Arab discrimination and abuse against Palestinians since 1948

Arab discrimination and abuse against Palestinians since 1948

All Arab countries except Jordan:

Palestinians are not allowed to become citizens of Arab countries, in accordance with Arab League Decree 1547 for 1959, "in order to preserve the Palestinian entity and Palestinian identity." Even in Jordan they can no longer become citizens. (There have been some exceptions: Palestinian Christians in Lebanon in the 1950s, Palestinians born from Egyptian mothers in 2011.)

Palestinians face severe travel restrictions throughout the Arab world. They do not receive passports and their travel documents are only accepted by a few countries.

Palestinians cannot vote or run for office in national elections.

Children born to Palestinians do not get citizenship in their host countries, violating Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Jordan:

1967: Jordan refused to allow Gazans who came after the Six Day War to become Jordanian citizens. Today some 165,000 Palestinians in Jordan cannot become citizens and get no government services.

1970: 3500-5000 Palestinians killed and 20,000 Palestinians expelled, their camps demolished, in the Black September events.

1988: Jordan revoked citizenship for millions of West Bank Palestinians as they declared "independence." As usual, this move was justified as being for their own good.

2010: Jordan continued to revoke citizenship for thousands more Palestinians

2012: Jordan passed an electoral law that effectively limits the number of Palestinian members of Parliament to less than 10%

2013: Jordan places Palestinian refugees from Syria in special camps that they cannot leave, separate from other refugees, and turns hundreds or thousands back to a dangerous future in Syria.

2014: Palestinians who are citizens are still denied equal rights in the military, and on getting college scholarships and being admitted to some public universities, among other areas.

Egypt:

1948: Placed all Palestine refugees that reached Egypt into camps, forced men to go back to Palestine to fight.

1949: Expelled all Palestinian from Egyptian camps into Gaza. Very few Palestinian Arabs were left in Egypt.

1950: Egypt refused any UNRWA presence on its territory, relegating it to Gaza.

1949 - 1956: Any Palestinians in Egypt were barred from schooling and employment.

2013: Hundreds of Palestinian refugees from Syria placed into jail as they try to enter Egypt

2013-now: Egypt has effectively closed the Rafah border with Gaza, even limiting hospital patients from traveling, effectively imprisoning 1.7 million Gazans.

Lebanon:

1950-58: Would only issue one-way travel documents for Palestinians to leave the country

1962: Palestinians classified as "foreigners":
73 job categories banned for Palestinians until 2010; now there are "only" 50 jobs off limits
They are still banned from working as physicians, journalists, pharmacists or lawyers.
They are not permitted to build new houses or own property, or even to repair their homes
Martial law imposed on refugee camps. Army stops people from entering and exiting.
Limitations on schools for Palestinian "foreigners"
Not allowed to live outside refugee camps, which in turn are not allowed to grow. Population of camps is now triple capacity.
Palestinians not allowed to create organizations.

1975-78: At least 5000 Palestinians killed in Lebanese civil war

1985-88: Thousands killed in "War of the Camps"

1995: Law prohibiting Palestinians from entering country without a visa; and visas weren't issued. Those expelled from Gulf states could not return to Lebanon. (Law repealed in 1999.)

2005: Specific laws prohibiting foreigners who are not "nationals of a recognized state" - Palestinians - from owning property. Those who owned it previously cannot pass it to their children.

2007: 31,000 Palestinians homeless because while Lebanese Army destroyed Nahr el Bared camp

2013: Some 50,000 refugees from Syria treated differently from other Syrian refugees; expensive temporary short-term visas effectively make them criminals

2013: Lebanon starts turning some Palestinian Syrian refugees away at the border

Kuwait:

1991: 400,000 Palestinians were harassed and forced out of the country.

Libya:

1994-5: Expelled 30,000 Palestinians, dismissed many from their jobs and confiscated their houses
Arab countries refused to take in the new refugees. Hundreds were stranded in the desert or the sea. Eventually Libya allowed some to stay but kept threatening to expel them again. In the end about 15,000 were forced to go to Arab countries they had documents for, Gulf countries, and Western nations.

