A. P. TOBIAS ("Blair is Arab champion", Yours Truly, Oct 19) continues to parade his ignorance and, worse still, his utter contempt for the Palestinians. But let me take up just one point in his long letter.
Jordan is not Palestine. The British enlisted the help of the Arabs (Lawrence of Arabia and all that) in order to defeat the Turks, who, until World War One had ruled over the Middle East for centuries. In return, the Arabs were to be rewarded with an independent kingdom of their own. But things didn't work out that way.
After the war, the British and French in fact entered into secret negotiations and, between them, carved-up the region into their own spheres of influence. Palestine became a British Protectorate, so too an area that came to be known as Trans-Jordan. For their part, the Arabs were out of it, their hopes trodden under and their disillusion turning to bitter resentment which was to bode so ill for the future.
Following the end of World War Two, the UN proclaimed the State of Israel, albeit the partitioning of Palestine between the Zionists and the Palestinians. But that was not what the Zionists had in mind.
So they went to war, confident that a short, sharp campaign would put the Palestinians to flight and defeat what little opposition the Palestinians and reluctant neighbouring Arab tin-pot armies could muster. All suffered humiliating defeat as the hands of the Zionists.
Zionist violence against the Palestinians culminated in several acts of unspeakable terror.
I might add that the making of Israel or, as the historian Maxime Rodinson calls it, the Zionist Colonial State of Israel, was nothing more and nothing less than a 20th century colonial conquest and consequently had the full support of the Western Imperialist powers.
Since then, consecutive Zionist governments have resorted to a nationalistic and exclusive racist ideology, wholly directed against the Palestinians. Zionist democracy, if that isn't a contradiction in terms, ends at the Green Line.
GEORGE ABENDSTERN
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