They were never asked

One of my closest friends was born a Palestinian in the small village of  Pardess Hanna now in central Israel..

When I mention  this in casual conversation, the listener  always seem  somewhat surprised.

Of course there is a kicker to the story. My Palestinian friend is Jewish. He was born in 1934 in the Palestine of the British Mandate.

Unless one understands what happened to the Palestinians, both  Jews and Arabs, one cannot begin to find solutions to the conflict.

In 1947, the UN decide to partition Palestine ending British rule (Britain had taken over from the Turks in 1918). 

Jewish Palestinians accepted the decision even though it meant accepting only a small portion of the Land of Israel.

Arab Palestinians were not allowed to make a choice. Instead the Arab League ,comprising all the major Arab countries, decided for them.

Seven Arab armies invaded the new fledging Jewish state, now called Israel. Their stated goal was to "wipe it of the face of the earth". 

The rest is history.  Israel survived and went on to build a thriving state.

Again, the Arab Palestinians were not allowed to make a choice,.

Instead Arab Palestine, with the agreement of the Arab League, became a part of Trans-Jordan (as Jordan was called in those days). It remained so for the next 19 years.

Came the Six Day War in 1967 and Arab Palestine once again changed hands under a new ruler.  First Turkey, then Britain followed by Jordan and now Israel.

PLO enter the picture.

After 1967,  Arafat's PLO bullied its way to the top of the various terrorist groups. He succeeded in creating the notion of a Palestinian nation and sold this idea to the rest of the world. At the same time he established the PLO as the legitimate representative of this Palestinian entity.

The Oslo agreements foisted the PLO,  in the guise of the Palestinian Authority, as the ruling body. They still remained under Israel military occupation but were supposed to handle civil administration. That's were it remains today except that the PLO now have to vie with Hamas as the representatives of the Palestinian

Arab Palestine never given a choice

At no point, in this whole history from 1918 to 2006,  have the Arab Palestinians been given a real opportunity to decide their future. 

They were never asked in referendums or elections if  -

• they wanted the British
• they wanted to accept the UN Partition
• they wanted Jordanian rule
• they wanted Arafat and the PLO as their representative.

The only free national election  with opposing parties ever held in Arab Palestine was in 2006. Previously there had been local municipal elections as well as elections for the President of the Authority. In 2006 the election was won by Hamas, a party whose platform is total destruction of the State of Israel. 

However that's a different story, I don't believe Hamas won because of that platform. Rather they won because of the incredible level of corruption in the PLO run Palestinian Authority.

The fact is that Palestinian Arabs have never been allowed to freely build the mechanism of statehood.  The infrastructure left by the British was corrupted first by Jordan and later by the PLO.

The economy is in ruin, mostly by the theft of billions of dollars in aid.  Efforts to revive it in recent months have not been helped by the blockades put into effect by  Israel in its  attempts to eliminate the rash of suicide bombers.  The virtual siege of Gaza is another huge problem caused by similar issues. Again that is another story.

Of course I understand that it is a matter of semantics when one talks in today's world about a "Palestinian Jew".  But without understanding of the background how can we ever move forward with a solution.

Sympathy but no guilt

As a Jew and an Israeli I have deep sympathy for the suffering of the Arab Palestinians. A few miles from where I sit and write ( less  than the distance between Baltimore and Washington)  thousands of civilians are trying to cope with impossible daily restriction on normal human activity.

I feel for them but I don't feel guilty. We have not betrayed them. The guilt is squarely on their own leadership.

I am not proud of how some  Jewish soldiers handle the situation. But how can one blame a young soldier for his harshness?  Yesterday he was lenient and sensitive to a pregnant woman at the border crossing only to see his friend blown up by the bomb she detonates. 

We don't need leaders like Jimmy Carter and other well-meaning people telling us what is wrong. There's enough blame to go around.

We, the Arabs and the Israelis, need someone to show us a way out of this morass.