Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?
It is April 13, 2002. I've had all I can stands and I can stands no more! It's time to get down to brass tacks on this Israel-Palestine thing. People are starting to lose their minds and they need to be dealt with. Do I mean Arafat or Sharon? No, I mean the slanted world press, idiot protesting American college students and good-hearted average folks who just want things to go away but don't want to take sides.
But first a little history lesson. After WWI, the land that is now Israel and Jordan was established as "Palestine" (the first time that the name was used for a clearly defined territory) by a League of Nations mandate and control was entrusted to Great Britain. Under the terms of the Mandate, Britain was obligated to the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, which pledged "the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people." Right off the bat in 1922, the British cleaved Palestine in two administrative districts. The eastern district, what was to become TransJordan, was by far the larger of the two. The Jewish people were only permitted in the western division. Already the Jews were forced into little more than 1/5 of the land that was to be established as their own homeland. In 1946, Britain granted independence to TransJordan, creating an independent Palestinian Arab state. (Hmm, an independent Palestinian Arab state. That sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?)
But of course for about a decade prior to that, Jews throughout Europe were being rounded up and slaughtered by Nazi Germany. So by the end of the war, the remaining European Jewish population were keen to have their own nation. Can you blame them? They had been screwed by just about every other country in which they have lived for a couple of millennia. In 1947, the U.N. took the remaining 22% of the original British Mandate and carved it up again. The Jewish state was slightly larger than the Arab state, but a large majority of it was desert and Jerusalem was smack dab in the middle of the Arab state. The Jews, eager for a homeland, agreed to this less than ideal arrangement. Of course the Arab nations in the region, intent on preventing any Jewish state in Palestine, all rejected the plan. Gee, there's a shock, eh?
So, what did those peace-loving Arab nations do next? They attacked the new Israeli state from all sides on the very day it declared independence on May 14, 1948. Lebanon and Syria came from the north, TransJordan from the east and Egypt from the south. The Arab League, the folks now swearing that they will live in peace with Israel if they will only give up some more land, declared a jihad, stating "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" But all they want now is peace, right?
Little did the Arab nations realize is that they would get their asses kicked by a tiny newborn country. The subsequent armistice led to Israeli control of much of what was to have been the Arab state, while Jordan unilaterally annexed the West Bank region. During the war, the good-hearted Arab nations encouraged their brothers who were living in Israel to leave and come to their countries until they had destroyed the Jewish state. Ironically, many Israelis, including Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, asked the Arabs to stay and accept full citizenship. Those who did flee were held in refugee camps and not treated well by their fellow Arabs. This was the beginning of their use by the Arab states as political capital with the rest of the world against Israel. Conversely, more than 2/3 of the Jewish population living in the Islamic world sought refuge in the tiny state of Israel and flourished.
Various military actions over the next quarter century, including the Egyptian campaign in the Sinai in 1956, the Six-Day War in 1967 and attacks by Egypt and Syria in 1973, proved fruitless for the frustrated Arab League. At the time of the cease fire after the Six-Day War, Israel held the region that was initially the western division of the original British mandate, including reclaiming the West Bank, in addition to capturing the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel gave up some of this land with its withdrawal from the Sinai as part of the Jimmy Carter-brokered Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1978. It has been less willing to give up other buffer zones it feels is imperative for its security.
A year after the election of Ehud Barak in 1999, an election that was heavily campaigned for by the Clinton administration to create a peace and save his legacy, the Palestinians were presented with an unprecedented land-for-peace plan. It called for shared control of Jerusalem, which would become the capital of the Palestinian state. The state would consist of a contiguous piece of land that comprises 97% of the West Bank, contrary to claims by Arabs that it was divided into separate areas. Right of return for refugees to the new Palestinian land was to be guaranteed and an international peacekeeping force was to be established in the region. Geez, how much more could Israel give? Well, it wasn't enough for Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. (Palestinian Authority, there's an oxymoron.) Why was it not enough? Because this is not about peaceful coexistence. It is about the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people. Arafat is a terrorist. He should not be given statesman status and should not be negotiated with.
History lesson over, leaving us with one obvious fact. The "oppressed" Palestinians don't have the Israelis to blame for their plight. It is their Arab neighbors, who don't give a rat's ass about them. They have a homeland. It's called Jordan. But we never hear about the poor Palestinians settling there. Everyone expects Israel to give up land acquired in a defensive military campaign to appease its attackers. Yeah and Europe gave up Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler. That did the trick, didn't it?
Now don't go running off. I'm not finished yet.