Commentary | :

By ADEL SAFTY

he recent decision
by the Palestine Na-
tional Council to set
up an independent
Palestinian state in
the West Bank and
Gaza, recognize Is-
rael and offer to
negotiate a peaceful
settlement is an event of undeniable histori-
cal significance. It is the culmination of the
gradual move, since 1974, by the Palestinian
leadership. toward the acceptance of the
principle of a Palestine divided into a Jewish
state and a Palestinian Arab state.

Having accepted the right of Israel to half
of Palestine, the Palestinians are asserting
their right, no longer to all of Palestine, but
to the other half of Palestine.

That right finds its juridical basis in Uni-
ted Nations General Assembly Resolution
181 of November, 1947. The resolution
recommended that mandated Palestine be

partitioned in a Jewish state and a Palesti-

nian Arab state.

The great powers supported the resolu-
tion for selfish reasons. The Truman admin-
istration wanted to court the American
Jewish vote in the coming election. The
USSR was interested in the elimination of
British presence in Palestine. It also hoped
that since the majority of Jewish immi-
grants in Palestine came from Eastern
Europe, the new Jewish state would be an
ally of the socialist camp.

_ But the Palestinian Arabs, who were in
possession of 94 per cent of mandated
Palestine and constituted virtually 70 per
cent of its population, objected to the parti-
tioning of their country. Henry Cattan,
spokesman of the Arab Higher committee,
pointed out that the United Nations pos-
sessed neither sovereignty over Palestine,
nor the power to deprive its people of their
right of independence in the whole of their
homeland.

Many other delegates expressed opposi-
tion to the partition of Palestine on legal
and moral grounds. The delegate of the
Philippines said that the partition plan “not
being mandatory under any specific provi-
sion of the UN Charter, nor in accordance
with its fundamental principles, is clearly
repugnant to the valid nationalist aspira-
tions of the people of the Palestine.”

Sir Zufrallah Khan, UN representative
for Pakistan, described the attitude of the
Western powers: “They who paid lip-
service to humanitarian principles closed
their own doors to the ‘homeless Jews,’ but
voted Arab Palestine to be not only a shel-
ter, a refuge, but also a state so that he (the
homeless Jew) should rule over the Arab.”

But the U.S. officials “by direct order
from the White House,” used “every form
of pressure” to change the vote of those who
opposed the partition plan. In the end, and
after the vote had been postponed twice
because the U.S. did not have the necessary
votes, the decisive votes for partition were
cast by Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines.

The Canadian delegate voted for the par-
tition resolution “with heavy hearts and
many misgivings.”

It is instructive to note, in light of what
has happened to the Palestinians and their
society, that the United Nations resolution
which gave Israel legal birth specifically
stipulated that ‘no discrimination of any
kind shall be made between the inhabitants
on the grounds of race, religion, language or
SCX...

Yet the partition resolution was quickly
overtaken by the bloody events in Palestine.
The Israeli state was established and it

SIMHA FLAPAN .

.. refuting Israel’s
myths about a Palestinian exodus.

quickly moved to forcibly prevent the Pales-
tinian state from coming into being. By the
end of 1949, the Zionist armies stood in
control of the area recommended by the
partition resolution to be a Jewish state and
of 50 per cent of the area which would have
formed the Palestinian state. As the Israeli
scholar Dr. Benny Morris recently con-
firmed, Zionist military leaders, with the
help of the occasional massacre, inflicted on
the Palestinians the expulsion, disposses-
sions, subjugation, and denial of rights
which perpetuated the conflict.

Another Israeli writer, Tom Segev (1949:
the First Israelis), showed how it was the
Arab countries which sought peace with
Israel in 1948-1949 and it was the Israeli
leaders who balked, preferring the status
quo and the state of siege. Segev wrote:
“The Arabs recognized Israel and were
ready to discuss peace, but Israel did not
accept the conditions” of allowing the
Palestinian refugees to return and permit-
ting the establishment of a Palestinian Arab
state as provided for by the United Nations
resolution.

Segev reported on recently declassified
files in Israel’s state archives bearing telling
names: “expulsion of the inhabitants,”
“destruction of Arab villages,” and so on.

The late Simha Flapan, Israeli politician
and revisionist historian, set out to examine
the solidified myths about the Palestinian
exodus, and about the Arabs’ unwillingness
to recognize Israel and make peace with it,
because “like most Israelis I have been
under the influence of certain myths that
had become accepted as historical truth.”
He found that the recently opened Israeli
archives “not only failed to substantiate
them (the myths), they openly contradicted
them.” Flapan wrote his book The Birth of
Israel “in the hope of sweeping away the
distortions and lies that have hardened into
sacrosanct myth.”
orty years after what
the Palestinians call
the year of catas-
trophe, the Palesti-
nian uprising is help-
ing to dispel these
solidified myths and
clearly allow the
conflict to regain the
reality and the duality which the myths had
successfully obscured for so long — that
the Zionist leaders, mainly European immi-
grants, were determined to transform Pales-
tine into a Jewish state and the Palestinians,
who were the original majority inhabitants
of Palestine, resisted the loss of their coun-

try.