2011: Palestinians were forced to pay a special tax of $1550.

2012: Many Palestinians lost their homes as properties were claimed by others in the wake of the revolution and the collapse of the judicial system.


Iraq:

Early 1950s: Expelled striking Palestinian workers, along with Saudi Arabia and Libya..

2005: After Saddam Hussein lost power, Palestinians in Iraq were subjected to abduction, hostage-taking, killing and torture from armed groups. Politicians derided them. About 15,000 were forced to leave Iraq. Thousands were stranded in camps in the desert between Iraq and Syria, where no Arab country would allow them to enter.

Qatar:

1994: Refused to grant Palestinians work visas.

Syria:

1970:  Palestinians cannot vote, cannot run for office, cannot own farmland, cannot own more than one property..

2005-2008: Syria did not allow thousands of Palestinian Arab refugees fleeing from Iraq to enter the country.

2012-today: Some 2000 Palestinians killed so far in Syria's war. About 50 have starved to death as forces cut off all food and water to the Yarmouk camp.

The entire bogus history of Palestinian Arab nationalism exposed by a stamp

The entire bogus history of Palestinian Arab nationalism exposed by a stamp

This is a stamp from  British Mandate Palestine. It says "Palestine" in Hebrew, Arabic and English, but in Hebrew it adds the initials א.י.(E.Y.), for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, which is what Jews have always called the area.

In 1925, Arab leaders in Palestine were very upset over those two letters, so they went to court.

From the Palestine Bulletin, October 13, 1925:

As already reported, the Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Haycraft, and Mr. Justice Corrie, heard on Saturday last the complaint preferred by Mr. Jamal Husseini against the Palestine Government. The plaintiff demanded that the Court should oblige the Government to remove on "stamps" and other official documents the Hebrew letters "E-I" (being the initials for the Hebrew word, "Eretz-Israel," leaving only the word "Palestine" in Hebrew.

Counsel for the plaintiff based his prosecution on Article 22 of the British Mandate for Palestine that states that anything inscribed in one of the official languages must be transcribed into the other two languages. The initials "E-I" (Eretz Israel) were inscribed in Hebrew only, in contravention to the provisions of the Mandate. The Chief Justice asked Counsel whether he would agree that the initials "E-I" be also inscribed in Arabic and English. Counsel replied in the negative. Their Honours then pointed out that the initials "E-I" was the translation of Palestine. Counsel contended that "E-I" was not the right translation of "Palestine" their meaning being "The Land of the Jews." He said that "Palestina" was already inscribed, and that the affixing of the initials "E-I" was tautological. He was of opinion that their addition constituted a political point to prove that the land was that of the Jews. The Philistines and the Jews were two separate nations, existing at separate times, and the meaning of one did not apply to the other. He requested the Court therefore that: it should order the deletion of the initials "E-I" from stamps and other official documents in Palestine - or alternatively, to order the inscription of the words "Suria El Jenobia" (Southern Syria), Palestine's Arabic cognomen.

That last sentence says volumes.

Jamal Husseini, who was one of the architects of the 1929 massacres of Jews and remained a major Arab leader in Palestine through the 1940s, felt that in order to keep things equal, Arabs should be able to officially use their own name for Palestine just as the Jews were using Eretz Yisrael.

And what name is that? Southern Syria!

This is already several years after Arab leadership officially abandoned their desire to integrate Palestine into Syria, but it shows that Arab masses clearly still considered Palestine to be a mere district of a larger Arab nation, not a nation of its own.

Notice also that Husseini regarded the Arabs of Palestine at the time to have been descended from the Philistines, not the Canaanites, as today's Arab leaders pretend.

Also, Jamal Husseini admitted that the Jewish people are a nation - something strenuously denied by Palestinian Arab leaders today.

