(Ha'aretz) Moshe Arens - The Palestinians as a national entity would probably not have existed had it not been for the Balfour Declaration. They were not recognized as such at the time, either by the Turks or the British. The Balfour Declaration refers to "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Thirty years later, in 1947, the UN partition declaration called for the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state in a divided Palestine. The non-Jewish population in Palestine was considered by the international community, and by themselves as well, not a distinct nationality but part of the Arab nation. It was the establishment of Israel that gave rise to a separate Palestinian national consciousness and in time international recognition of a Palestinian nation. A description of the tragic fate of the Middle Eastern Arab population in recent years is graphically described in Scott Anderson's "Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart" in the New York Times. Had it not been for the establishment of Israel, it hardly seems likely that the Palestinians would have avoided being caught up in this Arab national catastrophe. The writer served as Israel's Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2016-08-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive