Re:<<why is it incumbent upon arab countries to make a homeland for palestinians? the israelis are the ones who stole their land, and won't give it back. >>
Why Jordan?...
Maybe you need to know the history:
The liberation of Jordan from Ottoman sovereignty was achieved in September 1918, during World War I, by joint action of British and Arab troops. After the war, Jordan, along with the territory constituting present-day Israel, was awarded to Britain as a mandate by the League of Nations. In 1922 the British divided the mandate into two parts, designating all lands west of the Jordan River as Palestine and those east of the river as Transjordan(changed name in April '49 to Jordan). Transjordan was placed under the nominal rule of Abdullah ibn Hussein in 1921. In February 1928 Transjordan obtained qualified independence in a treaty with Britain.
In May 1948 the Jordanian army, known at that time as the Arab Legion, joined with the armed forces of the other Arab League nations in a concerted attack on the newly formed state of Israel. During the war the Arab Legion occupied sections of central Palestine, including the Old City of Jerusalem. Transjordan signed an armistice with Israel on April 3, 1949.
On April 24, 1950, despite strong opposition from other Arab League members, the king of Jordan formally merged all of Arab-held Palestine with Jordan and granted citizenship to West Bank residents.
King Abdullah was assassinated on July 20, 1951, by a Palestinian opposed to Jordanian tolerance of Israel, and was succeeded by his son Talal I the following September. On August 11, 1952, the Jordanian parliament deposed Talal, who suffered from a mental disorder, and elevated his son to become Hussein I the same day. A regency council acted for the new king until he reached the age of 18 on May 2, 1953.
For a time in the '60's the Jordanian frontier with Syria was as troubled as its border with Israel. Arab guerrilla fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), infiltrating Jordan from Syria, launched terrorist attacks against Israel for which Jordan suffered Israeli reprisals. In July 1966 Jordan withdrew support from the PLO, but a massive Israeli raid in November created intense pressure for Hussein to back the terrorists. When he refused, the PLO called for his overthrow, and clashes on the Syrian border increased.
Arab-Israeli tensions were meanwhile mounting steadily. When war seemed imminent, Hussein, in an unprecedented gesture of Arab solidarity, flew to Cairo and signed a defense treaty with Nasser on May 30, 1967. This action greatly enhanced his position with the refugees, but it also committed Jordan to active involvement when the Six-Day War broke out on June 5. On June 7, with its air force destroyed and the West Bank occupied, Jordan accepted a UN cease-fire.
Jordanian postwar diplomacy aimed at reinforcing ties with the West and achieving an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied area. Hussein took no unilateral initiatives toward a peace settlement, however, and Egypt, Algeria, and Syria hardened their anti-Israel position with calls for a sustained guerrilla offensive against Israel, staged from bases in Jordan.
The situation in Jordan reached the point of civil war in September 1970, when Palestinian guerrillas supported by Syria fought Jordanian troops in Amman and other areas of northern Jordan. After heavy casualties, a cease-fire agreement was reached requiring a number of concessions from Hussein. In 1971, however, Hussein ordered Premier Wasfi al-Tall to take military action against the guerrillas, and the movement was completely crushed. The Arab response to Jordan’s actions was strongly hostile. On November 28, while attending a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Premier al-Tall was assassinated by guerrilla members of the Palestinian Black September organization.
In 1972 Hussein proposed creation of a federated Arab state comprising Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Most Arab governments and the Palestinian organizations were unanimously opposed to such a state, however.
The short, indecisive Arab-Israeli War of 1973 began on October 6 and lasted for 18 days. Jordan contributed some token forces to assist Syrian troops fighting against Israel in the Golan Heights region. After the war the PLO gained standing in the Middle East, and in 1974 Jordan reluctantly recognized it as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In return, Jordan was promised economic and military aid from other Arab nations. In November King Hussein dissolved parliament so it could be reconstituted without representatives of the West Bank. Elections for the new Chamber of Deputies were postponed indefinitely in early 1976.