Today, Palestinian Arabs point to the stamp their leaders denounced as evidence that they were once an Arab political entity - and they erase the Hebrew altogether in school textbooks. They use the stamp as a tool to try to eliminate Jewish nationalism.

This little episode shows that Palestinian nationalism is a fiction. It only exists as a means to destroy Jewish nationalism, and if it wasn't for Zionism there would never have been any desire on the part of Arabs to have an independent Palestinian state.

It shows that Palestinian Arabs have changed their supposed history as a people in reaction to whatever the contemporary political climate allows.

There is one more lesson from this episode as well.

The Palestine Bulletin article was reproduced in the Macquarie University law school archives. But their version engaged in a little political correctness replacing the word "Philistines" with "Palestinians" and "Palestina" with "Palestine." Because it is not fashionable for modern Westerners to acknowledge that there were no "Palestinian" nation, ever. The idea that a law school would silently change the text of a 1925 newspaper article in order to align it with today's zeitgeist is but a tiny indication of how history itself has been distorted by today's universities for political purposes.

You can learn a lot from a stamp, if you are willing to keep your mind open.

Operation Embarrass: British bombed Jewish refugee ships

Operation Embarrass: British bombed Jewish refugee ships

As Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, the pitiful remnants of History’s greatest crime, tried to make their way across an often hostile Europe at the end of the Second World War, toward at least a semblance of safety in the Holy Land, they had no shortage of problems with which to contend, including disease and malnutrition, Polish anti-Semitism, Soviet indifference, Allied bureaucracy, and Arab nationalism. Now we discover that they faced yet another peril in the shape of bombs planted on their transport ships by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6.

A new book to be published next week entitled MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, by the distinguished British historian Keith Jeffery, reveals the existence of Operation Embarrass, a plan to try to prevent Jews getting into Palestine in 1946-'48 using disinformation and propaganda but also explosive devices placed on ships. Nor is this some speculative spy story that can be denied by the authorities: Dr. Jeffrey’s book is actually, in their own words: “Published with the permission of The Secret Intelligence Service and the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.”

When on June 1 this year the British government denounced as “completely unacceptable” the way that the Israelis landed troops on the Turkish flotilla to Gaza we did not know that its predecessor had done much the same, actually blowing up one ship and damaging two more vessels of a genuinely humanitarian flotilla that was trying to bring Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps to their people’s ancient homeland.

It now emerges that in late 1946 the Labor government of Clement Attlee asked MI6 for “proposals for action to deter ships masters and crews from engaging in illegal Jewish immigration and traffic,” adding, “Action of the nature contemplated is, in fact, a form of intimidation and intimidation is only likely to be effective if some members of the group of people to be intimidated actually suffer unpleasant consequences.” Among the options contemplated were “the discovery of some sabotage device, which had ‘failed’ to function after the sailing of a ship,” “tampering with a ship’s fresh water supplies or the crew’s food,” and “fire on board ship in port.” Sir Stewart Menzies, the chief of the SIS, suggested these could be blamed on an invented Arab terrorist group called The Defenders of Arab Palestine.

Operation Embarrass was launched after a meeting held on February 14, 1947 between officials from MI6, the armed services, the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office, the last represented by William Hayter, the head of Foreign Office Services Liaison Department, a high-flier who later became ambassador to Moscow. I knew Sir William Hayter in later life, but needless to say he never breathed a word about this operation. In his defense, it must be said that Hayter did order MI6 to ensure that arson “must be arranged, if at all, when the ship is empty.”
The Operation Embarrass team was told that “the primary consideration was to be that no proof could ever be established between positive action against this traffic and His Majesty’s Government [HMG].” A special communications network, code-named Ocean, was set up with a budget of £30,000 ($47,000), a great deal of money in 1947. The operation had three aspects: direct action against refugee ships, a “black” propaganda campaign, and a deception scheme to disrupt immigration from Black Sea ports. A team of former Special Operations Executive agents—with the cover story of a yachting trip—was sent to France and Italy with limpet bombs and timers. If captured, “they were under no circumstances to admit their connection with HMG” but instead claim to have been recruited in New York “by an anti-Communist organization formed by a group of international industrialists, mainly in the oil and aircraft industries,” i.e. to lay the blame on rich, right-wing, unnamed Americans. They were told that this cover “was their final line of defense and, even in the event of a prison sentence, no help could be expected from HMG.”

