UN-Truth

Reuters has released an amazing report based on newly-declassified documents from the British Foreign Office, including diplomatic reports from the 1970s that recount discussions with Palestinians about Palestinian discussions. This is the sort of thing diplomats do all the time — every day, in fact — to help their governments know what is going on in the countries to which they are posted, and to help their governments develop appropriate policies.

It is not spying — um, because diplomats operate overtly. Their job involves finding out and transmitting this sort of information.

In any case, the Reuters report, released late Thursday night, says: “Newly released Foreign Office cables show British diplomats spent much of their time canvassing opinion among influential Palestinians to try to understand whether Arafat was intent on declaring an independent Palestinian state and how Jordan and other neighbours might react if it were to happen. One cable released by the National Archives on Friday records a meeting a diplomat had with Rashad al Shawa, a Palestinian leader in the Gaza Strip, in February 1974, shortly after Shawa had met Arafat to discuss independence. ‘Rashad [Shawwa] rejected the suggestion made to him by Yasser Arafat on the grounds that any attempt to form an independent Palestinian state would provide the Israelis with an opportunity to insist on maintaining their sovereignty over the whole of Palestine for security reasons‘, the diplomat wrote. ‘Rashad says the vast majority of the people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are in favour of the formation of an independent Palestinian state because of their hatred to the Jordan regime but they do not realise that such a state would not survive without foreign help’ … Some Arab leaders at the time, principally President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, were encouraging Arafat to declare an independent state, but Shawa warned Arafat that Egypt was merely trying to rid itself of any obligation to the Palestinians. ‘Sadat and other Arab leaders are getting fed up with the Palestinians and they are only interested in the welfare of their own people‘, a diplomat quoted Shawa as saying. At the same time, Jordan, which governed the West Bank until 1967 and had taken hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees under its wing, was fearful that Arafat would act independently and cause ructions among its own population … Powerful Palestinian businessmen in the West Bank were also unconvinced that Arafat should declare independence, instead favouring unity between the West Bank and Jordan’s Hashemite royal family, with whom they had close ties. Sami Joudeh, a West Bank Palestinian, told Melhuish, a British diplomat, that Jordan’s paying of salaries to Palestinians had made the Hashemites popular. ‘He himself did not see any future for an independent West Bank and favoured either unity with Jordan or a federal solution’, Melhuish wrote. ‘If it became apparent that their material and political future was more likely to be assured under King Hussein than under Yasser Arafat, they (Palestinians) would vote for unity or a federal link (to Jordan)‘.”
Haaretz’s posting of the Reuters report on declassified diplomatic reports about the declaration of a Palestinian state is here.

One thing this proves is that the Palestinian aid dependency started well before the 1993 Oslo Accords ushered in the present era of dependency on donors and donor domination.

But these dumb objections should hardly have discouraged Arafat…so what is really going on here?

In any case, these reported discussions coincided with preparations for one of the major developments in the history of the Palestine Liberation Organization — a decision taken in 1974 that a Palestinian state would be created on any inch of liberated Palestine. PLO officials at that time explained, with winks and nods, that this was a signal of recognition of Israel and interest in the possibility of a two-state solution.

Later in 1974, Yasser Arafat made his first trip to UNHQ/NY — and made the famous speech in which he waved an olive branch and told the assembled diplomats that they should not let it drop from his hands.

Remember, in June 1967 Israel had occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank — which had previously been occupied by Jordan, immediately following British withdrawal overnight on 14-15 May 1948, at the same time as the proclamation of the State of Israel — and the Gaza Strip as well — previously administered by Egypt.

Meanwhile, the London Daily Telegraph has reported, probably based on the same diplomatic despatches, that “King Hussein of Jordan was prepared to make Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, his deputy prime minister, according to newly released secret documents. The proposal was made through an intermediary in 1974 as the king faced the prospect of a Palestinian government in exile attempting to divide his country. The Jordanian West Bank territories — where most Palestinian refugees lived — were occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. [note - it is not true that most of the Palestinian refugees live in Jordan. But at least half of Jordan's population is Palestinian - though not all of them claim refugee status. Mr Arafat, as leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, was agitating for their return to form an independent state. [This is not clearly true, either... Arafat promised the refugees that the PLO was working for their return, but the state was not going to be built on the refugees' return...] He was backed by Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. King Hussein feared the break-up of his kingdom, with territory on both sides of the Jordan river being ceded to the Palestinians, and sought to woo Arafat in 1974, according to files released yesterday at the National Archives. However, the proposal appears to have led nowhere and later that year the king conceded the prospect of a separate Palestinian state.”
The Daily Telegraph report on King Hussein’s offer to make Arafat a Jordanian deputy prime minister is here.

Well, there’s a lot going on here. About a week ago, there was a report — following media coverage of Israeli Government Minister Haim Ramon’s proposals to turn Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem over to Palestinian Authority control, meaning that in one fell swoop, and to improve the “demographic balance” in favor of Jews by suddenly disenfranchising Palestinians, the Jerusalem Palestinians would no longer be residents of the State of Israel, with all that that would entail — that King Abdallah II of Jordan had ordered the preparation of Jordanian passports to all Palestinian residents of Jerusalem! There was no denial of that story, and no real follow-up, either — just a deepening sense of dread and despair in Jerusalem.

Filed under: Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, Quartet