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Mess that is the - 'Middle-East'

Part 2:-

Everyone has their opinion about the Middle-East crisis and everyone comments on how best to resolve them.  Here is my opinion (part 1 / 2)

Second world war started at the fag end of 1939.  It gave everyone a chance to remedy the unfinished business of the first world war.  Arabs and Germans decided that ‘Enemy of my enemy is my friend.’  Several Arab leaders aligned with Nazi Germany in WWII to fight the Allied Forces and ‘Zionists’.  Nazi Germany’s extreme xenophobia and racism found a willing ear in the Middle East.  Nazi were happy to have the Arabs make mischief in the Middle East to put pressure on the British and divide their forces between Asia, Africa and Europe. 

WWII was even more brutal than the first WW.  Jewish civilians under German powers suffered badly.  If at the end of WWI Germans had supported Jewish claim for their homeland, by start of WWII, German government was busy blaming Jews for all that was unwell in their world.  Nazis concentration camps killed 17 million people.  By far the largest group was people killed were of Jewish descent – 5.9 million.  Soviets, Poles, Serbs, Romani, Slavs, disabled people, LGBT, Freemasons and anyone the Nazi thought were ‘undesirable minority’ were killed off. 

During WWII - 30,000 Palestinian Jews volunteered to support the allies.  By comparison, very few Palestinian Arabs volunteered.  During WWII, over 50 – 55 million civilians died.  By comparison 21 – 25 million soldiers died in the same war.  With nearly 6 million Jewish dead in the holocaust,  Jewish civilians were the biggest minority to suffer.  Fed up of being persecuted for over 2000 years, Jews insisted they wanted to return to their homeland in Israel.  WWII was their watershed and they never wanted to have the same situation happen again.  They wanted a land they could call their own.

After the war, despite knowing how the Arabs had not supported them and about the number of Jews that had died under the Nazis in the holocaust, the British continued to resist a call for ‘Israel’.  They wanted to remain on good term with the Arabs for the new commodity they controlled – Crude Oil.  British referred the matter of Jewish Homeland to United Nations in order to wipe their hands clean of the mess in the Middle East.  UN special committee on Palestine recommended a separate state for Jews and Muslims. On 29 November 1947, in resolution 181(II), General Assembly adopted UN special committee's recommendations for a separate state for Jews and Muslims and a special status for the city of Jerusalem.  British still dithered and it wasn't till they left Palestine on 14th May 1948 that modern day ‘Israel’ came into existence. USA and Russia recognized the new state straightaway.  Arab nations rejected the very idea of Israel and promptly invaded Israel to destroy it before it could become an established nation.  

Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded Isreal together to kill it before before it .  By end of November, Israel has repulsed the Arab armies and took ‘Arab lands’.  New areas of Israel and Palestine were demarcated by ‘green line’ to suggest working borders were placed around ‘West Bank’, ‘Gaza’ and ‘Sinai’ till land disputes were resolved.  Muslim world was smarting from the loss of their Islamic empires – Mughal and Ottoman and now they lost to Israel, a tiny nascent state implanted within the bosom of Muslim lands.

Since 1948, Israel’s Arab neighbours have tried every strategy possible to destroy Israel.  They have attacked several times in 1956, 1964, 1967 and 1973.  Through the ‘Palestine Liberation Organization’, Arab nations have tried to attack and kill off Israel in more ways than one.  Despite the fact that there is an embargo on what can and can’t be imported into West Bank and Gaza, rockets and missiles seem have no problems getting through Jordan and Egyptian borders.  The same borders can’t seem to let in medicines, food, building materials and normal day to day necessities.  Arab nations support for Palestine is very selective in that they seem to provide diplomatic oxygen to them, but no real help in terms of jobs and refuge.    

Arabs argue that Israel has no right to exist in their midst.  Afterall, it was created only after WWII.  Fact of the matter is, all Arab nations were created after WWI / WWII.  Arabs as people lost WWI and WWII.  The Europeans were the winners of both cataclysmic wars.  As the victors, they had the legitimate right to do as they as they saw fit with the lands they won.  Had the Arabs won, they would have annihilated British and French from Middle East, Asia and Africa.  They would have happily turned St Paul’s into a mosque as they did Santa Sophia in Istanbul a 650 years ago.  European powers reinstated lands and people that had existed in Israel 1700 years ago.  These were not new people, they were old people, returning to their homeland that was taken from them.    

Feeling partly responsible for the mess, western nations provide huge amount of aid and subsidies to the Palestinians.  In the years 2008 – 2010 aid amounted to $7.7 billion for about 4 million people living in the Palestinian territories.  This is the highest amount of aid given to any one nation on a continual basis.  Western nations provide free education and grants for Palestinian students to study in their universities.  Yet the Palestinians constantly berate ‘the West’ for all the ills in their society, take out protest marches, burn the flag of USA (and other EU nations) and rejoice whenever there is a terror attack in the ‘West’. 

Arab nations provide platitude and money for waging war, but little else in order improve their lives.  In most Arab countries, Palestinians are not allowed to apply for citizenship and are often discriminated against in education, health care and jobs.  Egypt and Lebanon border West Bank and Gaza yet they do not allow any humanitarian aid to pass through their border crossings to Palestine.  Though they are Arab Muslim neighbours, they do not give any rights afforded to their citizens or other neighbours to the Palestinians.  Not just Egypt and Jordan, but other Arab nations in the region deny Palestinians basic human rights. (see link to the article below).  These and other appalling discriminatory behaviors by Arab states are ‘justified’ as ‘for the Palestinian’s good’.  When will the Palestinians wake up and realize they are being (mis)used by other Arab states for their own vendetta!

Main stream media is happy to trumpet any discord, fights or infringement of rights between Palestinians and Israelis.  Yet the same media is silent when other Arabs are suppressing Palestinians in their countries.  Pro-Palestinian groups across the world are happy to shout anti Israeli slogans and burn flags of western nations, but they remain conspicuously silent about Arab injustice to the Palestinians.  They are all happy to see PLO and Arab nations spending millions, trying to destroy Israel rather than live peacefully with it.       

 

So what is the solution? – Live and Let Live.

In my humble opinion, if the Palestinians truly gave up violence and decided to live in peace, Israel would be happy to help them build a nation that could be as modern as themselves.  There could be homes, hospitals, civilian infrastructure and industry that can provide jobs and future for Palestinians.  Yet, Palestinians must want this to happen.  They must see the folly of trying to destroy Israel as self-destructive and see that their future and that of their own children and grandchildren is best served by living in peace with their neighbours – all neighbours including Israel.  

If the Arabs decide to live in peace, Israel would be happy to teach them how to make the desert bloom.  Israel, in its short time that it has been there, has turned the arid desert around them in to an agricultural wonder.  This can happen in Palestinian territories too.  Israeli have created jobs and industry that are forward thinking and innovative in every way possible.  Due to problems with Palentinians, they currently import labour from Africa, Asia and Europe.  If Palestinians start to live in peace, I am sure these lucrative jobs in Israel can be theirs.  Palestinians need to look forward and need to consider their future rather than live on rhetoric and ideology.  Empty spouting from political pulpits wont feed their families, give them shelter or medicine.  Peaceful co-existence is something the Palestinian people must want before it can become a reality for them.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/p/all-arab-countries-except-jordan.html

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1422/palestinians-in-arab-world

 

(Part 1 covers the mess that occured before WWII)

 

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