During the summer of 1947 and early 1948, five attacks were undertaken on ships in Italian ports, of which one was rendered “a total loss” and two others were damaged. Two other British-made limpet mines were discovered before they went off, but the Italian authorities did not find their country of origin suspicious, “as the Arabs would of course be using British stores.” Operation Embarrass even considered blowing up the Baltimore steamship President Warfield when in harbor in France, which later became famous in Israeli history as the “Exodus” ship that “launched a nation.”

The country that ought to be embarrassed by Operation Embarrass—indeed shamed—is Great Britain, which used explosives to try to stop truly humanitarian flotillas after the Holocaust, but now condemns embattled Israel for halting entirely politically inspired flotillas to Gaza despite her rights of legitimate self-defense. The depth of the animosity that Establishment Britain, especially the Foreign Office, felt toward the Jews of Palestine clearly went even further than we had ever imagined, and even 70 years later is by no means extinguished.

Operation Embarrass? You bet: Britain's secret war on the Jews

Jewish refugees on the deck of the immigrant ship Dov Hoz at Haifa in May 1946

British spies staged covert operations to sabotage Holocaust survivors' attempts to reach Palestine between 1946 and early 1948.

Among the tactics used by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in Operation Embarrass were the bombing of five ships used by potential immigrants, intimidation and the creation of a fake Palestinian defence group.

The British government gave the go-ahead to the campaign to slow illegal immigration into Palestine, provided there was "no risk of casualties being incurred" and no link could be traced back to the government.

The revelations come in the first authorised history of the SIS, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, by Professor Keith Jeffery. The book was published on Tuesday.

I just stumbled on it - it was like a spy novel

Prof Jeffery said: "Operation Embarrass was one of the most amazing stories I found. I just stumbled on it. It was like a spy novel. These are astonishing operational stories. Uncovering them made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck."

Before searching the archives, he had to agree to keep certain stories secret for national security reasons, but Operation Embarrass is revealed in full.

Prof Jeffery said: "It's quite explosive and you can see why the anxiety levels might go up, not just in the agency but in Whitehall as well. A lot of stuff in the archives was destroyed, so finding this tale was a reassurance. If it had been me, I would have shredded stuff like this.

"There is the possibility it could make things difficult for the Foreign Office. But I dug my heels in, and said it was very important this was revealed.

"It says a lot about the organisation of the SIS at that time, about the government's Palestine policy and about relations between the agency and the government."

In late 1946, the government asked the SIS to develop "proposals for action to deter ships' masters and crews from engaging in illegal Jewish immigration and traffic". Around £13,000 was spent on the operation.

A SIS report stated: "Action of the nature contemplated is, in fact, a form of intimidation, and intimidation is only likely to be effective if some members of the group of people to be intimidated actually suffer unpleasant consequences."

Options put forward for the campaign included the use of sabotage devices, tampering with a ship's fresh water supplies and crew's food, or setting fire to ships in port.

SIS chief Sir Stewart Menzies suggested blaming the action on a specially-created Arab organisation. The agents were instructed to devise failsafe reasons for their presence abroad and were told that if rumbled, "they were under no circumstances to admit their connection with the government".

Prof Jeffery said: "The book really does show the James Bond side of it. Embarrass is closer to the perception of the spy image than other stories in the book."

In summer 1947 and early 1948, the plot led to attacks on five ships in Italian ports. The British made it a priority that no one was on board in order to avoid casualties. One ship was a a "total loss" and two others were damaged.

The British set up a notional organisation - Defenders of Arab Palestine - which claimed responsibility for the work against Jewish immigration.

