di Shorsh Surme –
It is astonishing to learn that the Israeli secret services did not know in advance that Hamas was preparing to attack Israel with 5,000 missiles supplied by Iran. It had never happened: the defense systems had always already hit the first missile launched by Hamas, but what happened this time? Did Natanyahu want to justify the attack on Gaza at the expense of the lives of its citizens?
In two days more than 700 Israelis lost their lives, and one wonders where the international community, the blue helmets, but above all the so-called Arab brothers who have relations with Israel are, entities that should have intervened to urge the cease-fire. fire.
The Arab brothers have used the Palestinians for their own ends, just think that there are still refugees from 1948 in the suburbs of Lebanon and Jordan at a time when skyscrapers are being built halfway up the sea in Dubai.
In the early 1920s there was no “Arab Palestinian people,” but then it took a shape similar to today.
Until the end of the 19th century, residents living in the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean identified themselves primarily in terms of religion: Muslims felt much stronger bonds with remote co-religionists than with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. Living in that area implied no sense of common political purpose.
Then came from Europe, the ideology of nationalism; the vision of a government that embodies the spirit of its people was foreign but attractive to Middle Easterners. But how to apply this ideal? Who could build a nation? And what were the boundaries? Such questions have stimulated enormous debates.
Some said that the inhabitants of the Levant were a nation; others who spoke Eastern Arabic; or all those who spoke Arabic; or all Muslims.
But no one suggested “Palestinians,” and for good reason. Palestine, then a secular way of saying Eretz Yisrael or Holy Land, embodied a purely Jewish and Christian concept, completely alien to Muslims, even repugnant to them.
This aversion was confirmed in April 1920, when British occupying forces carved out a “Palestine.” Muslims reacted very suspiciously, rightly seeing this designation as a victory for Zionism. Less precisely, they feared that this signaled a resurgence of the crusading impulse. No prominent Muslim voice supported the delimitation of Palestine in 1920; everyone protested.
Instead, Muslims west of the Jordan River directed their allegiance to Damascus, where the Jordanian king’s great-uncle Abdullah II then reigned; they identified themselves as southern Syrians.
Interestingly, no one supported this affiliation more emphatically than a young man named Amin Husseini. In July 1920, however, the French overthrew this Hashemite king, thus destroying the idea of a southern Syria.
Isolated by the events of April and July, Palestine’s Muslims took advantage of a bad situation. A prominent Jerusalemite commented, a few days after the fall of the Hashemite kingdom: “After the recent events in Damascus we must implement a complete change in our plans. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine.”
Following this advice, the leadership in December 1920 adopted the goal of creating an independent Palestinian state. Within a few years, this effort was led by Husseini.
Other identities, namely the Syrian, Arab and Muslim ones, have continued to compete with the Palestinian one for decades, but the latter has now swept away the others and reigns almost unchallenged.
