The Promised Land or The land of Tears!

Before writing this blog post I must admit I found it a difficult topic to assimilate and to formulate my thoughts. I have thought deeply about this human catastrophe and the carnage unravelling in Israel and Palestine.  Well here goes I’ll try and make it lucid and as concise as possible. But like all wars it’s humanities making. 

One of my boyhood hero’s is T. E. Lawrence CB  DSO or has he’s famously called Lawrence of Arabia. What propelled his fame was the David Learn 1960’s film called Lawrence of Arabia. With two main protagonists being the actor Peter O’tool and Omar Sherif.

I saw the film as young boy on holiday in the Isle of Man. The sound track and the desert land scapes and characters in the film left an indelible mark on me. Much later on in second hand bookshop I bought the two volumes of Lawrence’s books Seven Pillars of Wisdom in Bridge North Shropshire.  The books were about his personal involvement in the Arabia uprising and revolt against the Ottoman Turkish army in WW1.

Lawrence was an academic archaeologist and won a first class BA honours degree on his thesis about crusader castles and fortification in the Levant region. Which is Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Cyprus. Cyprus is where I am on my sailing boat actually writing this blog article.

Throughout this region there are many fine Christian crusader castles built at time of the religious crusade against the Moslem overlords of that region. The most famous being; Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia. 

Prior to the First World War the Levant region was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. Before the Great War Lawrence spent time in the Middle East carrying out archaeological work. He actually undertook a walking tour and visited 36 different crusaders castles in the region. Was his archaeological work and walk-a-bouts like Gertrude Bell a convenient pretext to spy on the Turkish military in the region? 

He learnt to speak fluent Arabic and understand intimately the various sects and religions of the local inhabitants and more importantly the Ottoman way of ruling their empire in the Levant.

In seven pillars of wisdom he doesn’t elaborate upon if he was asked during his academic and archaeological studies to spy on Turkish military strategic defences in Syria? Why? As this became important during the First World War as the Turkish Ottoman army aligned itself with the German axis forces. During the war whilst in Cairo Egypt the HQ of the Middle Eastern command. Lawrence the archaeologist academic became an intelligence officer and intimately knew the strength and weakness of the Turkish army throughout the Levant region. 

(How the ottomans ruled their empire was based upon a millet system. The millet system is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities living under Islamic dominion (dhimmi). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves (in cases not involving any Muslim) with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government.)

Remember the inhabitants of the Levant were of multi ethnicity. Ottomans allowed the different religious sects and the people to govern themselves with light touch ruling from the Islamic Turks. The multi ethnic peoples of the region including; Moslems both Sunni and Shia who were aligned with Persia (Iran). The minority religions such as Christians and Jews. 

Palestine was only one small part under Ottoman colonial control in the Levant. The geographical area of the Levant included Transjordan, Syria, modern day Lebanon and Mesopotamia (Iraq) religions occupying these lands with the majority being Moslem with a small minority religions of Kurds, Armenian, Turkmen, Alawites, Druze, Maronite and Baha’is. 

In 1919 during First World War Palestinian Muslims and Christian’s constituted 90% of the population. Jews were tiny number of inhabitants they were a fringe religion. Palestine had a population of 750,000 of mainly Palestinian Muslim Arabs. The Jews constituted 56000 of the total inhabitants of the region of Palestine. Less than 1 % of total population it was tiny number of Middle Eastern Jews. 

How did European Jewish people colonise Palestine against the wishes of the existing Islamic Arab inhabitants? This happened after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the military occupation of the British victors in 1919. 

The British allowed the influx of Zionist Jews to acquire Palestinian lands. The secular European Zionist used a unique way of acquiring poor quality Palestine land using a social commune system of Kibbutz farming. Using wealthy Zionist patrons to buy Palestine land at exorbitant prices from remote non Palestinian landowner. Many of the Arab farmers were more like Russian peasants serfs. Arab farmers in many cases didn’t have proper documentation to prove land ownership.