Operation Embarrass ended in April, before the UK pullout from Palestine the following month. But Prof Jeffery concludes that the campaign had little or no effect. One SIS officer wrote that the failure to carry out a planned operation to disable the President Warfield ship in the summer of 1947 had been the biggest missed opportunity.

Instead, the renamed Exodus set sail with 4,500 Jewish refugees, leading to one of the most infamous episodes in the battle to create Israel. British forces seized the Exodus off the coast of Palestine. Three people died and the immigrants aboard were forcibly returned
to Europe.

"The cost," said one SIS officer, "both direct and indirect to the government, must have been enormous. All of this could have been spared if the Foreign Office had permitted the SIS to take the appropriate action against the President Warfield."

Prof Jeffery said: "After the disaster with the Exodus, the SIS guys pretty much said 'we told you so'. They could have blown its rudder off and averted the crisis.

"This was a fantastic job for me. I was like a child in a sweetshop. But I also feel this is part of the accountability process. British taxpayers funded these operations. You might say after 60 years what difference does it make, but you can tell it does. People will look at this and put the record straight.."

• British warned of 'bitterness' over handling of the Exodus ship

http://www.think-israel.org/dykes.britsbombedjewishships.html

WW2 Britain Blew Up Jewish Refugee Ships

A new book uncovers shocking secret attacks launched on ships bearing Holocaust survivors en route to Israel. Andrew Roberts on the violent lengths to which post-war Britain went to appease oil-rich Arab states.

As Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, the pitiful remnants of History’s greatest crime, tried to make their way across an often hostile Europe at the end of the Second World War, toward at least a semblance of safety in the Holy Land, they had no shortage of problems with which to contend, including disease and malnutrition, Polish anti-Semitism, Soviet indifference, Allied bureaucracy, and Arab nationalism. Now we discover that they faced yet another peril in the shape of bombs planted on their transport ships by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6.

A new book to be published next week entitled MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, by the distinguished British historian Keith Jeffery, reveals the existence of Operation Embarrass, a plan to try to prevent Jews getting into Palestine in 1946-'48 using disinformation and propaganda but also explosive devices placed on ships. Nor is this some speculative spy story that can be denied by the authorities: Dr. Jeffrey’s book is actually, in their own words: “Published with the permission of The Secret Intelligence Service and the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.”

It's shameful that Britain blew up humanitarian flotillas after the Holocaust, but now condemns Israel for halting politically inspired flotillas to Gaza.

When on June 1 this year the British government denounced as “completely unacceptable” the way that the Israelis landed troops on the Turkish flotilla to Gaza we did not know that its predecessor had done much the same, actually blowing up one ship and damaging two more vessels of a genuinely humanitarian flotilla that was trying to bring Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps to their people’s ancient homeland.

The Secret History of MI6. By Keith Jeffery. 832 pages. Penguin Press HC. 

Of course the hostility of the British establishment toward Jewish immigration into Palestine since long before the notorious 1939 White Paper on the subject is well-known—even King George VI wrote that year to say that he was “glad to think that steps are being taken to prevent these people leaving their country of origin”—nonetheless this is the first indication of the violent lengths to which post-war Britain was willing to go in order to appease the oil-rich Arab states of the region. For it now emerges that in late 1946 the Labour government of Clement Attlee asked MI6 for “proposals for action to deter ships masters and crews from engaging in illegal Jewish immigration and traffic,” adding, “Action of the nature contemplated is, in fact, a form of intimidation and intimidation is only likely to be effective if some members of the group of people to be intimidated actually suffer unpleasant consequences.” Among the options contemplated were “the discovery of some sabotage device, which had ‘failed’ to function after the sailing of a ship,”  “tampering with a ship’s fresh water supplies or the crew’s food,” and “fire on board ship in port.” Sir Stewart Menzies, the chief of the SIS, suggested these could be blamed on an invented Arab terrorist group called The Defenders of Arab Palestine.

