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The Jewish People's Ties to the Land of Israel

[Jerusalem Post] Allen Z. Hertz - There is an enormous body of archeological and historical evidence demonstrating that the Jewish people - like the Greek people or the Han Chinese people - is among the oldest of the world's peoples. The Jewish people has more than 3,500 years of continuous history, with a national identity that, in each century, has kept a link to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Jewish Bible, the Christian Gospels and the Koran all specifically testify to the connection between the Jewish people and its historic homeland. Like other peoples, the Jewish people has a right to self-determination. Though the self-determination of the Arab people is expressed via 21 Arab countries, Israel is the sole expression of the self-determination of the Jewish people, which of all extant peoples, has the strongest claim to be considered aboriginal to the territory west of the Jordan River. Thus, the Jewish people is aboriginal to Israel in the same way that, in Canada, certain First Nations are deemed aboriginal to their ancestral lands. Though some Western thinkers are now uncomfortable with the idea of a nation-state as the homeland of a particular people, the overwhelming majority of modern states are the homeland of a particular people, e.g., Japan, Italy or the 21 countries of the Arab League. At the 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I, a powerful international searchlight was trained on the self-determination of peoples, including the claims of the Arab people. However, no one there had ever heard anything about a distinct Palestinian Arab people. The international decision to create Palestine "as a national home for the Jewish people" was made in recognition of the Jewish people's aboriginal title and continuing links to the land. The Paris decision-makers strongly believed that they had also done justice to the claims of the Arab people via the creation or recognition of several new Arab states. Moreover, the decision to create a Jewish national home in Palestine did not result in the displacement of any Arabs. To the contrary, from 1922 until 1948, the Arab population of Palestine almost tripled. The later problem of Arab refugees only emerged from May 1948, when local Arabs allied with several neighboring Arab states to launch a war to exterminate the Jews. This analysis does not deny the current existence of a distinct Palestinian Arab people; nor does it claim that such a Palestinian Arab people is without rights. Rather, the conclusion is that there are rights on all sides, and that there should be a peaceful process that respectfully reconciles the rights of the Palestinian Arab people with the prior rights of the Jewish people. The writer was formerly senior adviser in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's prime minister and the federal cabinet.
2009-04-14 06:00:00
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