 The Zionist’s with the help of the United Stated and Russian during the period of the British mandate 1919 to 1948 slowly started to defend themselves from kibbutz attacks by the local Arabs. Setting up paramilitary groups with weapons and munitions eventually using force of arms to totally colonise Palestine to form the Zionist state of Israel in 1948. 

We can blame the imperial British empire for that and turning a blind eye and allowing a fledgling Zionist movement to occupy Arab Palestine. Israel fledgling nation was financially backed by the United States government. Why did the British allow this to happen and why does the United States still bank roll the state of Israel? 

It’s hard understand why the USA bank rolls Israel.? There is an interesting analogy of Israel as a nation; in reality it’s like having a largest US military aircraft carrier plonked at the end of the Mediterranean Sea smack bang at the edge of a volatile Arabic world of the Middle East.  I believe when imperial Britain and the French colonised the Levant after the Great War it was political self interest and geopolitics driven by strategic needs. However with us British, I never know,  if it’s by design or by accident. Because us Brits seem to stumble along. Maybe it’s part of the clever strategic ploy. To look bumbling and incompetent to the world.

Let’s step back and look at the big picture of the Middle East. What is the underlying strategic nature of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, Saudi Arabia and small nations of the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwaiti and Oman. They all adjacent to the Persian Gulf oilfields. Through a quirk of nature and plate tectonics they have lots of black gold under the ground! 

A strategic energy source that was ready to be tapped by Anglo Persian oil companies and Texan oil know how. Think about it who is the largest oil producing nation in the world the United States of America.  We the British had expert geologist. All these relatively poor Persian gulf nations had the resources but  they needed the expertise and know how to extract oil and refine it to market.

Egypt was already under British colonial occupation other than oil their money making  strategic choke point was the Suez Canal jointly owned by the Brits and the French. Oil today is transported through the Suez Canal to western counties from the Persian gulf. However more and more oil and gas goes to the Far Eastern nations such as India, China and Japan. After the First World War the British strategically occupied lands with the abundance of oil and gas. 

Now Palestine has no oil & gas but at that time the British were occupiers of Palestine Transjordan, Iraq and Egypt and had the expertise and financial wealth to exploit these oil riches in the Gulf states.

Palestine was a back water relatively poor Islamic nation. Jerusalem was at the centre of all the monolithic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. British knew how strategically important the Middle East was at the cross roads between the east and the west. Indian, Burma, Malaysia and Australia. The US being new and growing industrial nation also had strategic interests in oil and gas production in the Middle East.

I think I understand why today Israel is so important to US strategic western interests. It’s like having a modern industrial military strong American/European nation on the door step of Islamic world.  Not forgetting it is also a buttress against Russian imperialism in the region. 

Look at the situation recently with the Syrian civil war Bashar el Assad asked Putin for help to put down the up rising of militant Islamic factions. Russia sent in the Wagner military contractors with the Russian military to quash the Syrians war and keep the Syrian dictator in power. I’m sure Wagner and Putin got a nice big payback from Bashar el Assad. Aren’t the Russians now using the same military tactics in Ukraine by targeting civilian population infrastructure. However they haven’t been using chemical weapons like Assad used and his cohort before him in Iraq Saddam Hussein.

Modern Israel is an industrialised western type society with its values aligned with the US. Heavily armed and military sophisticated. And is always ready to attack any threats to its geopolitical and US financial interest from any misaligned actors such as Syria or Iran. 

First we need to look at the Zionist Movement who were they? Were they really practicing Jews or secular in being non practicing Jews? 

Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, is a modern political movement. Its core beliefs are that all Jews constitute one nation (not simply a religious or ethnic community) and that the only solution to anti-Semitism is the concentration of as many Jews as possible in Palestine/Israel and the establishment of a Jewish state there. 

The World Zionist Organization, established by Theodor Herzl in 1897, declared that the aim of Zionism was to establish “a national home for the Jewish people secured by public law.” Zionism drew on Jewish religious attachment to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel). 

