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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (198311)	8/20/2006 6:12:53 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Ottoman Empire was the political entity. "Palestine" wasn't a country... You are missing the entire point. No matter what you call the country, the people living there are the same. They are not being moved about. Actually, I think you missed the point. Here is what I wrote: Damascus was the most important city in the area politically, which is why Jordan, Lebanon and Israel were never on any Syrian maps--as far as they were concerned, the whole area should be Syrian. Want to agree with them? Shall we take a vote of everyone in those "countries"? Why do each those 4 countries have "legitimacy"? Why shouldn't they all just be Syrian? What I was saying is that the how the Ottoman Empire was divided up wasn't something that was simple and uncontested. A lot of different states were created out of it, and none of those states were created by the natives taking a vote. They were created by League of Nations mandate, or by British or French fiat, or by force, or by some combination of the three (or, in the case of Israel, by that UN vote). Different groups/clans got different territories. Who drew the boundaries? Who declared on territory a state, and another territory a part of a state? There were plenty of disagreements about that. And of course there wsa the Pan Arab movement which wanted to make the whole thing one large Arab state. Why not take a vote on that? Why were the Gulf States made into states? Ever look it up? Think there is an ethnic group called "Bahrainians"? Guess what, nope. The Gulf States were an invention of the British, and guess whose interests were served? You have a very simplistic and ahistorical view, both of what a nation-state is, and of the mideast in general. It isn't completely your fault, it is an American disease. Even Woodrow Wilson, scholar that he was, had these misunderstandings, and, with his "self determination" idiocy, helped as much as anyone to spread it around the world and throughout the 20th century. Guess where the pan arabs even got their ideas from? From German historicists! believe it or not, it's so--try getting a book from the library called "Nationalism," by Elie Kadourie. He spells it all out there, though you can find elsewhere as well.