In 1975 Jordan established closer ties with Syria, mainly in order to guard against a possible attack by Israel. King Hussein refused to accept the 1978 U.S.-sponsored Camp David Accords on the Middle East, because they failed to provide for Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories; in 1979 he denounced Egypt’s separate peace with Israel. Jordan supported Iraq in its war with Iran beginning in 1980, a policy that strained relations with the pro-Iranian government of Syria. In January 1984 parliament held its first regular session in ten years, and limited parliamentary elections took place in March.
In July 1988, in response to months of demonstrations by Palestinians in the Israeli-held West Bank, Hussein ceded to the PLO all Jordanian claims to the territory.
************************************************************
As far as Palestine is concerned:
Well, whose land it is really depends on state of mind. History would suggest that Israel has the greater claim to all of Palestine as well as a 2000 year head start. However, the last 1400 years has muddied up the waters.
The Brits really complicated things when they captured Palestine from the Ottomans in 1917 and 1918. The Arabs revolted against the Ottomans because the British had promised them, in correspondence (1915-1916) with Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also made other, conflicting commitments. Thus, in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews, whose help it needed in the war effort, a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. This promise was subsequently incorporated in the mandate conferred on Britain by the League of Nations in 1922.
During their mandate (1922-1948) the British found their contradictory promises to the Jewish and Palestinian communities difficult to reconcile. The Zionists envisaged large-scale Jewish immigration, and some spoke of a Jewish state constituting all of Palestine. The Palestinians, however, rejected Britain’s right to promise their country to a third party and feared dispossession by the Zionists; anti-Zionist attacks occurred in Jerusalem (1920) and Jaffa (1921). A 1922 statement of British policy denied Zionist claims to all of Palestine and limited Jewish immigration, but reaffirmed support for a Jewish national home. The British proposed establishing a legislative council, but Palestinians rejected this council as discriminatory.
Of course Jewish immigration became more urgent when the Nazi party took over in Germany and fear of their domination led to the 1936 Arab revolt...
The horrors of the Holocaust produced world sympathy for European Jewry and for Zionism, and although Britain still refused to admit 100,000 Jewish survivors to Palestine, many survivors of the Nazi death camps found their way there illegally. Various plans for solving the Palestine problem were rejected by one party or the other. Britain finally declared the mandate unworkable and turned the problem over to the United Nations in April 1947. The Jews and the Palestinians prepared for a showdown.
Although the Palestinians outnumbered the Jews, the latter were better prepared . They had a semiautonomous government, led by David Ben-Gurion, and their military, the Haganah, was well trained and experienced. The Palestinians, on the other hand, had never recovered from the Arab revolt, and most of their leaders were in exile. The Mufti of Jerusalem, their principal spokesman, refused to accept Jewish statehood. When the UN proposed partition in November 1947, he rejected the plan while the Jews accepted it. In the military struggle that followed, the Palestinians were defeated. Terrorism was used on both sides.
The state of Israel was established on May 14, 1948. Five Arab armies, coming to the aid of the Palestinians, immediately attacked it. Israeli forces defeated the Arab armies, and Israel enlarged its territory. Jordan took the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Egypt took the Gaza Strip.
The war produced 780,000 Palestinian refugees. About half probably left out of fear and panic, while the rest were forced out to make room for Jewish immigrants from Europe and from the Arab world. The disinherited Palestinians spread throughout the neighboring countries, where they have maintained their Palestinian national identity and the desire to return to their homeland. In 1967, during the Six-Day War between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as other areas.
In 1993, after decades of violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, leaders from each side agreed to the signing of an historic peace accord. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin met in the United States on September 13, 1993, to witness the signing of the agreement. The plan called for limited Palestinian self-rule in Israeli-occupied territories, beginning with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. Palestinian administration of these areas began in 1994. In September 1995 the PLO and Israel signed a second peace accord, expanding limited Palestinian self-rule to almost all Palestinian towns and refugee camps in the West Bank. Under the agreements, Israel maintains the right to send armed forces into Palestinian areas and controls the areas between Palestinian enclaves.
************************************************************
So explain to me why this is Palestinians land, please. |