But the politics of Zionism was influenced by nationalist ideology, and by colonial ideas about Europeans’ rights to claim and settle other parts of the world.

Zionism gained adherents among Jews and support from the West as a consequence of the murderous anti-Jewish riots (known as pogroms) in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Nazi genocide (mass murder) of European Jews during World War II killed over six million, and this disaster enhanced international support for the creation of a Jewish state.

There are several different forms of Zionism. From the 1920s until the 1970s, the dominant form was Labor Zionism, which sought to link socialism and nationalism. By the 1920s, Labor Zionists in Palestine established the kibbutz movement (a kibbutz is a collective commune, usually with an agricultural economy), the Jewish trade union and cooperative movement, the main Zionist militias (the Haganah and Palmach) and the political parties that ultimately coalesced in the Israeli Labor Party in 1968.

The top leader of Labor Zionism was David Ben-Gurion, who became the first Prime Minister of Israel. In fact there many Orthodox Jews who don’t believe in Zionism or the Jewish state. They believe based upon Jewish scriptures that Jewish people should live and integrate with gentile or Moslem societies. Not have political and social homogeneous state such as Israel. Young Orthodox Jews in Israel refuse to fight in the Israel Defence Force. They use to have dispensation but I believe the Israel state has clamped down on this and arrests them for refusing not serve in the IDF. 

Let’s look the original British government mandate of Palestine. After the military victory against the Ottoman Empire. This was enacted by the League Of Nations a precursor to the United Nations.

The Mandate for Palestine has a unique character regarding both its beneficiaries, the Jewish people, wherever they live, and the obligations of the Mandatory power. At the same time it has been a burdensome stone right from the beginning. Representatives of Palestinian Arabs have rejected it as being incompatible with their right to self-determination. The policies of Great Britain, the Mandatory power, show a gradual departure from its obligations. The establishment of the Jewish national home became, instead of the primary obligation, just one of the duties of equal weight and content as others under the Mandate.

Following the establishment of the State of Israel, the relevance of the mandatory system in the light of Article 80 of the UN Charter has been recognised, inter alia, by the International Court of Justice. The unique character of the Palestine Mandate, however, has been kept under wraps. Some academic writings and legal actions by the Palestinians now offer a radical revisionism, which uses the Mandate as the legal basis for a Palestinian state. This trend is not without consequences for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and for the right of the Palestinians to self-determination.

I thought I would include a thesis called the Iron Wall written in 1923 outlining the thoughts of Zionist regarding the Arab inhabitants and how they wanted and did create an Zionist Israeli state being the largest population of Palestinian land. He mentions the Spanish conquistadors, the pilgrims. And the morality of colonisation. Basically the writer was indifferent to the Arab inhabitants. The general feeling from some Zionist they were illiterate peasant no right to their land. The parallels with the American continent and Europeans colonisation, subjugation and genocide of indigenous peoples. 

Coincidently the US aligns itself with Israel  wasn’t the whole of the americas colonised by white Europeans. Treaties weren’t worth the paper they were written on by the Federal US government going back as far as President Andrew Jackson. He was plantation owner with black slaves. 

He didn’t think highly of the ignorant red Indian savages covering all of the America’s. 

Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal act in 1830, which granted the president the power to exchange lands in the West for Native American lands in the East. He actively pursued Indian removal, and persuaded, bribed, and forced more than 70 treaties to be signed with Indian tribes stipulating their movement west. Additionally, he secured the Treaty of New Echota, which created the false appearance that the Cherokee consented to moving west.

The Trail of Tears refers to the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands in the eastern United States to land in the West. The term is often used specifically to describe the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from their lands in the Southeast to present-day Oklahoma in 1838. Thousands died and many more suffered greatly during this event.

Andrew Jackson was a firm proponent of US westward expansion. He viewed Native Americans with prejudice as savages with an inferior culture. He believed that white US settlers had a right to take Native American lands, and even argued that it was beneficial to Native Americans that they be removed to a place where they could live their way of life separately from settlers.

The Palestinians have no where to go and some far right Israeli’s seem to condone that they should be pushed right into the sea. Or like the right wing nationalist premier Netanyahu wants to simply eradicate them off the face of the earth! The Israeli’s have virtually enslaved them in a one million peopled concentration camp called the Gaza Strip. Isn’t it any wonder this rebellion by them has been so horrific in breaking down this Zionist iron wall. What’s the solution is there any because Netanyahu won’t countenance a Palestine state. Arabs in the past have tried to invade Israel to no avail. 

Hamas are well armed and determined to destroy the Zionist state. Obviously what they did on the 7 October 2023 was absolutely horrific and what Israel is doing in return is equally horrific. As a soldier when I served in Northern Ireland I’ve seen hate but never to this level of visceral hatred as in Palestine. Even George Mitchell the US Senator who help broker the peace process in Northern Ireland admitted he couldn’t find a solution to the Palestine Israeli question. In 1949 the first UN peace envoy brokered a solution he was assassinated by an Israeli terrorist.

Count Bernadotte the United Nations envoy came up with two proposals for two state solution. Partition of Palestine. One part for the Palestine Arabs and one part for the Palestine Jewish Zionist.. Both were rejected by the Jewish Zionist and Count Folke Bernadotte was assassinated by the Jewish Zionist extremists.

First proposal

On 28 June 1948, Bernadotte submitted his first formal proposal in secret to the various parties. He presented the following suggestions to discuss:

• Palestine and Transjordan be reformed as “a Union, comprising two Members, one Arab and one Jewish”, each member with full control over its own affairs, including its foreign relations
• Economic union
• Fix boundaries by negotiation
• Immigration within its own borders should be within the competence of each member for a period of two years, after which the immigration policy of either member may be overruled by a “Council of the Union” or by the United Nations
• Full protection of religious and minority rights
• Guarantees for Holy Places, religious buildings and sites
• Return of residents, displaced by the conflict

As far as the boundaries of the two Members were concerned, Bernadotte proposed the following for consideration:

1. Inclusion of the whole or part of the Negev in Arab territory
2. Inclusion of the whole or part of Western Galilee in the Jewish territory
3. Inclusion of the City of Jerusalem in Arab territory, with municipal autonomy for the Jewish community and special arrangements for the protection of the Holy Places
4. Consideration of the status of Jaffa
5. Establishment of a free port at Haifa, the area of the free port to include the refineries and terminals
6. Establishment of a free airport at Lydda

Historian Elad Ben-Dror asserts that the person who was really responsible for the first Bernadotte Plan was Bernadotte’s deputy, Ralph Bunche. Bunche made a major effort to imbue it with his own thinking about the appropriate political solution. He was influenced by the ideas of Dr. Judah Magnes and incorporated them into the plan, chiefly in its basic scheme, which called for a confederation in Palestine rather than a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Criticism

The Israeli government criticized Bernadotte’s participation in the negotiations. In July 1948, Bernadotte said that the Arab nations were reluctant to resume the fighting in Palestine and that the conflict now consisted of “incidents.” A spokesman for the Israeli government replied: “Count Bernadotte has described the renewed Arab attacks as ‘incidents.’ When human lives are lost, when the truce is flagrantly violated and the [Security Council] defied, it shows a lack of sensitivity to describe all these as incidents, or to suggest as Count Bernadotte does, that the Arabs had some reason for saying no… Such an apology for aggression does not augur well for any successful resumption by the mediator of his mission.

