Palestine Had No Chance

Prolific Zionist propagandist and scribbler Michael Burd - *sigh* - had the following letter published in yesterday's Australian under the incredible heading Palestine had its chance. In it, he seeks to divert the reader's attention from Israel's total contempt for international law and its serial violations of UN resolutions by trotting out the old Zionist saw that the Palestinians could have had a state of their own today if only they hadn't petulantly rejected the UN "umpire's decision" to divvy up Palestine between Jews and Arabs in 1947:

"Israel basher Jake Lynch (Letters, 11/9) claims Israel's occupation is the obstacle to peace ignoring the reality that when Israel pulled out of Gaza, it was reciprocated with even more terror attacks by Palestinians - which certainly doesn't give Israelis the confidence to make any more concessions. Lynch likes to cite international law and UN resolutions when it suits him. How about the original UN resolution 181 in 1948 [sic: 1947] declaring one state for the Jews and one state for the Arabs which to this day has never been accepted by the Arab-Muslim world? Had this umpire's decision been accepted by the Arabs, the Palestinians would have had their state by now."

The oft-repeated lies of Zionist propagandists such as Burd on the subject of Resolution 181 are easily exposed. A good place to start is with political analyst Jeremy Hammond's 2010 essay, The Myth of the UN Creation of Israel.

Hammond's paper makes it abundantly clear why no Palestinian Arab in his right mind could possibly have accepted UN Resolution 181, arguably the most outrageous and disgraceful resolution in UN history. As an appetizer, here is the conclusion to Hammond's essay:

"The partition plan put forth by UNSCOP [United Nations Special Committee on Palestine] sought to create within Palestine a Jewish state contrary to the express will of the majority of its inhabitants. Despite constituting only a third of the population and owning less than 7% of the land, it sought to grant to the Jews more than half of Palestine for the purpose of creating that Jewish state. It would, in other words, take land from the Arabs and give it to the Jews.

"The inherent injustice of the partition plan stands in stark contrast to the alternative plan proposed by the Arabs, of an independent state of Palestine in which the rights of the Jewish minority would be recognized and respected, and which would afford the Jewish population representation in a democratic government.

"The partition plan was blatantly prejudicial to the rights of the majority Arab population, and was premised on the rejection of their right to self-determination. This is all the more uncontroversial inasmuch as the UNSCOP report itself explicitly acknowledged that the proposal to create a Jewish state in Palestine was contrary to the principle of self-determination. The plan was also premised upon the erroneous assumption that the Arabs would simply acquiesce to having their land taken from them and voluntarily surrender their majority rights, including their right to self-determination.

"UN General Assembly Resolution 181 neither legally partitioned Palestine nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority to unilaterally declare the existence of the Jewish state of Israel. It merely recommended that the UNSCOP partition plan be accepted and implemented by the concerned parties. Naturally, to have any weight of law, the plan, like any contract, would have to have been formally agreed upon by both parties, which it was not. Nor could the General Assembly have legally partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority for the creation of Israel to the Zionist leadership, as it simply had no such authority to confer.

"When the Security Council took up the matter referred to it by the General Assembly, it could come to no consensus on how to proceed with implementing the partition plan. It being apparent that the plan could not be implemented by peaceful means, the suggestion that it be implemented by force was rejected by members of the Security Council. The simple fact of the matter is that the plan was never implemented.

"The US, Syria, and other member nations were correct in their observations that, while the Security Council did have the authority to declare a threat to the peace and authorize the use of force to deal with that and maintain or restore peace and security, it did not have any authority to implement by force a plan to partition Palestine contrary to the will of most of its inhabitants. Any attempt to usurp such authority by either the General Assembly or the Security Council would have been a prima facie violation of the Charters's founding principle of respect for the right to self-determination of all peoples, and thus null and void under international law.

"In sum, the popular claim that that the UN 'created' Israel is a myth, and Israel's own claim in its founding document that UN Resolution 181 constituted legal authority for Israel's creation, or otherwise constituted 'recognition' by the UN of the 'right' of the Zionist Jews to expropriate for themselves Arab land and deny to the majority Arab population of that land their own right of self-determination, is a patent fraud.

"Further corollaries may be drawn. The disaster inflicted upon Palestine was not inevitable. The UN was created for the purpose of preventing such catastrophes. Yet it failed miserably to do so, on numerous counts. It failed in its duty to refer the legal questions of the claims to Palestine to the International Court of Justice, despite requests from member states to do so. It failed to use all means within its authority, including the use of armed forces, to maintain peace and prevent the war that was predicted would occur upon the termination of the Mandate. And most importantly, far from upholding its founding principles, the UN effectively acted to prevent the establishment of an independent and democratic state of Palestine, in direct violation of the principles of its own Charter. The consequences of these and other failures are still witnessed by the world today on a daily basis. Recognition of the grave injustice perpetrated against the Palestinian people in this regard and dispelling such historical myths is essential if a way forward towards peace and reconciliation is to be found." (jeremyhammond.com)