Operation Embarrass was therefore launched after a meeting held on February 14, 1947 between officials from MI6, the armed services, the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office, the last represented by William Hayter, the head of Foreign Office Services Liaison Department, a high-flier who later became ambassador to Moscow. I knew Sir William Hayter in later life, but needless to say he never breathed a word about this operation. In his defense, it must be said that Hayter did order MI6 to ensure that arson “must be arranged, if at all, when the ship is empty.”

The Operation Embarrass team was told that “the primary consideration was to be that no proof could ever be established between positive action against this traffic and His Majesty’s Government [HMG].” A special communications network, codenamed Ocean, was set up with a budget of £30,000 ($47,000), a great deal of money in 1947. The operation had three aspects: direct action against refugee ships, a “black” propaganda campaign, and a deception scheme to disrupt immigration from Black Sea ports. A team of former Special Operations Executive agents—with the cover story of a yachting trip—was sent to France and Italy with limpet bombs and timers. If captured, “they were under no circumstances to admit their connection with HMG” but instead claim to have been recruited in New York “by an anti-Communist organization formed by a group of international industrialists, mainly in the oil and aircraft industries,” i.e. to lay the blame on rich, right-wing, unnamed Americans. They were told that this cover “was their final line of defense and, even in the event of a prison sentence, no help could be expected from HMG.”

During the summer of 1947 and early 1948, five attacks were undertaken on ships in Italian ports, of which one was rendered “a total loss” and two others were damaged. Two other British-made limpet mines were discovered before they went off, but the Italian authorities did not find their country of origin suspicious, “as the Arabs would of course be using British stores.” Operation Embarrass even considered blowing up the Baltimore steamship President Warfield when in harbor in France, which later became famous in Israeli history as the “Exodus” ship that “launched a nation.”

The country that ought to be embarrassed by Operation Embarrass—indeed shamed—is Great Britain, which used explosives to try to stop truly humanitarian flotillas after the Holocaust, but now condemns embattled Israel for halting entirely politically inspired flotillas to Gaza despite her rights of legitimate self-defense. The depth of the animosity that Establishment Britain, especially the Foreign Office, felt toward the Jews of Palestine clearly went even further than we had ever imagined, and even 70 years later is by no means extinguished.

British restrictions and blockade on Jewish immigration to Palestine 1938-1948 caused the death of over 2 million Jews

British restrictions and blockade on Jewish immigration to Palestine 1938-1948 caused the death of over 2 million Jews trying to escape German extermination camps.

The British in 1922 gave away in violation of the Mandate 77% of the land in Palestine allocated for the Jewish people to the Arabs as the State named Jordan of which 80% of the population is Arab-Palestinians. This is the Palestinian State and no other.
British actions in Palestine during the Mandate 1918-1948 are the cause of the continued violence and terrorism in the Middle East. The British wanted to control the oil in the Middle East and they were willing and did cross anyone to accomplish their goals. In today’s time in history, nothing has changed.
In less than 20 years England and the rest of Europe will be controlled by Muslims with Sharia laws in place.

Prohibiting Jews for residing anywhere where the map of Mandate for Palestine territory of 1920 is a violation of International Law and the San Remo Treaty which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1920.

Any housing, factories, goods and services produced by Jews in the area that was designated as the Mandate for Palestine is granted by the International agreements and treaties of the 1918-1920, which are in affect for perpetuity.

Israel’s 2nd war of liberation of 1967 debunking the notion that Israel is an occupier

Ottoman land ownership law – It is time to learn the facts about Judea and Samaria

Ottoman land ownership law – It is time to learn the facts about Judea and Samaria

To truly understand the status of this territory we have to first differentiate between the personal and the national. The recent furor surrounding the government’s decision to declare nearly 1,000 acres at Gvaot in Gush Etzion “State Land” is a classic example of the ignorance of history and law that governs most discussions of Israeli actions beyond the internationally hallowed “Green Line.” Media headlines around the world screamed about “annexation” and “land grab,” the Palestinian Authority declared it a “crime” and foreign ministries around the world have demanded the reversal of the decision. However, few articles, press releases or communiqués mention the crux of the matter; the legal and historical status of the land in question.Ottoman land ownership law – It is time to learn the facts about Judea and Samaria

For many, if not most, around the world, every inch of land beyond the 1949 armistice lines is automatically Palestinian; a display of unfamiliarity with history and international law.

To truly understand the status of this territory we have to first differentiate between the personal and the national.

Of course there is land privately owned by Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, what many call the “West Bank” in seeming deference to the Jordanian occupation, which invented the term as juxtaposition to its eastern bank. These areas, like privately owned territory anywhere in the world, cannot be touched unless there is very pressing reason for a government or sovereign power to do so. These areas, according to Ottoman and British records, constitute no more than a few percent of the total area, meaning the vast majority is not privately owned.

However, to contend that these territories are “Palestinian” on a national level is problematic. To claim an area belongs to a particular nation requires the territory to have belonged to that people, where they held some sort of sovereignty that was broadly recognized.

All of these criteria have been met historically by the Jewish people, and none by the Palestinians.

In fact, the Jewish people were provided with national rights in these territories not just by dint of history and past sovereignty, but also by residual legal rights contained in the League of Nations Mandate, which were never canceled and are preserved by the UN Charter, under Article 80 – the famous “Palestine Clause,” that was drafted, in part, to guarantee continuity with respect to Jewish rights from the League of Nations.

For the past almost 2,000 years, since the destruction of Jewish sovereignty and expulsion of most of its indigenous people, it remained an occupied and colonized outpost in the territory of many global and regional empires.

The Ottomans were the most recent to officially apportion the territory, in what they referred to as Ottoman Syria, which today incorporates modern-day Israel, Syria, Jordan and stretching into Iraq. Before The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, land had largely been owned or passed on by word of mouth, custom or tradition. Under the Ottomans of the 19th century, land was apportioned into three main categories: Mulk, Miri and Mawat.

Mulk was the only territory that was privately owned in the common sense of the term, and as stated before, was only a minimal part of the whole territory, much of it owned by Jews, who were given the right to own land under reforms.

Miri was land owned by the sovereign, and individuals could purchase a deed to cultivate this land and pay a tithe to the government. Ownership could be transferred only with the approval of the state. Miri rights could be transferred to heirs, and the land could be sub-let to tenants. In other words, a similar arrangement to a tenant in an apartment or house as having rights in the property, but not to the property.

Finally, Mawat was state or unclaimed land, not owned by private individuals nor largely cultivated. These areas made up almost two-thirds of all territory.

The area recently declared “State Land” by the Israeli government, a process which has been under an intensive ongoing investigation for many years, is Mawat land. In other words, it has no private status and is not privately owned.

Many claims to the territory suddenly arose during the course of the investigation, but all were proven to be unfounded on the basis of land laws.

Interestingly, it should be clearly understood by those who deem Judea and Samaria “occupied territory” that according to international law the occupying power must use the pre-existing land laws as a basis for claims, exactly as Israel has done in this case, even though Israel’s official position is that it does not see itself de jure as an occupying power in the legal sense of the term.

None of these facts are even alluded to in the many reports surrounding the government’s actions in Gvaot. This is deeply unjust and a semblance of the relevant background, history and facts would provide the necessary context for what has been converted into an international incident where none should exist.

I frequently take foreign visitors and officials on a tour of Efrat and Gush Etzion and am amazed at the well-meaning ignorance and preconceived positions that many, even friends of Israel, hold about the status of this area and wider Judea and Samaria. Usually, however, by the end of the tour many of these positions have been debunked and those that I speak with are astonished that there is even another side to the story, having been assured that the pro-Judea and Samaria position is based solely on the Bible.

I welcome and even challenge anyone and everyone to come and see the reality for themselves and learn the history and context of the region, if only for the sake of intellectual honesty. No one ever lost out through intellectual curiosity, and I am certain that we can lessen the next furor and international incident if a greater number of people can be made more familiar with the facts of history.