Jordan. There is your state. Your Palestine. Your home. Return your keys to the new owners after your relocation to a different part of the same country.

Because if you are in Jordan today, and call yourself “Palestinian,” you are more likely to have been born in Jordan as opposed to what is today, the State of Israel. Jordan and Israel both exist within the confines of the British Mandate for Palestine. Does it matter who is sovereign or where your grandparents lived? And if “Israel” is really “Palestine,” why isn't Jordan?

If you live in Amman, Jordan is your most recent home, no matter how long your family lived in Haifa or Jerusalem. Why then do you insist that you are not, in actual fact, at home?

 This 1949 Jordanian stamp picturing King Abdullah, bears the label "Palestine" in both English and Arabic.

This 1964 Jordanian stamp bears the likeness of King Hussein and depicts Mandate Palestine as an undivided territory comprising all of modern day Israel and Jordan.

In 1948, King Abdullah declared, “Palestine and Jordan are one,” and in 1981, his son King Hussein said, “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine Jordan.”

Why should we not believe them? Are these kings of “Palestine” somehow not sufficiently authoritative? Rabbi Joe Katz offers a fuller picture of reality:

[About] seventy-five percent of Palestine's "native soil," east of the Jordan River, called Jordan, is literally an independent Palestinian-Arab state located on the majority of the land of Palestine; it contains a majority of Palestinian Arabs in its army as well as its population. In April 1948, just before the formal hostilities were launched against Israel's statehood, Abdullah of Transjordan declared: "Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country." Abdullah's policy was defended against "Arab challengers" by Prime Minister Hazza al-Majali: “We are the army of Palestine.... the overwhelming majority of the Palestine Arabs ... are living in Jordan.”

Although Abdullah's acknowledgment of Palestinian identity was not in keeping with the policy of his grandson, [King Hussein], Jordan is nonetheless undeniably Palestine, protecting a predominantly Arab Palestinian population with an army containing a majority of Arab Palestinians, and often governed by them as well. Jordan remains an independent Arab Palestinian state where a Palestinian Arab "law of return" applies: its nationality code states categorically that all Palestinians are entitled to citizenship by right unless they are Jews. In most demographic studies, and wherever peoples are designated, including contemporary Arab studies, the term applied to citizens of Jordan is "Palestinian/Jordanian."

In 1966 PLO spokesman Ahmed Shukeiry declared that “The Kingdom of Palestine must become the Palestinian Republic.”

Yasser Arafat has stated that Jordan is Palestine. Other Arab leaders, even King Hussein and Prince Hassan of Jordan, from time to time [affirmed] that "Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine." Moreover, in 1970-1971, later called the "Black September" period, when King Hussein waged war against Yasser Arafat's Arab PLO forces, who had been operating freely in Jordan until then, it was considered not an invasion of foreign terrorists but a civil war. It was "a final crackdown" against those of "his people" whom he accused of trying to establish a separate Palestinian state, under Arab Palestinian rule instead of his own, "criminals and conspirators who use the commando movement to disguise their treasonable plots," to "destroy the unity of the Jordanian and Palestinian people."

Indeed, the "native soil" of Arab and Jewish "Palestines" each gained independence within the same two-year period, Transjordan in 1946 and Israel in 1948. Yet today, in references to the "Palestine" conflict, even the most serious expositions of the problem refer to Palestine as though it consisted only of Israel -- as in the statement, "In 1948 Palestine became Israel." The term "Israel" is commonly used as if it were the sum total of "Palestine."

I am reminded of a necklace I wear, a gold silhouette of the map of Israel. More and more, Arabs are marketing this necklace and other items taking this shape, as if it were the map of “Palestine.” If it were really the map of “Palestine,” would it not then include Jordan, established as the national Arab home in Palestine in 1922, and declared as such by so many Arab luminaries in subsequent years? And why, if you were born in Amman, are you not already home—I would posit more so than if you had been born in Pittsburgh, Warsaw or Berlin?

Because Pittsburgh is not in Palestine, but Jordan is. To what then are you returning?
And why should anyone leave home?

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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