The Palestinian uprising is virtually uni-
que in the history of resistance to colonial-
ism: by its extraordinary popular character,
uniting young and old, men and women; by
the incredible courage and fearless resolve
of its teenage leaders; and by the hopelessly
gross inequality of a confrontation pitting
stone-throwers against an awesome army
ready to shoot, kill, tear-gas and blow up
houses.

It has earned the Palestinians their right-
ful place in history as resistance and free-
dom fighters, which the myths and

. distortions have long denied them. It has

also crystallized for Western public opinion
the nature of a conflict in which the Palesti-
nians, ready to share Palestine and offering
to live on a mere 23 per cent of their former
homeland, are opposed by Israeli leaders
who want to keep all of Palestine.

Thus are crystallized two positions. The
one position is based on compromise and a
call for a negotiated settlement, the other on
the principle that force already decided the
issue. But clearly force has failed, as is evi-
dent from the impact of the Palestinian
uprising and from the opposition of the
international community to the use of force
as a means of conflict resolution.

Courageous Israeli leaders understand
that, and have been calling on Israeli politi-
cians to face the reality. Abba Eban, former
Israeli foreign minister and privileged wit-
ness of the partition resolution in 1947,
recently made a strong case for a return to
the principle of sharing Palestine. Writing in
a leading French periodical, he argued that
“a principle that was applauded with fer-
vour when it benefited six hundred thou-
sand Jews cannot become obsolete when it
concerns one and a half million Palestinian
Arabs.”

estern powers, with-
» out whose help and
support the destruc-
tion of Palestinian
society would not
have occurred, have
a special obligation
and a moral respon-
sibility toward the
Palestinians. The United States (and to
lesser degree Canada) who played a crucial
role in bringing about and ensuring the
adoption of Resolution 181, recognized the
legality of the existence in Palestine of a
Jewish state and a Palestinian state. They
have recognized and helped the Jewish
state. Legal and moral principles require
that they recognize and help establish the
Palestinian state.

In establishing an independent Palesti-
nian state and accepting the existence of
Israel, the Palestinians have added to the
legal basis for their rights a significant polit-
ical and moral dimension. They have
accepted their enemy.

Israel is thus faced with the choice
between the principle of sharing Palestine
and the reliance on what Eban called “‘a
rigorous system of repression.” The choice
has never been more dramatically pu‘t
before the Israeli leaders. History will call
them to account. And that is because more
than ever, the reality of the present chance
of peace is more compelling than the illu-
sion of the permanence of subjugation of a
people determined to live in freedom.

Dr. Safty teaches Social Sciences and
Language Education at the University of Brit-
ish Columbia. The author of many articles on
the Arab-Israeli conflict, he is currently work-
ing on a book on the Palestinian question in
American political culture.

Mergers signal
tougher times

If the first month of the year is a
preamble of the rest of the year,
then we are in big trouble on the
economic front. There have already
been a few cases of corporate can-
nibalism, namely Molson swallow-
ing Carling-O’Keefe, Canadian
Airlines devouring Wardair and
Imperial Oil eating Texaco. All
these mergers lead to increased
profits for the few and loss of jobs
for the ones on the lower end of the
ladder in these companies. And, to
add to stupidity, some economists
even say that fewer and bigger
companies will increase competi-
tion. I am not a fan of free enter-
prise, but I know darn well that
competition is better when more
play the same game.

On the federal scene, there is a
person of a questionable intelli-
gence on the loose. Unfortunately,
he controls the interest rate. Bank
of Canada governor John Crow, in
connivance with Michael Wilson,
suggests that by increasing the
interest rate and by consequence
creating more unemployment, he
can beat inflation.

No thank you. I would rather
live with inflation at five per cent
and have a job than live with one
per cent inflation without a job.
Hopefully, one day these charac-
ters will be put back where they
belong.

Fernand Samson,
Kamloops

Labour can set
its own agenda

I’m writing concerning the arti-
cle “Labour and the NDP strategy
(Tribune, Dec. 19, 1988) which
raises the question, “Why should
the labour movement commit itself
uncritically to a political party
which increasingly seeks to dis-
tance itself publicly from labour
and its policies?”

NDP strategy in the recent fed-
eral election was to downplay free
trade. But, as the Tribune notes,
this was also CLC policy. Criticism
should be directed at the CLC, not
the NDP. How can we criticize the
NDP for having the same policy as
the CLC?

Rather than distancing itself
from the NDP, union leaders such
as the CAW’s Bob White and
Steelworkers’ Leo Gerard are cal-
ling for closer ties to the NDP.
Their argument is that labour can
influence the direction of the NDP.

Labour needs to set its own
agenda and decide how to achieve
its goals.