Quatsch Watch

By Richard H. Curtiss

(The British say rubbish, Americans say nonsense, we won 't print what the French say, and Germans say Quatsch, which rhymes with watch, which is what this column does.)

Civil Rights in the Occupied Territories

Quatsch: "The Arabs the Israelis deported had enjoyed the benefits of Israeli democracy with its freedom of religion, press, speech and the absence of any restraints on travel and educational opportunities.'' —From letter to the editor by Nathan Dobovsky, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 21, 1993

Watch: The 400 Palestinian Muslims expelled to Lebanon by Israel on Dec. 17, 1992 all were from Israeli-occupied territories and therefore enjoyed no "benefits of Israeli democracy.'' They were charged with no crime nor were they given any sort of hearing in a court of law or even in a police station. Instead, they were picked up in their homes, places of business or on the street, handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to the Lebanese border. After spending a night, still handcuffed and blindfolded, in buses they were dumped on a windswept hillside in Lebanon.

Muslim and Christian residents of the Israeli-occupied territories are subject to military occupation rules. They do not have the right to vote, can be arrested and held without charges, and placed in concentration camps for six months of "administrative detention" without any court action, and then for another six months, still without charges, at the whim of Israeli occupation authorities. Only Jews living in the occupied areas enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law and the rights of Israeli citizenship. Those rights and protections are denied to Muslims and Christians living under Israeli occupation.

The Arab Boycott and a Settlement Freeze

Quatsch: "What about [President Bill Clinton's] vote-getter pledge to press all the Arab countries to end their boycott of Israel? Why should they change their minds now anyway? They refused it during the Bush years and now signs are being given to them that it will be business as usual under Clinton." —Columnist Arlene G. Peck, National Jewish Post and Opinion, Indianapolis, IN, Feb. 24, 1993

Watch: The administration of President George Bush tried to broker an Israeli freeze on all Jewish settlement activities in the occupied territories in return for an end to the Arab boycott of Israel. It was to be a "confidence-building measure" as a prelude to an Arab-Israeli land-for-peace settlement based upon U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. Led by Saudi Arabia, the major Arab states agreed, but the Israelis did not. Israeli government- funded building activity continues in the settlements.

How was Palestine Partitioned?

Quatsch: "In 1948...the Jewish state was re-established. The Arabs were granted a much larger portion of the area at the same time, and new Arab states were also created, Jordan for example. Israel, given no other choice, was forced to settle for much less than was due her." —From letter to the editor by Irving E. Friedman, Orange County (CA) Register, Feb. 21, 1993

Watch: Under the partition plan for the Mandate of Palestine adopted by the United Nations in 1947, the two-thirds of the population that was Palestinian Christian and Muslim was given 47 percent of the land, and the one-third of the population that was Jewish was given 53 percent of the land, with Jerusalem to remain a corpus separatum under international supervision. At the end of the fighting in 1948 Israel occupied 78 percent of the land plus part of Jerusalem. Since the Palestinian state was stillborn, no Arab state has ever been created by the United Nations. Jordan was a separate mandate granted in 1924 to Britain. It attained its independence in 1946.

How Did Palestinians Become Refugees?

Quatsch: "It is simply not true to say the creation of Israel caused the Palestinian refugee problem. In reality the main cause of the problem was the Arabs' refusal to accept Israel's creation through the U. N. partition plan and the subsequent war launched by six Arab armies. They sought to destroy Israel despite the fact that the partition plan allocated land for a Palestinian state next to Israel. The Jews not only accepted partition but celebrated it, even though it left them with less than 13 percent of the land originally promised them by the League of Nations." —Chairman Ron Singer of the Media Relations Committee of the Jewish Community Council of Ottawa, Canada, The Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 12, 1992

Watch: There are five misstatements in the four sentences quoted. (1) Some of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 fled from areas under fire to protect their lives, others were forced out of their homes at gunpoint by Israeli forces and marched or trucked to Arab lines and fired upon if they tried to turn back. They remained refugees because Israeli forces would not let them return to their homes after the fighting ended. In 1967 new refugees were created when Israeli forces bulldozed many of the homes in refugee camps, particularly in the Jordan valley, and forced the occupants to cross the river into Jordan.

(2) The fighting that broke out after the U.N. voted to partition Palestine was initiated by both sides, but most of the territory that changed hands involved seizure by Jewish militias of land allocated to the Palestinians. The massacre of Palestinians from the neutral Muslim village of Deir Yassin at the hands of the Jewish Irgun and Lehi militias, supported by artillery fire from the Haganah (the future Israeli army), took place more than a month before organized military units from Iraq, Jordan and Egypt entered Palestine on May 15,1948 to stop what by then had become a rout of Arab villagers from areas allocated to the Palestinian state by the United Nations.

(3) Jordanian units followed specific orders not to enter areas that had been allocated by the U.N. to the Jewish state.

(4) The Balfour Declaration by the British government, which became the League of Nations mandatory power for Palestine, promised a "Jewish homeland" in Palestine, "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." There was no mention of a Jewish state in any of the negotiations prior to the United Nations vote in 1947, which also promised a state for the Palestinians. (5) The Israeli delegate to the United Nations was instructed by Israel s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, not to agree to the boundaries specified by the U.N. then or subsequently. His explanation to his diplomats for accepting partition but not agreeing to the partition boundaries was that Israel should accept what it was granted, and acquire the rest when it could, as it did in 1967.

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