Second proposal

After the unsuccessful first proposal, Bernadotte continued with a more complex proposal that abandoned the idea of a union and proposed two independent states. This proposal was completed on 16 September 1948, and had as its basis seven “basic premises”

1. Peace must return to Palestine and every feasible measure should be taken to ensure that hostilities will not be resumed and that harmonious relations between Arab and Jew will ultimately be restored.
2. A Jewish State called Israel exists in Palestine and there are no sound reasons for assuming that it will not continue to do so.
3. The boundaries of this new State must finally be fixed either by formal agreement between the parties concerned or failing that, by the United Nations.
4. Adherence to the principle of geographical homogeneity and integration, which should be the major objective of the boundary arrangements, should apply equally to Arab and Jewish territories, whose frontiers should not therefore, be rigidly controlled by the territorial arrangements envisaged in the resolution of 29 November.
5. The right of innocent people, uprooted from their homes by the present terror and ravages of war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective, with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who may choose not to return.
6. The City of Jerusalem, because of its religious and international significance and the complexity of interests involved, should be accorded special and separate treatment.
7. International responsibility should be expressed where desirable and necessary in the form of international guarantees, as a means of allaying existing fears, and particularly with regard to boundaries and human rights.

The proposal then made specific suggestions that included:

1. The existing indefinite truce should be superseded by a formal peace, or at the minimum, an armistice.
2. The frontiers between the Arab and Jewish territories, in the absence of agreement between Arabs and Jews, should be established by the United Nations.
3. The Negev should be defined as Arab territory.
4. The frontier should run from Al-Faluja north northeast to Ramleh and Lydda (both of which places would be in Arab territory).
5. Galilee should be defined as Jewish territory.
6. Haifa should be declared a free port, and Lydda airport should be declared a free airport.
7. The City of Jerusalem, which should be understood as covering the area defined in the resolution of the General Assembly of 29 November, should be treated separately and should be placed under effective United Nations control with maximum feasible local autonomy for its Arab and Jewish communities with full safeguards for the protection of the Holy Places and sites and free access to them and for religious freedom.
8. The United Nations should establish a Palestine conciliation commission.
9. The right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish-controlled territory at the earliest possible date should be affirmed by the United Nations, and their repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation, and payment of adequate compensation for the property of those choosing not to return, should be supervised and assisted by the United Nations conciliation commission.^[8]

With respect to the refugee issue, Bernadotte said,

It is … undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which … was to be included in the Jewish State. The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.

conclusion

Bernadotte’s second proposal was prepared in consultation with British and American emissaries. The degree to which they influenced the proposal is poorly known, since the meetings were kept strictly secret and all documents were destroyed, but Bernadotte apparently “found that the U.S.-U.K., proposals were very much in accord with his own views” and the two emissaries expressed the same opinion. The secret meetings were publicly exposed in October, only nine days before the U.S. presidential elections, causing U.S. President Harry S. Truman great embarrassment. Truman reacted by making a strongly pro-Zionist declaration, which contributed to the defeat of the Bernadotte plan in the UN during the next two months. Also contributing was the failure of the cease-fire and continuation of the fighting.

Shoulder Israel as a colonising state exist as single entity on original Palestine Arab lands?. I’m sure if you spoke with any indigenous red Indian today he would probably say the US federal government committed genocide against his people directly caused by European immigration. He’d say the government thought we were a primitive savage people who didn’t read books and were ignorant and stupid people not worthy of the lands they inhabited. Isn’t that what all colonisers do is to marginalised the people.  We realise that Jewish people have been persecuted and vilified over the centuries. But of all the races in the world the Moslem Arabs were the most accommodating of peoples. Zionism is nationalism and can’t see Israel in his current form ever being at peace as long as it subjugates the Palestinians it will always be a land of tears!

Since my serious accident 12 years ago I have become rather spiritual. I suppose I feel I had second chance with life. Things for me seem to happen if by coincidence or is it more deeper spiritual thing that happens. After researching this difficult blog story about humanitarian disaster brought upon Palestine after fall of the Ottoman Empire and the occupation of Palestinian Arab lands by Jewish Zionist. 

I had an email this morning with an attachment of this French film called the settlers. It’s a long documentary but I feel it goes to the heart of the bitterness and hate perpetuated by the colonisation of the Israel Zionist state on Palestinian lands.